The Simulacrum - Chapter 54 - Part 2

"This is such bullshit…" I grumbled under my breath as I made my way back to the man building. I was lucky that no one was around at this point, otherwise they might have thought I was some kind of weirdo mumbling to himself… but then again, the fact that I was doing that meant that maybe I was one? I left that conundrum to be solved by hindsight, and instead I continued to happily fume without being disturbed by anyone.

The reason behind my foul mood was naturally the tennis club in general and one smug Celestial in particular. I mean, just because the pitching machine was really intuitively designed and could easily be put together without the manual, it didn't make her right in any shape or form. They should have been able to do the same without my help anyway, yet all the placeholder girls were looking at me like I was some kind of savior, sparkling eyes and all. Except for Angie, of course, because she was just grinning like an absolute wiseacre. 

Anyhow, I was about to reach the wing with the nurse's office, so I decided to put my encounter on the tennis field out of mind (though not too much; I had to remember it in order to serve my sweet, cold revenge in the future), and focused on step #467 of my implausibly complex plan to help Josh become a real protagonist and finally start carrying his weight, if only so that I could focus on my own endeavors. Speaking of him, I quickly Far Glanced at him, and it looked like he just met up with Armband Guy and they were passive-aggressively quipping at each other. In other words, business as usual. 

I contemplated whether I should check the others as well, but I was in spitting distance of Peabody's little hidey-hole, so I figured I would do it later and get this over with as soon as possible instead. It was like pulling off a mental band-aid; it might hurt in the short term, but it's over quicker as well.

Thinking so, I stopped in front of the familiar door and opened it without even bothering to knock. I already checked on him, so I knew the nurse was in, and when I entered, the portly man quickly swiveled around on his chair in surprise, only to ease up once he realized it was just me.

"O-ho-ho! Why, hello, Leonard! It's been a while."

"Yeah, yeah. Good afternoon, et cetera," I gave him something that could be, if you squinted hard enough, considered a greeting and I closed the door behind me. "I came to talk."

"O-ho-ho? Could it be about your amnesia?" the old guy asked with his eyes open in anticipation.

While at first I wanted to dismiss him out of hand, in the end I had to grudgingly tell him, "No, but now that you reminded me of it, I suppose I should thank you for not telling anyone about my lost memories after all."

"No need to mention it!" he responded unusually boisterously, accompanied by a huge grin. "I believe I've already told you, but I'm as bound by doctor-patient confidentiality as any licensed physician. O-ho-ho! You certainly won't hear me tattling about your condition to your peers, that's for sure!"

"I wasn't really worried about that part," I said a little absent-mindedly as another thought took root in the back of my mind. Even though I tried to keep it a secret in fear of affecting the nebulous narrative in some shape or form, at this point I have more acquaintances who knew about my amnesia than ones who didn't. Since I got to this point, I figured it was about time to let the rest know as well, so I made a mental note about it before I returned to the conversation at hand and told the nurse, "I was actually more impressed by the fact you didn't tell the Arch-Mage about it. Very principled of you."

"Thank you for the compliment, but… I can't say I understand what you've…"

"Please stop playing dumb. I'm really not in the mood for it," I cut him off before he could say something silly, like 'What is an Arch-Mage?' "I came here because I wanted you to deliver a message to your nephew."

The moment I said that the atmosphere in the room went from jovial and easy-going to… well, still fairly easy-going, but with just a teeeeeny bit of tension on the top. Similarly, while Peabody maintained his lukewarm smile, the eyes under his bushy brows opened just a fraction wider, only to then narrow into suspicious slits a mere moment later.

"O-ho-ho? Refreshingly direct, aren't you?"

"As I said, I'm really not in the mood to beat around the bush," I answered with a shrug. "I would also prefer it if you did the same." Peabody only looked at me with a mixture of caginess and expectation, so I told him, "I want you to tell Friedrich that I am willing to hear him out."

"Is that so?" The nurse's eyes opened wide again at the mention of Labcoat Guy's name. He obviously didn't expect I would be privy to this detail, and that was the exact reason why I decided to drop his name in the first place.

I naturally pushed ahead to hit the iron while it was still hot, so before he could regain his balance, I quickly continued with, "Tell him that I want to meet him in person. I know it's not 'scheduled', but I want him to arrange one of his little ambushes just after school's out."

"Oh-ho-ho? Well, aren't someone well informed," Peabody mused as he rubbed his jaw and scrutinized me from head to toe. "Since you told me to keep being direct, let me ask you this: If you want to talk with him, why don't you just go to his workshop?"

I'm not going to lie, the candid way he asked it was really refreshing, even if the question itself was a pain in the neck to answer without giving away too much information. In the end, I settled on, "No offense, but I've heard that your android friend is a little trigger-happy, so I wish to avoid staying in an enclosed space with her for the time being."

"Very well informed indeed," he whispered under his breath.

In the meantime, I pushed him even more by declaring, "This time, I'll be there in person. Unfortunately I'm being watched as of late, so it would be best if he could make it look like I was caught up in the Purple Zone by chance. That way nobody would suspect we made contact on purpose."

"O-ho-ho? But didn't you just make contact with us?"

"No. I simply visited the school nurse before going home. There is absolutely nothing suspicious about that, especially considering that there is no way for me to suspect that you are related to Friedrich, or the Research Society, or that you are an old friend of the Arch-Mage, or that you visit the old man using a secret back entrance to the School under this building, or that…"

"I understand! Please say no more!" Peabody suddenly blurted out. Once I fell silent, he let out a tired sigh, reached inside his vest, and then wiped the sweat off his forehead with a yellow cloth handkerchief before he finally told me, "I understand you are truly, terrifyingly well informed. There is no need to highlight it any further."

"If you get the point, then I stop," I told him with my patented roguish smirk. "Tell your nephew I'll see him tomorrow."

I wanted to end the discussion on that decisive note, but before I could turn around and reach for the doorknob, I was stopped by a burst of irritating chuckles behind me.

"O-ho-ho! But wait just a moment, Leonard! If you are worried about being watched, wouldn't leaving my office so soon be considered suspicious?"

"Not really," I said as I tried to deflect his words, but he completely ignored me and patted the chair next to his own.

"Don't be in such a hurry! Come and sit. It's been a long time since you last visited here; why not talk a little, if only for the sake of appearances?"

I really wasn't in the mood, and there wasn't anyone tailing me to begin with, but since I wanted to keep up the pretense of this meeting, I had little choice but to go along with his suggestion. I didn't know whether he did it to entrap me on purpose, but looking at the lopsided grin on his face made me doubt he was the mastermind type.

Speaking of which, just what was Peabody's type? By that, I didn't mean his preference in women (or men; I don't judge), but as in our own classification. He sure as hell started out as a placeholder; I can still remember when he locked up during our first meeting as if it was yesterday. Yet at the same time he was the uncle of Labcoat Guy and an old friend of the Arch-Mage, two important 'side-characters', to use the terminology of our narrative hypothesis. 

Now, if he was only getting more animated over time, I would have absolutely no problem with his behavior. It is already well-established that when it comes to placeholders, more interaction with them equals more complexity, and with enough attention, they can quickly go from weirdos who would stab themselves with a pencil to quirky girlfriends with minor trust-issues (but you didn't hear that last part from me). In Peabody's case the problem lied in the fact that, based on his background and importance in the 'plot', he shouldn't have been a placeholder in the first place.

Let's take someone else for comparison: Melinda. She is by no means a major player in the 'plot', as far as we are aware of it, yet just by being Elly's chambermaid, aka, being connected to someone 'important' resulted in her being a relatively normal and animated side-character from the very start. In contrast, Peabody was related to not one but two 'plot-relevant' people, yet he was unmistakably a placeholder the first time I met him. 

I really didn't like to resort to this, but the most obvious way I could explain this discrepancy was through the application of retroactive continuity (or retcon, for short). This was something that we have discussed with Judy a number of times; the idea that the universe we lived in would 'fill in the blanks' when we weren't looking to enforce a sense of coherence. For example, while I can't say for sure either way (as I've never seen them beforehand), there is a good chance that before my early interactions with Judy, she had no parents. As in, they literally didn't exist until she was deemed important by 'the narrative', at which point they poofed into existence to complete her background.

I didn't like this. In fact, I found it about as disturbing as Judy's insistence on the narrative actively manipulating everything and everyone all the time. That said, it wasn't impossible, and it would have been irresponsible of me to dismiss the idea just because of some instinctual aversion. Sure, Judy and I butted head over these things a lot, but that was precisely why I hired her in the first place; so that there would be a second opinion I could argue and reason with. If she just blindly agreed with me all the time, then it would just result in complacency. I who knew? Maybe she was correct. I really hoped she wasn't, but ignoring her arguments would have been a folly of epic proportions. 

But back to the point: if I presumed that such retcons could take place in this universe, even to already 'established' people in our social circle, then there is a good chance that Peabody really was a placeholder from the beginning, but due to my unwitting interference, he was recognized as 'an important character' by the world. Following that, he was given a backstory, and said background retroactively linked him to both Labcoat Guy and Lord Grandpa, all the while he remained the same, mostly ineffectual person. 

I mean, he is apparently a friend of Amadeus from their school days, yet as far as I know, he is not a mage, and he is linked to the Research Society, yet I never saw him doing any magitech tinkering or discussing any technical details with his nephew. As a matter of fact, he is so mundane in comparison to his connections it makes him stand out like a sore thumb.

But then again, there was at least one alternative explanation I could come up with: maybe he had all of these connections from the beginning, but he used to be a placeholder because, due to the way he has no supernatural abilities, he wasn't really related to the 'plot', so to speak? In fact, if not for my Far Sight, I doubt anyone would ever figure out he was related to the important guys.

Anyhow, all of this was food for thought, but for later, and the moment I reached this conclusion, the man in front of me let out another one of his grating chuckles.

"O-ho-ho! So, what did you want to talk about?"

I narrowed my eyes at his question and stated, "Nothing. You are the one who told me to stay a little longer, so if anyone wanted to talk, it's you."

"O-ho-ho! Come now, don't be shy," he coaxed me with a disturbingly amicable smile as he leaned forward in his swivel chair. "Boys of your age always have some kind of problem to talk about! Puberty, changes in your body, relationship problems… I'm here to help you with all of those!"

"… What do relationship problems have to do with the school nurse?" I blurted out as my brow climbed my forehead on its own.

"I'm also the school counselor," he declared with an odd sense of pride, after which he let out a small chuckle and asked, "So, I gather you do have some kind of relationship problem after all. Why else would you focus on it right away?"

"There could be many, many reasons," I responded a little dourly, but the annoying nurse only continued to chuckle under his breath.

"Now, now. I told you there is no need to be shy! I can listen to all your woes, and none of them will leave these four walls."

My gut reflex wanted to dismiss him right away, but after a moment of consideration, I realized that the man in front of me was the closest thing I had to a normal, responsible adult amongst my acquaintances, even considering that whole mallet malarkey and the Hippocratic assassins. That… was sad. It also meant that, as absurd as it might have sounded, his was probably the closest to a 'normal' perspective if I wanted to get some 'normal' advice for my current woes.

"Fine. I admit I do have something," I confessed, but before the nurse could break into one of his self-satisfied guffaws, I quickly added, "Let me warn you though; if you tell anyone about what I am going to talk about, I will know, and I will make you regret it."

"O-ho-ho? Calm down, Leonard. You should know I'm a professional, and I don't want to get hunted down by the Brotherhood of—"

"Already heard that joke, so stop it," I huffed, but Peabody's smile only widened in response.

"Have you? Oh, what a pity. It is my best one."

"I'm sure about that. So, can you listen to me for a moment?"

"O-ho-ho! Certainly! That's what I'm here for!"

"Good. So, here goes nothing." I took a deep breath and then began with, "I know that you know that I'm currently dating Eleanor," I started with a half-truth to ease into the conversation.

"O-ho-ho! Of course!" he exclaimed with his usual, grating joviality. "I can remember it like it was yesterday; when you gallantly carried her into this room after school! Believe it or not, I could already see the attraction between the two of you!"

"I’m sure you did," I responded flatly, but then before I could continue, he cut me off with another laugh.

"O-ho-ho! How could I not? Believe it or not, I used to be quite the Casanova in my younger years, and while I might have lost my touch a little over thirty years of marriage, I would've had to be blind not to notice the spark between you two! Oh, the wonders of youth!"

"Yes, yes. Can I actually get to the point?"

"Oh, certainly," he told me while brushing off my scowl directed at him with an affectionate smile.

"So, here's my problem: we have been going steady for a while now, and according to my girlfriend, it is about time we take our relationship to the physical level."

"There is nothing wrong with that," he told me almost instantly, his voice sounding suspiciously rehearsed. "You are going through puberty, and the urge to explore your sexuality with your partner is perfectly natural. So long as she consents, go for it!"

That was a significantly more easygoing answer than what I expected. I quickly stifled the groan threatening to escape my throat and told him, "That's nice, but I'm not the one pushing for it. She wants to take things further, while I'm not really interested at the moment."

"O-ho-ho? Is that so? There is nothing wrong with that either. Some of us are late bloomers, and you might be one too! Why, believe it or not, I was a late-bloomer too! It wasn't until I was twenty when I joined my first swinger party, and I didn't try to use the back-door before I was—"

"Too much information! Can we stick to the topic, please?" I interrupted with all my might before the mental image could take root. "So, in your expert opinion, not wanting to rush this is not abnormal."

"Not at all! In your place, I would be more alarmed about why your girlfriend wants to take you under the blankets so soon."

"… Should I really?"

"O-ho-ho! Well, 'alarmed' might be too harsh of a word. You see, Leonard, she is going through puberty the same way you are, with all its urges and hormone imbalances. It is perfectly reasonable to suggest that she simply has her own needs she wants you to fulfill. Yet, the intricacy of a woman's heart is a twisting road that few of us menfolk dare to tread, and even fewer of us see its end."

"Very poetic; but could you be just a bit more straightforward? Please?"

"Put simply, your girlfriend's desire to have sexual intercourse with you might have less to do with her physical needs than her mental ones. For example, have you considered that she might feel that your reluctance means you find her unattractive? Or that she could feel pressured by the way you act around other girls? If my memory serves right, your little group of friends is full of pretty girls, is it not? Have you considered that maybe she is trying to seal the deal because she is afraid someone else might snatch you away?"

I didn't know what I hated more; the candid way he was talking about these things, or the fact that what he said actually made a lot of sense in context.

"That's a lot of food for thought," I finally stated a little absent-mindedly, which earned me another chuckle."

"You are welcome. But remember, if all else fails, the two of you should sit down and talk things through. Do not bottle it up, as the longer you leave a problem unaddressed, the harder it is going to deal with it once you open that bottle. Why, if only I talked to my wife right away after that enema incident back in college, we might have…"

"Stop! Too much information! Again!" I exclaimed as I crossed my hands in front of me, but Peabody only continued to grin at me. I rolled my eyes and let my arms down, then I told him, "Thanks for the advice. It was way more reasonable than I expected."

"Oh, and before I forget!" the portly nurse suddenly exclaimed as he reached out and began rummaging through one of the drawers in his desk. "Just in case you experience some performance problems in bed, I have the business card of a great urologist colleague of mine. Where did I…?"

"… I redact my last statement," I grumbled under my breath, but before I could say anything else, there was a series of knocks on the door.

"Come in," Peabody called out right away, probably by reflex, and the door immediately opened wide.

"Sir, I have an injured," an upperclassman announced as he more or less dragged one of the creepy amigos into the infirmary by his shoulder, and he didn't even spare a glance at me. On a closer look, he had an armband on him, meaning he was probably part of the disciplinary committee, and the guy he was pulling along seemed to be a fairly battered Mr. Bedhair.

"O-ho-ho? What happened?" the nurse inquired as he finally stopped searching his drawer, stood up, and gestured towards the nearby bed.

"We conducted a raid against a group of delinquents trading contraband," the upperclassman told him in a flat voice. "He attempted to escape through the first-floor window but slipped and fell. Luckily the hedge by the wall broke his fall, but the captain told me to carry him here for a checkup." 

Saying so, he unceremoniously dumped poor(sic!) Mr. Bedhair onto the bed and then immediately turned around and left without even saying goodbye. Placeholders, amirite?

Anyhow, Peabody immediately sprung to action and began to examine the creep. I was wondering whether I should leave or wait for him to finish, but then my dilemma was solved when he looked over his shoulder and told me, "O-ho-ho. It was a pleasure talking with you, Leonard, but I'm afraid this young man needs my full attention."

"I understand," I answered as I stood up. "I'll leave you to your work then. Just remember to relay my message."

"Worry not, I will."

I gave him a nod in lieu of a goodbye and I quickly walked over to the still-open door, but just as I was about to cross the threshold, the nurse called out to me.

"O-ho-ho! Just a moment, I almost forgot something!"

I turned around, and found Peabody already standing in front of me with an outstretched hand.

"Good luck," he told me as he pointedly shook his wrist, and after a moment of hesitation, I decided to shake his hand. Unsurprisingly, there was a small, rectangular object in his hand, but before I could refuse it, he already pushed it into my palm, and then followed it up with a playful wink.

That last be surprised me so much I couldn't react in time, and before I could say a word, he already closed the door in front of me. This time I didn't bother to stifle my groans as I shook my head and glanced down at my hand.

"I seriously have no need for an urolo…" I muttered under my breath, only for my voice to halt as I realized that the object in my hand wasn't a business card, but a condom. Correction: a full pack of condoms. The bumpy variety, if the slogan on the front was to be believed. I raised my head to dumbly stare at the door in front of me, then back at the rectangular red packet in my hand, and I couldn't decide whether what I got was better or worse than a business card.

At last, I decided to stop thinking about it and let out a sigh, then I promptly pocketed the pack. I mean, it was technically a gift, so it would have been rude to throw them away. It certainly wasn't because I had a feeling I might have to use them sooner or later. Also, I certainly didn't have a better impression of the nurse after this encounter. Not even a little bit.