Looking for Jake and Other Stories

They listen to me. He did not know if that was true. He knew only that they would not kill him, and that therefore he could make his offer, and his request.

No one else could get close enough, for long enough, to try. This was the only chance they had. No one else could possibly have even been heard.

He did not debase himself, did not plead, nor bluster. There was no trick. He came, the self-appointed general of London, spokesperson for humanity, recognising the fact that his side had lost the war, and asking for peace, as a conquered people.

You don’t need to kill us any more, he thought. You win.

It was the sobbing of the Liverpudlian officer into his radio that had put the idea in Sholl’s head. He had stood in the corridor beyond the radio room after midnight, stricken, listening to the man cry and scan the static for a sound. The relentless white noise wore down on Sholl.

What if everyone was waiting, he thought, to make contact, to hear their commands, and there was no way for word to come through? Perhaps the government still sat, in exile, in a bunker underground, making decisions completely without meaning, or perhaps they were all dead. It made no difference.

They couldn’t speak to their troops. There was no one to make decisions. Soldiers are paid to fight, and so the dispersed troops tried to, in bandit raids, being slaughtered when the imagos bothered. But fighting was not all that soldiers did: sometimes they surrendered.

Their job, now, Sholl became certain, was to surrender. What if the imagos were not carrying out a meaningless slaughter, but were fighting the war because no one had declared it over? Just like the soldiers. Waiting. For a decision that no one could take, and an order that could not be given.

What if there was no one left to give the order to stop? Would the war continue until stilled by entropy, or until the last human was dead?

Until that descent into Hampstead Tube, Sholl had not known for certain that the imagos would not touch him, but for weeks it had been clear to him that he had lived much longer than he should. He had made less and less effort to hide, and the fauna of mirrors, imagos and scavengers, always avoided him, shied away from him, without respect or fear, but as if noting something.

What is this? Sholl had thought. Aghast, he had decided that he was chosen for something. For this. He granted himself authority to speak for his people. To surrender. Judas-messiah.

He made no demands, but he offered terms that seemed reasonable: the terms of abject but dignified surrender. An end to hostilities. Tribute, in kind or obedience, in prayer if the Fish of the Mirror required.

Whatever was necessary. And in return, humans could live.

Perhaps we’ll be nomads, he thought. Or farmers, or serfs, ploughing up London’s ruins. A little colony of the imago empire. A backwater, eventually, with the freedom granted to those who are no trouble. We could make plans then— but Sholl stopped himself. That was not why he was here.

This was not strategy or double-bluff; it could not be. This was a surrender.

Am I Petain? Collaborator? Will children use my name as a curse? But there will be children.

We’ll live, we’ll spread the word that we’ve lost, and we’ll live, in ghettos if we have to, but we’ll live. A new history. What will we be? But we will be.

Someone had to decide. It was this, or die, like we’re dying.

He thought of the strange imago that had helped him, still not understanding its motives. He thought with shame again of the soldiers outside, who had come with him against his orders, as he had suspected they might, and been slaughtered by the Fish of the Mirror’s imago guard. The guard that had let him pass, waiting for him to do whatever it was that they expected.

Perhaps I’ve got this all wrong. Perhaps this isn’t why they leave me alone at all—what if the chosen one misunderstands what he’s been chosen for?

It was too late for that now. His offer—his suit for peace, his surrender— had been made. Sholl bowed his head respectfully and stepped back. He tried to feel like a leader. The humans had nothing with which to bargain—no strength at all. The only thing that Sholl could do was make his forces soldiers, defeated soldiers, rather than bandits or vermin. That was all he had. If the Fish of the Mirror chose, it could ignore Sholl, and hunt down the last Londoners, to the last child. All Sholl had was his surrender. An extraordinary, arrogant claim that it was his to surrender. In all his humility was this last puffed-up pretence. It was all he had. He begged. Searing, he begged mercy, general to general.

The Fish of the Mirror glowed. Sholl stepped back, his hands up and open. He waited for his conqueror to consider.

This is the story of a surrender.

. . . the world of mirrors and the world of men were not, as they are now, cut off from each other. They were, besides, quite different; neither beings nor colours nor shapes were the same. Both kingdoms, the specular and the human, lived in harmony; you could come and go through mirrors. One night the mirror people invaded the earth. Their power was great, but at the end of bloody warfare the magic arts of the Yellow Emperor prevailed. He repulsed the invaders, imprisoned them in their mirrors, and forced on them the task of repeating, as though in a kind of dream, all the actions of men. He stripped them of their power and of their forms and reduced them to mere slavish reflections. Nonetheless, a day will come when the magic spell will be shaken off.

The first to awaken will be the Fish. Deep in the mirror we will perceive a very faint line and the colour of this line will be like no other colour. Later on, other shapes will begin to stir. Little by little they will differ from us; little by little they will not imitate us. They will break through the barriers of glass or metal and this time will not be defeated. Side by side with these mirror creatures, the creatures of the water will join the battle.

In Yunnan they do not speak of the Fish but of the Tiger of the Mirror. Others believe that in advance of the invasion we will hear from the depths of mirrors the clatter of weapons.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

“Fauna of Mirrors” from The Book of Imaginary Beings

The patient awoke about midnight and had just entered the dimly lit bathroom when he saw the reflection of his face in a mirror. The face appeared distorted and seemed to be changing rapidly, frightening the patient so much that he jumped through the bathroom window.

LUISH. SCHWARZ, M.D. and STANTON P. FJELD, PH.D.

“Illusions Induced by the Self-Reflected Image”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My sincere thanks to Emma Bircham, Mic Cheetham, Simon Kavanagh, Peter Lavery, Claudia Lightfoot, Colleen Lindsay, Jemima Mieville, Jake Pilikian, Max Schaefer, Chris Schluep, Liam Sharp and Jesse Soodalter.

My deepest gratitude goes to all the editors who commissioned and/or published some of these stories: Benjamin Adams, Michael Chabon, Pete Crowther, Eli Horowitz, Ian Irvine, Maxim Jakubowski, Pete Morgan, Bradford Morrow, John Pelan, Mark Roberts, Nicholas Royle, Peter Straub, Jeff VanderMeer, and Tony White.

I would like to point out that the historical detail in the story “foundation” is accurate and a matter of record. The U.S. Army did bury Iraqi soldiers alive, using tanks mounted with plows. Among many other sources, see Patrick Sloyan’s article “How the Mass Slaughter of a Group of Iraqis Went Unreported,” The Guardian, 14 February 2003.