Wave Reflector

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn't my own. The difference was subtle enough that I didn’t see it at first. It took me a while to notice that something wasn't quite right; my hair parted on the wrong side, a shirt button open that in reality was not, a slight delay in my reflection returning a wave. When I looked into its depths, I would see my reflection, yes, but who that reflection was of, I could not tell you. It would come to show me so much more.

I didn’t think twice about the looking glass when Edward brought it in to laboratory. Five feet by three, the wood surrounding it carved to resemble leaves. The previous owner had painted the frame white and then distressed it – various hues of wood peeking through high spots on its surface. Edward had sourced it for free through the classifieds of an online marketplace in an effort to make our limited resources stretch a little further. The reason for its cost would become apparent, in time.

“Will this do?”

I turned from my workstation to see Edward holding a large rectangle of bubble wrap. He found a seam and tore the protective layer off the mirror, and turned it to face me. Framed in the shredded wrapping, my sad reflection stared back at me through a sad, smudged mirror pane.

I sighed.

There was a time where I had a wealth of opportunity and resources at my beck and call. Now I’m having an unpaid intern essentially dig through charity shops just to stretch what little funding I have. This was pathetic.

I tried to rouse myself from my melancholy. I reminded myself that despite my financial constraints, my work was beginning to gain traction. I told myself that even though all of my previous tests had only had some limited success, that at the point where I was now, the bar would move further and further, quicker and quicker with each experiment.

Each success, as minor as it felt, was actually a massive blow to the mocking disbelief of all of the institutions that refused to fund me. Each win was a middle finger in the face of the so-called industry professionals who used words like ‘crazy’, ‘insane’, or ‘far-fetched’ when referring to my proposal.

I was an accomplished physicist with many successful and well-regarded experiments and papers to my name; why did this one proposal meet such mockery? Wasn’t every piece of modern technology considered science-fiction at some point in time? Is the idea of teleportation forever to be relegated to schlocky television shows and pulpy comics?

All I wanted to do was see my brother again. He had moved from Australia to the States right before the Pandemic hit, and hadn’t been able to come home. First it was our lockdown, then it was theirs, then it was our second lockdown, then it was their economy vaporising his job. I could have flown to him, but I had sunk every cent I had into my work, and more importantly, was held back by a pathological fear of flying. Yes there was video chat, but it just wasn’t the same. I just wanted to see my brother again.

I sighed.

“You’re sure about the dimensions?”

“Five by three, like you said.”

“Break it out of the frame, clean it up, and we’ll hook it into the system. And we’ll hope it works.”

“Okie doke.”

Edward finished stripping the packaging from the mirror, then laid it down on a workbench. I returned to my calculations, the sounds of him rummaging through the lab’s toolbox breaking the prior silence with metallic discordance. Two more lines of code to program power factor correction. Subroutines to ensure any surge or loss of supply would be accounted for. Then on to a pre-test inspection of the equipment. Edward pounded something with a hammer.

“I don’t feel like I should have to say this, Edward, but don’t crack it.”

“Okay, Dr. Berwin! Should I ‘plug’ it in when I’m done?”

“Once I’ve checked over the system; then you can plug it in.”

As Edward continued to pound, I took an electrical multi-meter from the toolbox and walked over to the Wave Reflector Gateway. The culmination of five years hands-on work, the Wave Reflector Program had grown from a vague concept in my head, to a towering mass of steel, copper, and thermoplastic insulation. Currently at its centre was a rectangle of double-insulated glass ringed by an array of focussing lenses, exposed conductors linking them into the device’s power system. It wasn’t pretty, but it didn’t have to be, it just had to work. Without tearing a hole in the space-time continuum.

I pull back the focussing lenses, allowing me access to the rubber holding brackets that kept the glass seated in the frame. I pop the clips, and carefully remove the pane, being careful not to slice my hand on its edge like I did when I installed it. Behind me I hear the Edward squirting glass cleaner on the mirror, and I take my readings to make sure the Gateway is properly calibrated.

“Why a mirror?”

“What’s that?”

“Why a mirror? You said the glass worked, right?”

“If you call that ‘worked’...”

I point to a broom leaning next to one of the arms of the Gateway, the last few feet of it withered and singed to a point by something, most likely all the energy required to open the wormhole.

“I mean, it kind of worked.”

“Yes, the glass kind of worked, but it clearly wasn’t stable enough. I feel like the mirror will work.”

“You haven’t run a simulation or something?”

“I’ve run basic calculations, but this is a kind of science that I’m making up as I go. I’m finished testing, is it ready?”

I turn to Edward, and he gives the mirror a few last frantic scrubs.

“Yep!”

I put the multi-meter back in the tool-box and pick up the mirror. It felt kind of strange, almost sticky. Maybe Edward wasn’t so thorough. As I slowly lower it into place on the mounting frame, I get a sharp sensation in my palms, as if pricked by a particularly sharp needle.

“OW!”

“You okay??”

I rub my palms.

“...might be a short to the frame. Give me a couple of minutes to test it again.”

The sensation passes, and I lock the holding brackets over the mirror, move the focussing lenses into position around it. I pick up the multi-meter once more, triple and quadruple checking every connection from the frame back to the power supply. Everything checks out. Hmm. I go back to the workstation and check power levels, as well as the status pane on the program I cobbled together to automate the majority of the experiment. All green.

Okay. This is it.

“I think we’re good...”

“Hey, should we be filming this? For like a record or something?”

“Are you asking me if we should be creating a record of this probably illegal and possibly unethical experiment that could potentially alter space-time?”

“Ah...fair point.”

“Come over here, Edward.”

“Wait...illegal?”

I wave him over, and as he walks past me I hand him a pair of tinted welder’s goggles, pulling a pair down over my own eyes.

“Here we go.”

I enter the command to execute. A countdown from sixty seconds begins on my laptop monitor. A bank of check lights atop the Gateway blink from red to green in sequence. The alternating current hums its way from the transformer out on the street, through the extra-high voltage cabling, through my own transformers, through capacitor and resistor banks, until finally making its way to the focussing lenses on the Gateway’s frame. They light up.

SKREEEEEEEEEEEEE!

A loud shriek rings out, sounding in part like a wounded, unearthly creature, and in part like sharpened steel running down sharpened steel. Edward jumps, and I cover my ears. The sound is horrible, it chills me to my core, and my temples begin to throb. I make out Edward talking through my cupped hands.

“WHAT IS THAT??”

“I DON’T KNOW!”

“DO WE SHUT IT DOWN?!?”

“NO, NOT YET!”

The shriek trails off quickly, and we both stare at the mirror. The antique looking glass begins to vibrate, almost pulsating. It looks as if it’s about to shatter. Then, finally, it happens. The software, the ridiculous amount of energy, my kit-bashed monstrosity of a peripheral, and the mirror all work in concert to produce the intended result.

Beams of pure energy shoot out of the focussing lenses, interlocking, forming a glowing border around the mirror. Edward and I remove our goggles. Slowly, like a CRT monitor of old, an image appears inside the illuminated frame. No longer is the other side of my lab reflected back at us, now it’s something entirely different. From this distance, I can make out what appears to be some rocky structures lit dusky red, like what I imagine nightfall on Mars to look like. I check the program on my laptop. Some minor fluctuations in power level, but nothing too alarming. Stable. Thank goodness, stable! I look back at the mirror.

I did it.

A glorious - and most importantly, stable - manmade wormhole.

I DID IT!

My heart almost jackhammers its way out of my chest, to the point where I forget about the shriek. I check the Gateway’s system status screen; power is fine, temperature is fine, and radiation is minimal, no more than you’d experience on a commercial interstate flight. I double-check the destination coordinates that I had input prior to running my calculations. Still the same; middle of nowhere, Utah, in the States. I look back at the mirror. Maybe? I need to confirm it somehow. I need to get a closer look.

I take a step away from my workstation, and Edward grabs my wrist.

“Doc, what if...”

“’What if’ what?”

He finally takes his eyes off the Gateway and looks me in the eyes. He looks terrified, like he’d seen how he dies, and it wasn’t well.

“...what if it does that again?”

“What if it shrieks again?”

He nods, dread setting in his eyes.

“...then I’ll cover my ears again.”

I nod at him in an effort to reassure him, and he reluctantly lets my arm go.

“I need to get a closer look.”

I turn from Edward and walk slowly up to the Gateway. As I get closer, the image showing on the mirror’s surface becomes more and more discernible. I’m maybe a metre away from it when I realise what I’m seeing, and that it might not be Utah.

I see what looks like rust coloured sand in front of me, surrounded by similarly coloured rock formations, twisted, ugly, and jagged, rising up in the distance toward a blood-red sky. Crimson clouds roil on the horizon, smothering what could be a sun similar to our own, but it’s hard to tell. And I pick up a faint odour, like spoiled meat and ammonia. I feel the lightest of draughts on my cheeks.

Wait.

No way.

I hold out my hand, trembling. I feel it. A soft, steady breeze wafts into the lab from...not Utah.

Incredible!

I fish into my lab coat pocket, and pull out a large steel nut. I look at it, thinking of all the scientists and inventors and innovators who stood in the very spot I now occupied. Who pushed the limits of science to stand at the precipice of great discovery, and who dared to cross the line, to break rules and even laws, to experiment on themselves, to risk it all on a dream. I toss the nut at the mirror.

It passes through, and lands on the sandy ground with a soft thud.

I wait.

The nut sits there, doing nothing, staying just a piece of metal, and unofficially the first wormhole traveller.

I’ve done it!!

So many years of defending my ideas, so many refusals and dismissive jibes. So many opportunities to work on prestige projects passed up in order to make my dream a reality! So much time, energy, mental anguish and money funnelled into this experiment, and for it to all have paid off?! I feel my heart swell! I feel my back straighten, like I’ve lost half my body weight. I can’t stop smiling.

My mind races.

First thing I have to do is shut it down and run a second trial. I could throw a GPS tracker through, see where it ends up pinging from. That way I can determine where I went wrong with the destination coordinate and correct it. Yes. That’s next. Oh my god, I can’t believe it worked! I have to get the nut back, check if it’s gone test if for any kind of irradiation.

I grab the gnarled broom, and step closer to the mirror.

“Doctor Berwin!”

I jump at the sudden volume of Edward’s voice.

“What?!”

“I’ve don’t like this, whatever that place is, it looks...unfriendly.”

“It’ll be fine, I’m just going to get the nut back for testing, then we’ll shut it down. Grab a tracker for me?”

Edward walks over to my workstation, and I walk up to the mirror, dangle the broom handle through the portal, and start manoeuvring the nut back toward the lab. As it gets close to the edge, I use the withered end of the stick to poke through the threaded hole at the nut’s centre. I drop it onto the platform under the mirror, some red sand sprinkling around it as it clinks down on the metal.

“Here, Doc...”

Edward taps me on the arm, and I turn and take the GPS tracker without taking my eyes off the mirror. I switch it on, press the test button, and once it’s confirmed to be working, toss it through the looking glass. I gaze at this strange world for a minute more, and then make my way back to the workstation. I input the command to close the wormhole. As the border of light created by the focussing lenses dims, the alien vista blinks away, leaving only the mirror.

I fire up the GPS locating software. It takes a moment to load, and when it finally finishes booting up, presents a 3D rendered model of the planet. The globe on the screen slowly rotates, as a status bar gradually fills. An error message pops up on screen.

“UNABLE TO LOCATE UNIT 1”

I close the software and reload it. Same again. I turn on another tracking unit, and reload the software a third time. It pings the unit in my hand in milliseconds.

Hmm.

A moment of silence passes between Edward and myself.

“So...what now, Doc?”

“I uh, I think perhaps another trial. Maybe the locator was faulty, maybe we can retrieve it, send another one through...”

“I dunno, I think maybe we should check the algorithm for the destination inputs. I don’t know where that...place...was, but it didn’t look like it was anywhere on Earth. I got a major bad vibe from it. We don’t know what kind of dangerous conditions we could expose ourselves to; radiation, pathogens, some kinda toxic atmosphere or something...”

Edward wasn’t dumb by any stretch, but I had to explain so much of my work to him along the way that I actually take for granted just how much he does know.

“It uh...didn’t look particularly hospitable, did it?”

Edward shakes his head.

He may be right. After all, we conducted the first successful trial of a manmade wormhole, sent a test object through it, and retrieved it. That was light years beyond any previous win I’d had since embarking on this journey.

“Maybe a quick trial to send another tracker through, and then we’ll shut it down. Then I’ll recalibrate all the software until I’m 100 percent sure it’s accurate. And just for good measure, I’ll change the destination coordinates before the next trial.”

I type in the run command to begin the countdown sequence. My index finger hovers over the mouse, the mouse pointer hovering over the program’s ‘EXECUTE’ button. Yep. He’s right. I need to go over this with a fine-tooth comb. Plus there’s the nut to examine, and if we can retrieve it, the GPS tracker too. That’s enough progress for one day. Hell, it’s enough progress for the last twelve months.

I click the button, and the lights go out in the lab.

“I didn’t do that, Doc.”

“I know you didn’t. We probably tripped the high-speed breaker...which means something somewhere is shorting out. Looks like you get your wish.”

I feel my way over to where I know the circuit breaker panel is on the far wall of the lab and after a couple of attempts, flick the tripped switches back up. The lights come back on, and my laptop fires up. I walk towards Edward, picking the broom handle and nudging the steel nut around on the floor.

“Why don’t you head home. I’m going to run some tests on our little traveller here, and then make a start on the software. Thanks for your help today, Edward.”

“No worries, Doc.”

Edward grabs his backpack and begins to leave the lab. As he approaches the stairs leading back up above ground, he turns back to me.

“Doc?”

“Yeah?”

“Promise me you won’t fire it up ‘til I come back.”

I shrug at him.

“I couldn’t even if I wanted to!”

“Promise.”

“...I promise. I won’t fire it up unless you’re here too.”

He turns and leaves.

I can’t tell you how many hours - or indeed, even days – passed as I went about my tests. I was possessed. I had finally had my ‘Eureka’ moment, and though I had some concerns, I wasn’t about to quit now. Though my body occasionally ached, I didn’t feel hunger, my mind was in overdrive. I was typing out one equation on the laptop while calculating another in my head. I was running on caffeine and ambition, and the vision of a fully-functional Gateway.

It wasn’t until I ran out of coffee that I first began to notice something odd. I had stepped out to grab a tray of takeaways from the café three doors down. When I returned to the lab, I was met with the same strange scent that had come through the wormhole. I had extractor fans running constantly, and climate control set below room temperature in order to keep all of my instruments cool, so where the hell was this smell coming from?

I put the coffees down on a workbench, and sniffed by way around the room. It was faint but pervasive, and not to my surprise, got stronger the closer I got to the mirror. At a foot away, I almost gagged. I fished a scrap of rag out of my trouser pocket and held it over my mouth and nose to try to lessen the intense pong.

I examined the mirror. Just where could this smell be coming from? I scanned around its surface, looking along its top edge, then began to assess its sides. That’s when I saw something odd. The first something odd.

About two feet from the bottom of the mirror, grime had accumulated along it’s sides. There wasn’t much, but it appeared to be the same colour and texture as the ugly rocks I’d seen through the wormhole. What was going on?! I try to pry a piece off with a flat-blade screwdriver, but it doesn’t want to budge.

Hmmm.

The next couple of days passed without incident. The test of the nut came back inconclusive, some minor background radiation was coming from the metal hexagon, but nothing out of the ordinary. Microscopic study provided no further results either. After trying every hand and power tool in the lab, I finally manage to chip some of the red rock off the mirror with a diamond-blade cutting wheel. It’s structure was odd, but I couldn’t be entirely sure of what I was looking at; I had a passing interest in metallurgy, and no real experience with geology.

I stopped, and backed up to stand directly in front of the mirror. I looked at my reflection. I didn’t look like myself. I looked...odd. It took a moment for me to realise, but it wasn’t reflecting me, it was showing me as if I was someone else, looking at me directly. I scrutinised my likeness, and it was only after a good minute of obsessing over every minute detail that I realised what was so strange about it.

I would move ever so slightly, and my reflection would also move, however it seemed out of sync, like there was some kind of delay. When my lab coat moved in concert with my body motion, my reflection’s lab coat moved in the opposing direction, about three seconds after mine. It was like I was looking at a one-way mirror that was somehow projecting an image recorded by some hidden camera with a broadcast delay. This was bizarre, and left me feeling uneasy. I covered the mirror with a dusty, old tarp.

I could not have anticipated the final something odd. It took me another week before I could bring myself to look into the mirror again. And when I did, it put a chill through my bones.

I had tested and recalibrated my equipment to the point where the only thing left to assess was the mirror. I pulled down the tarp. The rusty rock formations had crept further up the reflective glass, and had grown thicker and fuller. I looked up to my reflection. I move around a bit, and sure enough, the delay is there, but this time has increased. I look down at my reflection’s feet, and don’t see the checker plate of the Gateway’s gantry, I see that red sand from the other place. I look back up at myself. And I truly do not know who I saw.

All the basic details that make up my appearance, my outfit, my hair style and colour, my nose, my ears, they’re all there, all the same - all but one. The eyes. The more I gazed into those eyes, the more I saw something in them, beneath them, staring back at me. Something missing, replaced with...something I couldn’t completely comprehend. Malice, perhaps. But before I could think any more on it, my reflection grins, and raises its hand at me in some grim form of a wave.

“GREEEEEEEEEEEEETINGS...”

There’s no words to capture how I felt in that moment. Thankfully, I have had very few true moments of fear in my life, and this would become the new reference point moving forward. I felt like my soul – if it existed – was torn from my body. If true, malevolent evil had an aural form, the sound that came out of my reflection’s mouth would be a prime candidate.

No.

No.

This wasn’t happening. That wasn’t my reflection. That was some...Stranger. This wasn’t happening. I just wanted to see my brother again.

I summoned all the willpower I had left, and broke eye contact with the mirror. I rubbed my eyes, shook my head about. I’d just been overworking myself. I had to clear my head. I just needed a proper break, some true rest.

But what if it was happening?

How would I know? How could I confirm this? How could I ascertain I was actually seeing what my eyes and my brain told me I was?! What could I do to prove this wasn’t my mind struggling to cope after a consistent lack of sleep? There was no way my mind was that fragile! Anyone who knew me, who spent a lot of time with me, would attest to that fact.

Spent a lot of time with me...

Edward!

I send him a text riddled with typos, summoning him to the lab. He replied a minute later saying he’d be right over.

One very long hour later, and finally, I hear the lab doors open.

“Edward!”

I hear his sneakers clomping down the stairs.

“Doc, it smells rank in here! What have you been doing?!”

The concern and anxiety in his voice is palpable. I turn to look at him as he approaches me, and see that he wears an expression of mixed fear and concern once he sees the state I’m in.

“Are you okay, Doc?!”

“Come here, look at this!”

I grab his wrist and walk him up to the Gateway.

We stand facing the mirror. I look at my reflection. I look haggard, but at this point I don’t know if it’s my own mind beginning to fatigue, or if it’s a true reflection of my current physical state. I look at Edward in the mirror, and he looks just as he did when he entered the lab.

“What do you see?”

Edward shrugs.

“Umm...us?”

I step closer to the mirror.

“Wait!”

I address the Stranger.

“Come on you bastard, say something!”

Our reflections, for now, are normal.

I turn to look at Edward.

“I fully acknowledge that it may be a severe case of sleep deprivation, but this mirror is...it’s not working!”

“What do you mean by ‘not working’?”

“It’s showing me impossible things, things that aren’t there!”

Edward looks at me, baffled. He goes to speak, but is cut off.

“GREEEEEEEEEEEEETINGS...”

We both turn slowly to look back into the mirror. Our reflections are staring at us, grins fixed on their faces. Mine opens his mouth, and speaks without moving it.

“GREEEEEEEEEEEEETINGS...”

My eyes locked on my reflection, I hear Edward’s breath begin to quicken next to me. His reflection remains stoic and calm.

“Doc, what the fuck?!”

“See!”

I address my doppelganger.

“Who are you...what do you want?”

Nothing for a half a minute. When the reply finally comes, it fills me with dread and pushes me over a line I didn’t know I had within myself.

“IIIIIIIIIIIIIIN.”

No. I can’t take this anymore. I can’t go through any more of this. My mind feels like scratched CD, skipping in place. I just want the song to play out, to be over, to move on to a more peaceful, pleasing melody.

I run up to the mirror and begin tugging frantically. I fumble at a pair of holding brackets, but they refuse to budge. It looks like that wretched rock had gotten into them and fused them shut. I take a hand off one of the brackets and use it to grab the edge of the mirror.

Pain.

Searing, white hot pain.

I pull both my hands away, and step back.

I look at the Stranger again.

“IIIIIIIIIIIIIIN.”

“NO!”

I run over to the workbench, and pick up a ball pein hammer. Seven years be damned.

I lunge forward, closing my eyes at the last second, and put the hammer right through the evil fucking thing, shattering it right out of the holding brackets, sprinkling onto the metal platform of the Gateway’s base. Another loud shriek rings out, this one even more wounded than the first one. The lab doors fly open, and a gust of wind blows into the lab. The foul odour that I had grown accustomed to dissipated from the room, and the spires of rotten rock crumbled and blew away, rust coloured sand scattering.

After my heart finally calmed down, I turned to Edward, and asked him the only question my mind could form at that point.

“Edward...where did you get the mirror from?”

“I uh, I found it on Gumtree, some old lady’s estate was giving away a whole bunch of stuff for free.”

“Was she an occultist or something?! Do more research next time!”

“Sorry, Doc.”

We both laugh, long and heartily, and I don’t know if it’s out of amusement, exhaustion, relief, or all three.

“Thank goodness that’s over!”

Edward nods, his usual smile returning to his face.

A few weeks later, once the terror and the turmoil of my hideous mistake had subsided, I made the decision to run one last trial. This time, I dropped fifty dollars on a bog-standard mirror, nothing exceptional about it. Edward had been by my side during the entire repair and calibration process, saying something about ‘ride-or-die’, whatever that meant. It was nice to have him on board, despite the reservations I knew he still held.

I lower the replacement into the Gateway, expecting it to shriek, or for my reflection to taunt me, but no, nothing. I lock in the holding brackets, letting out a long-held breath. I pick up a remote-control box, and take a few paces back. I look over at Edward.

“This will be fine...”

He nods in a way that somehow says ‘no’.

“It’ll be fine.”

“...yeah, Doc, it’ll be fine.”

“I’m going to stand right here with the kill switch, if you want to run the software?”

“Okay...”

“Edward?”

“...yeah?”

I point to the Gateway.

“This one’s from Ikea.”

Edward also lets out a long breath, his composure returning.

“Okay. Yep, it’ll be fine.”

Edward walks over to the workstation and taps a few keys. I don’t take my eyes off the Gateway, my thumb hovering over the big red button in the centre of the control box.

“Okay...”

Before I can say anything else, the hum of AC power fills the room.

“Edward! We didn’t set the destination coordinates yet!”

“Oh it’s already set.”

Beams of pure energy shoot out of the focussing lenses, forming the glowing frame around the new mirror. My heart freezes in my chest. I spin to face Edward.

“What’s already set?!”

“The coordinates.”

I hear the wormhole whirl into being behind me.

“Eddie...what do you mean it’s already set?!”

“I’m looking at it right now, it’s set, you changed it after the last trial...right?”

“Eddie...I said I was going to change it before the next trial!”

A loud clang rings out, as the GPS tracker clatters to the lab floor between Edward and myself.

Our heads whip around to look at the Gateway, as a familiar voice calls out to us.

“IIIIIIIIIIIIIIN.”