Irrational Scale

Far Off Unhappy Things – Boys and Girls of the Reflective Age

Chapter 8: Irrational Scale

The spirit of nostalgia
Is passing me by
Opium and poison
Jasmine and Rose
Maze of ambrosia
All flavours glow

– Alphonse de Lamartine

Fleur paged through the book. ‘Far Off Unhappy Things #6, Hazeron Dreams.’ It wasn’t very good. In fact, she would go so far as to say that it was quite bad. Still, it intrigued her. This woman- who was sleeping in a hospital bed in front of her- seemed to have hallucinated a strange version of the Lands Lost, complete with rather uncanny descriptions of Fleur and her siblings. That she had cast Fleur in the role of Prince Autumn’s mysterious lover struck her as distasteful, offensive almost, and she wondered how much this Eleanor figure actually knew. It was distressing, being confronted with a book painting a funhouse picture of your life. A broken reflection. Life seen through a mirror, darkly. Eleanor herself seemed to have been quite elated to meet Fleur, though she seemed to be under the impression that her appearance and name rested on some kind of bizarre coincidence, some cosmic joke. She’d cried for almost an hour at how awful it had been seeing Fleur in Jaque’s advertisements, and how horribly dehumanizing this kind of sexual exploitation was. It hadn’t been clear to Fleur at all if she was genuinely concerned for her, or felt offended because she saw Fleur as her novel character. After talking to Fleur for a while she’d instructed her friend, an older man called Wieland, to give her a copy of one of her books.

She just couldn’t believe these books were popular. At times the book she was currently paging through was cheap melodrama, other times it was puerile fantasies of combat and oddly sexless seduction. And then there were the chapters that came across more as the ravings of a madman, trying oh-so heavy handedly to convince you to care about a dreamt up world that only the author could really care about. A world that nonetheless resembled Fleur’s. She’d decided early on to never bring this up to Eleanor. It felt like a great way to either get caught up in something strange, or to drive the poor women even further into madness.

But she might turn out useful. Her friend had insinuated that Fleur could be put in legal trouble for resembling the character too much. Ownership of general appearance. Ownership of ideas. The laws of this world were magical. And could be bent to her advantage, perhaps. She’d been wanting to move up in the world for a while, had wanted to move on from acting in advertisements. Eleanor possessed both the funds and the contacts to make this happen. She just needed some nudging in the right direction.

“Hey,” Eleanor muttered, waking up from her sleep. “You’re still here.”

“Hmhm,” Fleur answered. “I’m reading your book.”

“I’m glad,” she said. “I dreamt about you.”

Here we go again, Fleur thought. “Yeah?”

“It wasn’t like my usual dreams.”

“No?”

“It wasn’t about my character. I dreamt about you.”

“Aha,” Fleur said, doing the best to feign even the slightest interest. “I have to go in a bit. I can give you my phone number. I’ll come by soon, to see how you’re doing. And I’ll tell my boss I’m quitting those advertisements. You’re right about them.”

Eleanor closed her eyes. “I’m glad,” she said.

The next days went by quickly, and in a haze. After Fleur quit her job she didn’t have much to do, so she allotted herself time for ‘homework’ in between watching stuff on the computer and playing games. Homework, which meant reading through all of Far Off Unhappy Things to have something to string Eleanor along with. Every few days she took the train to Eleanor, and spent long afternoons drinking and talking about her books. Eleanor seemed to be desperate for any kind of attention, and was utterly obsessed with her. Two weeks in Fleur suggested Eleanor come to visit her in Amsterdam, where she planned on suggesting a Far off Unhappy Things tv-show to her, so she herself could have an ‘in’ into more serious acting.

On a Wednesday morning, Eleanor arrived at Fleur’s apartment.

“Woah,” the woman said, walking into Fleur’s living room. “This is not what I had expected at all.”

Still confusing me with your character, Fleur thought. “No?”

“Is your roommate not here?” Eleanor asked.

“Who?”

“In my dreams you live with a red-haired girl, whose ‘half’ of the house is full of sporting equipment and medieval weapons. I’ve thought about including her in my next novel.”

“What?” Fleur said, once again stunned at Eleanor’s seeming inability to separate dreams from reality. She recollected herself, and mentally reaffirmed her mission to stay in as good graces as was humanly possible with Eleanor. “Interesting,” Fleur said. “Your dreams are so captivating. Maybe they’re dreams of the future, or parallel lives I could’ve lived.” She felt like throwing up. Do it for your acting career, she repeated to herself.

“I’ve thought the same myself. I frequently wonder if maybe Far Off Unhappy Things is another life I could’ve lived, or have lived. In another universe.”

“Say, now that I’ve almost caught up with your books I do have to ask: why is it called that? The story doesn’t seem very unhappy at all.”

“It’s sad on a meta-level,” Eleanor explained. “It’s commentary on the modern world and how alienated we’ve become from each other. It’s sad because it’s not real.”

Was it possible for someone to be more delusionally full of herself? The books were schlocky romantasy at best. It was difficult to believe Eleonor actually believed all this, but she’d looked at the online fandom. Eleanor’s fans also acted as if the novels were the second coming of Prince Autumn. Or, what was the human god called again? She had forgotten.

“Do you want to go shopping?” Eleanor asked. “I’ve always wanted to go shopping with a friend.”

“Sure,” Fleur said. “What do you mean by ‘go shopping’, though?”

“Huh? Like, two women going out to look at clothes and jewelry and stuff. That’s what women do, right?”

Eleanor sounded like Aster, early on in their annoying attempts at rejecting the gender their father had bestowed on them. She hoped it wouldn’t come to Eleanor trying to make a move on her. There were few people she was currently less attracted to. “Alright. Anywhere specific you want to go to? I don’t go outside much myself.”

“Me neither,” Eleanor said laughing. “There’s a fancy street with stores in the center of the city right, world famous. I want to go there.”

Fleur wondered about the social dynamics surrounding ‘shopping.’ She didn’t want to ruin the progress she’d made wrapping Eleanor around her finger, but then again, the lady didn’t seem very socially apt herself. If shopping turned out to be a form of social competition, she had no doubt she would manage to utterly crush her.

After Eleanor had used the bathroom, they hopped on the subway to Amsterdam Centrum. It was extremely crowded, even though it was in the middle of the week. The idea of tourism still astonished Fleur. Going somewhere as an exercise in consumerism. In the Lands Lost, most people died less than a thousand meters from where they lived, never having strayed much further. To her annoyance, a good amount of people they passed turned around to take pictures of her. A few boys yelled obscenities at her as she passed them by.

“You, euh, you sure draw a crowd,” Eleanor said.

Fleur shrugged. “You know how fans get.”

“I didn’t expect you’d have fans.” She sounded upset.

“They’re not really fans of me, they’re fans of what happens to me on tv.”

Eleanor went quiet and walked a little faster. Thinking about the advertisements had evidently made her upset again. “Hey, hey,” Fleur said. “Are you okay?”

“It makes me sick that we’re probably surrounded by people are thinking about you being raped.”

“They- if they are thinking about it, they’re thinking about the character I play, not me,” Fleur said to try and calm her down.

“It’s dehumanizing. It’s demeaning. Women shouldn’t be subjected to these kinds of things,” Eleanor complained.

Ridiculous, Fleur thought. Eleanor had no conception of real dehumanization. She could never quite get used to how insulated and sheltered the average inhabitant of this modernist world could get. “Let’s think about shopping,” Fleur said, doing her best to sound chipper.

“Yeah,” Eleanor said. Together they walked towards and along the shopping street, with Eleanor occasionally shopping to look at clothes through the windows. Every now and then she’d actually enter a store and contemplated buying something, endlessly asking Fleur for advice. Most of it was gibberish to Fleur. Fashion was defined by rarity and expense among the nobles of the Lands Lost, but ‘rarity’ did not meaningfully exist in the industrialized world. Another aspect of this world that seemed to entirely consist of fugues and reflections. When Eleanor did buy something, Fleur made sure to goad Eleanor into recommending her something slightly more expensive. She wondered if she’d accurately deduced the kind of social ritual this was, but if she had, she absolutely seemed to be winning.

After a few hours they both were dragging along more plastic and paper bags than they could comfortably carry, and Fleur was nearing bankruptcy. She hoped it would end up worth it. That she would manage to leverage her connection with Eleanor into a TV or movie production. Right when she was about to spring the idea on Eleanor, she was unpleasantly interrupted by a familiar voice.

“Fleur,” Morana said, grabbing her by the shoulder. “What a coincidence!”

“Oh,” Fleur said, a little dejected and turning around to face Morana. The Lampade was with a man that also struck Fleur as vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t immediately place where she had met him before.

“What are you doing here?” Morana asked.

“Are these friends of yours?” Eleanor whispered.

“Yes,” Morana said right as Fleur said “No.”

“I met Fleur at a party a while ago. We turned out to have a lot in common.”

Shut up shut up shut up, Fleur thought. She was going to ruin everything.

“Who is this again?” Morana’s friend, a tall man in a long black coat, asked. Fleur suddenly remembered where she had seen the man before.

“You harassed me as a potential murder suspect, remember?”

“OH! Oooooooooh,” the police investigator said. “I’m not actually a police investigator. I’m a private eye.”

“Aha,” Fleur said. “Did you catch your murderer?”

“I’m working on that. My name’s Detective, The Detective,” he introduced himself to the cadence of ‘Bond, James Bond.’

“Your first name is not actually The, is it?”

“It’s Sam,” the man sighed, making a face like a hurt puppy.

“I was actually-” Eleanor tried to say but Morana interrupted her.

“I’d love to meet your friend, Fleur. We have some business in the store over there, but when we’re done, do you two want to go grab dinner with us?” Morana pointed at a store called ‘Cremona’ that appeared to sell musical instruments.

“I have to check with my friend,” Fleur said. “It’s her day after all. Eleanor, do you want to grab dinner with Morana and Mr. The in a bit?”

“Well,” Eleanor said, scuffling her feet around. “I am getting hungry and I guess meeting your friends would be nice?”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Fleur tried to nudge her.

“No, no, I’ll be glad to, actually.”

“Wonderful,” Morana said. “We’ll be back in a bit.”

Great, Fleur thought. Just what she needed.

Morana and The Detective entered the store, and Fleur absent mindedly followed them in, at least slightly curious what the nymph and the cop could possibly be up to together.

“Hello, can I get your attention,” The Detective yelled. Everyone in the store turned to look at him.

“Ministry of Mysterious Business,” Morana said, pulling a badge out of her sleeve. Faces all throughout the store drained of blood. What was this about, Fleur wondered. She’d never even heard of a Ministry of Mysterious Business.

“Every single person in the store is either guilty or an accomplice, willing or unwilling, to violations of the Consensus Treaties,” The Detective boomed.

“The punishment for sin is death,” Morana said, pulling a sickle out of her other sleeve. For a second Fleur wondered how she could’ve possibly hid it, and then she realized what was coming. Morana was a Lampade. A reaper.

“Back off,” she whispered, pulling Eleanor with her. She tried to leave the store, but found the door stuck, the glass having become opaque. “Autumn,” she cursed.

“What is happening?” Eleanor said, panicking. Behind them, the screaming had begun.

Fleur looked on in horror as Morana slashed through the throats and limbs of customer after customer. The Detective had pulled out a firearm and was wildly, recklessly firing into the crowd. “I fucking love killing people!” He yelled.

Eleanor screamed and fell on her knees. Fleur crouched down next to her, and tried to at least somewhat shield her from the carnage.

“Get them!” Morana screamed while pointing at a customer and a store employee fleeing up the stairs, before spinning around and with unnatural elegance and precision racking open the trachea of a third. A green flash lit up her sickle whenever she cut someone, the eyes of her victim charring as if on fire.

There probably was a curse that destroyed or reaped the souls of its victims on her sickle, Fleur realized. Eleanor screamed and screamed until she could scream no more, and then she threw up.

Minutes that felt like hours passed, and the carnage stopped. Eleanor had gone catatonic.

“Why’d you follow us in?” Morana asked casually.

“Yeah you could’ve gotten caught up in something,” The Detective said. “That was very irresponsible.”

“What?” Fleur screamed. “You- you traumatized my friend for life. How am I going to explain this to her?”

“Oh,” Morana said. “She’s not veil aware, then?”

“Oops,” The Detective said, pulling out his gun again and putting it to Eleanor’s temple.

“HEY!” Fleur screamed, “Don’t fucking kill her!”

“We have to preserve Consensus,” he said, shrugging.

“I’ll wipe her memory or something,” Fleur quickly said. “I’m a magician. She’s extremely fragile to begin with, she wouldn’t survive something as traumatizing as this.”

“It’s just some dead bodies,” The Detective said.

“You can erase her memories? For sure?” Morana asked.

“Yes! I can. Autumn. What did you even do this for? What in the Lands could these people possibly have done?”

“The entire store is a front for an organization intent on spreading forbidden music,” The Detective explained.

“Église Métropolitaine d’Art de Jésus Conducteur,” Morana added. “Do you know them?”

“No? Why would I- forbidden music?”

“Yeah, music based on the Irrational Scale, the series of notes kept from man by divine accord,” The Detective said.

“Fuck off,” Fleur said. “I don’t want to know. I don’t want anything to do with this. Nothing. I came here to live a normal, modernist liberal life. Fuck off. Autumn. I don’t- Fuck.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” Morana said.

“Yeah. Sure. I euh, I gotta go. Can you undo whatever you did to the door?”

“Help,” Eleanor whispered.

“Shhh,” Fleur said, moving her hands before her eyes. “Sleep. Sleep. You’re dreaming, Eleanor. As always, dreaming. Sleep now.”

The woman went limp, falling into Fleur’s arms.

“Again, sorry,” Morana said, leaving the shop with The Detective. “I’ll make it up to you, Fleur.”

“Sure,” Fleur muttered.

“See you around,” The Detective said, all cheer and chipper as if nothing, nothing at all had happened.

With the two gone, and the unconscious Eleanor in her arms, Fleur wondered how in the Lands she was ever going to get her home, let alone actually manage to erase her memories.