[Original Novella] If That Looking Glass Should Break, Part 3

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I cut him short as his tendency was to make an explanation as long as his audience would endure before stopping him.“Supposing there’s a book out there someplace in which the sanskrit letters I circled appear on some page in that exact arrangement relative to one another. Could it figure out which book and which page?”

He stroked his chin stubble and squinted. “With a little work. You’ll owe me though. I dunno what yet, but coding isn’t easy so it’s not free.” Sounded fair to me. “Put it on my tab. Email me when you’ve got something”. With that, I went out for more coffee and some light reading. I never expected he’d be done so quickly.

“First I narrowed it to works originally published in sanskrit for obvious reasons. Then I searched for just those letters in that order, which further narrowed the results. I was really hoping it’d come back with just one. Since it didn’t, I then had to integrate the grid system and analyze each page for the correct spatial relationship between those characters.”

The real satisfaction he got out of such a project was making me understand the difficulty of it and how smart he must be to have achieved such a thing. I did not deny him. I remembered him launching into a tirade once when walking through a mall with me because he saw a nine year old play some first person shooter on whatever the new console was at the time and grow bored in under a minute.

“Do you think that little shit has any idea how many man hours went into programming just the physics engine? Or modeling every asset, painting textures and mapping which bits should be reflective because they’re wet, or using parallax mapping to make little details stick out?” He settled down when I provided the much needed perspective that kids that age have the attention span of a goldfish.

The program singled out a particular page in the Mesopotamian epic ‘Gilgamesh’. I downloaded a copy from Project Gutenberg and got to reading. It told the story of a king whose closest friend died, inspiring him to devote his life to questing for a means to restore him to life and to prevent his own death.

The moral seemed to be that death is inescapable, and that for humans, immortality is achieved through great works. Very defeatist, but a familiar line. The journal I edit for constantly receives emails from people we call “death apologists” who provide what they think are compelling reasons that death is necessary, dignified, and that living forever would be an insufferable nightmare.

We have our own ideas as to why people do this. The terrible moral weight of those already lost to mortality compels the living to rationalize why it ‘had to occur’. Perhaps some dare not hope for an escape from death, for fear that it will not arrive in time. Then there are the religious types. What need is there of salvation if nobody dies?

Emilio’s printout lay in the passenger seat as I drove home. The characters appeared in that configuration only on the page where Gilgamesh abandons his quest. Each character appeared in a word which, when they were strung together, formed the phrase “Neither is life”.

Once home I sat down with the case, bent a lamp over it so I could see it more clearly and scrutinized the protruding metal letters on the underside. With a little effort I found each one could be pushed in like a button. I wrote down the sentence in sanskrit characters spaced apart, then punched it in one letter at a time.

Nothing happened. To hell with this. Why was I wasting my time on an old fruitcake’s puzzle? What could be inside? A note that says “Gotcha” most likely. I set it aside, watched some Netflix and fell asleep on the couch. Another day went by. It was strange to have this much leisure time. What I like to call my responsibility gland was hyperactive. Was I forgetting some appointment? Was today the deadline for some paper I was writing?

I don’t like to drink alone, so silencing it with booze was off the table. Instead I returned my attention to the puzzle. Shit like that always sucks me back in. “No, it couldn’t be that easy” I thought. “That would be stupid.” But placing the stencil on upside down did appear to highlight a different set of characters. I copied them down, carefully took a pic with my phone and sent it to Emilio promising I would owe him twice over for it.

He got back to me around four with a new phrase: “Death is not certain”. It made no sense until I flipped it. “Death is not certain. Neither is life.” Part two of the gag, it had to be. To make me sit down and punch in those letters like a fool for the second time only to drill in how gullible I am. I did it anyway.

A sharp pop sounded and the two halves of the case felt loose. Sure enough I could now open the damn thing. I was mostly curious to see the mechanism by which it understood which letters had to be pressed and in which sequence but it was hidden behind a red velvet lining which, when peeled away, revealed a layer of metal. Not intended to be tampered with I suppose.

The lining gently held in place a lens which, judging by the coloration, had been carved from a solid piece of rose quartz. It was breathtakingly pure. I almost didn’t want to handle it with my bare hands lest I leave fingerprints, but when I looked at it closely there were already some on it from the last owner.

I held it up to the light. One half of the proverbial rose tinted glasses? I spotted motion through it. For just a split second. Like a blurred shadow flitting past. Looking through the lens more directly, I saw nothing out of the ordinary until I spotted the blue thread clinging to my pants. I’d not changed them since my trip with Zach.

The thread glowed and pulsated gently. I studied the lens, looking for hidden electronics. But there was no place to hide anything, it was wholly transparent. I looked through again, with the same result. It brought out blues like you wouldn’t believe. Then I had the idea of looking at the note with it.

The crafty old professor must’ve used invisible ink of some kind. It faintly glowed like the thread. “Congratulations to the new owner of this Orgonometric optical detector. I apologized for including only one, but I keep the other close to me at all times for reasons you will soon discover. Without exaggeration, the correct application of this device can greatly extend your lifespan. But once you gaze through it, there is no returning to your life as it was before. Regards, Professor Heironimus P. Travigan.”

Under the bottom layer of velvet was a small silk pouch to carry the lens in. Curious to try it outside, I put it into the pocket of my jacket, checked my phone to see how much daylight was left and headed out. I wondered how I’d look to strangers, furtively pulling out a pink lens and peering through it. Perhaps I could claim I was trying to bring back monocles?

I made my way to a nearby bus stop. It was someplace inconspicuous that I could sit down and not be bothered. I was in luck, the stop was derelict. Nobody I’d have to explain myself to. I withdrew the lens from the silk pouch and peered through it.

As with the thread, anything blue stood out very richly and radiated a faint glow. The sky most of all. But in peering at the sky I began to notice dark patches moving above above the cloud layer. Like photographs I’d seen of the ocean, where you can see the shadow of a shark just below the surface. These were immense, though. Swirling, writhing, never holding their shape for long.

Then I heard someone talking on their cellphone across the street. I peered at them through the lens and nearly fell off the bench. I tried not to stare, still conscious of how I would look if discovered but what I saw was simply beyond the pale.

Something resembling a frail, emaciated man just one third the size of a normal person clung to her shoulders, riding about on her back. It was bald and nude, missing a nose and ears, but the eyes were disproportionately large. And closed, as if it were sleeping. For some reason this bizarre creature appeared to be suckling the back of her neck. I started up as if to inform her of it, but what could I say without being maced?

It occurred to me that whatever it was, it might’ve noticed me staring if I’d not been lucky. What were they? What would happen if they knew I could see them? Did they relate somehow to the shadowy masses in the sky? I trembled, struggled with these strange new thoughts and set off looking for someplace else to sit.

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