Your basic prologue to the Trojan War.
Naturally, these weren’t real gods onstage, just humans playing them; but I knew right away who each was meant to be, like there was invisible text being projected over their heads and I was unconsciously reading that. Not just their names; a brief overview of the characters’ histories was flowing into my mind.
Handy dandy. Maybe all movies will work like this in the future.
“Witnessing a play about the Trojan War in Troy during said war…,” Koizumi murmured, sounding touched. “What a layered construct. Two—no, three layers deep.”
That line of thought sounded hella gnarly, so I opted to let him tackle it solo.
More importantly—my eyes were on the performers.
From what I could see, the actress playing Hera resembled Haruhi; their Aphrodite was kinda like Asahina, and their Athena was not dissimilar to Nagato.
All three had been stretched out vertically, aged up, and generally smudged around a bit; I didn’t have to look close to know they were entirely different people. It was more of a faint resemblance. Like they’d hastily gone looking for doubles and not had time to find anyone better, so been forced to compromise with this. That sort of vague resemblance, a near miss that actually bugged me more. Was this how I’d feel if we found ourselves face-to-face with a fake SOS Brigade?
And just because our girls had become goddesses, did they have to make the actors resemble them?
“Perhaps to ensure we know who the girls are playing.”
I was watching the play like I would a museum exhibit when Koizumi started talking.
“They may have decided the symbols on their seats would not convey the intent. That said, I agree it’s in poor taste. At least I don’t have a fake—if that’s any solace.”
Don’t care. One other actor had my attention.
“That’s…not the same old man.”
At first, I thought our old buddy was playing Zeus, but on closer inspection it was someone else. Zeus and Hera were seated at the head of the table in center stage, and the others were all genuflecting to them—not the actual bride and groom. The arrogance was certainly capturing Haruhi perfectly.
The actors playing gods spent a while acting out a raucous wedding party, but in due time, events unfolded as previously described.
The Apple of Discord incident.
An actress with long black hair—playing Eris—threw a golden apple into the party, and it was instantly a battle scene, quickly descending into pure chaos.
In time, someone asked Zeus to pass judgment—and the stage went black.
With no lighting fixtures, how’d they managed that? You might well wonder. I certainly did. But there was no other phrase to describe it; when light returned, the stage now held a pastoral landscape.
Wind blew across a grassy plain, like pure magic—a young man was aimlessly following a flock of sheep. The young prince of Troy, only recently informed that he was of royal blood. Here, Hermes descended from the heavens, serving as Zeus’s messenger, and accompanied by Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite.
Hermes demanded that Paris choose which of the three goddesses was most beautiful, and the goddesses each did their best to win him over. Aphrodite’s presentation may have ignored what the prize—Helen—felt about the whole mess, but she won Paris over, and the rest is as I’ve already explained.
Thus, having earned the enmity of the other two goddesses, Paris began to prepare for his sea voyage. Bound—of course—for Sparta, where Helen resided. Paris was actually already married, and his sister Cassandra, fearing for Troy’s future, begged him to reconsider. Her words reached him but failed to change his mind. Perhaps overwritten by the sweet whispers of the goddess of beauty.
Another blackout, and Paris was on a ship bound for Greece.
The fleet had several ships in it, waves cresting off the prows as they raced across the Aegean Sea. Paris’s cheeks flushed with love for the as-yet-unseen Helen, that heat undeterred by the chill of the wind upon them. With Paris was his relative, Aeneus, hero of Troy, here to back up the prince’s reckless plans to do crime and abduct Helen.
“First grasslands, now the sea and a fleet of ships? How’s this theater work? What stagecraft allows all this?”
Only one person capable of responding to my grumbles.
“It’s doing nothing to alleviate my suspicions that they’ve rather confused ancient Greek and Roman cultures. All the dialogue is in Latin. The girls are dressed like Greeks, but we’re wearing Roman clothing.”
Koizumi was also wearing his everyday smile.
“A play based on the Trojan War that took place in ancient Grecian times. Performed by Roman actors in a theater styled after imperial Rome. Yet the contents resemble modern Hollywood effects—if that make sense.”
“Hence the three layers?”
Our real selves and the movie we were watching; the movie showed a play based on legends; and the legends in that play ultimately derive from a heavily embellished oral tradition that made it difficult to differentiate fact from fiction. What percent of the truth remained?
“There’s a fourth layer with us in this virtual space, and we may have to account for the versions of ourselves still in the real world.”
Koizumi glanced around the amphitheater.
“Odds are high whoever constructed this world cannot distinguish between fiction and documentary. They’ve likely modeled this world after on-screen depictions.”
The fantasy and space opera arcs were especially indicative of that. The western bit was pretty bad—and the Prohibition storyline mixed elements of a C-tier TV show into a bad movie.
But if they couldn’t tell the difference between images based on historical fact and live-action stories someone just made up, what did that say about their minds?
“Denizens of other planets completely unfamiliar with Earth history may require explanations to clarify these distinctions.”
In which case, this definitely wasn’t the Data Overmind. Nagato’s boss probably had a decent handle on that distinction.
When I glanced back at the stage, Paris had skipped the rest of the journey and arrived on the Peloponnese peninsula. Joining a group of Trojan emissaries, he was now inside the Spartan castle.