A Plague of Mirrors

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Oct 22, 2024

The Outernationalist has been brought to Aswadistan to help launch GnosisNet, a cortical-modem program that will render police and politicians obsolete. Up in a palace minaret, he asks the sultan's court narratrix, Najwa, about the nature of reality. He gets a tale in turn:

There are mirrors that reflect with faith, and mirrors that reflect with mendacity. There are mirrors of love and mirrors of hate. The former foster warmth, the latter a viscous iciness. There are specialty mirrors that unreflect the reflections of others, and thereby reflect accurately, though not at all truthfully. There are double-dealing mirrors that unreflect unreflections and therefore reflect what was intended by the twice-removed mirrors.

I know what you are thinking: that I am toying with the definition of what a mirror truly is. Well, know then that a real mirror does not show you truth. Rather, it gives a backward image, a reversed two-dimensional portrait. Even the background is reversed. It toys with reality because it lies. The foreground is false as is the background. Entirely false. So close to reality, but not. There are no degrees of reality. Either a thing is real or it is not. And a reflection is not real. It projects a very similar scenario but it is entirely false. It merely suggests. It gives a close estimate of what is going on. It confirms, in real-time, what we think is the case. But it lies. Not only does it fail to take into account the third dimension, but it offers up a two-dimensional lie, which is the directional reversal that it calls its reflection. That we look to it for confirmation is more than just vanity. It is recklessness.

If you hold up a mirror to a mirror, do not think that you are finally beholding reality. It is still a lie. The photons have gathered in the promise of informing you, but they have, upon reflection, conspired to deceive you. The directional reversal is itself reversed, sure, but it is still wrong. For at the core of the second reflection is the first reflection’s lie. And a temple of truth cannot be constructed atop a foundation of lies.

This is why it is forbidden to portray His prophet Mohammed, upon whom be peace. If you have tried to encapsulate the truth of the Messenger with whatever tools are at your disposal, then you have already failed. You have come up short, and therefore lied. There are truths in this world that are so all-encompassing that they must be left to themselves, and are not to be held in the palm of a trickster’s hand for the masses to behold.

The cover to my novel Angels With Engine Failure, from which A Plague of Mirrors is taken.

Permit me to introduce you to Ardashir. Not the Sassanid king, but the ominilingual playboy of Ctesiphon. Geometry agreed with his face, it has been said, but not with his soul. Handsome and honey-tongued though he was, he tended to snag his soul onto the world's jagged edges that the rest of us would effortlessly glide past. Some attributed this to his bargain with Shaitan for the talents that his vocation demanded, others to the possibility to his having been an ifrit who had hijacked a human because it had become bored with mischief. Either way, he found himself in trouble nearly every day, and had spiritual crises with a regularity matched only by his meals. This was during Jahiliyah, the time of ignorance, before Allah made his dispensation to Muhammed, upon whom be peace.

Ardashir, when not translating texts, was given to wander in the empty desert, where he would converse with dust devils. Only there could he find respite, for the dust evils either respected the status of his ifrit soul or felt sorry for him. He had grown proficient in the language of wind, and would keep them abreast of the goings-on of the empire, in exchange for their wind poetry, which soothed his soul.

In effect, Ardashir and the dust devils were plagiarizing each other. It is easy to mock a mirror for its tendency to plagiarize reality, but really no one or no thing is original. Everyone and everything apes everything and everyone else. Allah, as you know, is the fountainhead of all.

Now Ctesiphon had its share of competent storytellers. Purple-lipped, white-bearded raconteurs in extravagant turbans and jangling, effeminate jewelry plied their trade with the same lascivious relish that opium dealers dish out their inky supplies of somnolence. Ardashir had run through the inventories of the best storytellers and was wanting for new material. He was near despair when a vaunted storyteller from Alexandria, named El-Misri, arrived in town for unknown reasons. Notoriety followed this old man, and Ardashir was determined to be among the first to hear what were hopefully new stories, and well-told ones at that. Ardashir spoke Egyptian fluently, and Greek even better, so the chances of understanding the old man were high. Venturing into the crowded city, however, meant subjecting his soul to cuts and bruises, but there was no way around it. One must invest in one's equanimity.

El-Misri's inaugural storytelling session was to be held on the second story of a dusty tenement near the Fire Pillar. The housing was held in the monument's shadow for a good part of the day, it being summer, when the sun arched in perfect linearity and only bestowed light with the diffusion of spilling across the horizon before it set. El-Misri chose than venue because his narrative pyrotechnics fared best in the shade. Many said that it was because he was of the cult of Set. Others, that he was a high-ranking vampyr.

Attendance was beyond capacity, with people snaking up and down the staircases and cramming into the hall. Ardashir was ready to enter the storytelling room when he heard a young lady's voice shout his name. He gazed down over the balcony to find staring up at him an exceptionally beautiful Nabataean whore by the name of Azam. Rumor was that she was deficient in the ways of the mind. Some say, though, that this was a ruse. "Translator," she said, "Descend from there. You are in danger, no more than always, but in danger still." Word must have gotten around about his sensitive soul.

"I will not descend," he said, "as I am about to hear a tale told by El-Misri."

"I, too, tell tales," Azam shouted up. "Yet El-Misri is not as fetching as I. And my endings are the envy of all of Baalbek."

So he descended. He won twice over. For though he was fortunate to hear a tale told with such clarity and élan, he was blessed to possess her. This took place at a nearby inn, where she had been staying. She was far from deficient. She told him the story of Al-Din and the Plague of Mirrors. It was not imparted by verbal account, but by an extravagant display of carnal prowess.

They lay entangled afterward, he tracing his forefinger up her spine. "I've heard that you subsist on nothing but river water and butterflies."

"That is partly true," she said, gazing over her shoulder at him. "I only eat butterflies after they have feasted on nectar. It is good for the humors and it keeps the djinn at bay. But I also like bread." She would smash the gathered butterflies into a smeary paste and eat it up rather unbecomingly.

Ardashir's soul had been hitherto untouched that day, until he disentangled himself from Azam and went to survey himself in a mirror.

Think about why we refer to our consultations with mirrors with the preposition "in," instead of, say, "at." This is not an error. For though a mirror is nothing but surface, much like a black hole, its energy is to be measured two-dimensionally. It is a hologram awaiting decoding. You are now one of the very few in the world to know this dark and dangerous secret. If you love someone, do not apprise her or him of this ever.

Azam's tale to Ardashir went thus:

In the court of Al-Din, there was a gilt-framed mirror that replicated like a virus, spread like a wildfire, wreaked havoc with the king’s idea of reality, reflection, and correspondence.

"There is an artifice to music," spoke Al-Din's wife, estranged from him since back before his memory served. "It lies in the pleasing propagation of sound. There is an analogous play involving mirrors. It is far from pleasing, and even malignant, but no less artful. The beatitude of the blood. One is convinced that it is wine coursing through one's veins."

"You shut up," demanded the king.

“It may seem self-evident that a mirror cannot lie,” said the queen, “but this is misleading. A reflection is not a lie nor a truth. The endless variations between a lie and a truth comprise the vast terrain where a mirror plague does its damage. There is only one yazata, or angel, for every ten mirrors in the world, yet a demon for each.”

“Shut. Up.”