Chapter 4 - The Past Is A Foreign Country
After Siesta departed, I decided to leave my door open. Just like freshman dorms. Not only would being asocial have been mind-numbingly dull, but it would have robbed me of the opportunity to better understand my "hosts," something I felt very much necessary for practical purposes, and for maintaining my sanity. In practical terms, my initial priority was to determine how any information I might provide would be received. I didn't have any reason to be overly secretive, and given my policy of overall honesty regarding my situation, elaborating would generally be helpful. However, this place was so alien that I was comfortable assuming nothing. I couldn't yet say what would be considered useful or damning to them. In short, until I had a handle on things, I needed to watch my mouth.
Ironically, that meant that I needed to talk to people, but do my best to keep the flow of information as one-way as possible, at least initially. At the same time, I craved normal human contact. I wasn't unaccustomed to isolation, but in my position, I felt my hold on sanity to be tenuous. My grip on reality had been destroyed the moment I arrived. Mimicking normality was the best I could do to keep myself from having some kind of mental break.
I thought again how weird it had been talking to Siesta. I mean, she was nicer to deal with than Louise, but that wasn't exactly a high bar. She seemed younger than I was, but the deference she showed made it really hard to tell. I glanced at the open door. I didn't know whether I preferred to deal with her servility or Louise's condescension.
Obviously Siesta was more agreeable, but Louise seemed more like a real person. I felt bad just thinking it, because Siesta was entirely pleasant. The more I thought about it, it was how well Siesta managed to play the role of demure servant that discomforted me. Louise, on the other hand, was playing the part of an aristocrat, but she was doing a pretty bad job of it. That she failed to properly and comfortably fulfill her social role made her easier to stand, if not easier to like.
Petty though it was, I actually looked forward to seeing her, entirely to enjoy the satisfaction of her being forced to recognize the status-at least temporarily-conferred on me by Colbert. For the time being, I wasn't just some asshole that had ruined her summoning ritual, I was a guest of the academy, and that afforded me some protection.
Since the hallway looked empty-and my gratification seemed to be delayed-I decided to more closely inspect the room my hosts had prepared for me while I waited to see if my partner-in-quarantine would appear. It was filled with a variety of wardrobes, end tables, and armoires with purposes I could not discern. Who needs more than one? Though, the lack of a closet made the excess more understandable.
I found something that resembled an oil lamp, but not only did I not actually know those actually worked, this particular object seemed to lack at least a few parts I thought were essential to one functioning. While puzzling over the peculiar lamp, out of the corner of my eye I caught a flash of movement through my door. I turned to address it.
"Miss Valliere, would you mind telling me how to operate this lantern?"
I wasn't sure what she had been doing, but she looked somewhat sheepish to be addressed, standing at the threshold, unsure of what to do with her hands. The expression didn't last long before it was replaced by a pathetic attempt at an imperious sneer.
"Do you truly know nothing?" she said, trying to seem lofty at five-foot nothing.
I looked at her, affecting my own archness.
"If our roles were reversed, I'd bet you'd find a fair few things you were unfamiliar with," I said.
She squinted at me before looking away.
"Professor Colbert seemed to believe you, but I can't see why," she said airily, "You could easily be a commoner from some remote part of the world and lying about the rest."
Her failure to grasp the gravity of first contact seemed quaint, but this condescension was beginning to irk me. I took a bit of a gamble, and chose to be a little passive-aggressive in my response.
"You know, where I'm from, it's considered a rather grave matter to accuse someone of lying."
She turned scarlet at my admonishment, which I didn't even pretend not to find amusing. In theory, an aristocrat trying to talk down to me would have galled me. Despite her best efforts, she was so manifestly bad at it that I was more amused than offended. It was very strange witnessing someone act in this way while seeming a moment away from bursting into tears. Still, it was getting tiresome. If I was in a better mood, I might have gone on prodding her until she either gave it up or snapped, but I was still rather far from my usual self.
She looked back at me and opened her mouth to say something, but I pretended not to notice and simply spoke over her rather harshly.
"Now, let's proceed on the basis that your instructor and I agreed: that I'm telling the truth and that I will represent my country until formal contact is established."
I maintained unwavering eye contact, daring her to contradict her professor. It was rude, but ultimately effective. She scoffed, but looked away again.
"That's all assuming we actually make contact with your home," she said.
I couldn't tell whether her performative obstinance was a personal trait or a product of her aristocratic background.
"You believe this will never happen again?" I asked.
She shrugged. I raised an eyebrow but she didn't meet my gaze. Her edifice of superiority was already crumbling into petulance. I couldn't quite understand why she was such an awkward and antisocial person. Surely a lot of this was a cultural difference, but she also just seemed to be a bit of an odd duck. We were still having this conversation through the portal of my room because she neither invited herself in, nor afforded me the opportunity, and seemed oblivious of how weirdly hostile she was being or how oddly we were standing.
"I doubt this will be a unique occurrence," I said, "It's pretty clear to me that I'm the first one to end up here, but not the last."
I figured I was the first on the basis that, if someone had ended up here before, we would have heard about it. People went missing all the time, but vanishing into thin air was a different matter entirely. Much like the Fermi equation suggested life in the rest of the universe from a single example, my summoning suggested that the same thing could be repeated. If the summoning ritual was as ancient as it sounded, that meant something had changed recently to allow Valliere to actually pull me here from Earth.
"If you disagree," I said dismissively, "you can kill me, or enslave me, or whatever your ritual calls for, and pray that you didn't start a war between our nations. Or at least bring down the wrath of the Professor upon you."
She ignored my mocking challenge and finally looked at me, her eyes narrowing and asked a question of her own.
"What do you mean, 'nation?'" It was only when she said the unfamiliar word that I could recognize that the other words we had been using were not English, "I can only assume you mean your country-people-realm?"
Her last word made sense in my mind, but assaulted my hearing. If I paid close attention when she spoke, I could hear both the incomprehensible French-ish syllables I had heard when I first arrived but—seemingly at the same time—I heard plain English. I could not even imagine how this was possible, and so decided to leave the matter be and focus on what she had actually said.
I couldn't tell if she was genuinely interested in the answer to her question, or just trying to change the subject. It was almost something a normal person would ask. In terms of what she had actually asked, I supposed her ignorance was unsurprising, considering the concept of the nation only gained prominence during the Napoleonic Wars. Assuming things translated, dynastic, familial, and personal relations dominated this kind of environment. I was no cultural historian, but everything about this place seemed pre-modern. Who knew which side of the Reformation it was analogous to, but the Enlightenment seemed a ways off.
Trying to explain the idea of nation to a premodern person was an interesting enough challenge that I chose to indulge Louise, regardless of the intent behind her question. In that spirit, I beckoned her to actually enter and sit. With the physical aspect more normal, I embarked on my explanation.
"A country is not a bad substitute, but it doesn't tell the full story," I said slowly, "A nation can be best conceived as the totality of the people that reside within a country, and the kinship they have with one another on the basis of the shared history and concept that the country is the collective patrimony of the people."
That was a half-truth, including only the romantic conception of nationalism. I restrained the impulse to explain civic nationalism. It relied on too many alien ideas for me to safely broach it before I had a better idea if she would try and accuse me of heresy or something. I watched her reaction closely, wondering if anything of what I had said had made it across the culture gap. Her brows furrowed and she spoke.
"Some of that…sounds familiar, but most of it just sounds confusing."
I probably shouldn't have worried too much about being correct and just told her it meant "realm."
I grimaced, I didn't want to be a long-winded ivory-tower intellectual, but I supposed in this scenario rambling impenetrably about things I knew gave me credibility. Still, I felt I'd done pretty well in breaking down the concept into layman's terms. I suspected that the cultural gap was more responsible than anything else. Or at least, that was the idea I consoled myself with.
"I'm hardly surprised it's unfamiliar," I said conciliatorily, "Despite the fact you can all do magic, everything indicates you're at the equivalent as to where we were between three-hundred and five-hundred years ago."
She opened her mouth, and then closed it. She squinted at me.
"Now I know you're deceiving me. How could you possibly know that?"
I gave her an enormous shit-eating grin fueled by the inanity of making a joke that literally no one on the planet stood a ghost of a chance of understanding.
"You know, I'm something of a historian myself."
She just stared at me, unamused, awaiting elaboration, which I, satisfied with my joke for an audience of one, deigned to provide.
"From what I've been told," I said, "noble blood still confers considerable status, but it's not a strictly martial aristocracy; the nobles can and frequently do fight on behalf of the crown but are not obliged to do so."
"Some are, like the Griffin or Manticore knights."
I nodded in concession.
"Regardless, you've told me that the crown lacks absolute authority but has substantial power over even the strongest of the nobility. Which places you at the beginnings of absolutism, approaching the early modern period-beginning, which—by my reckoning—is around 500 years before present."
I felt rather pleased with myself, but Louise seemed unimpressed.
"So… what are things like in the present then, if this," she gestured, somewhat futilely, at everything, "resembles 500 years in the past for you?"
I stroked my chin and considered her question.
"I don't think I can explain without giving you context," I said slowly, the gears beginning to turn, "which would probably have to be a whole lecture. Maybe later I can show you, if you want."
I'd need to get used to explaining Earth to these people in a way that was accurate but also maximized my own credibility. I would also need to make sure not to give them any possible reason to eschew contact. The last thing I wanted was the powers that be prohibiting Valliere from trying to make contact with Earth. Definitely don't mention Columbus. Speaking of, she nodded enthusiastically at my offer, her mask of condescension slipping.
"Great," I said, "I'll need someone to practice my spiel on before I give it to any of the professors or your government."
"But for now, tell me about yourself."
"Why?"
I furrowed my brow. It was an oddly defensive response to small talk.
"We're going to be in here a while," I pointed out, "so we might as well talk, and that's as good a place to start as any."
She still seemed hesitant, even glancing at the door, as if considering just leaving. I leaned on her further.
"Besides, there might be something about your background that might explain why you ended up summoning me."
She finally relented, and sat back with a sigh.
"What do you want to know?"
I raised an eyebrow at her making me interrogate her, but nevertheless proceeded.
"You have a family?" I said sarcastically.
She scoffed, but nodded. I gestured for her to elaborate, which she did. She spoke with pride about her house and parentage, but the latter also with trepidation, unable to meet my eyes. Hardly surprising, I knew it was a deficiency of my imagination, but I really couldn't picture a close and happy aristocratic family. But when it came to her two older sisters, she did show some real warmth or affection, particularly when it came to the younger of the two. I did my best to keep track of what she told me, but I was all too aware of my own incapacity to fully recollect personal details, particularly when I hadn't so much as seen a picture of the people in question. Besides, I wasn't sure if I liked her enough to overly care about her personal minutiae.
Still, with the ball rolling, I was keen to turn the conversation towards topics that might give me more useful information, either about how I had ended up here, or more about this particular place.
To that end, and to avoid any questions directed my way, or worse, an awkward silence, I asked her about her ambitions as a student here at the academy. I figured academics was a safe enough subject, and perhaps a source of common ground given I'd just done five years at university. However, she answered only evasively, fidgeting incessantly. Despite my best intentions, the conversation quickly turned sufficiently awkward that I was more than grateful when she stood, and made hasty, if polite, excuses to be elsewhere. With Louise gone, I sat back and let out a breath I wasn't aware I was holding. I clearly wasn't exactly comfortable talking to her, but I was feeling vindicated in my suspicions that she was altogether worse at playing her role than Siesta (though, of course, she was under less pressure to). Louise had gotten distracted from her airs of superiority easily enough. I still held a grudge for the pretension, but I was much more optimistic about this quarantine. She wasn't so bad that I wasn't willing to talk to her when given literally no other options.
Still, she was annoyingly touchy as evidenced by her incredibly awkward departure. I considered myself socially competent, but my mediocrity in this regard was harshly exposed by her own lack of social grace. I usually sought out people who found it easy and natural to carry a conversation. Alas, it seemed for the duration of this quarantine, I would have to attempt to broaden my shoulders and get better at bearing the whole weight of a conversation. I grimaced. I had little hope for my prospects, but it was better than sitting in silence.
When it came to other options, I wasn't entirely giving up on Siesta. Her status as an employee and the rigid class expectations that she had been molded into made it very difficult to reach anything more than a mask. But, I had a feeling that if I could convince her that I would not harshly repress her the moment she forgot her station, I'd bet she was a better conversationalist than Louise.
However, the following day, when I next saw Siesta, she was utterly single-minded in her duties and I lacked the imagination to communicate my intent without being terrifyingly direct. So I let her go about it, and bided my time, hoping inspiration or opportunity would strike and deliver me from the responsibility. I was ashamed by my passivity, but starting conversations was never my strong suit.
Once Siesta had left, as soon as I was feeling up to it, I repeated my practice of propping the door open. For the time being, I wasn't making any progress on the Siesta-front, so I would see if I had any better luck with Louise. Merely opening my door didn't seem to be enough to manifest her, so I found myself a task with which I could occupy myself.
The room, fortunately, was furnished with a desk, against the same wall as the bed, with the window on its left side. As someone accustomed to office chairs, I found the upholstered chair, though finely crafted, disappointingly immobile. But it did force me to focus on my self-appointed task. With the paper, ink, and stylus provided by Siesta, I set about composing some notes by which to explain my situation when it came time to brief the powers-that-be. Facetiously, I regretted not having kept Bill Wurtz's History of the Entire World I Guess on my phone. I knew enough of history that the trouble was not lacking the information, but stripping it to the essentials while providing sufficient context to people who knew literally nothing of Earth and its history.
I looked at the blank page, its endless possibilities combined with the finality of ink daunting me. How did you explain the 21st century-and all the centuries that came before it-to the premodern mind? Not only that, but explain it to a premodern people for whom magic was as common as fire. I had too many ideas to know what to do with, and a looming dilemma of whether to begin with the Big Bang or the Neolithic period. Fuck it. I had a better, less daunting idea to work on. I started writing. If you are reading this, then I am dead…
AN: This chapter had the first dose of explaining Earth and modernity to Halkeginians, something that will be a big part of this story. Let me know what you think!