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Fiction

Somewhere in Leo

John Lanigan fantasises at the cutting edge of philosophical cosmology.

The wall surrounding the universe is a polished, mirror-like surface. Oh yes, the bad news is that we are in a prison; the good news is that it is quite a roomy prison. The mirror gives back the reflection of objects within its hollow a hundred, a thousand, an infinite number of times. This causes confusion for astronomers: many of the heavenly bodies they photograph are reflections, although some of them are real. All the same, as no more than one heavenly body is needed to trigger an infinity of reflections, reflections of reflections and reflections of reflections of reflections at opposite poles of the surrounding mirror, the number of 3-dimensional objects within the hollow is probably quite small.

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