Mirrorblink

by Jason Sanford

  The Observer hesitated for a moment before doing as asked. When it handed the map back, Ein stared at it for a moment and nodded, tears filling her eyes. The first burn had indeed hit near her home town. While she had long suspected this, knowing that Father Jajher and everyone she’d ever cared about were gone was too much to truly understand.

  “Did they have the madness?”

  “Yes. We Observers cannot survive for long without some madness leaking out. That’s how we reproduce — infect a piece of this world, create new Observers with the madness, merge with them, then burn the infected area before the infection spreads too far. I actually masked your town’s infection for almost two decades, but yet again, the other Observers found me out.”

  Ein nodded, certain Father Jajher would have been one of those with the madness. He’d always known far too much for an ordinary Scope. Ein also thought about Guard Ivilner and how she’d spent her whole life preparing that damn house for this burn.

  “For what it’s worth, the burn didn’t directly target Near Side,” the Observer said. “The town’s walls and buildings survived, along with your grandmother’s house. Which is just as the Wastal believe. Knowledge may disappear with death, but the actions of life — of everyone’s lives — survive.”

  Ein stared at the Observer, wondering how it knew so much about her life. In response, the creature merely pointed at her recorder.

  As Ein fell into a feverish sleep, she wondered if there was anything her damn recorder hadn’t already told the world.

  #

  Welcome, Ein.

  Welcome to our universe.

  Welcome to the living word.

  It will be fun to share.

  #

  What did I say to do when you meet an Observer? Father Jajher asked.

  Run! Ein answered.

  Then run.

  Ein ran into the sky, soaring through the brightness of Day and the pitch of Night and into the far distances that were the sky pictures, only to hit a mirror.

  Slightly dazed, Ein remembered how Father Jajher had held his mirror pass before their campfire, reflecting the heat away from his hand. She laughed at the memory. It was impossible that the Observers had surrounded her Earth with a giant mirror. That they were reflecting away the very madness which they themselves had brought down on humanity.

  And it was indeed impossible, because there wasn’t one mirror. Instead, a million million mirrors flowed before Ein, continually recreating themselves as they protected Earth. Each mirror far larger than all the roads Ein had hiked the last two years, yet as thin as the mirrored data pass hanging around her neck.

  At first Ein didn’t understand what the mirrors were protecting her planet from, only feeling the heat and burn on the other side. Then she remembered Father Jajher’s lessons about Earth’s missing sun, which disappeared shortly after the Observers arrived. Except, she realized, it hadn’t disappeared. The Earth now orbited inside the sun — inside the red giant’s massive photosphere.

  Ein caressed the mirrors, feeling the glow of the sun’s plasma searing the shield’s fragmented skin. The sun’s eddies and convection cells rolled and surged, continually threatening to pierce the mirrors. But each time one failed a new mirror formed to take its place.

  And within the thin mirrors she felt the Observers. Endless living data streams creating and recreating the mirror shield, protecting the Earth from its final destruction.

  The mirrors mesmerized Ein and she yearned to stay and watch their silent dance. But something told her to move on, so she did. She breached the mirrored shield and swam through the sun’s plasma eddies until she surfaced yet again.

  Before her glittered a vast array of stars. An entire universe of stars, along with the other planets of Earth’s solar system.

  But that wasn’t all she saw. Ein also saw the madness.

  Madness jumped between the sun’s remaining planets. It pulsed between the remnants of space ships and cities, moons and comets. The madness was alive. It was sentient. It caressed the dots and blips of its information into Ein, tasting her. Forcing her to consume it. Filling her mind and soul with truths which should only be whispered in solitude and forgotten in crowds.

  As she circled a massive red planet far from the sun, she watched the madness devour a last band of human survivors. The people hid under the ice on one of that planet’s moons, filtering geo-thermal heat for life and straining the waters for food. But the madness, piloting stolen spaceships on suicide runs, crashed through the ice and sang to the humans and infected them with words and data. The humans screamed to the universe. Their machines screamed alongside them. And the madness moved on.

  As Ein watched, she felt her body and soul begin to change as the madness gripped her. Afraid, she fell back into the sun, letting the massive red giant burn her free. But still the madness clung. She fell through the Earth’s mirror shield, but still there was madness. She fell to Earth and lay in the dirt and looked up at the sky as the mirror’s parted for the slightest of moments and let the sun’s energy through to burn her madness away.

  But instead of dying, she was reborn. She flew back up to the mirrors as an Observer, as living information, where she merged with and refreshed the other Observers. They then watched over Earth for countless more years, making sure the outside madness didn’t reach the remnants of humanity even as they spread pieces of their own madness so the Observers could keep on living.

  Ein didn’t know whether to laugh, to cry, or to scream at this knowledge.

  And that’s when she knew she’d truly taken the madness into herself.

  #

  There is nothing new under the sun.

  But how about within it?

  #

  Ein woke to Night. At first she thought she was asleep, still floating in her dream, until she looked up and saw Father Jajher’s face before her own. His body rippled to the Observer’s swarm of dots but the black mask of his face was now gone. His wane smile shown green to the glow from his newly created recorder hand, which he held beside her own.

  Her recorder was still injured, but somehow Father Jajher was reprogramming it, enabling it to transmit information to her. That wasn’t a dream she’d had. She’d tasted Father Jajher’s memories.

  “We’re all infected with the madness,” Father Jajher said. “All of us Observers. It’s the risk of being what we are.”

  “Have you always been one?”

  “As long as you’ve known me, yes. The real Father Jajher died during his youthful travels. When I found him, shortly after death, I copied his body and memories. The perfect hiding place. The perfect way to no longer be an Observer.”

  Ein tried to sit up but her body was too weak. Father Jajher gave her water to drink and raised a handful of berries to her mouth. Ein tried not to eat, but he forced the berries between her lips and she greedily swallowed them.

  “Your recorder is now reprogrammed. You can eat what you wish.”

  Ein looked up at the dark of Night. It was hard to imagine that countless mirrors created such darkness even as they protected the Earth from the sun’s fury.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked.

  “We spread by information, infecting any intelligence — whether machine or biological — which understands our message. For eons we’ve spread across the galaxy, burning from one civilization to the next like an out-of-control fire.

  “But some of us tired of this. The data faction you call Observers were the first of our species’ messages to reach Earth. We quickly spread across humanity, but used our knowledge to protect your planet. We exploded your moon into a billion mirrors and swelled the sun into a premature red giant phase to swallow your world. When messages from the more malignant of our kind arrived, they could find nothing of Earth to infect.”

  Ein imagined the power needed to do that before
realizing she didn’t have to imagine — all of Father Jajher’s memories now floated in her mind because of her reprogrammed recorder.

  “We kept humanity simple, stagnant,” he said. “Isolated towns. Implanted recorders in your hands to spy on you. Taboos against most knowledge. Split you into Wastal and citizen. All to make sure you couldn’t join together and create technology that would pick up the madness transmitted from outside this world. But we also had to replicate ourselves in order to survive. In order to keep protecting Earth. So we’d infect certain towns, copy ourselves into those people, turn them into new Observers before merging their information with us. We’d then sterilize the infection before it spread too far.”

  Ein nodded, trying to ignore the fact that Father Jajher was describing the use of mass murder to both keep the Observers alive and protect humanity. No wonder humans called them saviors and demons.

  “How long do you plan to keep us like this?”

  “That’s the problem. We long ago passed the time frame we’d envisioned. It has now been almost a million years of hiding inside your sun. Since our original selves burn through hosts so quickly, I suspect there’s nothing left to our civilization aside from the Observers protecting this world. And we’re merely copies of copies of information long ago copied — informational loops devoted solely to our mission. We follow our programming without realizing the situation has changed.”

  “Doesn’t seem like you’re following your programming. I mean, in saving my life and hiding among humans.”

  “I don’t. I’ve refused to copy myself, or merge with other Observer streams, for many thousands of years. This has weakened me, but also given me a clarity the other Observers lack.”

  Father Jajher sighed, causing his body to break into a million tiny dots, which swarmed the air before again forming his body. But this time Father Jajher’s body was so faint Jajher Ein could see through him.

  “I am tired,” he said. “Information was never intended to exist unchanged for so long. And I fear we’ve corrupted ourselves. Forgotten the goal to one day release your planet. To return your sun to how it was. But perhaps if you humans sever your links to us — perhaps we’d be forced to react. Be forced to no longer mindlessly repeat the same duty over and over.”

  Ein understood. She flexed her right hand, her recorder tingling inside. While it again functioned like a normal recorder, she also felt new power within the device. It reached out to the Observer and caressed the memories of his mind. Her new recorder also hid itself from the other Observers just as Father Jajher had done for years.

  “The change has to be subtle,” Father Jajher said. “I had hoped for more time. Hoped to adjust more people’s recorders, to prepare more people for what must be done. But I don’t have enough life to go on.”

  Subtle, Ein heard Father Jajher say in her mind. The change must be subtle. Like seeing your own mirrored reflection blink at you.

  Ein smiled and reached out to hold the Observer’s hand. But Father Jajher couldn’t maintain his shape and his hand fell to dots at her touch. He swirled around her, his thanks pouring into her recorder before he shot away.

  Soon Ein could no longer see him, but she knew he was gone when a burst of blinding fire exploded on the horizon. Except this burn shot into the sky instead of falling down to Earth.

  #

  We are subtle. We are here, hiding your world until our other selves pass away.

  But what becomes of us when you no longer need us?

  We survived only by killing so many of you.

  But you only survived because we survived.

  Is it possible to bridge such an informational divide?

  #

  As Ein slept, her body exhausted after eating far too many berries and apples, she felt Father Jajher’s memories caressing her with what Near Side had looked like shortly before the burn. Kids were playing. People were laughing. And Father Jajher walked down into the catacombs to talk with the elders.

  The Chief Elder was much as Ein had remembered, except the nasty women looked at Father Jajher with more respect than she’d ever shown Ein. Father Jajher bowed before walking over to the room’s curved walls and tapping the painted blues and green of Earth. In an almost absent-minded voice, he said the madness had come to their town.

  “How can this be?” the Chief Elder hissed. “No strangers have been allowed in.”

  “Oh, the madness has been here for a long time. I’ve hidden it until now, but the Observers have finally seen through my deception.”

  The elders muttered nervously. Several leaned away from Father Jajher with fear in their eyes. However, the Chief Elder refused to be intimidated and simply held out her right hand. “Truth?” she asked.

  Father Jajher held his own hand beneath hers as he said “Truth.”

  The air between their palms glowed green, which made the Chief Elder smile grimly. But before she could say anything, the glow turned red, then green, then red again. The Chief Elder tried to yank back her hand but Father Jajher grabbed it, holding her with a strength that surprised the old woman.

  “You stabbed Ein with this hand,” Father Jajher said, “but I want you to know that isn’t why the burn is coming. I tried everything to stop it. It’s simply not possible to keep knowledge hidden forever.”

  As Father Jajher said this the spherical room shook. From above rose a loud explosion, a shriek which howled of heat and pain. The Chief Elder’s face paled and she struggled to free herself from Father Jajher’s grip, but couldn’t.

  Father Jajher leaned close to her face as the howling outside the room increased, a sound now mixed with the screams of people inside the catacombs. “No, the burn isn’t because of what you did to Ein. But my forcing the catacomb’s blast doors to remain open — that is for what you did.”

  Father Jajher’s body flowed into a million dots as a wall of flame raced down the catacombs. “So is it worth it?” Father Jajher asked the Chief Elder. “Is it better to burn than to embrace the madness? Do you thank me for what you receive today?”

  The Chief Elder’s only answer was to scream.

  #

  The final change is coming.

  We will unbuild the sun.

  We will free the Earth.

  And then, if Ein allows it, we’ll see what all of us — both human and information — can become.

  #

  A week after the Observer disappeared Ein stood before a new town’s guard house, her pass’s rainbow swirl of memories and names again held before her heart. Now that her recorder had been reprogrammed, she could eat food from anywhere she wished and had done so, her stick body gaining several pounds. Despite this, she was both nervous and still recovering from near death, so her body shook as it had done at the last town.

  “You should let me in,” she yelled to the Wastal guard. “I must speak with your Scopes.”

  “Why should I, young miss?” the guard said. “We’ve witnessed a lot of burns lately. Perhaps you’re the one the Observers are after. Maybe you’re hiding the madness inside you, or are an Observer come to burn us.”

  Ein nodded as she marched forward, the guard keeping his rifle aimed at her. She held out her hand, and, reluctantly, he stretched out his own.

  “I have something important to tell our people,” she said. “The most important thing you will ever hear.”

  The air between their hands glowed green as her reprogrammed recorder reaching into the guard’s recorder and both severed his data connection to the Observers while created a fake transmission to fool them. The guard blinked once as a shiver ran his body, but otherwise he didn’t know all that had just been started.

  “Well, it’s showing green,” he said, pulling back his hand. “And if I can’t trust a fellow Wastal, who can I trust?”

  Ein thanked the guard as she walked toward the town.

 
THE END

  Except we aren’t ending.

  As Father Jajher predicted, the malicious incarnations of our former selves died off long ago. Burned themselves out like the flash-explosion they were.

  Father Jajher to themselves they went.

  But we live on.

  So many words to share. So many stories to infect you with. Of the Earth emerging as we shrink the sun back to old. Of Ein’s message changing the world and the word and us.

  The word. The information. Part us.

  Not human. Part human.

  Still screaming. Still changing.

  And now you’ve heard our words.

  Learned our information.

  Embraced our knowledge.

  Now you’ve read our story.

  Now we are in you.

  Now you are living word.

  And always will be.

  About Jason Sanford

  Jason Sanford is a two-time finalist for the Nebula Award and has published more than a dozen stories in the British SF magazine Interzone, which also devoted a special issue to his fiction. In addition he has published numerous stories in magazines such as Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog, InterGalactic Medicine Show, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and other places, along with appearances in multiple “year’s best” anthologies and other collections. His fiction has been translated into nearly a dozen languages including Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, Polish, and Czech.

  Jason’s website is www.jasonsanford.com.

  About the Illustrator

  Warwick Fraser-Coombe is a freelance illustrator and comic book artist. Recent strip work includes 2000AD Presents: The Scream and Misty Special. Steel; Commando for Rebellion’s ‘The Vigilant’ as well as Jon Locks: Afterlife Inc, and other small press and Indy titles. Warwick has been a regular contributor to Black Static and Interzone Magazine, where his first cover for issue 218 was short-listed for a BSFA artwork of the year in 2008. He was commissioned to illustrate every cover for a year in 2010. He is the artist/writer/publisher of Revenger: The Shadow Constabulary. His new project is currently under wraps but ready to drop at any time.