Kitty reached through the cabinet to get the spices, and suddenly she
froze. She froze in the way people do when they have a genuinely new
thought about something they have always done without even thinking about
it. Because she had looked at what she was holding. The recipe called for
five spices, and she held five. But only two of them were right, and
neither was in the right location.
A terrible intuition overtook her, like when you come home early to surprise your wife and you find your boss' car parked in your driveway and the bedroom is the only one without lights on. Horrified she opened the cabinet - to find that not a single container was in the same place as when she'd checked two years earlier. Panic ran through her, horrible fear.
She ran through the kitchen like she was possessed. She opened every cabinet, every cupboard, every drawer and every storage container. And she found the same thing - nothing was the same. Everything was moved! Everything! Somebody had been in the Institute, had searched the whole place inside out, and the only clue left was that things were in the wrong order!
But why hadn't anyone else noticed? Kitty never actually opened things, she just reached through for what she wanted . . . but nobody else could, and thus nobody else needed to remember where everything was, precisely, in three dimensions.
And now a lot made sense. Times when people had been looking for items they had put down, and she had been confused by their poor memories. All the times that somebody had pointed up to fifty degrees off the true direction. How everyone indicated directions as if everything was the same height as their shoulders. Kitty never lost track of locations, never had to figure out vectors or perspective. It was as natural to her as breathing, or thinking - or passing through walls! Her mutation! This knowledge was part of it, and she'd had it since birth!
"They're all blind." She whispered. "Missing a whole sense, they have to guess all this stuff. No wonder everything's been moved, they must look inside and find things visually each time they open a door. They must have to keep their eyes focused ahead at all times to keep track of where people are in crowds. They must . . . they must have no idea what the hell I've been cooking. Since I sure haven't been using the right ingredients or measurements the past few years."
And so it was that Kitty's cooking improved tremendously. As did her driving, once she realized that to compensate for everyone else's handicap she had to constantly look at the road.
A terrible intuition overtook her, like when you come home early to surprise your wife and you find your boss' car parked in your driveway and the bedroom is the only one without lights on. Horrified she opened the cabinet - to find that not a single container was in the same place as when she'd checked two years earlier. Panic ran through her, horrible fear.
She ran through the kitchen like she was possessed. She opened every cabinet, every cupboard, every drawer and every storage container. And she found the same thing - nothing was the same. Everything was moved! Everything! Somebody had been in the Institute, had searched the whole place inside out, and the only clue left was that things were in the wrong order!
But why hadn't anyone else noticed? Kitty never actually opened things, she just reached through for what she wanted . . . but nobody else could, and thus nobody else needed to remember where everything was, precisely, in three dimensions.
And now a lot made sense. Times when people had been looking for items they had put down, and she had been confused by their poor memories. All the times that somebody had pointed up to fifty degrees off the true direction. How everyone indicated directions as if everything was the same height as their shoulders. Kitty never lost track of locations, never had to figure out vectors or perspective. It was as natural to her as breathing, or thinking - or passing through walls! Her mutation! This knowledge was part of it, and she'd had it since birth!
"They're all blind." She whispered. "Missing a whole sense, they have to guess all this stuff. No wonder everything's been moved, they must look inside and find things visually each time they open a door. They must have to keep their eyes focused ahead at all times to keep track of where people are in crowds. They must . . . they must have no idea what the hell I've been cooking. Since I sure haven't been using the right ingredients or measurements the past few years."
And so it was that Kitty's cooking improved tremendously. As did her driving, once she realized that to compensate for everyone else's handicap she had to constantly look at the road.