The Heat of the Night

January 14, 2026, Boise, Idaho


Tara zipped her jacket against the January chill, her breath fogging in the dim streetlight glow. The power was out again—third time this week—but she didn’t mind. Not anymore. She adjusted her Heat Vision contacts, the ones she’d mailed in last month with a $2.04 check (2 cents per lens, plus tax). The graphene coating had come back flawless, a single atomic layer that upshifted light into the thermal spectrum. Now, the world pulsed in shades of heat: the blue chill of snowbanks, the orange flicker of a neighbor’s woodstove, the red streak of a cat bolting across the yard.


She’d splurged on the tech after hearing about Heat Vision, a scrappy startup out of Reno. Their pitch was simple: send us anything clear—goggles, contacts, windows—and for 2 cents per item, 5 cents per square meter on bigger stuff, they’d coat it with graphene magic. Thermal vision for all. Tara’s buddy Jace, a trucker, had mailed his rig’s cockpit windshield. “Like driving through a sci-fi flick,” he’d said, grinning. Cost him $12 total. Worth it.


Tonight, Tara was hunting. Not game—groceries. The outage had killed the corner store’s lights, but the clerk, a Heat Vision convert, waved her in. His goggles glowed faintly as he scanned her cans, their warmth lighting up his hands. “Saw a guy lift a candy bar earlier,” he muttered. “Caught him red-handed. Literally.” Tara smirked. Shoplifting was harder when everyone could see your hot little paws.


Outside, the streets buzzed with a new rhythm. Kids in coated ski goggles chased each other, shrieking as they tracked warm footprints in the snow. A cop car rolled by, its graphene-tinted windows scanning for trouble—rumor was, the department had coated every cruiser for under a grand. Heat Vision’s cheap rates had flipped the night upside down. Even the local diner had sent in its plate-glass front, $15 well spent to spot late-night loiterers.


Tara’s phone buzzed—Jace. “You see the news? Some idiot coated his drone lenses. Caught a bear raiding trash from a mile up.” She laughed, picturing it. The possibilities were wild. Pilots were coating cockpit glass, hunters were mailing binoculars, and last week, a viral vid showed a guy with coated sunglasses spotting a gas leak in his basement. Heat Vision’s inbox must’ve been a firehose.


But it wasn’t all fun. Her neighbor, old man Grady, grumbled about “nosy glow-eyes” peering through his curtains. Privacy was toast when anyone with two bucks could see your radiator—or your body heat—from the sidewalk. Crime had shifted, too; burglars were coating masks now, turning the tech back on itself. Tara kept her blinds shut tight.


She trudged home, the thermal world alive around her. A couple glowed pink through a parked car’s coated windshield, steaming up the night. A raccoon flared yellow in a dumpster. As she unlocked her door, she glanced at the sky—stars invisible, but a faint heat-trail hinted at a plane overhead, its cockpit likely graphene-glazed.


Inside, she peeled off the contacts, the world dimming to normal. Heat Vision had changed everything in six months flat. For 2 cents, she’d bought a new way to see. Tomorrow, she’d mail them her reading glasses. Why stop now?