Don’t throw up in your helmet don’t throw up in your helmet don’t throw up in your helmet don’t throw up in your helmet don’t throw up in your helmet don’t throw up in your helmet don’t throw up in your helmet don’t throw up…

"Uhm… Kara?"

"I’m fine! Let’s just… take it slow."

"It’s easier if you open your eyes. Keeps in check the illusion of falling backwards that your middle ear gives you in weightlessness. And remember I got you tethered. Nothing can happen."

"You need to control your pulse Zelman. I’ll have to give you more oxygen for a while. You should've asked for a chill pill before going out."

Should have could have and I would have, you witch.

I forced myself to open my eyes. I watched a bead of condensed water float through my helmet. Of course I had to look down. The Vortex below swallowed me up in my mind.

"I’m ok! It’s just a little… fear of heights."

"Just look at me. No reason to be afraid to fall. You wouldn’t hit anything for a few million years anyway."

Chris fired his suit’s thrusters to slow us down.

"We’re almost there."

Shortly before I would have impacted on our destination he pulled on the tether to brake me and propel himself forward, spun around to land on his feet, and caught me with both arms. I wondered if he was a good dancer in gravity too.

“Alright, let’s get to work. I’ll keep us fixated and get us to where you want, while you check this thing out. Set your suit’s thrusters to auto-stabilize now. ”

"Right." I regained my composure and nonchalantly pushed the button on my left shoulder.

Then, in what must have been a phenomenal moment in the history of mankind, I rammed my little pickaxe into the stone and scraped some dust into the spectral calorimeter. I pushed “on” and read the display.

"Yep. It’s a rock alright. "

I holstered both utensils and looked into the sphere of dancing lights. They kept doing whatever it was they did and ignored us completely. I pulled out the next tool and pointed it.

"I’m going to hold the imager into the rings that delineate the cut now. They look perfectly smooth and metallic from here. Can you see anything?"

Andrea looked through the images I transmitted to the Trailblazer under various wavelengths.

"The rings have concave mirrors inside them. Remarkably perfect mirrors too. Zelman, can you move closer to one of them and point the imager so it sees the reflection of your other hand in a 45 degree angle to the surface?"

"I don’t wanna get too close to the lights."

"Can you see how they're generated from there?"

"Can’t."

"They show up very low energy through the imager. I don’t think they’ll burn you or anything."

Chris held his hand into the lights.

"Feels safe."

"Alright. Let's go Zelman."

"Yeah. Let's."

I moved through the lights to the center of the mirrors and pointed the imager to look at my hand at an angle through the mirror like Andrea asked.

"That’s odd. No polarization. Turn the imager on its axis."

I turned it like a screwdriver screwing my hand through a mirror. Five years of university for this.

I looked over to Chris and saw him grin at me for acting like Andreas’s puppet.

"Change the angle by moving closer to the mirror, still pointing it at your hand." I heard the sound of typing through the intercom.

"Weird. "

I stuck out my tongue and moved my head and arms like a mock-marionette for the amusement of Chris. He tried to wipe the grin off his face but didn't quite succeed.

I smirked at the ridiculously deformed figure sweating in a space suit on the other side of the curved mirror. As I contemplated myself I noticed that reflected through it and the one on the other side, the lights made some sort of pattern that wasn’t visible from outside. Andrea seemed to be busy with her analysis, so I slowly thrust backwards to see if moving towards the center would give me a better perspective.

Every once in a while, some of the circling streaks would overlap to form what looked like symbols. I moved my head back and forth like a clucking chicken to see if there was a certain focal point which would allow for a viewer to read them. Crossing the center of the mirror’s curvature radius made the reflection flip upside down and back, as I passed back and forth through it, making me slightly dizzy again.

I could make out what looked like a capital “A”, then a “Z” , then an infinity sign, an “N”, and an “F”.

How is this possible? How can they use the Roman and Greek alphabet?

Then I thought I saw the numbers 1, 5, and two 2s.

So they're Arabs or Indians too. Ok, I get it. There are thousands of curves and lines randomly crossing, and my brain is taking snapshots of things it recognizes. Confirmation bias and training. Like people see faces in random patterns like clouds. I wonder if it’s similar to when the gate recognized that song. I tried to remember the Valhalla Song in my mind.

I felt dizzy again and turned my head to look away from the mirror in front of me.

But now the mirror was everywhere.

I closed my eyes. Ha ha. Yeah. Right.

I opened them again and looked around me in every direction. Everything was gone. Chris, the Trailblazer, the surrounding system. There was just me and my image, in a reflective bubble all around me.

Or another Doppleganger? Not this shit again.

I found the tether. My eyes followed it outwards from where it was attached to my suit. It was attached to my mirror image. Everywhere I looked, the mirror showed the opposite side of me from another angle. No. This is definitely a mirror.

"Is everything alright? Did you lose something?"

Man am I glad to hear his voice.

"I… I seem to be… stuck. In the mirror."

"Want me to pull on you?"

"By stuck I don’t mean mechanically stuck. I’m… inside… a mirror."

"I see you looking all around you. But you don’t seem to see me."

"I don’t. I just see myself. Everywhere. I’m surrounded by a fricking mirror."

"Peterson, is Zelman’s oxygen supply ok? I think she's hallucinating."

"Oxygen concentration's within optimal range. Tell us what you see Zelman."

"I only see a perfect image of myself no matter where I turn. I told you… I’m surrounded by a fricking mirror."

"Surrounded by several regular mirrors, or a single spherical one? If it’s concave you should see yourself very differently. Twisted. Also, please point the imager in all directions."

I pointed the imager in all directions.

The witch has a point. My reflection no longer looks twisted like before. But in order to surround me, the mirror must be either curved, or composed of several straight ones. But if that was the case, there'd have to be more than one reflection of me too.

"Ok, I’m hallucinating.

Wait…"

Right on time, there were now multiple reflections of me all around. Why didn’t I see them before?

"I just noticed… there are many reflections. Some close, some far. They’re not twisted, so there must be several straight mirrors. I probably just don’t see the edges because they're flawless."

"I don’t see what you see through the imager. I see Chris and the Trailblazer in the background. What does the background look like to you? You must see some kind of background, and that should fold at the edges of the mirrors."

"The background in the distance is just… more and more tiny reflections. Until they’re too small to make out."

"What’s the light source? There has to be one or you wouldn't see anything. Do the reflections get darker with distance or change in color?"

"I guess my helmet is the light source. But I’m lit from all sides by its reflections. They aren’t getting darker or brighter. They don't change in other ways than size and angle."

Andrea was silent for a while.

"How many primary reflections… the ones largest in size… do you see?"

I looked in all directions and counted.

"I count twelve."

"Sidd, how do you interpret this?"

Oh great. He's back.

"Specialist Zelman is describing what one would see from inside a perfectly reflective dodecahedron. Perfect reflection, however, is physically impossible due to loss of photon momentum and polarization during scattering. The crewman is either mistaken, lying, or psychotic. This is further evidenced by the fact that we can see her despite the alleged surrounding mirrors, which would be another violation of the first law of thermodynamics. Thirdly, I believe the imager transmissions speak for themselves."

"You know what? Screw this. And screw you too, Sidd. Pull me out of here Chris."

Chris hesitated.

"Captain?"

And screw you too for this, Chris.

There was an awkward silence.

"Alright, get back on board you two. We’ll let others try and make sense of it when we’re home. Sidd spotted something else several clicks east shortly after he came back online. And hurry up. We can’t stay here much longer unless we find shelter from the radiation. "

I felt the tether pull on my suit. The reflections started shifting and closing in on me. Chris pulled harder, but I still stopped moving.

Fuck. This is giving me a head ache. I tried not to panic.

"Kara? Is your auto stabilizer still on? Turn it off so it’s easier to pull you."

"Uh… yeah. Hold on I’ll turn it off."

I gave a sigh of relief and pressed the button on my shoulder. My heart was racing and I was breathing heavily.

Chris gently started pulling again, then stopped.

"Are you holding on to something?"

I looked around my suit.

"I’m not in contact with anything but the tether." It was now pulled straight and formed a kink with its reflection where it entered the mirror.

Something else changed. Apart from the fact that I’m sweating even more.

I looked around. I counted.

“Now there’s only 6 primary images of me. One above and below, four surrounding me.” Behind them in every direction, a string of me continued reflecting into infinity.

“What’s going on? What’s causing the hold-up?”

"Specialist Zelman is now describing what one would see inside a perfectly reflective cube, possibly in a failing attempt to change her story to something more credible."

"Alright Gorman, just drag her in. We have something else to investigate before going back. You have your orders."

"Roger."

Chris pulled with increasing force. I felt the pull on the suit, but also felt like my body was pulling on my eyes and brain.

"Ouh! Stop! "

Chris stopped.

My eyes had started to water and I couldn’t wipe them through the suit. I tried looked around me with blurry vision.

"That fucking hurt. And it changed again. Now the reflections are so close I think I can touch the mirror." So close it's making me claustrophobic. "And there’s only four now."

"Specialist Zelman is now describing what one would see inside a tetrahedron. She is continually reducing the number of edges delineating the faces by one, while the number of faces went from 12 to 6 to 4. There is no continuation to this pattern. She has reached the minimum number of straight surfaces that can enclose a volume, and the minimum number of straight lines that can encompass a surface. Continuing with the current procedure may therefore stop her from further delaying the mission."

"Could mean you’re almost out of there. Sorry if this hurts but we have to get back."

"Maybe I can help by pushing myself away from the opposite mirror. If you pull too hard you’ll tear something."

I used my right arm to push myself away, towards the direction of the tether.

But the moment I touched the surface, my glove stuck to it and both the tether and the mirror started pulling in opposite directions with incredible strength.

"Fuck!"

"Stop pulling back! I can’t hold …"

"I’m... not pulling… it's pulling… oh fuck…" I screamed in full panic.

"Just a little bit m…"

"No! You’ll get sucked in or tear my suit apart."

"Just…"

The audio was cut off when I frantically pushed the release with my free hand and the tether whiplashed out through the reflecting surface.

“OH GOD…” Kara screetched as she felt the entire universe collapse into her.