In effect, both limousines crashed into mirrors.
SPECIAL PROMOTION - HYPER-ALICE
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Hyper-Alice and Hyper-Elvis: the future of personal appeal.[*]
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THE SILVERING
Possibly, you could say that one evening, late in the future, all the mirrors in the world decided to join together. Whilst most people would consider mirrors merely as reflective surfaces, some of the more mystical religions proposed them to be doors, into some other, deeper realm. Rather now, see them as veins; the veins of some vast hidden creature along which light can travel. A creature with blood photons.
For centuries this creature knotted its veins together, in such a way that each journey of light came back to its starting point. Thus, we saw ourselves. But now, with this joining at the silver, each mirror reflected not the astonished gaze of the owner, but the equally shocked expression of another, stranger face.
A stranger's face.
At which you could only grimace, or bellow, or stand dumbfounded in front of.
We have to imagine the mirror creature shrugging itself, perhaps, and coming out of the shrug with its tangle of veins rearranged into a new pattern. Perhaps it didn't mean this to happen. Perhaps it did.
Destroying the mirrors brought no respite, for each replacement mirror bought, or indeed created, would still reflect the same stranger's image. Also, it was quickly noted, no matter where in the world the viewer was, no matter through which foreign mirror he or she gazed, the same partner would always be waiting there.
This phenomenon became known as the Silvering. In time, the imagined monster through which the rays of light ran was called by the same name.
The exact mathematical shape that the Silvering's veins would have to follow, for the process to take place, was discovered to be a highly complex eleventh-dimensional curve. The abstract beauty of this curve may have pleased the scientists; but it was of little use to all the billions of people in the world who now found their mirrors completely useless for their given task. To take a most obvious example: how could some young woman with long tresses of flowing hair possibly groom herself in the reflected image of some old, decrepit bald man?
For yes, some men were reflected by women. The Silvering knew no prejudice. The old were mirrored by the young; gays by straights; blacks by whites; the rich by the poor. At first this dissolving of boundaries brought only anger on both sides of the glass. Fortunately, although light waves could travel through the Silvering's veins, sound waves could not. Curses were not heard, but, of course, easily imagined from the expressions on a face.
But then, and only after a very short time, the people of the world came to accept their new reflections, and to work with them. And thus it was that old, decrepit bald men learned how to mime the combing of long golden tresses. And the world was considered a better place for the joining at the silver.
The only distressing moments came about because of a simple mathematical property: each of the Silvering's veins had only two points of entry - a beginning and an end. Because of this, the process only worked when the number of people in the world was an even number. Given the eternal play of birth and death, every so often a person would go to their mirror, expecting their partner to greet them, only to find themselves staring at a blank space, an emptiness, a terrifying void.
This phenomenon was known as the Clouding, and brought about an avoidance of all mirrors, until such day as the global population turned back from odd, to even, and all the veins of light had both beginnings, and endings.
A new face would appear to embrace your reflection, and the smiles were perfectly copied. Making balance in the world.
Until the Silvering shrugged once more; not only through space, but through the past and the future as well. So that possibly one day, late in the evening, you could say that all the mirrors of all time…
BEFORE IT DISAPPEARS
I was dining out with Kid Signal the other day, when he happens to mention a new player in town, some girl making a nice little fish-pie out at the casino. 'Monkey Funk, they're calling her,' says the Kid, feeding his face, 'and quite obviously born to angle. Want to check her out? Maybe to get rid of the worm, and a little something extra for me and the mouse?'
'Just keep eating,' I told him. 'And leave the worm out of this.'
The Kid was a fine experiment; the mouse that lived inside his stomach was a friendly little creature, if kept well fed, and an expert on all the latest rumours.
Some of us weren't born so lucky.
I threw the Kid a fish, just a tiddler, mind, for the tip-off.
Then I lose it. Something gets eaten, and it's all just darkness until I'm riding on board this tramcat, crammed in tight and sweaty. I swear I was the only halfway-human on board.
The tram was a moving zoo, filled to overload with snakegirls, dogboys, pigpeople, birdbrains. All the specimens. Screechings and roars and a right old ruckus they made, about how this was gonna be their luckiest ever day.
Yeah, right. I'd heard it all before, a thousand times or so. But if this new girl in town really did have some monkey in her, that was way up the food-chain, maybe I could finally catch enough moneyfish to get my head laundered. Sure could do with one.
We all tumbled forth at the outskirts of town, into the catpark. The crazy herd rushed for the casino gates, with me following slow behind, feeling this sudden emptiness. The skullworm was nibbling at something vital, and another bit of my sorry life drifted away. Something about my mother, or was it my girlfriend, I can't remember. What the hell was it?
Darkness.
In the foyer I changed some fish into chips, and then sauntered into the Fractal Roulette room. The place was jammed, wall to wall sucker. Tony McHool was playing a wheel, nursing his cobra the same time. Tony was one of my sure-fire bets; a skinny kid and skinnier snake I'd found playing poker in some dogdive down town. The snake was wriggling out of his shirt, and I knew for a fact where it was joined to him, because he showed me in the Gents when we signed the deal. I won't go into the gruesome details, but after that I just had to loan him some fish to play with. McHool was now gambling a shark on all or nothing. Always a bad bet, even with a snake to help you.