by Philip Madden
CLASSIFIED REPORT: PROJECT OKEANOS
Office of Extraterrestrial Observation, UN Scientific Coalition
Observer: Dr. Elias Verne
Date: ██/██/████
Subject: Initial Contact with Entity ‘MIRROR’
BEGIN REPORT:
We encountered something.
Or perhaps it unmade us. We, the observers, return as hollowed-out versions of ourselves, carrying only echoes of what we once were. There is an absence among us, a gnawing void where certainty used to reside. The entity—designated ‘MIRROR’—has left its mark, though not in ways we can quantify. We are unravelling, slowly, imperceptibly.
Observations:
Each of us saw differently, yet what we saw does not belong to this world. Dr. Song described an ocean without a surface, black and endless, swallowing starlight. Captain Halloway glimpsed shifting masses, shapes writhing in and out of coherence, faces forming only to dissolve. I saw my hands, but they were no longer hands—too many joints, the skin a shifting membrane of light and shadow. Our instruments failed us. The spectrometer gave readings that should not exist. The audio logs play whispers layered so deep they do not end.
More troubling were the changes in perception. The station lights flickered in patterns we could not predict, casting impossible shadows. At times, the ship felt larger, corridors extending into darkness where walls should have been. When we closed our eyes, we did not see the usual bursts of color behind our lids but vast, empty distances, stretching farther than human thought could comprehend.
Cognitive and Temporal Distortions:
Something fractured. Time does not move as it should. We left for three hours; we returned twelve days later. The station AI insists we never left at all. Dr. Ruiz mutters in tongues not spoken by man. Captain Halloway watches the corridors, eyes darting to movements we cannot perceive. The rest of us avoid sleep, yet in our wakefulness, we dream—of things moving just beyond our field of vision, of places that defy geometry, of something breathing behind the fabric of the world.
Worse still, we feel as if we have been observed. Not in the way one is watched by another living being, but with a deeper, older awareness. Something has taken notice of us, and its gaze is not one of curiosity or malice, but of inevitability. We attempted communication. What we received was a mockery of language, a corruption of our own voices:
“YOU WERE NEVER ALONE.”
Aftermath:
Dr. Song no longer speaks. Instead, she carves symbols into metal, deep and precise, patterns we do not recognize. Captain Halloway covers polished surfaces, claims his reflection moves before he does. I feel myself slipping, losing moments, thoughts fraying like old thread. We are no longer whole. Something of us remains with MIRROR, and something of it has come back with us.
The dreams have worsened. They are no longer dreams but transmissions. Visions of landscapes stripped of life, of black rivers that do not flow, of structures that hum with voices just beyond comprehension. At times, we hear whispers in the walls, breath where there should be silence. The station’s instruments detect no anomalies, yet we know the changes are real. We feel them inside our skulls.
Conclusions:
MIRROR does not observe, does not respond. It does not threaten. It does not need to. It simply is, and in its presence, we diminish. We sought knowledge and found something far older than understanding, something that sees us not as beings, but as brief flickers in a long, dark expanse.
This mission must not be repeated. No further contact should be attempted. There is no aggression here—only an indifference so vast it devours.
And yet, the question remains:
If it has seen us, what now remains to be seen?
END REPORT.
~
Bio:
Philip Madden is a freelance writer based in Poland. He has published comics, short fiction, essays and poems.
Philosophy Note:
Mirror is a philosophical story concerned with the limitations of our human consciousness and experience in dealing with beings and entities beyond what we think the rules of learning. Certain themes found in the works of H.P. Lovecraft and Stanislaw Lem served as inspirations.
