u/HEXad3cimalCat

I’ve been looking around for books that encapsulate the idea of needing something that is unattainable and the struggle of dealing with it. Think of I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream (not from a plot perspective, just that the title fits what I’m looking for almost perfectly).

Ok, I was bored and drafted up an idea about a man who found himself in a mirror dimension. However, the mirror dimension and real dimensions collide. The real dimension is our universe as we know it and the mirror is the sam, but there is no life, the only way for living things to exist in the mirror dimension is if they are transported there. From a biological standpoint, the mirror dimension is stagnant. Any life that reflects itself into the mirror dimension from the real dimension shares the same movements, but it has no mind. Think of it like an actual mirror, your reflection not being alive but still following your movements. If any living creature from the mirror dimension is reflected into the real dimension, the same will occur. Visually speaking, mirrored life will appear totally flat with no defining features, almost as if it was created out of jelly that was pushed inwards as far as physically possible. Additionally, any mirrored object/person is completely grayscale. (You can probably tell this is more of a visual storytelling experiment than a book at this point) For example, an person inside the mirror dimensions dimension being reflected into the real dimension would appear totally gray whereas any person being reflected into the mirror dimension from the real dimension would be colorized. Now that the visuals are out of the way, allow me to explain the plot. It’s relatively short with a lot of room for inferences and theories, but not empty enough for a significant lack of enjoyment. Our main character, a human man from about 400-2000 years in the future is undergoing space travel. By then, technology would permit quick space travel, enough to find some way to accelerate humans incredibly quickly. I’m no physicist and I can’t be bothered to study any profession with too much math than I can handle, so let’s assume humans can travel at some exorbitant speed by then. This man traveling through space is approaching Gaia BH1 (I looked it up, Google said it was the closest known black hole) and willingly barreled into it with a camera for the sake of science. As he continues forward, typical black hole stuff occurs and time gets all funky. After a bit, our main guy reaches the event horizon. Now, this dude basically just did what Cooper did in interstellar, going into a black hole. However, my interpretation of this is a tad different. Half of him stays outside the black hole whilst the other half enters. Thing is, this black hole is a portal to the mirror dimension. So, half of him is in and the other half is out. The half that is outside is fully conscious, able to talk and communicate perfectly to the camera he brought. Then, with the half that’s inside, he can see and move that half freely in the mirror dimension. As you know, the mirror dimension is an alternate version of the real dimension. However, due to displacement of black holes across both dimensions, Gaia BH1 connects to a mirror black hole in the stairwell of some kid‘s room in an attic if a house 400-2000 years ago. (Fun fact: this is based upon my real room when I was younger!) The kid is home alone in the real dimension while the power is conveniently out, so the kid has no way to call for help if a peculiar space man with only one side came knocking. As said space man walks up the stairway, the kid notices him and becomes thoroughly frightened, as one should. But, because coincidences, there’s nothing he can do. Our hero realizes the panic this kid has while also panicking himself, so he tries to calm down the situation. He slowly steps forward with his hands in a defensive yet open position, trying to talk to the kid. However, sound is one of the few things that doesn’t get mirrored. Oh, and keep in mind, the perspective changes from page to page, so imagining it as a book, the reader would experience the thoughts of both main characters. Since the our space man has made the assumption that the mirrored Earth has the same atmosphere as real Earth, he takes off his helmet in order to show he’s human, just like the kid. But if you paid attention earlier, you’d know that the kid would only see a gray hemisphere where a normal half-head would be. Still unable to diffuse the situation, the man tries to reach out and touch the kid carefully to symbolize comfort, although the child is utterly mortified and refuses to stop screaming. When their fingers were supposed to touch, the man just phases right through the kid. After all, the only connection between the mirror and real dimensions are visuals. Unexpectedly, the kid sees this and calms dow, having enough rational thought in this moment of strangeness to realize that the man can’t hurt him even if he wanted to. The man realizes that the kid is no longer upset and is able to focus on his goal of finding out what is even happening, walking down the staircase to try and escape. Once the threshold is reached for him to make contact with the displaced black hole once more, he phases back into the real dimension, now able to barely escape Gaia BH1’s gravity thanks to science fiction bs. On the trip back to real Earth, he relays his experience to the camera and works up his theory as to why it occurred. Mr astronaut is an astronaut and is obviously quite smart, so he cooks up a theory about the same as to what actually happened. Once he returns home far into the future because of freaky deaky black hole magic, he checks the testimony of what he believed to be the same kid he saw, the experience being the exact same as what he had done. TLDR: space man pulled a Cooper and traumatized the equivalent of Murph by doing dimensional time travel.