All mirrors in the world are linked to a large city via a virtual channel behind them, through which no human will ever set foot. Mirrors devour everything they see and broadcast their pictures to this city. Mirrors keep up with the Joneses. They are envious of one another. They sow off. If they could, some mirrors would shatter others into pieces out of rage. Fortunately, mirrors’ world is entirely virtual, with the only things that are real being the communication tunnels among them and the pictures they show one another.

The golden mirror, which was made up of eighteen hexagonal pieces, looked arrogantly at the old woman’s pocket mirror who was selling currants. It smirked in disgust and hatred at the mirrors in the Gucci store and the Geneva Palxbo Auto Show, saying, “I do not know why even some of these mirrors are still alive. One must tell this pitiful creature that if I were you, I would voluntarily throw myself under the feet of passing pedestrians a hundred times in order to have a valid excuse for the humiliating pictures that I communicate to the city.” The mirror in the Gucci store grinned and looked at a picture of the elderly woman who was now staring into her pocket mirror. It was a small mirror with a red leather frame that her husband had given to her as a gift on the same day 60 years ago. Her beautiful eyes were not hidden beneath the weight of her wrinkled eyelids and intertwined long white brows back then. For 60 years, she and the mirror had stared at each other, and the mirror had communicated to the world of mirrors all of the old woman’s tears, smiles, grudges, yearnings, despairs, and admirations.

Gucci mirror paid attention to golden mirror’s flaunts once more, “I am about to be launched at the end of October this year. I will send you the last of the light from the universe’s first stars. You will see those pictures before humans, but they will see them forty days later, when they combine the pictures of all my parts.” Gucci mirror could not take it anymore. To confront the mirror of James Webb satellite, it had to do something, “But I have heard that, unlike Hubble, which can be repaired and renovated on a continuous basis, if something goes wrong along the way or if you fail to complete your task properly, you will be obsolete.” The golden mirror said charmingly, “I am mounted on a ten-billion-dollar telescope! I am not a poor mediocre mirror in which spoiled boys and girls spend all day and night bending and twisting themselves in front of my eyes, nor am I someone who sneaks peeks at people’s asses, bending up to their waists inside various cars and interfering with others’ lives. I am supposed to set eyes on stars and galaxies …”

And deep below, it was envious of the red pocket mirror that the old woman treasured and cared for more than anything else in the world.