IN 2008, astronomers discover a planetary system orbiting a distant star which looks much like our own. Two years later, Dr. David Green of the National Space and Aeronautics Institute develops a light-refracting telescope that enables him to actually see the planets, and discovers that they are not just similar to ours, but are in fact a reflection of our own solar system. He aims to prove his theory—that everything we see is merely a reflection of ourselves—by developing ever more powerful telescopes to probe this mirror image deeper, and becomes obsessed with the idea that the ultimate proof is to find himself in it, who he imagines would be looking back at him, the way our image stares back at us in a mirror. He sees the earth’s reflection in great detail, every mountain, every tree, every face, but fails to find himself, and in the end realizes a simple but inexplicable axiom, that this reflected earth contains every single object in its original counterpart—everything except the beholder, who does not exist.