Лю Цысинь - Hold Up the Sky

His reflection loomed large, filling his field of vision with the quicksilver bubble of his helmet’s one-way reflective faceplate. He fought to keep from closing his eyes as his head touched the mirror. At contact he felt nothing, but in that very moment everything vanished before his eyes, replaced by the darkness of space and the familiar Milky Way. He jerked around, and below him was the same view of the galaxy, with one addition: his own reflection receding into the distance, the maneuvering units he and his reflection wore linked by streams of thruster jet fog.

He had crossed the mirror, and the other side of it was a mirror, too.

His earpiece had been chirping with the commander’s voice when he was approaching the mirror, but it had cut out. The mirror blocked radio waves. Worse, the Earth wasn’t visible from this side. Surrounded entirely by stars gave the astronaut the feeling of being isolated in a different world, and he began to panic. He adjusted the jets and arrested his outward motion. He had passed through the first time with his body parallel to the mirror, but now he oriented himself perpendicular, as if diving headfirst into it. Just before contact, he cut his speed. Then the top of his head touched the top of his reflection, and then he passed through and saw with relief the blue Earth below him, and heard the commander’s voice in his ear.

Once his upper torso was through he dropped his drift speed, leaving the remainder of his body on the other side. Then he reversed the direction of his jets and began to back up; fog from the jets on the opposite side of the mirror issued from the surface around him like steam rising from a lake in which he was partially submerged. When the surface reached his nose, he made another startling discovery: The mirror passed through his faceplate and filled the crescent space between it and his face. He looked downward and saw his frightened pupils reflected in the crescent. No doubt the mirror was passing through his entire head, but he felt nothing. He reduced his speed to the absolute minimum, no faster than the tick of a second hand, and advanced millimeter by millimeter until the mirror bisected his pupils and vanished.

Everything was back to normal: Earth’s blue sphere on one side, the glittering Milky Way on the other. But that familiar world persisted only for a second or two. He couldn’t reduce his speed to zero, so before long the mirror was above his eyes, and the Earth vanished, leaving only the Milky Way. Above him, the mirror blocking his view of Earth extending hundreds of thousands of kilometers into the distance. The angle of reflection distorted his view of the stars into a silver halo on the mirror’s surface. He reversed thrusters and drifted back, and the mirror dropped down across his eyes, vanishing momentarily as it passed to reveal both Earth and Milky Way before the galaxy vanished and the halo turned blue on the mirror’s surface. He moved slowly back and forth several times, and as his pupils oscillated on either side, he felt like he was passing across a membrane between two worlds. At last he managed a fairly lengthy pause with the mirror invisible at the center of his pupils. He opened his eyes wide for a glimpse of a line at its position, but he saw nothing.

“The thing’s got no width!” he exclaimed.

“Maybe it’s only a few atoms thick, so you just can’t see it. Maybe it approached Earth edgewise and that’s why it arrived undetected.” That was the assessment of the shuttle crew, who were watching the images sent back.

The astonishing thing was that the mirror, perhaps just atoms thick but over a hundred Pacific Oceans in area, was so flat as to be invisible from a parallel vantage point; in classical geometry, it was an ideal plane.

Its absolute flatness explained its absolute smoothness. It was an ideal mirror.

A sense of isolation replaced the astronauts’ shock and fear. The mirror made the universe strange and rendered them a group of newborn babes abandoned in a new, unfathomable world.

Then the mirror spoke.

THE MUSICIAN

“I am a musician,” it said. “I am a musician.”

The pleasing voice resounding through space was audible to all. In an instant, all sleepers on Earth awoke, and all those already awake froze like statues.

The mirror continued, “Below I see a concert whose audience members are capable of representing the planet’s civilization. Do you wish to speak with me?”

The national leaders looked to the secretary general, who was momentarily at a loss for words.

“I have something to say,” the mirror said.

“Can you hear us?” the secretary general ventured.

The mirror answered immediately, “Of course I can. I could distinguish the voice of every bacterium on the world below me, if I wanted to. I perceive things differently from you. I can observe the rotation of every atom simultaneously. My perception encompasses temporal dimensions: I can witness the entire history of a thing all at once. You only see cross sections, but I see all.”

“How are we hearing your voice?” the US president asked.

“I am emitting superstring waves into your atmosphere.”

“Superstring waves?”

“A strong interactive force released from an atomic nucleus. It excites your atmosphere like a giant hand beating a drum. That’s how you hear me.”

“Where do you come from?” the secretary general asked.

“I am a mirror drifting through the universe. I originate so far away in both time and space it is meaningless to speak of it.”

“How did you learn English?”

“I said that I see all. I should note that I’m speaking English because most of the audience at this concert was conversing in that language, not because I believe any ethnic group on the world below is superior to any other. It’s all I can do when there’s no global common tongue.”

“We do have a world language, but it is little used.”

“Your world language? Less an effort toward world unity than a classic expression of chauvinism. Why should a world language be Latinate rather than based on some other language family?”

This caused a commotion among the world leaders, who whispered nervously to each other.

“We’re surprised at your understanding of Earth culture,” the secretary general said earnestly.

“I see all. Besides, a thorough understanding of a speck of dust isn’t hard.”

The US president looked up at the sky and said, “Are you referring to the Earth? You may be bigger, but on a cosmic scale you’re on the same order as the Earth. You’re a speck of dust, too.”

“You’re less than dust,” the mirror said. “A long, long time ago I used to be dust, but now I’m just a mirror.”

“Are you an individual or a collective?” the Chinese president asked.

“That question is meaningless. When a civilization travels far enough on the road of time, individual and collective both disappear.”

“Is a mirror your intrinsic form, or one of your many expressions?” the UK prime minister asked.

The secretary general added, “In other words, are you deliberately exhibiting this form for our benefit?”

“This question is also meaningless. When a civilization travels far enough on the road of time, form and content both disappear.”

“We don’t understand your answers to the last two questions,” the US president said.

The mirror said nothing.

Then the secretary general asked the key question: “Why have you come to the solar system?”

“I am a musician. A concert is being held here.”

“Excellent,” the secretary general said with a nod. “And humanity is the audience?”

“My audience is the entire universe, even if it will be a century before the nearest civilized world hears my playing.”