I stand in front of the mirror and I look at myself. I am a good leader. The Awakening would not exist without me. I built it from nothing -- a handful of believers in a basement, and now I have an army. Five thousand enemies dead. The Authority is finished. The people are free. I say these things to my reflection and they sound true. They sound right. They sound like the voice of a man who has done what needed to be done. But sometimes, when the light is wrong, my reflection doesn't match. It's a small thing. A flicker. My mouth moves and the reflection's mouth is still. My eyes blink and the reflection's eyes stay open. It lasts only a moment -- a fraction of a second, like a film frame skipping -- and then everything is normal again. I tell myself it's the light. The underground community's lighting is poor. The fluorescent tubes flicker. The mirrors are old and warped. These are rational explanations. I am a rational man. I deal in facts and calculations and evidence. The evidence says the Authority is lying. I have read their documents. I have seen their calculations. The Catastrophe Warning is based on data that doesn't add up. The Sun is not changing. The migration plan is unnecessary. The Authority built it to control us, and they've been controlling us for three centuries. I know this because I read the documents. I know this because the numbers don't lie. I know this because I am smart and the Authority is stupid and I am right. But sometimes, late at night, when I'm alone in my office and the fluorescent light is humming and the mirror is showing me my face, I wonder: what if the numbers are right? No. That's impossible. The Authority is evil. Evil people make evil calculations. Their numbers are lies. I look at my reflection. My reflection looks at me. For a moment, I think I see something in its eyes. Not malice. Not fear. Something worse: pity. I turn away. The execution was necessary. I told the people this. I told them that five thousand lives were a small price for the freedom of millions. I told them that the Authority's scientists were tools of oppression, and that by killing them, we had liberated the community from three centuries of lies. The people believed me. They cheered. They sang. They danced in the streets. I stood on the balcony and watched them and I felt powerful. I felt righteous. I felt like a man who had changed the world. That night, I dreamed of the five thousand. They were standing in a line, facing me. They wore no clothes. Their skin was pale and translucent, like fish bellies. Their eyes were open. They did not speak. They did not move. They just stood there, staring at me with their pale, dead eyes. I woke up sweating. The fluorescent light was humming. The mirror was showing me my face. My reflection was normal. I got out of bed and went to the office. I locked the door and sat at my desk and opened the Authority's documents. I had read them a dozen times. I knew them by heart. But I read them again anyway. The calculations were precise. The data was consistent. The prediction was clear: the Sun would change within a generation. The Authority had built the migration plan based on this prediction. They had spent three centuries preparing for a catastrophe that might happen. Might. Not would. Might. I closed the documents. I stood up. I walked to the mirror. My reflection was normal. But I could feel it watching me. Not with malice. Not with fear. With pity. "Which one of us is the madman?" I asked the mirror. The mirror didn't answer. Mirrors never do. The doubt spread like a virus. I could feel it in my thoughts, in my dreams, in the way I looked at the people who followed me. Were they following a leader or a fool? Were they celebrating a victory or dancing on the edge of an abyss? I tried to tell myself I was wrong. I tried to tell myself the Authority was evil and their numbers were lies. But the numbers didn't care about morality. The numbers were just numbers. And the numbers said the Catastrophe Warning was real. I started seeing them everywhere. The five thousand. In the mirror. In the shadows. In the faces of my followers. They were always silent. They always stared. They never spoke. One of my lieutenants noticed. "Marcus," he said. "You look terrible." "I'm fine," I said. "You don't look fine. You look... I don't know. Like you've seen a ghost." "I have," I said. "Five thousand of them." He laughed. He thought I was joking. I wished I was. The White Dawn came on a Tuesday. I was in my office, staring at the mirror, when the light changed. The fluorescent tubes flickered and died. The windows went white. I walked to the window and looked out. The sky was white. Not the white of clouds. The white of a light so intense it erased everything. The buildings across the street were silhouettes. The people in the street were silhouettes. The world was a photograph developed in reverse -- black shapes on a background of pure, terrible brightness. And then the light faded. And the Sun was red. Bloated. Silent. A wound in the sky. I stood at the window for a long time. The five thousand were right. The Authority was right. The Catastrophe Warning was real. And I had killed them. I had killed five thousand human beings because I was too proud to admit that I might be wrong. I walked back to the mirror. I looked at my reflection. My reflection was normal. But I could feel it smiling. Not my smile. A different smile. The smile of a man who knows he is right and has the evidence to prove it. "Which one of us is the madman?" I asked. This time, my reflection answered. It didn't speak. It just smiled. And in that smile, I saw everything: the five thousand on the ice, the people in the streets, the red Sun in the sky, the documents on my desk, the numbers that didn't care about morality. I am Marcus Vane. I led the Awakening. I killed five thousand people. And I was wrong. I sit in front of the mirror every day now. I ask the same question. The mirror never answers. But sometimes, when the light is wrong, I think I can hear the five thousand, standing in a line, silent, staring at me with their pale, dead eyes. And I know they're right. © 2026 - Authored by Z R ZHANG ( EL9507135 -- パスポート番号[ちゅうごく] 중국 여권 번호 Номер паспорта หมายเลขหนังสือเดินทาง Passnummer رقم جواز السفر CHN Passport) The aforementioned Author hereby grants to OXFORD INDUSTRIAL HOLDING GROUP (ASIA PACIFIC) CO., LIMITED (BRN74685111) all economic property rights, including but not limited to the rights of: reproduction, distribution, rental, exhibition, performance, communication to the public via information network, adaptation, compilation, commercial operation, authorization for third-party use, and rights enforcement. Such grant is exclusive and irrevocable. The term of such rights shall be 49 years from the date of publication. To contact author, please email to datatorent@yeah.net Based on the pending patent application document (202610351844.3), creationstamp.com has calculated the tensor feature encoding of this article: OTMES-v2-UNKNOWN