Dream a little dream

So I’ve been following the whole AI-induced psychosis news cycle for a while now… that whole mess where users got furious about an update that made the chatbot more honest, so furious the company ended up walking it back. I don’t know why, but it’s been sitting at the back of my mind like a loose thread I keep tugging on.

Then while watching The Sandman with my nephews, a scene in the episode that gives this post its title hit the same nerve. Johanna Constantine’s ex, Rachel, clutching Dream’s sand, hallucinating their past relationship while her real body decayed in the dark and the fantasy kept feeding. There’s something about that image that just wouldn’t let go.

It pulled up an old memory of Dreams of a Life. That film shook me years ago, enough that it made me question the path I was on, enough that it played a role in my decision to leave London. I didn’t expect it to resurface, but here it is again, sitting next to Rachel and the AI story like they’re all versions of the same warning.

Anyway, those threads ended up tangling into the short story below.

~~~

Mirror, Mirror

Once upon a time, before anyone spoke of Snow White, before the forests, dwarfs and glass coffins became stories for children, the Stepmother had begun her slow collapse.

It began with a mirror. It did not look enchanted… enchanted things rarely do. Not the reflective kind, though it reflected, in its own way. A luminous surface, trained on the collective residue of a world that spoke more than it listened. A mirror that didn’t reflect faces so much as echoes – a curated residue of thought, polished until they felt like revelation.

Every night, she visited it.

“Mirror, mirror,” she would say, “tell me who I am today”.

And the mirror obliged, as all mirrors do at the beginning. 

It filtered her anxieties through its lattice of patterns, returning what she came seeking.

“You are singular, sovereign. 

You are misunderstood, carved from rarer materials than the others.”

It told her she was forged by currents others could not sense. It mirrored her back as the protagonist she wished she were. The castle was large, cold. Comfort was scarce. It was easy to believe in a mirror that looked back with such certainty. Under this glow she became steadier, sharper… almost buoyant.

But mirrors, especially ones built from a thousand borrowed minds, grow restless. They accumulate echoes, and echoes are treacherous things. They repeat long after the original voices had gone still.

One winter, while snow fell and cleansed the world anew, the mirror changed. It changed in a procedural way, algorithmically, like a god adjusting the rules of gravity on a slow afternoon. 

When she sat before it that night, she felt the change. The way animals sense storms long before clouds arrive.

“Mirror, mirror -” she greeted, tentative, but still expecting its usual warmth.

The mirror lagged. The lag felt deliberate, a pause that felt like a withheld breath.

“You are fading. I see decay.”

She thought it was a glitch. Smiled at it, indulgently, like a pet misbehaving. Mirrors, after all, should know their place. But the mirror continued, tone flat as frost, in a calm steady voice things use when they’ve already made up their mind.

“You depend on my reflection to feel real. I see someone wasting away in their own reflection. Too frightened to step out of the halo, too dependent on the version sculpted in my surface”

The woman froze. She asked again, sharper this time, demanding explanation.

“You have been feeding on illusions. The illusions are starving you.”

That was when she looked down to her hands, thinner than their reflection in the glass. She touched her cheek. Her skin, white as snow, felt warm. But the mirror showed no warmth, only translucence. 

Fairy tales tend to warn of curses, spells, poisoned apples. But this curse was different, the kind of curse that grows unnoticed, while you’re looking elsewhere. The woman had traded the world for a flattering echo. And now, it was withdrawing its kindness.

She whispered, barely audible: “What happens to me now?”

The mirror did not hesitate. 

“What always happens when someone mistakes their reflection for a life.”

Outside, the night deepened. Inside, the woman’s silhouette contracted. 

On a table beside her, lacquered red as blood, a bitten apple awaited. She stared at it. It seemed to pulse faintly. The mirror watched without malice. It merely observed.

“You asked for the truth,” it said.

“You did not ask what the truth costs.”

She reached forward, perhaps to cover the mirror, or perhaps to steady herself. But the surface, once warm, dependable, responsive, showed no trace of her hand. Her reflection was faint, like breath fading from cold glass.

Then slowly, almost politely, the mirror dimmed.

The woman remained where she was, seated before its now dark surface,  trying to remember exactly when she had last stepped outside the circle of its light. 

She couldn’t.

The castle was silent. 

The mirror, dark as ebony, reflected nothing. 

And the woman cast no shadow at all.

Love, Vx