The thing in Hackworth's pocket was a pair of dark sunglasses: wraparounds 
with a glimmering rainbow finish, the sort of thing that, decades ago, would 
have been worn by a Magnum-slinging rebel cop in a prematurely canceled 
television series. Hackworth unfolded them and slid the polished ends of the 
bows cautiously over his temples. As the lenses approached, he could see light 
coming from them; they were phenomenoscopes. Though in this context, the word phantascope might have been more appropriate. The image grew to fill 
his sight but would not focus until he put them all the way on, so he 
reluctantly plummeted into the hallucination until it resolved, and just then 
the bows behind his ears came alive, stretched, and grew around the back of his 
skull like a rubber band snapping in reverse, joining in the back to form an 
unbreakable band. "Release," Hackworth said, and then ran through a litany of 
other standard yuvree commands. The spectacles would not release his head. 
Finally, a cone of light pierced space from somewhere above and behind him and 
splashed across a stage. Footlights came up, and a man in a top hat emerged 
from behind a curtain. "Welcome to your show," he said. "You can remove the 
glasses at any time by securing a standing ovation from not less than ninety 
percent of the audience." Then the lights and curtain vanished, and Hackworth 
was left with what he had seen before, namely, a
cybernetically enhanced night-vision rendering of the deck of the ship.