These last twenty-four hours after my experience in Deya’s mirror have been the saddest of my life.
I don’t know how I ended up on that flight. All I remember was that after I closed my eyes, as Deya told me to do, I was suddenly sitting on a plane. The flight attendants were walking up and down the aisle, serving drinks. I looked out the window. We were flying above a thick layer of clouds, and the light from an oddly bright sun was streaming through the windows on the right side of the plane. No one was sitting next to me. The top portion of a boarding pass was sticking out of the seatback in front of me. I removed it and read that I was on Flight 1849. I stood and made my way into the center aisle. The light from the sun coming through the windows seemed to be getting brighter. I was at the back of the plane and began to walk toward the front. People were talking with one another, some were reading, children were watching movies. A few of the passengers were complaining to the flight attendants that the inside of the plane was getting too warm and asked if the air-conditioning could be turned up. I continued to make my way up the aisle, and two hands reached out and grabbed mine. One grabbed my left and the other my right. I looked down to my left and saw my father. Seated next to him was my brother. I turned to my right and saw my mother. They were sitting across the aisle from each other. Before I could say anything to them, the plane jolted, and then it jolted again more wildly. The intensity of the sun through the windows caused me to squint, and I was sweating from the heat. It was easily more than one hundred degrees in the cabin. I heard the voice of a distraught captain come over the intercom, but I couldn’t make out his words. The lights in the plane flickered and went out, and suddenly, the sound of the engines stopped. The plane banked sharply to the right and then nosedived. Passengers were screaming. I looked at each of my parents and then my brother. I yelled out, “I love you!”
The next thing I knew, I was crying, and Deya was hugging me.
I didn’t get any sleep last night. This morning, I finally told Camden what I had experienced in the mirror at Deya’s house. I told him about Flight 1849. He didn’t doubt me for one second. He grabbed my hand, and we drove to the central rebuilding offices, which are housed at the old Pentagon. We found Camden’s mother, who was helping to salvage data from various computer systems all around the country. She took us to the archive and helped us comb through various air traffic logs from the day the solar storm hit, August 18, 2027. It took a while, but we found the log entry. It was for Centennial Flight 1849 from New York’s JFK to Little Rock.
Logan could hear his mother crying. He heard what sounded like tissues being pulled from a box.
The log confirmed that Flight 1849 had gone down in the solar storm during the Great Disruption. The plane had crashed near Louisville. My mother, father, and brother were all on the manifest. Their seats were listed as 14C and 14D, two seats across the aisle from each other, and my brother sat in 14B.
Somehow the mirror had transported me to the moment right before the plane went down. The mirror answered the question of what happened to my family, which has haunted me for nine years. Until now, I had hoped that they were still alive somewhere. I would have given anything to see them again. My first journey into the mirror has taken place, but it was not a joyful one.
Logan heard more crying. His mother’s words struck his heart. He understood how she felt. He would give anything to see her and his father again.
Deya wasn’t kidding when she said the mirror had no heart and didn’t care about our feelings. As hard as this experience was, I’m glad I had it. I needed to know the truth, and now I can move on. I do have a question about my experience in the mirror, though. Did my parents hear me say I loved them? Are their spirits alive somehow, somewhere, with the ability to interact with me? Is that what immortality really is? I remember reading something about this in the Chronicles.
Now Logan heard the flipping of pages in a book.
Here it is. It’s the parable entitled Desire, the voice of Immortality.
Logan knew the parable that his mother was referring to. There was a long pause before Logan’s mother’s voice came back.
What if the Chronicles are right? I can’t deny that I saw my mother’s face in the mirror. And I saw both of my parents and my brother on the plane. What if a person’s consciousness is eternal? Could I actually send my parents a message? Is that possible? I have to speak with Deya—maybe she knows more about this and if there’s any merit to the outlandish thing I’m suggesting. I’m going over to see her right now.
The recording clicked off, but there was one more on the chip. It was made at 11:12 P.M. the same night. Logan selected it and pressed play.
I spoke to Deya tonight and told her what Camden and I learned about Flight 1849. While saddened by the news, she was not surprised by it. She gave me advice: “Do not become enamored with the faces or places you see in the mirror. They must remain secondary to the information you receive. If you get consumed by what is presented, you will lose sight of why you see it.” She was right. While seeing my mother and father was both wonderful and heartbreaking, the information obtained from the vision about Flight 1849 is what is important. While it is hard to accept, I have to admit that it is liberating.
Logan thought about his many candle visions. He could see how Deya’s advice about the mirror also applied to the Satraya Flame. The information he had received in the flame was indeed more important than the images that had delivered it. Every component of a vision conveyed an essential piece of information. The voice of Logan’s mother continued.
Deya then asked me a very provocative question: Where had the information that my parents were on Flight 1849 come from? Had it already been in my mind when the Reflecting process brought it forward?
I had no idea how to answer. Deya asked me another question: How did the looking glass know that the queen was the fairest of them all at one moment and, later, that Snow White had replaced the queen as the fairest of them all?
Once again, I didn’t have an answer. But I feel that the mirror and the Reflecting process do, that maybe there is not a single question they can’t answer.
I wonder how far Deya has taken this.
Logan looked at Deya’s Destiny Box and the mirror she had hidden in it, and he recalled the strange experience he’d had when he first glanced into it. He’d never told anyone that he had seen, as clear as day, the face of his mother looking back at him. At the time, he’d doubted that he’d really seen it at all. But now, having heard his mother’s account and Deya’s explanation, Logan wondered what his doubt had caused him to miss. He leaned over and picked up the mirror. It was time to look into it again.
20
One day, you will learn that the distance between your discernment and your judgment is equal to your own desire to change.
—THE CHRONICLES OF SATRAYA
NEW CHICAGO, 10:01 P.M. LOCAL TIME, MARCH 22, 2070
Logan sat in the half lotus position. He straightened his back and closed his eyes. He took a few deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling slowly. He tapped the index finger of his right hand on his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose. In his left hand, he held Deya’s mirror. He took another deep breath and opened his eyes. He adjusted the angle of the mirror slightly, so that he could see the reflection of his entire face. Logan directed his gaze to the spot on his forehead that Deya had told his mother was important. His eyes did not waver. The music continued to play in the background, and the candlelight cast an eerie shadow on Logan’s face in the mirror. From time to time, he would close his eyes and take a deep breath, slowly exhaling each one. Then he opened his eyes and continued looking at his reflection, resting his gaze on the spot on his forehead that he had tapped with his finger.
Logan began to see a gray-blue fog, similar to what appeared when he stared at the blank pages in the Chronicles. The cloud-like forms floated in front of him, interfering with his efforts to focus on his reflection. He tried to blink away the distractions, but t
he fog persisted. He noticed that the edges of the mirror were blurring and that a blackness was encroaching on his peripheral vision. As Logan had learned to do with the Satraya Flame, he pressed on, not allowing himself to question what was taking place.
Soon his reflection in the mirror became distorted, as if waves of heat on a hot desert road were rising before it. For a fleeting instant, Logan thought he saw himself with a beard and a mustache and long blond hair. His eyes, however, remained the same. The morphing of his face in the mirror continued more rapidly, and soon he was looking at a procession of faces he did not recognize. He forced the image of his mother into his mind. The flow of faces halted, his peripheral vision returned, and the blackness vanished. Logan saw his own face in the mirror. The moment had ended.
“You know better,” Logan whispered to himself. “Do not get distracted.” He had learned in working with the Satraya Flame that the instant thinking occurs one loses the singularity of mind discussed in the Chronicles. Logan readjusted his body and said with conviction, “Let’s try that again.” He recentered his thoughts and looked into Deya’s mirror.
* * *
The procession of faces was as rapid as before. This time, Logan did not allow his judgments to interfere; he simply observed. The faces transitioned, from smiles to frowns, from blue eyes to black, from straight hair to curly and pointed noses to flat ones. Then, without warning, the procession stopped, and a single face presented itself. Logan was looking into the gray-blue eyes of a man who appeared to be in his mid- to late thirties. He had neatly combed jet-black hair and a thick black mustache, a pointy nose, and a firm, distinguished chin. As Logan gazed upon him, he could feel the man’s determined and steadfast bearing; he could sense that this man was searching for something. Logan recalled the instruction that Deya had given to his mother and closed his eyes. The face of the man was the only thing he held in his mind.
Logan ducked as a series of ultraviolet blue lights passed over his head, making a crackling sound. He was in a dimly lit room, where a man was rocking back and forth in an antique chair in front of a desk, writing feverishly in a book. The man wore a white collared shirt under a dark gray tweed suit. He was slender and about two meters tall. Logan walked over to him. It was the man whose face he had seen in the mirror. Logan could not help noticing his thin fingers and unusually long thumbs. Books were scattered on the floor around his chair. Logan squatted down and read the title of one of the larger, thicker ones: Theoria Philosphiae Naturalis by Boskovich. A book Logan was more familiar with lay next to it, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain. There was a third by an author named Vivekananda. After a moment, Logan looked up at the man and said, “Hello.” There was no response. “Hello,” he said again. The man remained engrossed in his writing, unaware of Logan’s presence.
Logan gazed around the room. Metal cages, long glass tubes, and copper balls of all sizes were scattered around it. This was clearly a laboratory of some kind. He walked over to what looked like a group of large batteries connected by thick black wires. Near them was a wheel about three meters in diameter, made of coiled copper. When Logan touched it, he received a shock. He looked at the table in the center of the room, where an illuminated lightbulb lay. The large bulb was not attached to any wires, but somehow it gave off light. Logan looked back over at the man in the chair, who was still writing, undisturbed by Logan’s exploration. Logan looked over the man’s shoulder to see what he was writing.
The idea gradually took hold of me that the earth might be used in place of the wire, thus dispensing with artificial conductors altogether. The immensity of the globe seemed an insurmountable obstacle, but after a prolonged study of the subject, I became satisfied that the undertaking was rational.
Farther down the page, Logan read:
Like a flash of lightning, the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagrams of my motor. A thousand secrets of nature which I might have stumbled upon accidentally I would have given for that one which I had wrestled from her against all odds at the peril of my existence.
The man stopped writing and looked around, as if sensing that he was not alone. Then he looked back down and began to doodle something in the margin of the page. Logan looked at what the man was sketching. A cross, it seemed, but within each quadrant, the man drew an elliptical shape; then darkened the lines. When satisfied, he drew a circle around his sketch.
The image looked familiar, but Logan couldn’t place it. The man turned to a blank page.
The lightbulb on the table at the center of the room began to flicker. Logan looked past it and noticed something in the far corner of the laboratory. A cloth was draped over an easel. He walked over and removed the cloth, tossing it onto the floor. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He was looking at The Scream by Edvard Munch. He turned back to stare at the man, recalling Mr. Quinn’s note. Was this the one whose diligent work halfway around the world was related to Munch’s picture?
Logan turned back to the Munch with a start; the images had become animated. The red sky was swirling, and the water in the harbor was cresting into waves. The two people in the background were walking forward toward the person in agony, who still stood motionless on the bridge. As the people approached, their faces became clearer. While Logan had never seen one of them before, he did recognize the other. It was his daughter, Jamie.
The lightbulb in the center of the room flickered more rapidly and caught the attention of the man sitting at the desk. Logan watched as the man walked over to the table and picked up the flickering bulb. Holding it in his hand, he looked perplexed. Logan turned back to the picture and saw that the face of the screaming man was now a blur, because it was shaking so rapidly. A terrifying scream rent the air. The image of Jamie continued to move forward, until it horrifically merged into the countenance of the screaming man. The light in the room flickered faster and faster. The screaming became so loud that it was unbearable. Logan put his hands on the sides of his face, mimicking the man in the picture. What’s happening? Why is my daughter in this painting? The scream hit a feverish pitch, and suddenly the image of his daughter exploded into a morbid convulsion of colors. Logan screamed himself. He turned away and looked at the man standing at the lab table. The lightbulb fell from his hand and crashed onto the floor. Everything went dark and silent.
Logan’s singularity of mind was gone. He became aware of his surroundings—the feel of the cushion beneath him, the soft music, the wavering light of the candle. Deya’s mirror was slowly coming into view, and the blackness in his peripheral vision was receding. Logan heard someone coming up the stairs. He rose and walked out of his meditation room. It was Ms. Sally and Logan’s daughter, Jamie.
“She had a terrible nightmare,” Ms. Sally said. “She started screaming in her sleep.”
Jamie ran over to her father and hugged him around the waist. “My head hurts again,” she said.
21
If you know what to do but do not do it, does it matter that you know what to do?
—THE CHRONICLES OF SATRAYA
ISLE OF MAN, 10:08 A.M. LOCAL TIME, MARCH 22, 2070
“It’s down here,” Anita said, as she descended the spiral staircase.
Britney followed. “You have the wickedest home. And I mean that in a good way. Where are we going?”
“To the Alexandria Room.”
“See, that’s what I mean. Who names the rooms in their house? Or should I say their castle?” Britney laughed.
They reached the bottom and stepped onto the marble floor of Peel Castle’s master library.
“Are you kidding me?” Britney said in astonishment.
Anita laughed at her reaction. The Alexandria Room was named after the library of Alexandria, of course, one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world until Julius Caesar burned it down. The twenty-five-square-meter room boasted a translucent white marble table below an illuminated domed ceiling. Lighting installed underneath caused
its surface to glow, and thirty high-back chairs with blue velvet cushions were placed around it. The room’s walls were lined, floor to ceiling, with bookshelves. Multiple rolling ladders were mounted on each of the four walls. At the north end of the room were rows of glass cases containing precious documents dating back to the Middle Ages.
“How do you find anything in here?” Britney asked.
“Hypatia can help us,” said Halima, popping up from one of the thirty armchairs that faced away from the library’s entrance.
“What are you doing here?” Anita asked, walking over to her.
“My homework,” the younger girl replied. “Mr. Quinn gave me a few things to read before he left on his trip. What does benediction mean?”
“It means blessing,” Anita answered, glancing at the book. It was titled Enuntiatio de Tutela.
“Who is Hypatia?” Britney asked.
“She’s the librarian down here,” Halima said.
Britney spun around, looking for her.
Anita laughed. Halima jumped out of the chair and walked over to a nearby control pad. “You can type in what you’re looking for, or you can just say it. Find A Christmas Carol.”
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