Collection Only
The mirror had been on eBay for eleven days.
ORNATE GOLD MIRROR — £25 — COLLECTION ONLY
Views: 7.
Dave looked at the photograph again.
The mirror was perfectly decent. Bit of foxing around the edges, but that was character. The problem, he decided, was probably the photograph.
In the reflection stood Dave.
Grey shorts.
One sock.
Phone held horizontally.
Expression of a man attempting to sell a mirror.
He opened the AI editor.
“Remove man from reflection.”
Dave vanished.
Better.
The room now appeared mysteriously unoccupied, although one grey sock remained hovering approximately three feet above the carpet.
“Remove sock.”
Gone.
Dave considered the result.
Views were the problem. You needed people to stop scrolling.
He thought for a moment.
“Add attractive woman’s feet at bottom of reflection.”
The AI supplied two elegant bare feet with red toenails.
Dave frowned.
Bit much.
“Natural looking.”
The feet acquired an ankle.
“Casual.”
A corner of floral summer dress appeared.
Dave stared at it.
“Yeah.”
He uploaded the new photograph.
By teatime:
Views: 83
At 7:14 p.m. a message arrived.
Hi mate. Still available?
Dave replied.
Yes mate.
Three dots appeared.
Any chance collect tonight?
Yeah no problem.
8ish?
Fine.
Dave was delighted.
Twenty-five quid for something Sandra had been asking him to take to the tip since Easter.
At 8:07 the doorbell rang.
Dave opened it.
A man of about forty stood outside.
There was a pause.
“Mirror?”
“Yeah.”
Another pause.
The man’s eyes moved briefly past Dave into the hallway.
“Twenty-five, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Cash okay?”
Get Dominic Pennock’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
“Perfect.”
The man entered.
The mirror leaned against the wall.
He looked at it.
Then at Dave.
Then, very casually, toward the stairs.
“Good mirror, that.”
“Yeah.”
“Your wife’s not bothered about you selling it?”
“Don’t have a wife.”
The man looked at the mirror again.
Something important was happening behind his eyes.
“Girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Ah.”
Dave helped him carry it to the car.
The following morning Dave checked eBay.
A similar mirror had appeared in Doncaster.
VINTAGE LARGE MIRROR — £40
In the reflection, beside an entirely ordinary IKEA bookcase, were the unmistakable lower legs of an attractive woman wearing fluffy slippers.
Dave narrowed his eyes.
“Cheeky bastard.”
By Friday the market had collapsed.
Mirrors across Yorkshire were being photographed in increasingly implausible domestic circumstances.
£30 pine cheval mirror: woman’s bare feet beside champagne bucket.
£15 bathroom mirror: silk dressing gown disappearing around doorway.
£60 Victorian reproduction: two wine glasses, high heels and what appeared to be a handwritten note saying come upstairs.
Nobody knew who owned any of the feet.
Nobody cared.
One seller in Wakefield attempted authenticity.
His listing showed the genuine reflection of himself in boxer shorts holding a Samsung.
Views: 2.
One was his mother.
Three weeks later, a man from Swindon published a spreadsheet.
He had analysed 1,847 mirror listings and established that the optimum conversion rate occurred at 0.73 suggestive ankles per square metre of reflective surface.
He was extremely pleased with it.
Dave downloaded the spreadsheet.
Sandra, who had in fact been his sister and had merely wanted her bloody mirror out of the garage, looked over his shoulder.
“What are you doing?”
“Market research.”
“For what?”
Dave turned the laptop around.
On screen was a photograph of a £12 hall mirror.
In its reflection, AI had placed two elegant feminine feet beside Dave’s shoe rack.
Sandra stared at him.
“Dave.”
“What?”
“You do realise when they come to collect it, you’re still going to be here?”
Dave looked at the photograph.
He looked at Sandra.
He looked back at the photograph.
“That,” he said slowly, “isn’t really what the data measures.”
From somewhere in Swindon, a spreadsheet was extremely pleased with itself.
