The Eye in the Chest

📖 "The Eye in the Chest"

A short story set in the Gorfic Timeline, circa 1972
By “Harry Turtledove” (in style)

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Berkeley, California – March 1972

Lieutenant William “Billy” Torres hadn’t planned to desert. Not really. He wasn’t one of those Berkeley burnouts who wore Army surplus jackets with peace signs drawn on the sleeves. He was a serious young man — or at least, he had been, before the Mekong Delta, before the body bags, before the dreams.

But when he came back in '71, the world wasn’t what it had been. His kid brother was talking about frogs with eyes in their chests. His college friends — the ones who hadn’t died or gone insane — were growing their hair out and humming weird chants about “ribbit vibrations” and “the still hand.” Even his mother lit incense now. Said it helped her “receive the cosmic frequency.”

It was Berkeley. Everyone was nuts.

But when Billy saw the Frog, it felt different.

It was at the corner of Telegraph and Dwight, painted ten feet tall on the side of a used bookstore. Red. Radiant. The frog sat upright in lotus position, hands folded over its belly. An enormous eye stared out from its chest — not angry, not cold, just… knowing.

Underneath, a phrase was scrawled in violet paint:
“The War Outside Is the War Inside.”

He stood staring at it for fifteen minutes. He didn’t even realize he was crying until a soft voice beside him said, “You see it too.”

Billy turned. A woman stood there — no older than thirty, barefoot, in a poncho dyed with spirals and frogs. Her hair was streaked with indigo. She wore a necklace shaped like an open hand, palm up.

“You’re a brother,” she said, matter-of-fact. “You just haven’t leapt yet.”

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Red Chest Hollow Commune – Oregon, May 1972

Billy sat cross-legged by a bonfire, surrounded by ex-Marines, draft dodgers, and a few old Black Panthers who now called themselves “Guardians of the Lilypad.” Everyone wore red — cloaks, robes, even repurposed fatigues dyed with beet juice. The smoke smelled sweet. Music — strange, sitar-twanged and electric — drifted in the background.

Across the fire, old man Malik was speaking.

“They think we’re weak,” he said. “They see our smiles, our mantras, and they think we’re soft.”

He opened his shirt. There, tattooed across his chest, was a giant, hyperrealistic eye.

“But we see, brothers and sisters. That’s what they fear.”

He pointed at Billy.

“You were a soldier, right? They trained you to kill. What did they never train you to do?”

Billy hesitated. “To… forgive?”

The old man nodded. “To breathe. To listen. To be still. You’ve got part of the Eye open, son. But it’s still afraid.”

Billy didn’t know what that meant, but he felt it in his chest like a tuning fork.

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Later that Night

He took the frog tea reluctantly — brewed from psilocybin and lotus petals. The Guardians called it “Unfolding Water.” They said it opened the Chest-Eye.

The world melted slowly, like wax off a candle. He watched the fire twist upward into the stars, saw constellations rearranging themselves into frogs, saw the people around him become shadows of light and laughter and weeping.

Then he saw him.

GORF.

Not a man. Not quite. Maybe a spirit. Maybe a vision. He had the face of a frog, wide and impassive, and eyes like oil on water. He sat in the fire, legs crossed, body pulsing with color.

He didn’t speak, not with words. He just was.

Billy tried to salute. Old habits.

GORF blinked.

Then Billy’s own chest burned, flared, and in his mind he saw everything — the war, the napalm, the screaming, the children, the empty medals — and then the silence afterward. GORF reached toward him, hand open, then placed a single finger on Billy’s chest.

The Eye sees. The Eye forgives. The Hand remains still.

Billy screamed. Not in pain. In release.

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Aftermath

Two years later, the Army declared Billy Torres a deserter.

They searched Oregon twice. Never found the commune. Locals just shrugged and said, “Ain’t no frogs around here. Just hippies.”

But in San Francisco, someone painted a mural — a soldier kneeling, hands outstretched, with a red frog above him like an angel. In his chest: a glowing, unblinking eye.

Below it, a new slogan:

“He Who Sees, Does Not Obey.”