Mister Volition by Greg Egan quotGive me the patch.quot He hesitates despite the gun long enough to confirm that the thing must be genuine. Hescheaply dressed but expensively groomed: manicured and depilated with the baby-smooth skin ofrich middle age. Any card in his wallet would be p-cash only anonymous but encrypted uselesswithout his own living fingerprints. Hes wearing no jewellery and his watch phone is plasticthe patch is the only thing worth taking. Good fakes cost 15 cents good real ones 15 K --buthes the wrong age and the wrong class to want to wear a fake for the sake of fashion. He tugs at the patch gently and it dislodges itself from his skin the adhesive rim doesntleave the faintest weal or pluck a single hair from his eyebrow. His newly naked eye doesntblink or squint --but I know its not truly sighted yet the suppressed perceptual pathwaystake hours to reawaken. He hands me the patch I half expect it to stick to my palm but it doesnt. The outer face isblack like anodised metal with a silver-gray logo of a dragon in one corner --drawnquotescapingquot from a cut-and-folded drawing of itself to bite its own tail. Recursive Visionsafter Escher. I press the gun harder against his stomach to remind him of its presence while Iglance down and turn the thing over. The inner face appears velvet black at first -but as Itilt it I catch the reflection of a street light rainbow-diffracted by the array of quantum-dot lasers. Some plastic fakes are molded with pits which give a similar effect but thesharpness of this image --dissected into colors but not blurred at all --is like nothing Iveever seen before. I look up at him and he meets my gaze warily. I know what hes feeling -thatice water in the bowels --but theres something more than fear in his eyes: a kind of dazedcuriosity