Here begins the great revenge of otherness, of all the forms which, subtly or violently deprived of their singularity, henceforth pose an insoluble problem for the social order, and for the political and biological orders.
In those days the world of mirrors and the world of men were not, as they are now, cut off from each other. They were, besides, quite different: neither beings or colours nor shapes were the same. Both kingdoms, the specular and the human, lived in harmony; you could come and go through mirrors. One night the mirror people invaded the earth. Their power was great, but in the end of bloody warfare the magic arts of the Yellow Emperor prevailed. He repulsed the invaders, imprisoned them within mirrors, and forced on them the task of repeating, as if in a dream, all the actions of man. He stripped them of their power and of their forms and reduced them to mere slavish reflections. Nevertheless, the day will come when the magic spell will be taken off…shapes will begin to stir. Little by little they will differ from us, little by little they will not imitate us. They will break through the barriers of glass and metal and this time will not be defeated.
J.L. Borges