Mirage

Mirage is an astrologer from the former 24fps circle whose readings become a practical way of keeping track of scattered friends. Her computer charts link personal troubles to a larger pattern of uncertainty: a prediction about Zipi Pisk’s marriage proves strikingly accurate, while later reports of arrests and unexplained absences make Mirage’s astrological warnings feel less like a game than an attempt to recognize danger. She is both an interpreter of the heavens and an informal point of contact for a community whose members are losing one another.

Identity and Background

After the events in Trasero County, Mirage returned to Fort Smith and gave away her astronomy books, ephemerides, and zodiac posters. She appeared to be rejecting the knowledge that had shaped her, resolved to keep her feet on the ground and return to a family life described as bound more by resentment than affection. Yet her withdrawal does not last. The account presents her as coming to understand that the stars have, in effect, selected her: interpreting their messages remains her vocation, even when she has tried to refuse it.

That reversal makes Mirage’s identity less a settled profession than a calling she alternately relinquishes and resumes. The people around her do not encounter an abstract believer in astrology alone. They encounter someone who applies it to individual lives, remembers the fortunes of old companions, and acts when her readings suggest that someone is in trouble. Her return to astrology therefore also restores a connection to the people and political past she had attempted to leave behind.

The Astrological Network

Mirage stores information about her old 24fps friends in a computer, using it to prepare and update their astrological charts. The device makes a dispersed community legible to her: she can revisit their circumstances and, when a chart suggests they are faring badly, try to reach them. In this way the computer functions as both a personal archive and a directory for renewed contact, preserving a network whose members have scattered or fallen out of touch.

About three years before the later crisis, Mirage contacted Zipi during the most difficult phase of Zipi’s divorce from Sheldon. Her reading indicated that Sheldon was involved with a Virgo woman who worked with him. The information proved correct, astonishing Zipi and establishing Mirage as her oracle. Zipi subsequently asked for tips on horse racing as well; Mirage’s advice brought Zipi winnings at Aqueduct, enough to leave her with extra spending money. Their relationship thus joins astrology to ordinary practical needs: Mirage’s counsel offers both an account of personal events and, at times, a modest material benefit.

Pluto and the Political Forecast

Mirage’s next major warning concerns Pluto’s return to Scorpio. She understands the planet’s retrograde movement as a temporary interval in which people in power may learn mercy and wisdom; its renewed direct motion, by contrast, signals a return to its older, destructive tendencies. When Zipi asks whether this means Reagan will be reelected, Mirage gives a broader answer: people will become more paranoid because each person will be affected differently.

Her forecast is personal as well as political. Pluto rules the underworld, and its return to Scorpio connects the coming change to Brock Vond, who was born under that sign. Mirage’s reading does not prove that astrology causes political events, but it gives the characters a language for apprehending a shift in the atmosphere around them. The astronomical cycle becomes a way to imagine hidden power returning to familiar habits, just as the old 24fps network begins to experience renewed instability.

Missing Friends and Growing Alarm

The warning acquires urgency when Mirage learns that Howie has been arrested for possessing cocaine, although he had never used the drug. Mirage attributes the event to malign influences in his astrological Fifth House, but she does not stop at interpreting it. She calls former 24fps friends and discovers that two, perhaps three, others have suddenly become unreachable without explanation. She is frightened, and Zipi becomes frightened with her; neither knows what to do.

This concern resonates with an earlier report that many familiar people have simply disappeared from the computer. That report belongs to a different conversation, not to a direct account by Mirage, but it echoes the same unsettling pattern: people vanishing from records and from the community’s reach. Mirage’s charts preserve personal histories, yet they cannot explain why friends have gone missing or ensure that those friends can be found. Her information gives her a reason to sound the alarm, not control over what follows.

Narrative Role

Mirage’s importance lies in the way she joins systems of knowledge that the novel leaves in tension. Her astrology gives individual misfortune a cosmic pattern; her computer records give friends a place in a human network. Neither system is sufficient by itself. A correct prediction earns her Zipi’s trust, but that success cannot turn the later disappearances into a clear, solvable problem. Her role is consequently that of a watchful intermediary: she remembers, calculates, and makes contact, while the community’s growing fear exceeds what her methods can settle.