Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

This is a takeoff on the old Sci-Fi-Horror tales of the 1950's some of us may recall. Tongue-in-cheek!

In a small dank basement room beneath all the ruckus of the New York Institute of Technology the two men huddled, one with his hands covering and rubbing his face. Hair mussed. The other staring at him, pointing to a diagram he was holding.2

“I tell you it makes sense,” he said. “It’s got to work, because the numbers work. Why can’t we give it a try? What’s to lose?”3

The man who had been rubbing his face ran his fingers through his mousy hair.4

“What’s to lose is time, time and face. This is silly, Harold. You’ve spent too much time on this already. I’m telling you, I simply can’t do it. The administration won’t allow it.” He picked up the wax paper holding the remains of his lunch and folded it over his half eaten chicken salad sandwich, stuffing it back into the brown paper bag. “Now I’ve seen your idea, I’ve given you my opinion…”5

“But you are the administration, Isaiah. They’ll do whatever you say; whatever you recommend!” There was a moment’s pause. “Just get me the equipment then,” said Harold. “You won’t have to take part in the experiment. All I need now is another two mirrors and the recorders. Come on, Isaiah. It won’t be any trouble for you….None at all!”6

“It isn’t the mirrors or the electronics, Harold, it’s the support, your salary, keeping you on the faculty.”7

“What? What do mean, Isaiah? I have tenure here. They can't let me go!”8

Isaiah pulled his gleaming gold pocket watch from his vest and glowered at the time. “It’s getting late,” he said. “Really, Harold, we’ve discussed this before. I have a meeting. I have to go.”9

“I’ve given years to this university, Isaiah. It’s time for them to give back. I’m not asking for much. I won’t be treated like this. Please….” Harold held his hands out in entreaty. 10

“I’ll speak to you tomorrow, Harold, tomorrow.” Isaiah turned to exit the heavy door of the small basement hovel. It slammed behind him, leaving Harold to himself.11

He looked into the new mirror he had purchased for his experiments. His gaunt reflection stared back. The mirror was too new. It would do for part of the project but he would eventually need something larger…older. He lifted his gaze toward the sound system’s speakers; sensitive enough, but not an integral part of what he had in mind. Not yet. For now, it was the mirrors that concerned him. Harold sealed the cracks around the door and pulled the black shade over the little dusty basement window which led into nothing better lit than a subterranean closet. Then he doused the light. Blackness. Harold stood quietly for a moment, then tried to see his own hand. He could not.12

They wouldn’t believe him, but Harold knew that if one could achieve total darkness but still get the surface of a mirror to emit light,…but never mind. They wouldn’t listen. No one had ever done it before. The secret lay in the use of two reflective surfaces, exactly positioned. They hadn’t used two mirrors. It was a reverberation principle. Each of the facing mirrors would reflect the image off the other, intensifying what little light there was; magnifying it! It would be old light. Trapped light! The key, Harold thought to himself, was that not all the light off old images was reflected. Some of the image’s light was seized, trapped in the mirror. The light, now, would be coming from within the mirror; from its depths. And there was no telling what that would reveal. Foolish people, thought Harold. They don’t understand. They cannot fathom the significance of my work.13

When Isaiah returned the next day there was a dank odor about the small room. And it was dark.14

“Harold? Are you here, Harold?”15

There was no answer.16

“Harold?” cried Isaiah. “It’s me. I brought you some coffee.”17

Isaiah detected a slight movement in the corner where light had trickled in from behind the open door. Harold bounded up, off his little stool.18

“Isaiah,” he said, in a chilling whisper, "you know String Theory: the tiniest particles…the building blocks of all matter…so called strings? Nothing more than vibrations? Cannot be halved? Cannot be reduced? Nonsense, Isaiah! How can they reflect light if they are smaller than light particles? They are larger than light particles! Photons are the building blocks! It is light itself that we are created from. Light is the essence of it all. The Bible, Isaiah. The Bible! Let there be Light! This…is our very essence!”19

Isaiah removed the lids from the cardboard coffee containers and walked toward Harold. “You’ve been working hard, Harold. Have some of this. I can get us some lunch if you like.”20

“You don’t understand Isaiah. All those years I spent studying holograms. The same image over and over, whole, intact, no matter how many pieces it is broken into! The answer to it all is in the light. All of it need not be reflected. Some remains caught. Trapped in the mirrors. It is our essence, the essence of all things… and I can get it out! We can see it. Think of it Isaiah. Light from the ages! Images that would have been forever lost captured in the glass…but now, we can extract them! The dead can be resurrected!”21

Isaiah held the coffee out to Harold who did not seem to see him.22

“Isaiah, take a simple hologram and break it in two…in three pieces. What do you have? Three identical, intact holograms. Break each one of them, what do you have? More complete holograms. Replication! They cannot be divided. The light cannot be halved. A basic particle, an essential building block cannot be halved…cannot be reduced. And the particles of light that are trapped in these mirrors are whole…! Like holograms. And we shall see, we shall bring into being, the whole image!”23

“Harold,” said Isaiah, “take the coffee. Let me get you some lunch. You’ve been hard at it.”24

“No Isaiah. I want you to understand first. Like the sound waves and the images we send into space…they go on and on, Isaiah…for eternity!It’s conservation of energy. Bits of light that never die…are never lost! They remain in the glass…forever; until I will extract them! It starts with the light already in the glass…. It is reflected into the other mirror…and picked up, intensified by the first, and on and on, until we see it for what it is. The entire image! I won’t let them stop my work, Isaiah! I can’t let them!”25

“You don’t have to, Harold. I’ll help you. Listen to me,” Isaiah took out his gold watch. The mirror caught the image. “It’s getting late, let me go and get us something. I won’t be a few moments.”26

“No, Isaiah.” Harold lifted the heavy lamp by his side and struck Isaiah with its bronze base. Isaiah fell, the burning coffee airborne for an instant, then splashing down on his tweed jacket. “No Isaiah, you aren’t going anywhere anymore.”27

Harold dragged Isaiah’s limp corpse outside the basement room door that stood ajar and down to the cellar furnace. With no little difficulty he opened the furnace door and sat Isaiah on the edge. Then he pushed his body into the oven’s white hot flames. With a final twist of his shoe and leg, he shoved Isaiah into the blaze and shut the small cast iron hatch to the furnace.28

Back in his cellar hovel, Harold closed the door and knelt down to mop up the spilled coffee and the droplets of Isaiah’s blood. It was then, from his speakers he heard a sound. The reverberation units has been set up to detect sound from the mirrors…if that were to come to pass. At first, indiscernible, the sound became clearer: “It’s getting late.”29

Harold looked up. It was then he saw the gleam in the mirror. The speakers sounded louder still. “It’s getting late!”30

The gleam in the mirror was suddenly more than light…it was Isaiah’s gold pocket watch! And the face behind it mouthed the words: “It’s getting late!”31

Harold stood. He faced the long mirror. “No, you can’t,” he said…"you won’t stop me.” He lunged at the image in the glass with the base of his lamp which was still within his reach. The mirror shattered, fragments darting and lacerating, cutting, leaving shards of glass strewn all about the dark room. 32

Each piece of glass bore the full image of a man holding a gold watch…until the light from the open door filtered in and vanquished it. The phrase on the speakers became an intolerable squawk as the images faded, bound for eternity…while Harold’s sliced and bleeding body lay amid the shards, thinking, “it’s getting late.... It's getting late."33
 

Reviews

[Sara]

this is truly bizarre- an interesting scientific concept, and it does reflect 1950's scifi, and also old victoriean horror novels, suh as the invisible man and the portrait of dorian grey, dr.jekyll and mr hyde, with the dawning of new scientific discoveries comes new horrors and speculations. you did a good job with the ending, though im not sure why harold killed isaiah, maybe because he had gone mad from a night in the dark?
anyway, i was intrigued, good job.
-sara