Then it was over, and he was debarking in what had been the Wal-Mart's garden center. The new bright sun made him tear up, and he fished out his shades. "Hey, mister, c'mere, I've got something better than sunglasses for you!" The guy who beckoned him over to a market-stall had the look of an aging bangbanger: shaved head, tattoos, ridiculous cycling shorts with some gut hanging over them. "See these? Polarizing contact-lenses -- prescription or optically neutral. Everyone in India is into these things, but we make 'em right here in Florida." He lifted a half-sphere of filmy plastic from his case and peeled back his eyelid and popped it in. His whole iris was tinted black, along with most of the whites of his eyes. Geometric shapes like Maori tattoos were rendered in charcoal grey across the lenses. "I can print you up a set in five minutes, ten bucks for plain, twenty if you want them bit-mapped." "I think I'll stick with my shades, thanks," Sammy said. "C'mon, the ladies love these things. Real conversation starter. Make you look all anime and shit, guy like you can try this kind of thing out for twenty bucks, you know, won't hurt." "That's all right," Sammy said. "Just try a pair on, then, how about that. I printed an extra set last Wednesday and they've only got a shelf-life of a week, so these'll only be good for another day. Fresh in a sealed package. You like 'em. you buy a pair at full price, c'mon that's as good as you're going to get." Before Sammy knew it, he was taking receipt of a sealed plastic packet in hot pink with a perforated strip down one side. "Uh, thanks..." he said, as he began to tuck it into a pocket. He hated hard-sells, he was no good at them. It was why he bought all his cars online now. "Naw, that's not the deal, you got to try them on, otherwise how can you buy them once you fall in love with 'em? They're safe man, go on, it's easy, just like putting in a big contact lens." Sammy thought about just walking away, but the other vendors were watching him now, and the scrutiny sapped his will. "My hands are too dirty for this," he said. The vendor silently passed him a sealed sterile wipe, grinning. Knowing he was had, he wiped his hands, tore open the package, took out the lenses and popped them one at a time into his eyes. He blinked a couple times. The world was solarized and grey, like he was seeing it through a tinted windscreen. "Oh man, you look bad-*ass*," the vendor said. He held up a hand mirror.