Doctor Hornicker adjusted his instrument and examined the eye again. He hadn’t been mistaken: within the dilated pupil he could see the universe laid bare. He considered whether it might be a trick of the light, and was conscious of the lunch that still lingered on his breath.

“It’s perfectly natural for our eyes to weaken as we age,” he said to the young man who sat facing him. The man had reddish hair and a band of freckles across his nose and might have been twenty or forty, his pale complexion made it difficult to tell. Doctor Hornicker was nearly sixty, and for most of his life had lived alone; to love was a burden in the world as he now knew it.

The man, Phineas Redmond, said that he was a turbine technician on one of the wind farms powering the electrical grid, and that without his eyesight he was as good as dead. All of Doctor Hornicker’s patients knew this to be true, but very few had the mettle to remark on it.

Doctor Hornicker once more assured the man that there was nothing to fear—he said this to all of his patients—and for the first time took notice of the irises surrounding the dark pools; anyone else would have thought them magnificent, but their colors, peacock colors—blue-green and copper—paled in comparison with the unexpected splendor of long-forbidden celestial bodies.

“Look up. Left. Good.” There was no mistaking Centaurus A, familiar to him at once. He had known the names of many celestial bodies as a boy, but since the last labor rebellion half a century ago, the stars were forbidden to the working class and the streets were flooded nightly with a dense and artificial fog. That the stars belonged to everyone, and that in theory anyone could reach for them, was an idea too dangerous to be allowed to flourish.

“If I can’t see, I can’t work, and if I can’t work—you understand.” They lived in a world where work signified breath, and wealth determined proximity to the stars. Those who could work but had no need to do so lived in sky-piercing concrete buildings from an era of aspirations, and only they could look up at the glimmering expanse overhead and dream sweet dreams—of what? Even taller towers, even greater wealth, laborers more industrious and still more insignificant.

No longer did children dream of becoming astronauts, or astronomers; even astrology—what the stars foretold—was forbidden among working men and women. Lovers were never star-crossed, no one thanked their lucky stars and nothing was any longer written in the stars because the moon and the stars belonged exclusively to the privileged in their glistening palaces high above the ground.

“You must take care to avoid unnecessary strain,” said Doctor Hornicker, to which the man made no response. The law required the doctor to report on all of his patients, but reporting the decline in Phineas Redmond’s eyesight meant that the man would be under scrutiny by the State. When his eyesight became antipodal to optimal performance, Phineas Redmond would be put to death. And so, falsifying his records to show otherwise, Doctor Hornicker prescribed Phineas a pair of contact lenses and begged him to return should his eyesight continue to worsen.

The doctor sent Phineas on his way—the sun was setting quickly, and a thick fog was beginning to blanket everything. He looked for Centaurus A in every pair of eyes for months afterward.

It was a year before Phineas Redmond returned with his eyes weaker still, and in his pupils Doctor Hornicker observed the Ring Nebula. He prescribed stronger lenses and again sent the patient on his way, but this time felt a familiar twinge in his breast at the moment of parting.

Phineas Redmond was as good as dead when he returned to Doctor Hornicker for a third time. In his pupils the doctor saw the Pillars of Creation and marveled at their unrivaled beauty. He found himself unable to understand how an otherwise healthy individual in the prime of his life could so suddenly lose his vision, and with horror imagined Phineas’s death by execution.

Phineas confessed: he never descended from his turbine when the work day was done and nightly fell asleep gazing fanatically at the stars. He had seen too much, had dared to dream and had drunk too deep, and now there were no lenses strong enough to once more allow him to see.

Doctor Hornicker could not turn him out onto dangerous streets, and so asked Phineas to share his life with him. He would protect him, he swore, and would care for him. And so nightly he lost himself in Phineas’s peacock eyes, swimming among the celestial bodies that glowed there.

They spent their evenings talking quietly about nothing in particular, as lovers do. Phineas mischievously recited a treasonous nursery rhyme—“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”—and Doctor Hornicker—Henry—still remembered the words to what was once the Star-Spangled Banner. Phineas flourished in his darkness, and they never discussed his eyes or what wonders they held.

Someday perhaps these eyes would cloud over, but Doctor Hornicker knew he would not love Phineas any less. They had collided like two galaxies and there was no separating them.

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Jean-Luke Swanepoel was born in South Africa, and currently lives in California with his partner. His work has appeared in Prime Number Magazine, Lunch Ticket, Litro Magazine, and CutBank. He is the writer and publisher of The Thing About Alice (2020), and he’s always busy reading. Find him on Goodreads at www.goodreads.com/jlswanepoel.