Novus Harmony

The pale light on the projector flicked over a rolling screen, sending a monotone of images slapping one after the next in a motion of filmography. Flowery fields, mountains, open brain surgery, the steam of a train, the path of a leaf across the horizon, and the train again leaving it's station. The film played in tedium to the disgruntled crowd. Some were dressed in hoods and jeans, others latex suits and ponchos. Humanoid figures in the audience were mixed with the eldritch bystanders, bark, scales, tentacles and suits intermixed to witness the artist's tranquil work, throwing popcorn in front as they waited along their vast cosmic journey. A lone girl, pulled gently on a monocle man's vest. "Excuse me.. do you know when this stop gets off?" She asked, looking at the walls and ceiling.

 

Every surface was translucent, she tiptoed as if walking on thin air. The background scenery of the higher beyond outside the formless walls seemed to fly by, changing from apple orchards, to vast spectrums of stars to fauna roaming and gazing in emerald fields, a photogenic support of the filmography playing on loop. To the young girl, nobody seemed to speak in her tongue, or know where they were heading, she was dismissed with a ho hum or a hush hush.

 

When she lost her patience, she walked away from the projector, finding a small lever the shape of a fire alarm. Her gentle pull opened up a translucent set of stairs, and someone arrived to retrieve her. "There are toasted nuts and popcorn in the kiln, they'll be ready in a minute. You may have some bottled water in the meanwhile."

"Huh? Ohh waitwait no I just want to get somewhere! Whereever.. 'where' is."

She looked up at the women. The tall imposing entity had pure white skin as cold and still as chalk with shimmering red eyeshadow and concentric diamond-tattoos across her forehead. Her hair went out like locks of snow, blending into the pure grey fur she wore around her neck. Illuminated rubys and sapphire jewels hung from her neck and ears like musical chimes. Below her coat was a rubber labcoat, going down her sleeves until they were draped over her wrists and ending below in a floral skirt swishing by her ankles and ugg boots.

"What's your name?" She asked in a frail wavering voice, before humming gently. The woman seemed not perturbed nor interested, it was hard for the girl to read any expression across her delicate face. The slight maroon tint painting her lips was peacefully still, awaiting her response.

 

"I, I'm Nia.. Adroita Nia." The girl said folding her arms. "Awhile back I was journeying with a friend I met, Wick. But we lost touch and I, got extra lost. Do you know what floor this is?" She asked.

The women could sense her sincerity, checking her wrist and holding it to her ear, as if listening to the blood flowing within. "Floor? I see. You must have come from Grahim's tower.." She sighed, and then began to hum. "Come with me little one."

 

With a sense of vulnerable hesitation, the girl followed suit. "Right this way, up these steps." And they ascended without being able to see a single step, the taller women leading in tip top quiet repose.

 

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WIck hung around the impressive gallery, juggling orbs. The Curator, no longer a small girl but a visionary painted along the blank canvases. Her many arms mixed colors and a mango salid of fruity hues in her usual artistic manner. Wick slung around her neck to look closer.

 

"Ooo, an impressionist piece with an AI slant! You really are following the latest trends."

Curator turned her head and smiled. "Wick, what ever are you talking about?"

Oh it's nothing. "Oh, it's nothing." I told her.

She had a certain painting up in back with only an outline of a what looked to be a women, and wouldn't you believe dear reader out there that this was a whopper of a silhouette. The greys and beige paint were magical, and I mean literally magic, cuz the Curator is a magic painter! I could always count on her artsy fartsy sense to humor me, and her my humor to help her relax. But this evening there was something odd about the portrait, it was unpainted last time I'd visited her and wowsy, it was really unlike her to leave a canvas unfinished. It was like my cooking! Where I'd usually cook something stinky, mess it up and just eat from the bowl.

 

"Sorry to pop your thinkmop. But ain't that one been up there pretty long?"

The Curator stopped and gave it a shrug. "That piece needs a special something. Whenever I try to paint it.. the paint dissolves and it phased into a silhouette. I don't know if it's because of me or the recipient, but I cannot paint my old master yet. I've tried, but I haven't been able to succeed."

Wick turned their head. "Your master? Didn't take you for the kinky type. I mean, I did, but not your brand of avant garde." Wick dipped her hands in some black ink and attempted to smear a tiny swish over the silhouette. The portrait absorbed the ink and it faded like breath on glass.

"Who is she?" I asked, as I leaned back on a chair to badger Nia more we moved to the next segment.

 

 

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Her guide pressed forward thru the darkness, and into a room practically dripping with saturation alongside muted colors. The girl followed, hearing a soft tinkling sound as they stepped behind the next door. The room was a lounge with comfortable chairs and a long curved coffee table, along the walls were shelves of books on musical theory and art.

Nia stepped into the backroom, observing the litany of cultural artifacts. Painted canvases still wet, cluttered limbs and porcelain bodies with runes, gear and dials inside, and a variety of instruments laid about the shelves and tables. In the far back a golden ornamented pipe organ laid in the corner gathering dust.

 

 

"This place is beautiful!" She said looking around the room, noting all the vivid portraits, decals and rich details across the women's collection. "Thank you." The women said, clearing some stacks of musical sheets off a table for herself to set some coffee down.  Her eyes were tired and red, a cigarette was still clamped firmly between her lips. After a moment of silence, she put the paper down and exhaled, and the sound echoed the air. The woman seemed to listen to it, and turned her gaze to Nia.

 

"I'm glad to meet you.. though a bit.. surprised. It's not often I see someone crawl out of my sister's well." This women had a certain flair for an eccentric but still refined art scene.

Adroita scratched her head. "It was, a big well I guess. Pretty huge."

The women nodded, dabbing out her cigarette and humming again slightly. "There appears to be a coalescing of unwitting surrogates that my siblings have asked to answer to me lately. Causality falls under my proverbial lap, no thanks to articulations of their heirs." She closed her eyes, lips whispering a faint tune that made Nia feel peaceful yet dizzy, as if the notes would reverberate through her soul.

"Okay sure. Why not. Inevitability breeds in homogenic groups, and finds successive resolutions upon the spinster of this household. Mathematical harmony breaks upon the most ardent of notes, no? Netwon caught gravitons of appleseeds, not descendants. We can apply an abstraction of usage through this, sloppy lack of formalization."

 

Nia was poured a small cup of coffee and looked up. "Um... okay." She looked through some of the shelves and picked up a violin.

"Are you, a musician? You have all these instruments and sheets, like a composer."

 

The women shrugged. "What is music but applied mathematical principles astute to the tunings of the soul." There was a tap of the table, even her fingernails creating harmonies. "I used to love music. Now it just depresses me. Melancholy is easy to listen to, until everyone lauds you for it for which there is no forgiveness." She placed her hands on Detroit's temples, as if praying for her. She could hear Nia's heartbeat. She could sense the vibrations and brainwaves, the synapses and celluar pulses, the molecular jittering and movements, every last motion was processed until she could feel the quantum strings vibrating in melody. Novus struck her fingertips over her gently, as if playing those strings, those elementary structures like a harp, letting their sounds line up neatly, listening into her emotions, her synaptic gospels. Diamonds appeared in her eyes briefly.

 

"And the paintings?" Nia asked.

The women stood up and folded her arms, her coat rustling. "Oh I rarely finish those. See that one? It's the post-abstractionist equivalent of an old knickknack." She dipped her pinkie finger in some foggy black paint and swiped it over a painting of a medieval empire.

"There! It is done, so I sayeth. Follow me." She picked up the painting.

"Why'd you do that? It was still in its early stages, you ruined it!"

Novus lit a cigarette, letting the smoke fall over her tired eyes. "Ruin befalls those who covet true amorous chords, but the hymns of the deep never give up. True obliteration of a canvas breeds violence of one cosmic span or another. "

"W-what?" Nia tiptoed along, seeing a long hallway with water surrounding them to the edges of the cosmos and whales the size of stars casting their visage.

"It's an old proverb." Novus told her. "My mother read me literature as a child. The continuum of time too can be reduced to a melody of sequential notes if you think in solitude and despair. The proverb means attempting to fine tune or prevent those notes, will not bring peace of mind. In correlation between time as a mathematical  constant and this resistance along the canvas is the will of constituent, circuitously subjective destitution. The tapestry unwinding, throwing off balance until it all comes undone, every note out of tune. I tell this to Grahim all too often, but she delights in it, degeneration, not regeneration of discourses... Insidious tastes of hers."

 

They approached a pearly white gate at the end of the tubed hallway. "And that means?" Nia asked.

Novus smiled. "The orchestra of catastrophe."

 

Novus opened the gate and pressed forward. On the other side, a tower-shaped cathedral lay with endless halls and height, stacked to infinity with canvases and artistic pieces. Novus put the canvas she held on a wall, gently affixing it until it glimmered and joined the arrays and rows along the collection.

Elsewhere, elsewhen.. A medieval world existed whereas it had not before. In the peace of it's fantastic summer, they looked at the dark blot arriving over the sky, whistling through the wind. The calm before the storm came to a close as the blot descended, a serphent of darkness devouring the land. This great dragon became the bane of this world, and in the presence of its greatness both disciples and heroes emerged, either to worship it to sworn to slay it. Kingdoms and alliances were forged based on these two allegiances. Merchants, artists, and artisans follows suit. Within the singular canvas Novus put up, an entire world was created, joining the infinite others within the gallery halls

 

Nia stood trembling in awe. The paintings and portraits, the landscapes and murals, each of their color compositions and the perspectives was like heaven itself in an ecclesial collage. The largest paintings, several stories tall lay across the walls like mosaics. At the centerpiece, a golden painting depicting Gaia and floral overgrowths, wars and civilization within it's wide canvas hung up. The piece could've been the envy of Michelangelo, its width showing hundreds of scenes and thousands of figures within, a singular portrait at the center of the portrait like a painted goddess.

 

"And who is that?" Nia stood trembling.

"The greatest of all. The original. This masterpiece holds the secrets of not just all that is, but the ones that made it all possible. This image was never finished, I lost my muse when finishing his masterpiece."

"His masterpiece?" Nia asked.

"Oops. This masterpiece. Freudian slip. From the very first touch.. I've always hated this piece."

 

"We haven't talked enough about where you came from, Nia."

 

Nia turned around to see Novus with an arm draped over her shoulder. She put her arms up. "Whoa, easy. You'll have to let me do the talking."

"Nonsense. We are the same people, artists, we're just with different experiences. What I want to know about is why you came to me, why you came to my studio?"

 

Nia looked at the painting, a blank look crossing her face. "That women in the centerpiece of that painting, who is she?"

Novus stood next to her, putting her hands in her pocket to get a good look.

 

"There were once two travelers along the cosmos, off to a new destination. Wealthy, powerful, rather immensely cultured. They were looking for something special."

 

"A painting?" Nia asked. "Well yes but, more than that.. I'm a women of many crafts. I built them a doll, and put an essence in it."

"I can understand that, why would you build a doll with an essence. A doll can't truly embody anything, it's just a doll. Why would you build a doll with an essence?"

"It was done on the request of two individuals, and I gave her to them. What was done was I made her more than a doll. I gave her eyes, a soul, a mind, a heart. I brought her to life. This woman has my soul, and the essence of me within her. I love her, she's my life."

 

"Is she your muse?"

 

"No. This isn't about my past, I'm telling you, she came to me, atleast in my head. It was as if she knew I needed her."

 

"She chose you? Why?"

"Perhaps it's as a simple as a sense of destiny, or a sense of a calling. But whatever it was, I know she's the woman I've always looked for. The woman I've never known I was looking for. She's like a daughter to me. And this painting, was what I gave her. Her world." She sighed. "I wonder if she knows I exist. Did her parents who commissioned me ever tell her?"

 

Novus grinned. "And you came to me because, I'm a great artist."

Nia looked at the painting, looking at it's details. It seemed to speak volumes, of a universe of infinite possibilities, a landscape of stories and characters.

"Is there a story behind this world?"

The women started to hum. "Is there.." She took out a pair of headphones and an mp3 player, changing the settings.

 

 

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What did she say, I, Wick asked. About the story behind the world.

"Oh, she said. Yes. But not yet. We're just getting to the heart of it all. Now let me show you my work. And then we kind of pulled away from that work, although I kept turning my head back to it.."

 

The Curator had finished painting an unruly 'traveler' who'd failed one of her tests. They stood as a new sculpture, and she poured on them confetti.

 

"Novus Harmonica. She used to go by a different name.."

A different name, I asked, turning my head. I went over and put a rubber cowl on the sculpture, teasing it by mooning it.

 

"Her name, it was Pandemonia. Apparently she used to be something of a scientist, and lover of guitars and heavy chords. But that was, a long time ago. Her and Intellica had an incident, and Harmonica doesn't play anything anymore."

 

Oh, that's sad.. I blew a raspberry at the sculpture.

 

 

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Somewhere on Gaia, Flora walked the halls of Domina Pontifica on the Observatorium for Universal Harmonic Vibrations. The Domina cleared her throat. "The scientists say we've been able to pick up the energies of the Hymn for ages, but it's only recently we reached the point where we could access it. It's energy signature is very similar to the Cascade and the Hex of the adjoined worlds Sandra observed. But we're not able to isolate the wavelength yet, some things cannot be rushed."

 

She turned and casted an odd eye on two puppets Flora had brought with her. "Oh, I see you brought the folks. Nice to meet you."

Flora chuckled. "Mom, mother. Don't be rude." She ordered them both to wave like the good mindless obedient dolls they were.

"Now, this wavelength comes from outside our known universe, although it reverberates in subsequent worlds around it's interspace. It seems to change frequencies..."

Flora folded her arms. "Any clue why? My time is valuable. I don't like visiting Gaia for too long, the dirty boars she calls her sons were slobbering across the pavement in their leashes."

"Well.. we're not certain.. But the Daughters of Eclectica have written a full report and some very interesting revelations to share."

Flora tapped her foot impatiently. "Revelations.. typically come at the end times. Are you suggesting there is calamitous news?"

"N-not at all my Empyrean! Please, listen to what they have to say."

A dozen women in golden coatjackets and visors stepped forward with clipcharts, looking at one another before turning to Flora, never the wiser what they would reveal.

 

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Harmonica continued adjusting her mp3 player and humming until she got the right vibe she wanted.

"I think that's enough sight seeing for now. Now come along.."

Nia gave a small gentle clap. "Could you, teach me how to paint like that sometime? I could use some lessons.."

Novus looked down. "I'll think about it."

 

She lead her through the lounge room, the two would transverse back down the stairs to the projector room.

"Did you shoot this footage?" Nia asked.

"Filmmaking. Old hobby. Now sit quiet for a little abit, I have to call my sister and get your providence sorted out." She cringed. "Ugh, dealing with Intellica is such a pain. I'll have to paint her some ugly fruit on a particle collider just to get her off my back. She always likes the dullest things from my orchard. I'm doing you a huge favor by letting her twist my arm again.."

 

"Intellica?" Nia scratched her head, noticing commotion and unrest over in the projector's audience.

"We used to conduct experiments together, her mathematics and logarithms are a little shoddy compared to mine. But she gets so caught up in the details and her little computations, plus she had a daughter.. I can only be around her calculatormouth for so long."

 

"Hey, hey lady! This film stinnks!" A ruffian with a mohawk and a big burly reptilian woman next to him started throwing popcorn at their host.

"Play something better. And where are those roasted chestnuts??! I should've gotten the space witch instead of this shit.." The man threw the whole container until it fell at her feet. Harmonica looked at them, turning her head as if she were a priest shunning a with sinner.

"Pity. Such a sad fragile thing you are.."

"What did you say bitch?" The reptile woman hissed. "Maybe you should get better sssservice!"

The two started to march up to her. Nia stood behind her, hiding her head in the folds of the woman's labcoat and holding onto her collar's fur.

She stood firm, and they pushed their fingers to her chest. Her head turned to Nia hiding within her.

"We only create in tandem, not apart. We sing in harmony in the evervast. Not alone. And when we fail notes.." the words she whispered, Nia could make out only with the barest utterance of her lips, although she couldn't hear the sound she knew which word she meant.

 

Catastrophe.

Novus Harmonica hummed. She raised her voice above a hush and started to whisper, then that whisper became a lyrical rune traveling through the airwaves. The vibrations, from the macroscopic, to the microscopic to the quantum all strung together with her voice. The two stood still as statues, feeling themselves heavy, so heavy that the notes overwhelmed all sense. Harmonica continued to hum and hymn, the two swaying to beat and never taking their swirling, hypnotized eyes off her. Their clothes distorted, becoming stewardess outfits, the hymns of the birds and stars rendering them calm and jointed, cracks and seams appearing along their skin, faces ebbing and flowing until the melty texture reconstituted into feminine faces painted with makeup.  Every part of their bodies rippled and changed, flowing and reforming from the simple tune and being completely overwritten in the blink of an eye, until their old memories fogged and sank into nothingness. The purpose that filled them straightened them out and made them happy to accommodate better manners for their host. She was their world, their muse, and they'd do anything for her. Anything.

 

The two now stood with clean slacks and docile smiles, the song letting them remember what they came here for.

 

Where two delinquents were, two stewardesses now stood stiff and smiled.

"Now, you were saying something about better service?"

"Y-yes, we will be the best service!" They shouted together, arms outstretched to salute her.

"Now, let's get on with the show," Harmonica said.

Nia peaked out. "Can you teach me to do that?"

Novus snickered. "Only to those who love me."

"Huh?"

She patted the girl's head. "But of course, those who hear my voice.. all come to know the mathematical essence of what love is. True love is selfless. One cannot hold onto their self when they truly come to know it."

"O-oh.. alright." Nia swallowed. "I know this is weird to ask but, can you tell me more about that universe you created? With, the Doll you said you made for those two ladies?"

Novus Harmonica was flattered.

 

"Right. That... It's name was Orchid."

 

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Somewhere in Orchid, Gaia

 

Flora stood on a throne in a cathedral, the usual religious processions had dragged on this year. She was never too fond of the pompous pageantry, but the zealotry of her devout followers was nothing to be dismayed about. They were enjoying themselves, she knew it was more for them than her, even if it really all was for her. Pleasure was to be pursued. Enjoyment in ecclesia. This universe's structure was harmonious, that much she always knew. Her thoughts went back to the reported findings of the Daughter's of Eclectica, on the musical nature of reality and its origins.

Suddenly a women she never recognized approached her.

"My Empyrean, this woman is a talented painter and something of a sorceress. She's come to you asking if she could paint your portrait."

 

Flora cocked her hips, taking one hand and dragging it to a grape. She almost put it to her mouth.

"She calls herself, the Curator."

Flora stopped, instead angrily flicking the grape at the servant.

"That name.. I've heard rumors. What's a Tower celebrity doing groveling before me. Send them forward."

 

The Curator in all her artistic sense marched forth in tall boots, a multi-stitched waist coast and a fur collar much like Harmonica's. Flora got a good look at her, the paint along her face, the charms she kept as she refused to look straightforward at the Empyrean, merely tilting her eyes.

"Heard you Coo'."

Flora was aghast. "What do you want? If you'd like to paint my portrait, you're going to have an awful lot to prove to me."

The women, having long since left behind those days as a child was tickled by Flora's provocations. "Heard from your mother lately?" She teased.

Flora scowled. She turned to the two puppets next to her, the parents who once had the nerve to try to rule over her.

"Which one?"

"Nothing, nothing." She put a strong face on and took out a paintbrush. This woman's defiance was fuel for her to capture her intensity in a work of art. Here was her chance she decided, to prove she could create an art piece that even her master Novus Harmonica couldn't do - paint the women's daughter herself.

"Oh.. I can paint you as well. But you're already so beautiful, I don't think I can capture your true beauty through paint." She stretched her neck and stepped forward, Flora's imperial guards holding spears to block and defend her. Flora waved her hands for them to be at ease.

"Oh? And what do you offer?"

"I will paint you with the forces of the unseen. The elements you covet." She ringed her finger around the light, harmonies gathering until a quantum of light began spiraling into concentric rings, then she jingled them like keys to play a tune. The Hymn.

The lifegiver of this world and of dolls like her.

 

"So, shall we get started, mon claire?"

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