The Tower of A-to-Z

Amun Quetzalcoatl Baal Zeus Bridger, the richest man in the world – probably; it was difficult to get an accurate count of all the pies he was fingering – was not used to being dumped by text message. Indeed, he wasn’t used to any text messages that his family and friends weren’t contractually obligated to send. He handed his phone to his least unfavourite personal assistant, something-something Chen.

“What’s that say?”

Chen sprang into action and immediately hesitated, the message stopping him cold.

“It says, ‘I’m dumping you.’”

Amun nodded, as though he had known this all along – which he did, but sometimes he didn’t know he knew until he double checked – and took his phone back.

“Thank you, Chen. You’re fired.”

Chen bowed and a couple security mooks escorted him from the spacious penthouse suite.

Amun watched him go, and once the elevator door closed, turned his attention to the colossal floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the walls. They afforded him a marvellous view of the skyline above New Rio. Nothing but rolling white clouds below, and endless blue above. And of course the sun, which few could afford to see.

But he didn’t feel inspired today. Didn’t even feel content, or accomplished. He checked his phone.

“I’m dumping you. I can’t stand the sight of you anymore. I’m leaving forever.”

He grimaced, and checked his stocks real quick. Everything that was supposed to be up, was, and everything that was meant to go down, had. There were even some tangentially related articles about food and labour riots. It all gave him no more than a flicker of a smile though. And as for the little niggle at the back of his mind that “people were affected” – which was irrational, he knew, as people were affected by everything all the time anyway, because that’s how matter and energy worked – he stepped into the bathroom and washed his hands of it.

And when he dried his hands on his mammoth-wool towels – a unique set, made from a single mammoth that had been reconstituted expressly for towel purposes, before being re-extincted to maintain the value of the towels – and looked up at his emerald-encrusted mirror, he sighed.

For looking back at him was nothing. It was true then. His reflection had abandoned him.

“Come back,” he texted. “I’m sure we can come to an arrangement.”

“No.”

“I’ll have Fergus draw up a contract.”

“I hate you.”

Amun was at a loss for words.

“Don’t look for me,” was the final message he received.

He was in a slump all of the following week. Neither his five-star reviewed wife, Mrs. Bridger, nor the various mistresses he kept on retainer, could really cheer him up. At best, he got a quick shot of joy that soon faded into forgotten.

Same with his business dealings. He’d been working on a brilliant plan for the past six months, confiding in his reflection each morning. Years ago he’d nearly wiped out the labour market with his automated workforce, but lately he’d been buying up all sorts of hiring agencies. When he dropped the bomb that A-to-Z Corp. was downsizing its robot employee pool by 40%, in favour of re-hiring humans, the media exploded. As did the value of his shares.

Not only did it let him appear beneficent, it also made fiscal sense, especially with the rise of robo-unions. Turned out impoverished humans were cheaper to maintain than first-world machines after all, if the poverty was dutifully nurtured.

And there was a delightful knock-on effect, where the robots had started labour rioting too. Wherever man and machine clashed was fertile ground for poetry and selling weapons to both sides.

And yet even all this did nothing to alleviate Amun’s mood. His reflection had told him it would happen this way. Warned him not to go through with it.

“But think of how much we’ll make!” Amun said.

“To what end?”

Amun had no reply for that. The question didn’t make sense.

“How much is enough? At what point have you won?”

When he checked his accounts after the hiring change, even his brows rose. If he hadn’t already been the richest man, he definitely was now. With all that wealth, he had near infinite potential to change the world for the better. Surely his fool reflection must have seen that – nobody could do anything, if they didn’t first have the potential to do it. But the traitor had left him, and deprived him of gloating.

“Why don’t you do something about it?” his son Cupid asked him over a kakapo-egg omelet one day. Well, it wasn’t the original Cupid Eiffel Maharaja Bridger – the original had no sense, business or otherwise, and was incredibly irritating with all the whining and self-harm, and so Amun let him go. This Cupid was one of the original’s body doubles and got the promotion, because he understood his role.

“I mean, it’s just a reflection,” said Cupid. “A pale imitation of the original. But if it bothers you, why not do something about it? You’re the world’s foremost doer, after all, and change equals opportunity, right?”

Amun realized Cupid was right, and for the first time since the text message, felt a stirring of his old self. And if children were fungible, then certainly reflections had to be too.

He immediately announced a new job opening at A-to-Z Corp., and later that afternoon started interviewing the first substitute reflections.

There were no shortage of applicants, though irritatingly they arrived with their reflection-casting humans. And they were underwhelming. The business people, who were inferior business people to him, had inferior reflections, naturally. The celebrities had fine enough reflections, but he could see that his products were holding them together and it all seemed so fake. The politicians looked okay on first blush, but they were all greasy and corrupt – which he knew, as a premier corruptor of politicians. The athletes he found no common ground with, and the scientists were too frumpy (and though he’d never admit this to anyone, except maybe his own reflection, he found them both inexplicably intimidating.) And the everyday regular people gave him a hearty laugh which he desperately needed, before he had them expelled from his tower.

Even Mrs. Bridger offered up her own reflection – maybe she’d taken his advice to “earn your keep” to heart – and he had to admit, the prospect offered interesting possibilities for the bedroom. But no, he really was looking for a more masculine chin, so she was out.

After a week of miserable interviews, Amun kicked everyone out and locked himself, and his immediate attendants, in his penthouse.

“It’s all pointless,” he muttered at his shadow, crossing his arms and kicking an intern. “At least you haven’t abandoned me.”

“Never, sir!” said the intern.

“What? I was talking to my shadow. Get lost!”

After the intern ran off, Amun reflected on what just transpired. Yes, his shadow was still here, because it was his shadow. Just as his reflection was his. Just as everything was his. He felt a welcome chill in his heart.

He looked at his phone. “Don’t look for me,” was the final text message he had received. Nothing since.

Amun sneered. “Who are you to tell me what to do?” He snarled. “Who are you to dictate terms to me?” With a growl, he threw his phone at his mirror and shattered both. When had he ever followed other people’s rules? This was his game.

“At what point have you won?” his reflection had asked.

“I’ll bloody well show you!”

The next morning he put his resources to use and ordered his various companies to buy up mirrors.

“How many mirrors do you want, sir?” asked a CFO by the name of Tyson or Tucson or Toucan or something.

“No,” Amun said, “I don’t want to buy some quantity of mirrors. I want to own the concept of Mirror. I want every single instance of Mirror in my warehouses. I want stores cleaned out, I want private residences de-mirrored, I want every damn children’s doll that came with a tiny plastic mirror confiscated. I want cars stripped. I want every mirror maker bought out. I want particularly reflective glass to be rounded up. And I want it done yesterday – now go!”

Most people gave their mirrors willingly, because Amun offered a pittance for them, and that was more than they’d otherwise have. Others had to be encouraged by the gentle persuasions of the militias that Amun’s politicians wielded. Soon enough, his warehouses were overflowing, and he built a new tower to house all the things.

The tower was made of featureless black walls and rose 10 kilometres into the sky, nearly as wide at the base, and it soon contained every mirror and mirror-adjacent object on the planet. All, inside. All, facing inward. And Amun had the only key.

“You can’t hide from me!” he shouted, alone inside his new tower. He lit a match and a trillion others appeared all around him. “I know you’re in here!”

Only his echo answered.

But he knew he was right. He had to be. His reflection had nowhere else to hide, after all. So, Amun spent a month walking his tower, screaming, taunting, and almost-but-he’d-deny-it-pleading, his countless lights following him. He gradually climbed higher and higher, methodically eliminating his reflection’s hiding spots by smashing mirrors as he went along, grinding them into dust under his heels, the stars winking out one by one. Finally he arrived at the summit, at the last mirror on Earth.

And it was empty.

Amun destroyed it, snuffed out his light, and stepped onto the roof. The wind whipped at him, but the breathtaking view of the globe did nothing for his low spirits.

“I don’t get it,” he said, pensive. He stared out at the land and the sea, and leaned on the railing. Where could his reflection be, if not in a mirror or mirror-like object? And why would it expend such efforts to escape him?

He sighed and spent a long time staring out at the waves. It gave him opportunity to ponder and wonder, and he retraced his steps to see if maybe, somehow, impossibly, he had made a mistake. And it hit him – the realization that he had made a mistake – like one of the tsunamis he had engineered to encourage coastal nations to lower tariffs on lemons.

“Of course!” he shouted, slapping his forehead. Water. Nature’s knock-off mirror, a lazy counterfeit that cut into his bottom line.

He mustered all his assets, corralled all his underlings, and pulled all his strings. Water was Public Enemy No. 1, and he wanted it – all of it – behind bars. He didn’t spare any expenses – figuratively, of course; he didn’t employ an accounting corps to not game the crap out of the system – and no amount of protesting swayed his heart.

Besides, protesters were good. Not only were they a litmus test for him to know he was on the right track, but mass unrest required mass crackdowns, and since both sides needed equipment like pamphlets and riot gear, he could sell to everyone. The whole thing was a self-subsidizing process.

He even melted down the glaciers for good measure, and drained every swamp, because you could never be sure what your reflection was up to.

Soon enough, he had a new tower. This one was painted red and it was 100 kilometres tall. His chief scientist told him this qualified as “in orbit,” so Amun fired him. Then he put on his space suit and went to the top of the tower, to gaze upon his hoard, and to have a reckoning with his reflection.

It was glorious. The top of the tower was a man-made lake – the only lake, the last lake – deeper than any before it. And far below him, over the rim of the tower, he saw the horrid, hole-ridden dust ball that was Earth. The astronaut photos were a lie – it wasn’t a green and blue marble, it was a rotting brown apple core.

Pride swelled up in Amun’s chest. His father – on the day he was let go – had the audacity to laugh at Amun, to say he’d never amount to anything of note.

“But who’s laughing now, Dad? You said I’d never be a real water baron.” To make his point, he forced a laugh until he grew red in the face.

Maybe. He couldn’t tell, because he still couldn’t see his reflection. The flat black waters reflected the infinity of the cosmos above, and the countless stars, free of the grasping talons of city lights and cloud cover, could shine in all their cold glory.

He felt a chill grip him, and a strange peace. The enormity of reality revealed itself to him, even if just a reflection of a sliver, and he fell to his knees, humbled. It was beautiful and horrible – awesome in every sense of the word – and the staggering scope of it, the limitless potential, stole his breath.

He beheld the totality of existence – and couldn’t find himself in the picture.

“But surely, I belong,” he whispered. Surely, I matter.

He shook off the fog of peace and stirred up the flames of ire. His reflection had betrayed him, and he wasn’t going to let this one go. If it wasn’t on the lake, it had to be in it. And in, Amun dove.

Nobody ever knew if he found what he was looking for, for the tower was not built to withstand the terrible duty it was charged with. As the Earth rotated, the tower buckled, cracked, and exploded. The parched land was flooded, the blistering sky was showered with cosmic rain, and the people and robots cheered. And A-to-Z Corp. settled the whole water thing out of court, for an undisclosed amount.