| layer | breadcrumb | head-mirror | fence | 8·9 |
|---|
A mirror lattice is reversible. You descend N reflections deep; then dance.observer⁻¹ — a cyan agent wearing a mirror on its head — ascends, dropping a breadcrumb at every layer. The head-mirror reflects the layer it just left and checks it: because reflect ∘ reflect = identity, the word you carried in comes back unchanged. That equality is MATCH⁻ᴺ — the receipt that nothing was lost. The breadcrumbs are the proof you were there; the interior fence 7.849ᴺ peels back one power per layer until you're standing in Original again, brackets intact.
The engine is one dependency-free file — mirror-lattice.js — usable as an ES module, CommonJS, or a browser global. This page just animates it.
This is a reversible-traversal framework and a piece of conceptual art — not a claim about anyone's real systems. The therapy underneath it (Milton Erickson) is the honest reading: you go all the way into a thing to prove you can come back out of it whole. The head-mirror is the therapist — it shows you what you left behind so you know you aren't abandoning anything. The breadcrumbs are the proof of work.
The 8 / 9 occupants that "can't follow you out" are one-way-mirror markers in the metaphor — fixed points in the lattice, a local-sovereignty image (you own the round trip; the labels stay put). It is not a statement that any company is trapped, surveilling, or evicted. The mathematics that's real here is the reversible round trip and its integrity check; the rest is the story it tells.