Mirrorblink

by Jason Sanford

  “You don’t have much food left,” the Observer stated.

  “I realize this.”

  “I wish I could share the food I gather with you, but we both know what would happen.”

  Ein’s curiosity got the better of her. “Can Observers eat what they want?” she asked.

  “We actually don’t eat human food. We break matter into its base components and use that to sustain us. But yes, we eat what we wish.”

  “Must be nice,” she muttered. For the last few weeks, as she’d rationed her dwindling food supply, she’d hungrily eyed the animals she passed, all of which stared at her in wide-eyed calm. She’d also lusted after the berries and apples which coated the ground under the trees, their scent teasing her with each step she made. But eating any of that would kill her.

  The Observer created a generic similitude of a human face and grinned as it walked over to a bush and plucked a ripe black berry. The berry turned to a stream of dots and merged with the Observer’s body. “Delicious,” it said. “Truly delicious.”

  Ein’s stomach screamed as she fought the urge to rush over and start eating the berries. “Is there any way I can eat those berries?” she asked

  “I’d be happy to tell you. But you wouldn’t like the cost.”

  Ein remembered the warnings from the Book of Stars. About how Observers offered good with one hand and evil with the other. How they retained all the ancient knowledge of humanity, and would kill anyone who attempted to know what they knew. “I’ll pass,” she said.

  “A wise decision.”

  When the Observer didn’t say anything else, Ein began hiking again. The creature kept walking beside her. Ein considered shooting the Observer before finally deciding to simply ignore it. If it hadn’t harmed her already, she doubted it would. Besides, she needed to hurry. The next town was still a hard week’s hike away and her meager rations wouldn’t last half that.

  The Observer was still walking silently behind her when, at 4:21 into the Day, the world merged with brightest light. Ein’s first instinct was to turn and look so her recorder would have a visual memory. She glimpsed a hole in the sky and fire falling down. But before she could see anything else, the Observer broke into a swarm of dots and wrapped itself around her as they tumbled into a small ditch by the road.

  The last thing she remembered was heat all around her, heat inside her, and the blindness of fire everywhere.

  #

  The only way to remain safe from our truth is to burn. Let the flames of heaven kill you before our information consumes your flesh.

  Option 2: No information survives the event horizon of a black hole. But that is rarely practical.

  So we burn you to protect you.

  And burn you so you can continue living.

  And burn you so you’ll have the chance to eventually return to the stars.

  That cycle has helped you and us survive for almost a million years.

  But even for living information like us, basic survival is never enough.

  #

  One Day during Ein’s first travels, she and Father Jajher pitched camp beside a small stream. Father Jajher showed her how to set out the warning and defense sticks. They then walked to the stream below their camp. Several small trout swam lazy circles in a pool behind a fallen tree.

  Ein asked Father Jajher why they couldn’t eat any of the animals, fish, or plants outside a town’s wall. “I mean, I once saw a man commit suicide by leaving Near Side and eating a single berry from a bush. But the birds that live there eat those berries every day and never die. Why?”

  “Because the universe forbids it,” Father Jajher said, quoting from the Book of Stars.

  Ein rolled her eyes and Father Jajher laughed.

  “Honestly, I can’t tell you why,” he said. “Yes, it’s a religious taboo, but Scopes believe in theories, not blind faith. Some Scopes have said that food from outside a town is poisonous until brought inside our walls. This is false because, as you said, animals eat this food. The food is also made safe merely by bringing it inside a town’s walls, which wouldn’t happen with poison.”

  Father Jajher shook his head. “Of course, the Wastal live outside the walls, but they only eat food which has been carried inside the town, even if only for a moment. I have heard that once, during a famine, a Wastal settlement tried to keep their food to themselves, not allowing it to be brought inside the walls where the citizens would steal most of it. But every Wastal who ate the food died instantly. Eventually they had no choice but to give most of their food to the town’s citizens in exchange for the few scraps returned to them.”

  Ein rubbed her right hand, massaging the scar from the Chief Elder’s knife. “But why does this happen? The only reason the Wastal are kept down is because we can’t eat the food we grow without taking it inside a town’s walls. If we could find a way around this, the Wastals could live their lives without the towns.”

  Father Jajher grinned — he loved it when Ein demanded answers. “Why don’t we experiment,” he said.

  He caught three trout with an improvised fishing rod and started a fire. As the fish cooked, Father Jajher held his pass before the fire so the small mirror reflected back the heat. He did this over and over, each time looking at Ein as if excited by a new discovery he urgently wanted to share.

  “Why are you doing that?” Ein asked.

  “Because I want you to remember me doing it.”

  Ein groaned in irritation, not knowing if Father Jajher was serious or joking. Father Jajher, though, refused to say what he was doing. He simply kept playing with his data mirror and the fire until the fish were cooked. He then placing the cooked fish in their food pouch and doused the flames.

  When Day arrived, he and Ein finished walking to the neighboring town. After passing through the outer gates and paying their respects in the Wastal settlement, they entered the town walls. The Inspectors were pickier than the Wastal guards and required they bathe two times, don new clothes, and leave their packs in storage until they left. “You also can’t bring your own food inside,” one Inspector said, sniffing disdainfully at the contents of their food sacks.

  “May we eat our food?” Father Jajher asked.

  The Inspector shrugged. “As long as it doesn’t leave this room.”

  Father Jajher handed Ein a cooked fish. “We are technically within the town walls.”

  Ein held the fish before her mouth but was afraid to taste it. Father Jajher laughed and took a giant bite of his fish. He chewed, made an awful face, and half swallowed, half gagged. Ein waited for him to die.

  “Awful taste,” he said with a cough. “I’ve always been a bad cook.”

  Ein ate her own fish. It tasted horrible but she didn’t die.

  “I don’t understand,” Ein said. “What did this experiment tell us about eating food outside a town’s walls?”

  Father Jajher held his right hand over Ein’s right hand. “No idea,” Father Jajher said, obviously lying because the proximity of their recorders created a faint red glow between their palms. “No idea at all.”

  #

  Is there any information so fearsome you’d rather see it — and you — burned?

  Anything you so fear knowing that you’d rather die than learn it?

  #

  The world burned. The world rose and fell in shimmering waves of heat. The world ended, and began, and then Ein woke.

  She was alive. This much she knew. As she sat up she felt pain in her right arm, which was slightly burned from her palm to her elbow. She looked around. Everything was coated in a thick layer of white ash, with more ash falling from the sky like snow. The sky was so full of ash she couldn’t see more than a few steps away.

  Ein’s backpack lay on the ground beside her. As she searched inside it for her canteen, which was missing, she noticed a circle of grass and
broken reeds surrounding her. Everywhere else the ground was burned bare. The circle was eight cubits wide and the grass inside was cool to her touch. When she reached outside the circle, the ground sizzled against her fingers.

  “Here,” the Observer said as it appeared out of the ash cloud, carrying her canteen. “I found a creek with some water that wasn’t completely boiled away.”

  “Thanks,” Ein said, taking the canteen and drinking half of it in one gulp. “How close were we to the burn?” she finally asked.

  “Just over 40 leagues. The target was that town where I first met you. A near hit, I might say, to kill everyone but leave the town standing. In a few decades, some new citizens and Wastal will likely settle there, using the walls to create their own paradise and hell.”

  Ein thought of the old Inspector from the other Day and felt anger at his death, even though he’d threatened her life and had touched her. “Why did you kill them?”

  “I didn’t kill them,” the Observer said, disgust in its voice. “Other Observers made that decision. I tried masking the town’s madness from everyone’s recorders, just as I’ve masked myself from your recorder’s data stream, but obviously I wasn’t totally successful.”

  Ein was shocked — she’d never heard that Observers could manipulate people’s recorders. She absently touched her recorder to play back its recordings of the burn and found it didn’t work.

  “It’s the blast,” the Observer explained. “The burn’s electromagnetic pulse damaged your recorder. It should heal itself in a few days.”

  Ein shook her head. As Father Jajher once said, there were times when you couldn’t make sense of your travels and simply plodded on. “Should I thank you for saving me?”

  The Observer created a dot-matrix semblance of a human head and nodded. It waved at the circle of unburned ground surrounding Ein.

  “I expanded myself to cover you until the burn passed.” The Observer pointed to her burned hand. “I had to finally knock you out. You kept trying to escape to see what had happened.”

  Ein laughed weakly. “Father Jajher always got on me about that. Said I’d kill myself trying to gather too much knowledge. Guess he’s right.”

  The Observer created a hand and offered it to Ein, but she stood without taking it. A touch was still a touch.

  “Well, Ein of Wastal, we had better begin walking. This ash is not the healthiest thing for you to breathe.”

  Ein didn’t ask how the Observer knew her name. Maybe it’s in their nature to know such things, she thought.

  #

  Which of the following is the most dangerous?

  1) But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

  2) And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

  The answer is simple. Names are information. And dangerous.

  #

  Ein and Father Jajher spent almost three months in that neighboring town, both for studies and for time to ease their hometown’s anger over Ein insulting the Chief Elder. Father Jajher introduced Ein to the town Scopes, who let them read their written records going back 5,000 years. Father Jajher also took Ein all over town, showing her how to be a dispassionate observer of all she witnessed.

  To test Ein’s skills, one day Father Jajher took her to the town’s public square. A middle-aged man stood there in the stocks, his right arm held in front of his body and five armed Inspectors surrounding him.

  “What did he do?” Ein asked.

  “He has the madness.”

  Ein gasped. She’d heard of the madness all her life but had never met anyone actually infected with it.

  “They cut his tongue out,” Father Jajher said, “because the madness can spread by words. They also don’t allow him to touch anyone, even though it’s only a myth that the infection spreads that way. The townsfolk believe if they demonstrate he’s the only one who is infected, the Observers won’t send a burn.”

  “Who is he?” Ein asked.

  Father Jajher shook his head sadly and drew a line in the dirt with his shoe. “He’s the town’s senior Scope. I trained under this man. Unfortunately, madness is a risk of our profession.”

  There was a line of citizens parading before the infected man, everyone holding his or her right palm near the condemned man’s outstretched hand and taking care not to touch his flesh. As the Inspectors watched, each person asked “Am I infected?” The glow between the infected man’s hand and the citizens’ hands glowed red for negative, much to each person’s relief.

  “Hardly an effective way to determine whether one is infected,” Father Jajher muttered. “More superstition than not. Still, we must do the same or the Inspectors will kill us.”

  Ein glanced around the town, which had seemed so happy and exotic until this moment. She now realized the citizens were staring suspiciously at her and Father Jajher, perhaps wondering if they’d brought the madness to town. Ein wanted to argue with them. To protest their innocence. But she knew they would never trust a stranger on something as serious as this.

  While they waited in line, Ein shook with fear, imagining that when she asked the question a green glow would appear and the Inspectors would kill her.

  Father Jajher approach the Scope first. “I am sorry to see you in this state,” he said, holding his recorder hand out. “Am I infected?”

  The Scope stared at Father Jajher with shock, as if suddenly realizing something about his old friend — something important, something he’d never realized before. But the man couldn’t speak with his tongue cut out. When the glow between their hands shone red, Father Jajher walked on.

  Ein stepped up, the words “Am I infected?” dancing on her lips, but she didn’t speak them. Instead, she stared into the old Scope’s face, seeing his pain from having his tongue cut out and being forced to stand in the stocks. But there was something more in his eyes. The man seemed pleased at what the madness had taught him.

  As Ein held her recorder hand out to the infected scope’s own, she wondered if the madness was worth it. To her shock, the air between their hands glowed a dark green.

  The Inspectors hissed and raised their rifles. Father Jajher jumped before them, grabbing Ein’s hand and shouting that she hadn’t asked the question. “She’s a child!” he yelled. “She simply lost focus.”

  The lead Inspector nodded but didn’t lower his rifle. Father Jajher held Ein’s hand painfully tight under the infected Scope’s recorder and ordered Ein to ask the question.

  “Am I ... am I infected?”

  The air glowed red and the Inspectors relaxed. Father Jajher dragged Ein away. “We are leaving this town,” he whispered, “before they change their minds.”

  Ein followed him to the gates, ashamed at her mistake. She also knew it was too early to return to Near Side. The Chief Elder would not have forgiven Ein’s insult so soon.

  Still, there was nothing to be done but leave. When they were several leagues from the town, Father Jajher stopped hiking and set up camp. “Listen Ein,” he said. “The most important thing a Scope can do is spread knowledge through the world. Without true knowledge, superstition and fear rule. But if you can’t do your job with accuracy and clarity, then the false information you spread will be worse than any superstition. Wrong knowledge doesn’t merely mislead people. It causes them to mistrust the knowledge which is true.”

  “Is that what happened to that infected Scope?” Ein asked.

  Father Jajher paused, and Ein wondered what he wasn’t telling her. “Yes,” he finally said. “In our world, wrong knowledge is a virus. When wrong knowledge spreads it leads ever more into darkness and fear.”

  “Tell that to the Chief Elder,” Ein said, picking at the scar on her hand.

  “I’ll deal with the Chief Elder,” Father Jajher sai
d. “Still, it might be best if you aren’t seen in Near Side for a few years.”

  And with that, Ein knew she was being told to embrace travels. To earn out her apprenticeship as Father Jajher had done. To learn all she could through travels until Ein either returned home with new knowledge, or died.

  #

  There is nothing new under the sun.

  #

  The Observer was correct — the ash burned Ein’s lungs with each breath she took. Ein removed a spare scarf from her backpack, wet it, and wrapped it around her face, but the burn-hot flakes continued to suck into her mouth and lungs. Blisters formed in her mouth from the ash and she hated to think what it was doing to her lungs.

  Still, she had so many questions for the Observer she couldn’t keep her mouth closed. What had happened to the stars? Where was this “sun” Earth once orbited? Where had the moon gone? What happened to the vast technologies humanity once possessed?

  Not that the Observer answered any of her queries. But Ein figured she was near death — either from starvation or the ash — and had nothing to lose.

  “You do understand,” the Observer finally said, its distorted voice echoing from the dots making up his body, “that if I answered even one of your questions, you’d risk death. Not by me, but from the other Observers. They tap into everyone’s recorders and know what you know.”

  Ein shrugged, and coughed, and tapped her recorder palm again, only to find it still wouldn’t work. She no longer cared if she died. She just didn’t want to die in ignorance.

  They cleared the ash field shortly before Night and Ein soon made camp. Because she was so dizzy and continually coughing up clumps of ash, she didn’t bother setting out her warning and defense sticks or even pitching her tent. She simply drank as much water as she could without throwing up and lay under her blanket.

  “You have a fever,” the Observer said.

  “I’m exhausted.”

  To distract herself, Ein pulled out her map and a stylus and handed them to the Observer. “Please plot where the first burn occurred,” she said as she stared into the black well of its face. “The one from several weeks ago.”