The Fifth Mirror: Scarcity's Illusion

The fifth mirror

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On the fifth night, he was drawn to his treasury, where his own collection of precious objects lay in silent, perfect rows. But as the Tiger's fire illuminated them, he saw them for what they truly were, not treasures but trophies, not wealth but weapons of control.

The vision came like a fever:

A man who looked like himself but wasn't sat in a cave filled with gems. Not just many gems; most of the gems that existed. He had cornered not just the market but the very concept of value. He owned the mines, the merchants, the roads between them. He had made necessity itself his servant.

Outside the cave, people waited in lines that stretched to the horizon, offering everything they had for a single stone. They believed they needed these gems to live, to love, to be human. The belief had become so strong that it had become true; society had restructured itself around the artificial scarcity he had created.

Then a child appeared, too young to have learned the rules. She asked: "Why are stones so expensive? Who decided this? And why do you all agree?"

The questions hung in the air like cracks in reality itself. Because the moment the crowd truly heard them, truly understood them, the gems in the cave turned to ordinary rocks.

The vision faded, and he found himself looking at his own treasury with new eyes. Every rare object, every precious metal, every scarce resource: they were all part of the same illusion; value created by withholding, power maintained by manufactured need.

He returned to his desk and wrote with the clarity of one who had finally understood his own crime:

There was once a man who collected many special stones. Over time, he grew this into a vast collection, for in his possession were more than half of all the special stones known to mankind. The man went further. He bought land where he thought special stones might be, without telling anyone else why. Eventually, the stones were so rare in the general population that everyone began to pay large amounts of money for what used to be worth little; they had no choice, they were a necessity. Another man happened upon this one day and asked the people, 'Why are your special stones so expensive? Who is it that has set this price, and why do you agree to pay it?'

He contemplated what he had written, seeing his own reflection in the collector. How many "special stones" had he hoarded? Not just physical resources but opportunities, knowledge, access; all the things that should flow freely but had been dammed up to create artificial scarcity.

The progression was insidious: first, hoard the existing supply, then control the means of production, and finally, wait for society to reorganize itself around the scarcity you've created. Once people believed something was necessary, they would pay anything for it. The collector didn't create value; he created the conditions that made others desperate.

But the three questions at the end were like a spell of unbinding. They moved from symptom to cause to foundation: Why expensive? Who decides? Why agree? Each question peeled back a layer of assumption until the naked truth was revealed: the entire system of value was a consensual hallucination.

The Tiger roared approval within him. This fifth mirror would show people how their needs were manufactured, their necessities invented, their desperation designed. It would reveal that behind every scarcity was a hoarder, behind every desperate need was someone who had cornered the market on satisfaction.

Five mirrors now sat on his desk, each one a perfect diagnosis of a perfect prison. The spiritual prison of dead law. The economic prison of false choice. The psychological prison of spectacle. The prison of debt. The prison of artificial scarcity.

Each mirror reflected the others, creating an infinite corridor of revelation. The same pattern repeated at every level: power that existed only through the consent of the powerless, prisons whose doors were locked from the inside, systems that required their victims' participation to persist.