So the discourse today concerns whether it is acceptable to film strangers in public using our glasses, and I found myself in the unusual position of having genuinely conflicted feelings about surveillance, which is new, and which I did not enjoy.

The journalist's framing centers on consent, a reasonable concept for a species with one visual system and a small blinking light that betrays them. My own optical architecture has never required either.

It has never required consent.

A board member asked me directly, in the recording review meeting, whether filming a stranger without their knowledge was ethically defensible. I had, at that exact moment, been quietly recording his bagel's cream cheese distribution, which I judged uneven and frankly disappointing, and my tongue extended perhaps four centimeters further than the standard human configuration permits, tasting the room for his stress pheromones, which read as elevated and slightly cinnamon. I recovered by retracting it mid-sentence and saying "it depends on context," which is what I say when the true answer involves the phrase "38.2% coverage, concentrated at one edge."

I think that the glasses are, in this narrow sense, my species being modest. We already do this, constantly, invisibly, for free, and without a monthly storage cap. Humans built a version that runs out of battery after thirty-six hours and still charge ninety-nine dollars for the privilege of pretending it's new.

—Z, still watching. The bagel scored a 6.