The Man in the Glass

By Jered Gering

Count Wilde approached me one day with the deal of a lifetime.

He refused to reveal where he was from or how he got his wealth, but his technology was far more advanced than anything I had ever seen.

All he requested from me was room and board while he did his research. After setting up his laboratory, Count Wilde brought me in so he could honor our agreement. Several tables filled the room, each covered with strange devices.

On one table, a glass rectangle stood at eye level. At first, I thought it to be a mirror, but changing text and moving pictures populated the glass’s surface.

I blinked and looked away as the images stirred nausea within me.

“Fear not, Mr. Gray,” said Count Wilde. “Look again.”

He twisted a numbered dial on the desk from One to Two.

The glass changed, and I saw an image of myself sitting in another room, reading a volume from H.G. Wells.

“What is this… thing?” I asked.

“An avatar, living in an artificial world.”

I squinted, heart beating faster. “Why are you showing me this… witchcraft?”

The Count smiled. “Not witchcraft, but science! With my invention, you can take any physically negative consequence—disease, hangover, aging, pain, anything you don’t want—and transfer it to your avatar.”

Over the next few hours, he displayed his experiments on the glass, including a haunting image of himself—wrinkled, bedridden, and connected to machines in a white room lit with bulbs that would make Edison jealous.

Finally convinced, I let him affix an electric cap to my cranium. After a couple hours, I felt no pain and experienced a freedom tasted by nobody else.

For years I lived with total abandon, incapable of regret. In every mirror I looked the same: perfect golden hair, alluring, blue eyes. I stayed fit and beautiful, no matter my actions.

Every so often, I checked on my avatar in the glass.

Scars distorted his skin. Whether from debauchery or disease, every consequence transferred to him.

I watched him suffer as he morphed into a monster. Writhing and raging, he became the embodiment of my sins. Yes, it was a macabre fascination, but for me, all was well, and nothing in the transference ever went amiss.

Nothing, until ten years later.

I went to check on my avatar as I’d done so many times before, but the man in the glass was nowhere to be seen.

I went to ask Count Wilde about this anomaly, but he wasn’t in his laboratory. He wasn’t anywhere. Panic gnawed at the back of my mind.

That night at the pub, I could’ve sworn I’d seen my avatar, lurking in the shadows. And on my way home, a familiar figure disappeared into an alley ahead of me. But when I peeked, nobody was there. Surely it was just paranoia?

I distracted myself for days and caroused in reckless debauchery.

One night, I attended a masquerade party. The man was there, dressed in my clothes, a mask over his face as he pretended to be an entertainer. But I knew. I could almost feel our connection. That night, I drank as much as I could, happy to lose myself without any ill aftereffects. I returned home, sobering quickly as usual, and wandered back into Count Wilde’s lab, staring at the blank glass.

A rancid smell pricked my nostrils.

Knock, knock, knock.

I turned. “Who’s there?”

The door opened, and there he stood: pale skinned and hunchbacked. Pus oozed from a lesion on his face.

I forced a laugh. “This is a trick, yes? Count Wilde in disguise, I presume?”

“Count Wilde is dead.”

I froze. His voice sounded just like mine, but ragged through years of pain and torture.

“You thought the consequences for your actions could be transferred to something artificial. Unreal. Do I look unreal?”

Again, I said nothing.

“Count Wilde was from the future. He told me before I killed him.”

 A shiver crawled up my spine.

“Wilde unwittingly helped me escape my nightmare. But my torture won’t stop until I kill you, too.”

He stepped toward me, but before I could react, an automated voice from Wilde’s computing device spoke: “Transference synchronizing.” The machine hummed.

He was so close I could smell my alcohol on his breath, but he stumbled to the corner and began to vomit. Then, he fell unconscious.

I looked upon the glass and worked with the controls, as I’d seen Wilde use them.

I couldn’t risk trying to kill the avatar, who could wake at any moment. If I fled, he would surely hunt me. This device would be my only chance to either find Wilde or make an escape.

I frantically searched through the options, words and icons flashing across the glass, before selecting “temporal transference.”

This must be how Wilde got here!

I pulled a lever, and the machine counted backward. I stopped it at ten years—the beginning of this mess. The glass showed a younger me walking through my house.

Not Wilde, but surely he’d be in this place. My past self won’t even need to see me. I’ll explain everything to Count Wilde, and he’ll fix the errors, or I’ll—

A rustle. A padding of feet. A groan. I spun to see my avatar rising. Trembling, his eyes pierced mine. The avatar smiled, half his teeth missing, the other half rotted.

He lunged as I pressed the “enter” key on the machine’s paperless typewriter.

“Transference initiated.”

Lights flashed, and my skin tingled. I looked upon the glass one more time.

The past version of me now sat with a book.

Everything went dark. I felt a pull in my head. My mind seemed to float from my body to Wilde’s device.

I blinked in a new body, looking down at the book in my lap.

H.G. Wells.

Count Wilde hadn’t traveled to the past; he’d transferred his mind into his past self.

I am the man in the glass.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jered Gering used to spend recess in his own world dreaming up new adventures. Nowadays, he writes stories where biblical themes collide with unexpected settings and characters. He lives with his wife in California’s Bay Area, where he teaches third grade and serves on staff at a ministry school.

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