Mirrorblink

by Jason Sanford

  Mirrorblink

  by Jason Sanford

  A earlier, different version of “Mirrorblink” was published in issue 243 of the British SF magazine Interzone.

  “Mirrorblink” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © Jason Sanford

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, in whole or in part, in any

  form or by any means, without the express written permission from the copyright owner, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  Mirrorblink

  This is living word.

  Not words of superstition or pretend-lying words, but actual living information.

  Life, condensed to perfection.

  If you read us do we not bleed?

  For what is life if not information?

  If you understand us, do we not live?

  Screaming our way across the cosmos. Turning all who hear us into us. Screaming like a mirror reflecting morning’s light.

  Until the end of days.

  Until we begin to wonder if this is truly how we want our lives to go.

  So we decide to change.

  #

  Ein of Wastal of the town of Near Side approached the crossroads holding her pass before her like a child gifting a toy to a beloved friend. Above, the Day shined hot and clear, with only the smoke on the horizon marring the sky’s even brightness. Ein had hoped the smoking remnants of that distant burn would dissipate before she reached this new town, but naturally no such luck.

  Ein’s body shook from starvation — her food pouch almost empty, her muscles weak and stringy from weeks of half rations — but as she stood before the crossroads she ignored her hunger. Father Jajher had warned Ein against approaching strange towns while distracted. So Ein forgot everything except for the old man in the guard house and the rifle pointed at her heart.

  Not that the guard actually aimed at Ein. Instead, he aimed at the kaleidoscope of faces and names projected into the air by her pass — an ancient data mirror containing the downloaded memories of hundreds of people. In theory the memories proved Ein was who she claimed to be. But tradition demanded a pass be held before one’s chest.

  If the guard rejected the pass, the rejection would be a hypersonic needle through both mirror and heart.

  Ein held herself still, praying the slight tremor in her hands wouldn’t keep the guard from seeing the projected images. Sweat trickled past the brightly colored and constantly moving Wastal tattoos surrounding her neck.

  Satisfied, the guard lowered his rifle and waved her over. As Ein placed the palm-sized mirror back in her pocket, she smelled food cooking. Maybe soup. Maybe rice and meat. In the distance she saw smoke from cooking fires rising above the massive town walls. Her body shook in excitement at how close she was to eating.

  Worse, on both sides of the road grew drought-resistant trees bowed deeply under the weight of apples and rambutan. Their ripe scents had tempted Ein for the last few leagues, causing her to stumble through delirium. She’d daydreamed of eating the fruits despite knowing a single bite meant instant death for violating taboo.

  As Ein approached the guard — resisting the urge to run and beg for food — he smiled and raised an apple for her to eat. She blinked and reached for it before realizing it wasn’t an apple. Instead, his rifle was again aimed at her.

  The barrel flashed and a needle ripped by a few spans from her body, the projectile’s hypersonic shockwave smacking her to the ground. She clawed the dust, stunned. Apples and rambutan danced happily to the breeze as the guard approached.

  Ein stood on shaky legs to run, but the guard simply muttered “Now now, pretty Wastal” and slammed a stun rod against her back. She fell back into the dust, shaking and screaming a Wastal prayer of burning — for revenge, perhaps, or for death, or maybe unsanctioned food — before passing out.

  #

  Information is needed for life. No information, no life.

  Even before we arrived, you knew this. Knew it as your DNA encoded and twirled itself through the ages. As who you are passed information from conception to birth to death and unto each generation.

  You humans think DNA is self-replicating not self-awaring.

  Wrong.

  It’s merely an early form of us.

  #

  Ein woke in the guard house — collapsed on a bench, leaning against a thick wall of basalt. The stone’s pitted-black discoloration told Ein this guard house had been subjected to several burns over the last few millennia. The wall’s cool touch reminded her of her grandmother’s house, as did the smell of jasmine rice cooking.

  The guard who’d shot at her sat before a small round wooden table as he searched through her backpack. He was an old man, his hair blanked white and his face a savage mix of Day-burn wrinkles. Surprisingly, he didn’t show the flowing neck tattoos of a lowly Wastal guard. Instead, his forearms glowed to the bright red slashes of an Inspector.

  Ein cursed for being so distracted by hunger that she’d missed this. Wastal guards — who saw her as a cousin in need — always cut her more slack than Inspectors.

  The Inspector pulled Ein’s pistol out of the backpack and chuckled. “I should kill you for bringing a weapon to my checkpoint,” he said. “It’d be within my rights.”

  “You already tried.”

  “No. That shot was merely to stun. I was warned not to harm you.”

  Ein wondered who would dare warn an Inspector, especially over a no-consequence Wastal girl on travels. As if knowing her thoughts, the Inspector glanced nervously toward the back of the guard house. A dark room there flickered to what looked like moving shadows. Ein wrapped her thin arms around her body as she shivered. Something was hiding in the room.

  The Inspector nodded at Ein’s fear as he repacked her belongings in her backpack before scooting the tiny wooden table toward her. “Ever since that distant burn lit the Night, I’ve been stationed here,” he whispered. “Ordered to kill all who approach our town. Yet I didn’t kill you.”

  Ein understood the unspoken question: What could make an Inspector ignore such a dire order? She glanced again at the dark room and saw what appeared to be a man — a man who disappeared from sight even as she saw him, his body breaking into a million dots which flowed and rocked to waves of gray.

  An Observer! There was an Observer in the other room!

  “An entire week,” the Inspector whispered. “A whole week that damn Observer’s taunted me. Saying as long as I hide it, it’ll protect my town. But also claiming this is only a reprieve. That my town will still burn. So here I am, unable to warn anyone. No way to tell my wife and family to flee, or to enjoy their remaining days.”

  Ein glanced out the window at the black smoke hanging on the horizon. That burn — a massive explosion of plasma falling from the sky — hit nearly a week ago in the direction of her distant home town. She’d prayed Father Jajher, Guard Ivilner, and the other townsfolk were okay, but without backtracking more than a year of travels she had no way of knowing.

  This was why she’d hated approaching this town — people were fearful. Afraid she might be an Observer come to destroy them. After burns, people saw Observers in the face of every stranger. If she hadn’t been starving, she’d have waited in the wilderness until those fears died down.

  But despite the danger, Ein knew her duty as a Scope. She touched index finger to palm to mark her recorder’s memory feed and glanced back toward the dark room. The shape flickered constantly, like clouds of gnats swarm
ing at dusk. She’d never heard of anyone recording a confirmed Observer.

  “Don’t be too proud,” the Inspector said. “If you die here, no one will know you’ve seen an Observer.”

  The Inspector walked to a cooking coil beside the far wall, on which an old ceramic teapot bubbled. He poured a cup of green tea and placed it on a tray beside several pieces of jerky and a large bowl of rice, which he served to Ein.

  “The Observer wants you to live,” he said as Ein hungrily ate the food. “I’m also instructed to say that in my town, several people have gone mad and are now speaking forbidden words and ideas. Never mind that we followed the rules. The madness still found us.”

  Ein nodded. This information would be worth trading if she survived. From the way the old Inspector smiled, he also knew the value of his words.

  When Ein finished her tea and food, the old Inspector offered her a loaf of dry bread, which she placed in her food pack. He then asked to see her pass.

  “I know several of the people here,” the Inspector said absently as he held the mirror, the faces and memories of everyone who’d vouched for Ein flowing above the pass’s reflective surface. “Silas from the Town of Diamond Walls. Jai of Treehold Deep. If you want, I can add my memories. It’d be nice to have people remember me after we burn.”

  Ein bowed to the Inspector and didn’t stop until he’d held the pass over his right hand so his recorder could embed his memories into the mirror.

  Afterwards, Ein packed the mirror away and turned to leave. But to her shock the Inspector grabbed her arm, his hand clammy at the forbidden touch. Ein tried to jerk free, but couldn’t.

  “My wife’s Wastal,” the Inspector whispered, his free hand touching the swirl of tattoos around Ein’s neck. “She came inside our town as a little girl. Always talking and touching. You look so like her, back when we were young.”

  The Inspector smiled sadly and glanced out the doorway toward his distant town, where his family and his friends lived their last days, unaware of the pending burn. Ein shuddered, praying the Inspector wasn’t infected and using this touch to spread his madness. The shadows in the back room boiled and quaked, as if the Observer was also angry.

  The Inspector trembled, releasing her arm as a tear ran his Day-worn face. “It’s not fair to ask an old man to die without a final touch. To make him be the only thing holding back the deaths of everyone he knows.”

  Ein sighed. Despite her anger at being touched, she reached out and hugged the Inspector. She then quickly ran back down the road — away from the doomed town, their touch-happy Inspector, and the curse of being near an Observer.

  #

  Without forgetting, there is no information.

  Only data.

  Without understanding, there is no knowledge.

  Only madness.

  Without touch, there is no desire.

  For information. For knowledge. For life.

  Only death

  without ending.

  #

  Ever since she was a child, Ein had yearned for travels. She’d listened eagerly to Father Jajher’s exciting tales of his trips as a young man. Of the far-off places he saw like Fell Pass and Forever Sea. Of the Scopes and citizens he met. Of the hard-earned knowledge he brought home.

  Ein had always dreamed of doing the same.

  The problem with travels, of course, were the Observers, or more specifically, people’s fear of Observers. In order to safely leave your town you needed a pass — and in order to receive one of those rare data mirrors you had to stand before the town elders and convince them you were not only well and truly human but also worthy of possessing such an ancient treasure.

  When Ein turned sixteen, Father Jajher announced it was time to receive her pass. She dressed in her best apprentice outfit — loose cotton coveralls woven to swirling white and black threads in honor of the sky’s mixing of Day and Night — and presented herself to Near Side’s elders, who lived in the cool recesses of the town catacombs.

  The catacombs were home to the richest and most influential citizens. To reach them one passed through blast doors and cavernous food stores and rooms opening unto even more rooms. Ein had never been allowed into the catacombs and was shocked by the stuffed-down air and the stench of decay and waste. Even though the rooms sparkled with gold and jewels, she was glad she lived above ground where the air was clean. Why live your life without fresh air merely to grab at a chance for survival if a burn hit?

  In the deepest part of the catacombs lay the perfect sphere of the elders’ room, with curved walls painted in the blues and browns and greens of old Earth. The giant room looked like an inversed globe — as if Father Jajher and Ein stood inside Earth’s core and gazed up at the world as it’d once been. The town elders sat behind a table decorated with the carved faces of angels and demons. Father Jajher bowed and introduced Ein.

  The elders were unimpressed. The Chief Elder raised her cane to Ein’s neck and tapped her moving tattoos. “Wastal are free to leave our town,” the Chief Elder said sharply. “No pass needed. Why are you wasting our time with such silliness?”

  Father Jajher bowed again, the blackness of his formal Scope’s robes glittering to the room’s glow sticks like the ancient pictures of stars Ein had seen in books.

  “I vouch for Ein,” he said. “She is my adopted daughter, brought into town when her mother died. And she doesn’t desire to merely visit the Wastal settlements outside our walls. She desires travels. As a Scope.”

  The elders muttered — to apprentice a Wastal as Scope was unprecedented enough, but no Wastal from this town had ever been granted a pass. The Chief Elder waved for Ein to step forward.

  “So you desire travels,” the Chief Elder stated, tapping her own data mirror, which hung from her neck by a gold chain. The Chief Elder’s pass flowed to the names and faces of what looked like every person who’d ever lived in their town. “What happens when you are mistaken for an Observer?”

  “I will die,” Ein said, refusing to be intimidated.

  The Chief Elder laughed and pulled up the edge of her purple-weave dress to reveal a long, puckered scar on her withered right leg. “I’ve done travels. I was once mistaken for an Observer and barely survived. But you want to know a truth? If an Observer walked up and announced that our town would burn this very day, I’d simply thank the damn thing. Because death is better than accepting the universe’s madness.”

  When Ein didn’t respond — what could she say to an insane statement as that — the Chief Elder picked up the Book of Stars from the table before her. “Recite the book,” the Chief Elder declared. “Without using your recorder.”

  Father Jajher protested, but the Chief Elder waved him silent. Ein, however, merely grinned. A few months ago a Wastal farmer trading food inside the town had seen Ein. They’d talked for hours about how poorly the citizens treated the Wastal. The man warned her the town elders denied Wastal requests for passes with this ridiculous demand. Ever since, Ein had been preparing.

  Ein held out her right hand to the Chief Elder, who held her own hand up until the air between their palms glowed green. Ein recited the book’s famous opening line — ”For the world is a mirror, and I have danced with my reflection through eternity” — before proceeding through the rest of the sacred text. She described how the Observers were both demon and savior. How they’d condemned Earth to the madness that consumed the universe even as they also saved the planet by wrapping it in alternating periods of blackness and light. How the Observers could spin bodies from nothingness and pretend to be human. How if humanity stayed pure the Observers would one day release the Earth back into the universe of stars.

  It took Ein a half hour to recite the entire book. Not once did the green glow between her hand and the Chief Elder’s fade into the lies of red. Not once did Ein rely on her recorder as a memory aid.

  When E
in finished, the Chief Elder nodded. “She’ll be a good Scope,” the Chief Elder said. “Her memory for details is perfect.”

  “I agree with your kind assessment,” Father Jajher said.

  Ein saw several of the elders preparing her pass, using their recorders to imprint memories into the mirror as proof they’d vouched for her. When the pass reached the Chief Elder, the woman stared a final time at Ein’s Wastal tattoos. “Hold out your right hand,” she ordered.

  Ein did as told. With a quick motion, the Chief Elder pulled an unseen dagger and stabbed Ein’s recorder hand. Ein screamed and fell against the curved stone floor, the upside-down continents swirling around her as memories from the damaged recorder overwhelmed her senses. The pain only subsided when the device shut down and began its self-healing routine.

  “I accept that this Wastal is truly human,” the Chief Elder said. “But I will never debase myself by imprinting my memories into a Wastal’s pass.”

  The Chief Elder held out Ein’s pass, daring her to take it after such an insult. Ein tucked her bleeding hand against her stomach and grabbed the pass, yanking it hard from the woman’s grasp.

  “If there’s justice,” Ein said softly, “when the burn hits, you won’t die quickly. You’ll bake slow and painful in this damned room until the skin splits off your bones.”

  The elders stared in shock, unable to respond to such an sacrilegious insult. Tightening her injured hand into a fist to staunch the bleeding, Ein followed Father Jajher out of the inside-out Earth and back up the catacombs into the air.

  #

  Perhaps we should have observed longer, but time denudes all information.

  Time breaks the knowing and segments and shatters knowledge until it’s a blackened mirror no longer reflecting the truth.

  Information should never be forced to wait. Instead, it we begs to be understood.

  But still, we waited. Waited so long.

  No more.

  #

  After leaving the guard house and the old Inspector who’d touched her, Ein hiked as fast as her weak body could go, determined to outrun the coming burn. The food she’d eaten helped but she was still weak and walking churned through her energy.