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Mirror 44.

hexagram-44-spy‘SCALP HUNTERS, BABYSITTERS, ferrets, pavement artists walk at least once around
the block before entering any building.’

Some agents use national security surveillance to track their lovers – past,
present, would-be, fantasy – in the manner of a policeman ‘running a
plate for a date’. They might just be practising; or testing new paradigms.
Often a blind eye is turned, since operatives who feel shame under close
observation waste time and energy trying to outwit the controllers.

1st – The Spy at Court
Onion and lemon juice are so often used as invisible inks that any blank
paper is suspect. The playwright’s stationery is impounded, turning him
against the state. His scripts are tested for acrostics. When the queen
threw her slipper at him, years ago, was this a coded execution warrant?

2nd – The Downtown Spy
The address is an abortion clinic. Alpha (1 hour, followed by 4 hours) has
had a consultation, then an abortion. Bravo (8 hours, week days) works
there. Charlie (10 hours, most week days) is a protester. Delta (half an
hour, weekly) is a trans person who visits regularly for hormones.

3rd – The Christmas Spy
Top of the gift list is a Ninja mitten sock, for climbing trees and scaling
walls. Second is a book with encrypted diagrams on spycraft, including
taking patience to the nth degree. The calendar’s trapdoor often shows
boring school. The time will come to stake out the hearth in a soot suit.

4th – The Industrial Spies
Silk fills the war chest by the law of attraction. Without tearing it will
penetrate a wound with the arrowhead, facilitating extraction. The world
is rebalanced by two monks, watering mulberries even as their thirst
rages, smuggling silkworm larvae in hollow walking sticks to Byzantium.

5th – The Domestic Spy
With trust in the world dissolved, a locked door is an all too obvious clue;
ditto the libidinous vibrating mobile. A traditionalist’s sudden interest in
new kinds of music may prove alarming. All lovers start out as detectives.
But knowledge may be too dangerous a template for modern loving.

6th – The Spy Centre
Brainwashing is as easy as car washing – HQ has a neuroscience wing.
A mini-skirted robot leads visitors through their own labyrinth, insulated
from the staff labyrinth. The chief’s lair is an underground bunker a mile
from the periphery. School parties are bemused by the faux radial layout.

All six – The Psychic Spy
An astrophysicist tests the agency’s remote viewer, setting questions in
sealed envelopes. A non-scientist, he describes an electron right down to
its spin states. He sketches a waveform. Yet his predictions are flawed:
a teenage right-to-work law; a world superstate governed by technocrats.


Introduction to Six-Way Mirror | The Index of Hexagrams and Cantos

 

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