Chapter 16: The Mirror
The robe was heavier than Chris expected.
He stood in the center of Tristan’s dim living room, the early morning desert wind scraping against the windows like something half-alive. A soft light leaked under the door, but otherwise, the room was dark. On the dining table: pages, sketches, and notebooks, each arranged like offerings around the folded robe.
He held up the robe.
No ceremony.
Only intention.
Tristan watched from the corner. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”
Chris didn't answer.
He pulled the robe over his shoulders. It was stiff from age and unfamiliar material. Not wool. Not cotton. It rustled with a quiet static as he fastened it at the chest.
The robe fit.
Not in size.
In resonance.
His heartbeat shifted—subtly at first, then unmistakably. Slower. Deeper. Like it had remembered something.
Tristan stepped closer, handing him a set of keys.
“I had to bribe the night guard,” he said. “Said I was part of a cleanup crew for an unscheduled event. You’ve got an hour. Maybe two.”
Chris nodded.
Tristan touched his shoulder. “If anything happens—if you don’t come out…”
Chris turned, eyes calm.
“Then I went in.”
—————
The estate was sleeping.
But not silent.
As they crept through the service entrance, the Inwood Room called to Chris with a pull that was not magnetic or architectural—but biological. It was less a room, more a node. A terminal. A breathing space with memory woven into its proportions.
They moved quickly through the atrium, the pale pink walls glowing under the moonlight like the inside of a seashell. The garden was shadowed. The pool stilled.
The Inwood Room waited.
Chris paused at the doorway.
He turned to Tristan. “Whatever happens, don’t follow.”
Tristan nodded. “I’ll be here when you return.”
Chris hesitated.
Then: “If I return.”
—————
The room felt smaller now.
Like it had condensed around him.
He stepped into it slowly, the robe trailing like smoke. The air smelled of cedar and something older—ozone, maybe, or pages never turned. The mirror above the mantelpiece dominated the space, triptych-like, gold-gilded and unassuming.
He stood before it.
His reflection stared back.
Older. Wetter around the eyes. Mouth drawn.
But then—something changed.
The mirror rippled. Just slightly.
It didn’t shimmer. It bent.
The left panel folded inward. Then the right. The central pane stayed still, as if bracing for impact.
Chris stepped forward.
The hum began.
It wasn’t sound. It was beneath sound.
A frequency. A rhythm that began inside his ribs.
His vision blurred. Objects morphed into a colorful spectrum.
His eyes closed. Then his mouth opened. The sound of “AOM” filled the room. The sound of the universe.
His vision tightened.
Then disappeared.
—————
When the world reassembled, he was nowhere—and everywhere.
Chris was standing in the Inwood Room.
But not the one he knew.
This one pulsed with light that had no source. Its walls breathed. The mirror was no longer a surface, but a tunnel—a corridor cut through perception.
He turned. The doors had vanished.
He stepped forward.
Not walking.
Moving without feet.
The robe floated around him like a cocoon.
He raised a hand, expecting fingers.
Instead, light.
Not glowing. Just knowing.
The air thickened.
Then thinned.
Then vibrated with harmonic overtones he didn’t know he could hear.
A voice entered his mind.
Not words.
A tone.
Familiar.
Like a lullaby hummed by the universe to its own reflection.
—————
He passed through a corridor shaped like no corridor—geometries shifting as he looked. The floor was made of memory. The walls were woven from frequencies he’d only glimpsed in dreams.
And at the end—an opening.
The atrium.
But no longer earthbound.
Chris stepped into a version of Sunnylands rendered in translucent shadow. The statue of Eve wept slowly—not tears, but vibrations that shimmered down her stone face. The plants beneath her gave off an iridescent glow.
He looked up. “A temple. Over the Garden of Eden.”
He turned.
Above the pool: the stars.
But not stars.
Coordinates.
Every point of light connected by unseen logic—like a divine geometry revealing itself only now.
And above them all: a flicker.
A point so far it should not be visible.
But it was.
Voyager.
Not as machine.
As presence.
—————
Chris fell to his knees.
He wasn’t breathing.
Not because he couldn’t—but because he didn’t need to.
The robe vibrated against his skin, syncing to the pulse of the air. His chest expanded—not with oxygen, but with something else.
Awareness.
Remembrance.
Light coalesced around him, folding into shapes he couldn’t name. He felt his childhood unfurl in reverse—his parents’ voices, the first time he drew a building, Maya’s laughter echoing backward through time.
Then silence.
And then—
Contact.
—————
He did not see Voyager.
He felt it.
It didn’t speak.
It transmitted emotion.
Not language. Not message.
Just an awareness that stretched beyond the limits of time.
An understanding.
A knowing.
It was him.
It was Walter.
It was Atman.
It was everyone who had ever wanted to be more than themselves.
And in that knowing, Chris forgot who he was.
And remembered who he always had been.
—————
The robe lit from within.
Not blindingly. Reverently.
As if some part of it had been waiting for its wearer.
He floated now, not above the ground, but through layers of memory. He saw Atman, chained to the desk. Saw Eli in the alley, whispering stories into the void. Saw Maya crying in the hallway, thinking he couldn’t hear.
He felt all of it.
Not as guilt.
As offering.
Every sorrow. Every missed opportunity.
Fuel.
—————
The geometry began to collapse around him—folding like paper into tighter and tighter patterns. The robe unraveled into symbols. The walls closed. The mirror reappeared.
Not as exit.
As re-entry.
Chris stepped toward it.
It did not reflect.
It opened.