Planet of the Blind: A Science Fiction Story

All information comes to people through their senses. There are exactly four senses that people have:

1. The sense of hearing, the most useful of all senses;

2. the sense of touch;

3. the sense of smell;

4. the sense of taste.

That there are only four senses is a scientific fact taught by a great consensus of our school teachers. But for a long time there has been a strange tiny group of eccentrics who claim that there is something they call a “fifth sense.” They use the strange term “vision” to refer to this alleged ability. They even claim that they have the ability to use this so-called “fifth sense,” by doing some weird paranormal activity that they call “seeing.” These weirdos call regular men like me "blind men." 

I was hired by a committee at a major school to scientifically investigate this strange claim. Feeling the bumps on many a road sign, and asking directions from people on the way, I finally made my way to a small community of people who called themselves “seers.” I asked whether any of them had this strange power they called “vision.” They said they all had the power. I asked whether they would be willing to engage in a scientific test of this ability. I was rather surprised when they agreed without hesitation to the test I proposed.

The scientific test I proposed was a simple one. At one end of a large room, I would sit next to one person. A second person would sit about twenty paces away. I would instruct the first person to raise a random number of fingers in the air at an interval of thirty seconds. I would be able to tell how many fingers had been raised by feeling the person's fingers with my fingers. At each interval, someone named Adra sitting twenty paces away would have to call out how many fingers had been raised. This is a test that no person twenty paces away should be able to pass, because there is no way to tell how many fingers a distant person has raised through the known senses of hearing, smell, taste or touch (unless the person raising his fingers told how many fingers he raised, which was prohibited).

The test was tried 10 times, and in each case the person seated twenty paces away called out the correct number of fingers that had been raised. I knew that there must have been some kind of cheating. I accused the two persons of previously conspiring to memorize a sequence of numbers that would be remembered by both the person raising the fingers and the person seated twenty paces away.

“There is an easy way to prove that we really do have vision,” said  the person raising the fingers. “You can be the one who raises his fingers. And you can make sure to pick a random number of fingers each time you raise them.”

So I replaced this person in the test who raised the fingers. Twenty times I raised a random number of my fingers, changing how many fingers were raised each time. I was surprised that each and every time, Adra seated twenty paces away called out the correct number of fingers that I had raised.

“Those must have been only lucky guesses,” I said.

“Surely you can do better than that as an explanation,” said Adra.

“It makes no sense that so few people would have this rare skill you call 'vision,' and that almost everyone in the world would not have such a skill,” I said.

“There is a simple explanation for that,” said Adra. “Would you like to hear it?”

“Sure,” I said. “I like a good children's story as much as anyone else.”

“I will tell you the truth, not a children's story,” said Adra. “Once long ago every person in the world could see with the wonderful fifth sense we call vision. The eyes of every person allowed them to discover the nature of distant objects as soon as they pointed their eyes in the right direction. But then one year something very strange happened to the sun. For reasons we don't understand, the sun suddenly got much brighter. It was what we called the Great Brightening.”

“What do you mean by this odd word brighter?” I asked.

"It's hard to explain the word to a blind person like you who has never seen anything,” said Adra. “It's kind of like when a fire suddenly gets much hotter. It means a sudden increase in energy. When the sun suddenly got much brighter, some delicate part in the eye called the retina got damaged, and everyone in the world that looked at the sun lost their ability to use their eyes. They could no longer see. They became what we call blind, meaning without any ability to use their fifth sense.”

"So, tell me,” I said skeptically, “how did you and your friends ever acquire this magical paranormal ability you call vision?”

“We were born with the ability, just like everyone in the whole world is born with such an ability,” said Adra. “The only difference is that we were extremely careful never to lose our ability to see. Whenever we went outdoors, we would always wear thick very dark sunglasses that would protect our eyes from being damaged by the very brightened sun. If you had taken the same precaution all your life, you would also be able to see. You also would have vision, a fifth sense.”

“That is a very interesting story,” I said. “How did you ever learn such a story? Was it passed down from generation to generation? Such tales passed through oral tradition are not very reliable.”

“We discovered it in a book,” Adra said. “I will show you the book.”

Adra brought a book and I asked to feel it. I opened up the pages, and turned them. I could feel nothing. The pages were all smooth.

“The pages are all smooth,” I said. “Clearly the book has no information in it.”

“You're wrong,” said Adra. “The book has very much information. Nowadays almost everyone gets information from books by using their fingers to feel the tiny bumps on the pages. But before what we call the Great Brightening, people would produce books with smooth pages. They put information on the book by using a machine rarely used today, a tool called a printer. A book created in such a way could be read by anyone with the fifth sense, what we call vision. By getting the information from this book, we were able to find out how the Great Brightening caused most people to become blind, to lose their vision, when the sun flared up like a fire that burns much more brightly.”

“How many of these old books with smooth pages do you have?” I asked.

“Thousands of them,” Adra said.

Disgusted by these lies about a claimed paranormal ability, I left the community. Using my bump puncher to make bumps in paper, I must now write my report to the committee of the great school that hired me. I will report that the claims of a mysterious fifth sense called “vision” are delusions without foundation. I will report that those who claim to be able to “see” with their eyes are probably mentally disturbed people, of interest only to doctors who treat the mentally ill. I am sure that my report will help advance the noble cause of true science. I look forward to the day when great scholars will read my report by using their finger tips.