Creative Differences (Part Two)

“Um, what?” Zeb said.

“You’ll see.”

“Are we still on for dinner?”

“I’m sure we can eat when we get there,” Himari said.

“Get where?”

“I don’t know. You’re supposed to tell me.”

“Huh? I don’t even know what just happened. Did I just upload the Salieri program to Tutela’s central computer?”

“You sure did.”

“I didn’t mean to. That’s not at all what I was trying to do.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter now. It happened, and we’re gonna have to deal with it.”

“I mean, is it a problem?” Zeb asked.

“I think so. But I’m not the one you should be asking about this. Right now, you need to tell me what coordinates to put into the transpo pod’s navigation system.”

“I seriously have no idea--” Just then, a song started playing in Zeb’s head. It was a jumble of strings, flutes, and harpsicords, playing at a blistering speed. It took a couple measures for his musically fluent brain to catch on that it was the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major, only sped up to three-hundred and fifty-three beats per minute. Zeb didn’t know where it was coming from, but it was the only information he had at the moment, so he said, “Um, is there a 5th street anywhere near here?”

“Sure is. What number?”

“353?”

“Okie-dokie,” Himari said, punching the address into the navigation panel. “Should be there in about a minute, so let’s just take that time for quiet reflection, what do you say?”

A minute later, the transpo pod had landed on top of a century-old building just to the east of the financial district. There was an open door leading to a stairwell, and once Zeb and Himari passed through it, the back of Zeb’s neck started buzzing at seven-hundred and sixteen bpm.

“Where to, chief?” Himari said.

“Room 716.”

“Cool.”

When they got there, the door opened before they could even knock, and they were beckoned inside by none other than Jane Necrophage, drummer of the famous band Elephants Gerald.

“Good. You got my message,” she said, closing the door behind her.

“Jane Necrophage?” Zeb said. “I found you!”

“Congratulations.”

“Is someone going to tell me what the hell all of this is?”

“I bet you feel like shit. Why don’t you sit down?”

Zeb wanted to act tough in front of Himari, but he did in fact feel like shit. He sat down on a sofa situated against the back wall of the room. Himari sat on the other end of the sofa, and Jane took a seat in a recliner on the other side of a coffee table.

“I know you must be confused,” Jane said.

“Fuck yeah, I’m confused.”

“It’s okay. I’ll explain everything, at least as much as I know. But first, just so we can get on the same page, what exactly did you think you were doing at Tutela Headquarters?”

Zeb sighed. He still had a powerful headache, but at least the rest of his body was beginning to feel like normal again. “I was looking for you.”

“That’s sweet. And why were you doing that?”

“Well, because Max and Travis told me you were missing.”

“They said that?”

“Yeah. They said that you went to a meeting at Tutela Headquarters, and never came back. Travis said that the label had probably killed you. But now, I don’t know if that was a stupid thing to believe or not.”

Jane shook her head. “No, it’s not. Did they tell you about Lil’ Ouija?”

“Yeah. So, wait, did the cops really shoot him in his sleep?”

Jane cleared her throat but otherwise didn’t respond.

Himari, suddenly on the verge of tears, said, “Yes, they did. That was what made me agree to help Jane, when she called me. I had heard rumors before, but I…saw the live-stream footage. If I had known for sure, I…”

“I know, Himari,” Jane said. “You go to work for a record label, you don’t expect them to assassinate their talent via extrajudicial murder.”

“Hold on, so you guys knew I was gonna do what I just did?” Zeb asked.

“We figured someone was going to, we just didn’t know it would be you, and we didn’t know it would be today. We had a plan ready.”

“Yeah, I tried to warn you, after you got off the elevator,” Himari said. “But I messed up. I didn’t think you and Max were gonna be able to convince Terry to let you into the top floor complex. He’s usually such a square. That’s why I assigned him to be your tour guide. Shoulda done it myself, but I had other things to get ready. I hope Terry’s okay, but there’s no doubt that he is very much fired.”

“Fuck, this is wild,” Zeb said.

“It is,” Jane said. “Just outta curiosity, did Max or,” she feigned spitting on the floor, “Travis say why Tutela would want me dead?”

“Well, Travis gave me a reason, but Max didn’t seem to believe it.”

“Let me guess,” Himari said, “he said that they wanted to replace Jane because she wouldn’t bang any members of Elephants Gerald?”

“Yeah,” Zeb said. “It sounded fucked up to me, but I didn’t know what to think.”

“I don’t blame you,” Jane said. “That really is a note I get all the time, even though they know that I have a longtime boyfriend. I guess our juvenile, fictitious persona wasn’t good enough for corporate. Shouldn’t be that surprised. I mean, they do expect the black metal bands they sign to really worship Satan, or Odin, or whatever. We kinda lucked out that our schtick is that we’re horny all the time. Could be worse.”

Zeb thought about Cheddar Bob, and wondered if he was a fan of Elephants Gerald. Probably not, he thought, for no particular reason. “They told me that the label tracks your location, and if I could hard-jack into the central computer, I could find out where you were. At least, where you had been, when your tracking beacon got turned off.”

Jane raised her eyebrows. “Really? That’s actually kinda smart. I’m impressed.”

“That had to be Travis’s idea,” Himari said. “Captain Skullfucker isn’t that slick.”

“You’d be surprised, Himari. I know you hate him, which is a perfectly reasonable response to meeting him even once, but he’s not as dumb as he pretends to be.”

Himari rolled her eyes. “If you say so.”

“Okay,” Zeb said. “So, does the label really want you dead?”

“I dunno. Probably not any more than they want any other artist dead. I mean, they’re training myna birds to replace us, so I’m sure they wouldn’t be against purging the Earth of all human creation, but no. I don’t think there’s a hit out on me, or anything.”

“So what was I really doing there?”

“Obviously, you were there to upload the Salieri program onto the central computer.”

This response brought up many questions in Zeb’s mind, but he found himself unable to articulate any of them. Instead, he scrunched his face as if trying to hold back a phenomenal belch.

Himari leaned forward. “You see, Max and Travis weren’t lying when they told you that the label has tracking beacons implanted in all of their artists.”

“Yeah, I know. I felt Max’s arm, where his was put in.”

“Yeah. But no one is looking for Jane. Well, except for you.”

“And Max, right?”

Himari shook her head. “Wrong. Max doesn’t give a shit where Jane is. She told you herself, she wasn’t clicking with the major demographics. And why should he care about any particular drummer, when he has access to a program that can turn anyone into a musical savant?”

“Okay, so what was his plan, getting me to hard-jack into the computer?”

“Well, the artists aren’t the only people being tracked. The customers are, as well.”

“Really?”

“Of course. When’s the last time you bought a physical album? I mean, there are people older than us who have never needed to go to the store to buy music. No, when you get an album from Tutela, or any label, it goes directly to your chip. When you make the transaction (or even when you just log onto their streaming service), you’re giving the label access to your brain. The individual ip address is supposed to only be temporary, but there’s no way the Osiris brothers haven’t figured out how to get a bead on every one of their customers. By uploading the Salieri program to the computer, you probably just sent it directly into the brain of every person who’s ever even considered buying music from Tutela Records.”

“Oh. Cool.”

“Not exactly,” Jane said.

“Why not? I have it, and it’s fucking amazing.”

“Yeah, I have it, too. That’s how I was able to send you this address. And yes, it is intoxicating, at first. It’s kinda like you’ve been allowed to enter a world that was always in front of you, but just out of reach.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what it feels like.”

“But trust me, it’s not nearly as wonderful as you think.”

“How can you even say that? This program is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“But it’s really not,” Jane said. “Nothing good has ever come from being perfect.”

“Well, I don’t know if I’d call it perfect. Just, like, it gives me the ability to be perfect. Doc Hodges told me it’s just a tool. I can use it or not.”

“Right, but you’re never gonna choose not to. And when you do use it, you’ll always do things the best, most perfect way. That’s the end of your music career, my friend. Say goodbye to creativity forever. You’ll spend the rest of your life making flawless, soul-less dogshit, not an error in sight.”

“Why would I want to make errors, when I don’t have to?” Zeb asked.

“Because you’re a human being. Even now, with your enhanced musical knowledge, you’re not perfect. No one is. Art is supposed to capture the human experience, and creating art that is better than you are is always gonna feel off. It’s the difference between an art and a craft. There are innumerable perfectly designed man-made structures in the world, but the vast majority of them have not brought nearly as much joy to people as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. They fucked that one up royally, and the world is better for it. The same is true for music. Some of the best things come from fucking up. Like ‘Money,’ by Pink Floyd.”

“Huh? What about it?”

“Okay, well, you know that song?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“It’s is in seven-four, right?”

“Um, yes.”

“Okay. And what else can you tell me about it? Lemme answer for you: it’s fucking boring, for most of its runtime. It slogs along, seven beats at a time, and nothing interesting happens for the first couple verses.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Himari said. “I don’t like that song.”

“Nor should you,” Jane continued. “It’s kinda lame. That is, it’s kinda lame until the guitar solo kicks in. Zeb, think about that part, and tell me what happens then.”

Zeb had already pulled up the song and had been playing it silently in the back of his mind, allowing the Salieri program to analyze it. “Okay, um, at the guitar solo, it changes to four-four.”

“Bingo. It switches time signatures, and it’s fucking awesome. It feels like someone has grabbed all the money that had been accumulating over the first few minutes and run away with it. It’s great. A brilliant decision. Only it wasn’t an artistic one.”

“What do you mean?”

“You see, they only changed time signatures because the guitar player couldn’t solo in seven-four. Something about those extra three beats at the end of each measure was throwing him off, because frankly, he wasn’t that good of a musician. Quite possibly the only genuinely good and interesting thing that band ever did was because one of its members was not fluent in music. If everyone gets the Salieri program, you can kiss happy little accidents like that goodbye. No one will need to adapt to overcome musical challenges, because nothing will be challenging. Everything will just be correct. How boring is that?”

“Wabi-sabi,” Himari said.

“What’s that?” Jane asked.

“My grandmother was an architect in Japan, and her whole deal was that there is beauty in imperfection. She made buildings that were asymmetrical, that, like, made you feel weird and sad when you looked at them. She told me that it reminds us that nothing is perfect, and everything is impermanent. She called it wabi-sabi.”

“That’s beautiful.”

“Yeah, that is pretty cool,” Zeb said. “But what’s to stop me from making my music wabi-sabi, even with the Salieri program?”

“I mean, nothing, really, besides human nature. Think about it, for just a second, and tell me you’ll ever actually put in the extra effort it would require to make something imperfect on purpose, when you could just knock out something the ‘correct’ way.”

Zeb thought back to his jam-session with Max, and how Max’s suggestion that he try a different beat on one of the songs had seemed almost insulting. “It just is, and I know it,” he had said. Jane was right. “Okay, I get what you’re saying, but does the Salieri program really mean that all music will be done the same way? Doc Hodges said it was like learning a language. He said we were both fluent in English, but we couldn’t write ‘The Grapes of Wrath’”

“That’s different,” Himari said.

“How?”

“Well, there are rules for writing and using language and stuff, but no one way to do it. What would the ‘perfect’ book even be like? I mean, have you read ‘The Grapes of Wrath’? It’s not perfect. There's a whole chapter, like over ten pages, where it’s just a turtle crossing the road. I think what Jane is saying is that music has these rules that make things like that impossible, if you do them right. If there was a Salieri program for writing books, that turtle thing would be whittled down to just a few words that better explained what Steinbeck was going for. In fact, the ‘perfect’ book would probably only be a single word, or something.”

“Exactly,” Jane said. “The Salieri program gives you perfect knowledge of western music theory, which has a bunch of pretty strict guidelines about how it operates. Sure, people will sometimes break those guidelines on purpose for artistic reasons, but for that to be effective, it usually comes after a lifetime of learning how not to break them. That kind of artistic maturity is earned, and the people who now have the program haven’t earned it. They have no reason to break the rules, when following them feels so good. So not only are people going to write cookie-cutter music from now on, they’re gonna do it at the expense of all other schools of music theory. Western music has been the dominant force for far too long, and often major universities don’t even bother teaching, say, eastern music, or Native American music, or any of the hundreds of styles from different countries in Africa. Why is that? Well, a couple reasons, I think. Rich white people like Bach and shit, and they also like controlling our lives, so they pump western theory into the world as much as they can. But also, having rules to follow makes it easier to both learn and teach. What might at first seem like a huge leap forward in giving the creative power to the people, is actually the total victory of the exact forces that have been keeping them down. All music will be the same, therefore there will be no need to buy music from anyone, but there will also be no need to learn how to do it a different way.”

“Fuck, this is making a lot of sense,” Zeb said. “So why did Max trick me into doing it?”

“Would you believe it’s because our last Elephants Gerald record got some bad reviews?”

“Yes, I would,” Himari said.

“Wait, what?” Zeb said.

Jane nodded. “Most critics said the album was trite garbage. That we’d gone corporate. They were absolutely right, by the way. I dozed my way through recording it. They could have gotten anybody to play any instrument and it wouldn’t have come out any different. And that’s before you turned a significant portion of the population into musical geniuses. Oh yeah, about that. Do you feel more musical, Himari?”

Himari sat up straighter. “You know, now that you mention it, no, I don’t.”

Zeb said, “Well, I didn’t either, when I first got it. It kinda kicked on on its own when a song started playing.”

“Yeah,” Jane said, “but we’ve been talking about music this whole time, and the program knows it. I bet you didn’t have to try too hard to think about that Pink Floyd song.”

“Yeah, that’s true. It just started running in the background.”

“No, that didn’t happen to me,” Himari said. “And I get stuff from Tutela all the time with my employee discount.”

“Do you think I fucked it up somehow when I uploaded it?”

“No, you definitely did that part right. Maybe it needs the customer to open the line to their brain by completing a transaction.”

“Yeah, that’s probably it,” Jane said. “Do me a favor. Buy a single or something, and see if you get the Salieri program along with it.”

“Okay.” Himari touched her right temple and blinked a couple times. A few seconds later, she nodded. “Alright, I just got the new Proto Raptor track.”

“Cool. Now play it, and see what happens.”

“Okay, gimme a second. Oh my God! What’s happening?”

“Oh, shit! Are you Okay?” Zeb asked, reaching over to catch Himari, who looked like she was about to fall over.

“Woah. I think so. I, like, understand everything about this! This is…damn, this is amazing.”

“Okay, so now we know, it requires a transaction to go out to the public. Good info to have.”

“If you try to take this program from me, I will kill you,” Himari said, only partly in jest.

Jane laughed. “No promises. Anyway, Max was not cool with people essentially saying that he sold out.”

“What did you think?” Zeb asked.

“I think we sold out the second Felix Osiris heard of us. Becoming a boring, corporate rock band was inevitable, once we signed our first contract. But Max never saw it that way. He still prides himself on being a man of the people. Of course, that’s all bullshit. We only got big because one of his ex-girlfriends was some executive’s niece.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. We were talented, once, but that has no bearing on success in the music industry. Marketability is what matters, and nowhere does it say that that requires talent. Talent can be manufactured, and marketability can be manipulated, to the point that the average person actually believes that some heir to a business magnate’s fortune really is more talented than anybody else. How many famous musicians and actors do you see that are born rich? A huge percentage. Is that because they’re actually better, or because their daddy gave the right fat-cat a huge wad of cash?”

“So, Max wants to prove what? That he’s still grounded, or whatever?”

“Yeah. But what he really wants is to destroy the Osiris brothers, and Tutela Records along with them, for turning him into a stooge. And if he can do that by giving the world some massive gift of knowledge, all the better. Plus, thanks to all his past drug use, he can’t get the Salieri program himself, so he gets to pretend to be like Jesus or something.”

“Sickening,” Himari said.

“True. But the thing is, I’m not at all against his main goal. Ruin the Osiris brothers? Fuck yeah. Take down Tutela Records? Sure, why not? I’d just rather not destroy music as an artform in the process. That’s why I turned down his proposal.”

“What proposal?” Zeb asked.

“He tried to get me to do what you just did. That’s why I got the Salieri program installed. I thought it was just gonna be some helpful reference guide. I didn’t know why he thought he could bring down a record label by handing out free music theory textbooks, so I went along with it. But that was before I saw just how all-encompassing the program was. Once I got it installed, I backed out of his little plan. He was pissed, but he knows he’s never been able to get me to do something I didn’t wanna do. This isn’t the first time we’ve had creative differences. It’s probably the last, though. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Zeb, but Max was only ever interested in you as a vessel for getting Salieri into that computer.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to put that together.”

“If it’s any consolation, I like your music. I listened to a couple of your band’s tracks about an hour ago, and it’s good shit.”

“Yeah, me too,” Himari said. “I listened to one back at HQ. I liked it a lot.”

“Oh, wow. Thank you. Both of you. It’s just a shame that we’ll probably never get to sign with a big label like Tutela.”

“Tutela’s evil,” Himari said, “so I wouldn’t worry about that too much.”

Jane said, “Well, Felix Osiris is evil, that’s true. But Tutela Records is not necessarily Felix Osiris. I wouldn’t lose any sleep if the label fell, but I don’t think that’s our only option.”

“What’s another one?”

“We hand Tutela Records back to its founders.”

“Those nanobot holograms?” Zeb asked. “Do you think that would work?”

“Why not? They ran the label for decades. And now they’re immortal.”

“I met them. They’re cool, but they kinda seemed like a bunch of bros, or something.”

“That’s just the role they were brought back to play. They’re trapped inside their twenty-something bodies, so it might be an easy thing to fall back into, but they lived full lives, and they have massive amounts of experience inside them. And the fact that they’re not organic anymore is a plus.”

“I saw them all dissipate, when the alarms were going off.”

“That’s a security measure,” Himari said. “They go incorporeal in an emergency. They’ve probably re-converged by now.”

“Okay. So all we have to do is defeat a super-powerful music industry mogul, and probably his police chief brother, in order to hijack one of the most profitable companies in the history of civilization, and give it to four long-dead dudes imprisoned inside hologrammatic representations of their former bodies, and in the process delete a life-changing program from the heads of millions of innocent people.”

“Yeah, that’s about the long and short of it,” Jane said. “You guys in?”

“Yes, I’m in,” Himari said. “I won’t like giving the Salieri program up, but you’ve convinced me.”

Zeb smiled at Himari. “Yeah, me too. After all, this is kinda my fault.”

“Only a little,” Himari said, winking. Zeb almost fainted again.

“Awesome,” Jane said, standing up. “It’s getting kinda late for me, so I’m gonna go to bed. But you guys stay up as late as you want. We’ll start planning tomorrow.”

“Okay. Good night,” Himari said, glancing over at Zeb at the other end of the sofa.

Jane stopped in the doorway and turned back around. “Oh, one more function of the Salieri program that I doubt Doc Hodges told you about: because of the wireless MIDI connection, like how I sent you that message, Zeb, you can link two brain chips together and listen to the same piece of music. Could be a fun way to enhance any…activities you get into. Just a thought. Probably won’t get another chance to try it out.”

“Uh, good to know. Thanks,” Zeb said.

Jane smiled and left the room.

Himari slid up next to Zeb, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “So, what are you in the mood for?”

The next morning, Zeb woke up with a clear mind, and not just because he had gotten laid the night before. Now that he had had some time to think, it was easier to recognize how blatantly obvious Captain Skullfucker’s ploy had been. He didn’t even know Zeb’s name until they were already on their way to LA. Zeb walked around pretending not to give a shit about the big labels and the brainwashed zombies they catered to, but a few words spoken by a famous singer had been enough to throw that all out the window. He shuddered to think of how naïve he had been, to think that somebody like Max was interested in him and his art. Jane was right: Zeb had been played for a sucker, tricked into pulling off a plan Max didn’t even respect him enough to tell him about.

But now, he had the chance to fix his mistake, and he was going to take it. Last night, as he and Himari were closing in on each other, he had felt something that he had almost forgotten: the fluttering excitement of stage-fright. He was living in the moment, playing to the beat going on directly in front of him, constantly unsure of his next move. And it was thrilling. What he hadn’t been considering, what the Salieri program had made it almost impossible to consider, was why he played music in the first place. He played music precisely because he didn’t know everything. He often had no idea how a song would go, even after he’d played it hundreds of times. The little fear of fucking up, and the little victory of overcoming that fear--that was the whole game. Starting a fill, perfectly aware that it was beyond his ability, seeing the understanding in his friends’ eyes, as they anticipated just what the hell he was trying, and the inevitable smiles and laughter, whether he succeeded or not, was better than any drug he could get on the streets. Hell, it was better than sex. Almost. He couldn’t wait to get this fucking program out of his head.

Jane brewed up some coffee and they started planning their attack.

“As far as I see it,” she said, “there are three major issues at play here. One: deleting the Salieri program off of the central computer, and wiping it from the brain chips of as many people as we can. Two: destroying the Osiris brothers, by whatever means necessary, short of assassination. And three: usurping control of Tutela Records and giving it back to the dudes who started it. Let’s focus on them one at a time.”

“I’ve been thinking about that first one,” Himari said. “I don’t think we should delete the program outright.”

“No? What’s your idea?”

“I think we should upload some malware to the computer that corrupts the program, but still sends it out with every transaction.”

“Why would we do that?” Zeb asked.

“Well, it’s a lot harder to remotely wipe a person’s brain chip than it is to remotely add something to it. If we delete the program, sure, nobody else will get it, but those who already have it won’t lose it. But if we attach a targeted virus to the transaction, it can worm its way in and destroy the Salieri program for us.”

“That’s smart, Himari,” Jane said. “The only problem is that they’d have to actually do another transaction for that to work.”

“True, which means that we can’t actually destroy the label. We need their infrastructure to unfuck the situation. But if we pull off that third part and actually give the company back to the founders, that’s not a problem at all. We could offer a free promo album, or something, and when people downloaded it, boom! No more Salieri program.”

“I like it. Means we’d have to find someone capable of writing such a virus, but that shouldn’t be too hard.”

“No, probably not. What might be harder is finding someone to actually upload it to the computer.”

“What’s the problem with that?” Zeb asked. “Couldn’t we just load the virus onto my chip, and sneak me in, like before?”

Himari shook her head. “No, probably not. First of all, I doubt my security clearance is still valid, so I probably couldn’t get you into the lab. Also, it’s…possible that you would die in the process.”

“What?”

“Remember how shitty you felt when you hard-jacked in? That’s because the computer is not optimized for human interfacing. It’s only supposed to be done as a last resort. When hard-jacked, the human brain acts as a sort of amplifier, increasing its own power exponentially, like an AC generator capable of supplying light to an entire city block.”

“Yeah, Travis said that was why I had to plug into the central computer. He said that no code would be powerful enough to crack through the encryption if it was sent from far away.”

“Yeah, he’s right about that. What I’m sure he left out was just how ridiculously dangerous that process is. It grabs power from your entire brain and ramps it up to unsustainable levels. It’s very possible that if you had stayed jacked-in for just a few more seconds, your brain would have overloaded and sent shockwaves through your nervous system.”

“Like power-stroking?” Zeb asked.

“Way worse. When you power-stroke, it’s just your pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain that runs the chip. But when you hard-jack, it uses your whole noggin. So, when you stay in for too long, you run the risk of just kinda…melting.”

“Holy fucking shit,” Jane said. “Do you think Max and Travis knew that?”

“I can’t say for sure, but, it sounds like at least Travis knew what he was talking about.”

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Zeb said, leaning forward to put his head in his hands. Himari started rubbing his back, and he felt a little better.

Jane said, “Well, Zeb, even though you did put the Salieri program onto the computer to begin with, I still like you enough to not want you to die.”

Zeb chuckled. “Thanks. Yeah, I don’t wanna die, either.”

“Yes, please live,” Himari said.

“That’s the plan. But, if it’s too dangerous for a person to do, how are we gonna upload the virus to the computer?”

“That’s a good question. I imagine Salieri is optimized for distribution, so it probably loaded faster than some bespoke code from some hacker would. For someone to be able to survive that, they’d have to have incredible control over their bodily systems.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever heard of Cyber-Sangha?”

“No,” Jane said. Zeb shook his head.

Himari continued. “Cyber-Sangha is a Buddhist community devoted to a special type of meditation designed to make them really good at interfacing with computers. Like I said, surviving being jacked-in often requires wildly impressive control over your own body. Like, you have to be able to control your nervous system, in order to mitigate the shock you might experience from power-stroking. Some Cyber-Sangha monks even meditate by power-stroking on purpose, to practice how to counteract the effects. But it usually takes years to develop that kind of control.”

“Cheddar Bob’s boner telekinesis,” Zeb said.

Jane nearly spit out her coffee. “Did you just have an aneurysm? What do those words have to do with each other?”

Zeb laughed. “It’s this guy I met at Doc Hodges’s office. He was explaining what it was like to have three penises, and he--”

“He has three penises?” Himari asked.

“Yeah, but it’s not like you think. He got them to test his willpower. He thought that if he had more dicks, it would be more impressive if he overcame his unrelenting horniness.”

“But does he have three pairs of testicles?”

“No, that’s the thing. He didn’t strike me as the most forward-thinking dude in the world.”

“So why are we talking about him?” Jane asked.

“Well, he was telling me about how he can decide which of his dicks got hard, at any time. He said that erections were like telekinesis, in that you used your thoughts to move blood around your body.”

“That…makes sense, I guess,” Himari said.

“Yeah, I thought so too. I wanted to argue, just out of principle, you know, but I had no argument. He also said that he was trying to figure out how to send blood to other parts of his body, to get a boner, like, in his foot or whatever, so he could do karate. At least I think that was what he was talking about.”

“So, lemme get this straight,” Jane said. “You think this Cheddar Bob might have enough mastery over his body that he could survive the virus upload?”

“Well, yeah.”

“You wanna put our plan in the hands of a three-dicked boner magician?”

“I mean, unless you think we can get one of those cyber-Buddhists.”

“Not likely,” Himari said. “They don’t really come out to play that often, and when they do, it’s for very specific reasons. I don’t think ours applies.”

“So, yes. I’m saying we ask Cheddar Bob.”

Jane laughed. “Fuck it. Why not?”

Zeb found Cheddar Bob about a block away from Doc Hodges’s office, talking to an older couple waiting for a hover-train. They appeared to be politely declining to engage in the conversation, which seemed to Zeb to be a completely rational decision. Cheddar Bob was gesticulating wildly, occasionally pointing aggressively at his crotch. He was wearing the exact same outfit as he had been the other day, but, come to think of it, so was Zeb. Captain Skullfucker hadn’t supplied him with a change of clothes, and everything had happened so quickly since yesterday, he hadn’t even considered purchasing any. He wondered what Cheddar Bob’s excuse was, or if he even needed one.

The hover-train arrived, and the older couple got on it faster than was strictly necessary. Cheddar Bob sighed and sat down on a bench, scanning the horizon for a new person with whom to share his erection stoicism.

“Hey, Cheddar Bob,” Zeb said, sitting down one bench over.

“Oh, hey, Zeb,” Cheddar Bob said, as if they were old friends who had planned this meeting well in advance. “How did the program install go?”

Zeb was honestly touched by this casual remembrance. Cheddar Bob might have been weird, but he was a good dude. “Oh, the install went okay. I’ve had a hell of a time since then.”

Cheddar Bob nodded knowingly, like a sage being informed that one of his pupils had behaved in a wholly predictable manner. “Yeah,” he said.

“Uh, yeah. How are your dicks today?” Zeb asked.

“Not too bad. The black one is acting strange, like it’s kinda puffier than it was yesterday. That usually means it’s about to rain.”

“Uh-huh. Say man, you hungry? Wanna get some breakfast?”

“Sure, I could eat. You buying?”

“You bet. Come on, I gotta transpo pod parked not too far away.”

They went to an old-fashioned diner and sat in a booth towards the back. Cheddar Bob ordered a coffee and some pancakes. Zeb got waffles and a glass of orange juice.

“The endless debate continues” Cheddar Bob said, once the woman taking their order had walked away.

“Uh, what debate?” Zeb said.

“Waffles versus pancakes, obviously.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“See, I always hear people say that waffles are better, because they come with their own little syrup compartments, but I think that’s kinda reductive. The waffle itself is harder, like, more durable, so when you bite into it, you’re more likely to spill syrup and butter on your shirt--or in my case,” he looked down at his bare chest under his denim vest, “my naked belly--like a cup breaking in your hands and whatever was in falling out. But the pancake doesn’t worry about keeping things separate. It lets the syrup and butter inside its body, making them a part of the larger pancake, so that when you eat it, you’re also getting them. Each one makes the other better, because pancakes aren’t really worth eating if you don’t drench them in syrup. It’s a symbiotic relationship, like Venom and the alien goo he’s covered in.”

“Venom?” Zeb asked.

“Yeah, you know, from Spider-Man.”

The woman brought them their food and left again.

“Oh, yeah, right. Hey, Cheddar Bob, is it cool if some friends of mine join us?”

Cheddar Bob shoved a substantial load of pancake into his mouth, then said, “Yeah, sure, cool with me.”

“Cool, ‘cause they’re already here.” Zeb waved over to Himari, who was sitting at the diner bar, eating a piece of apple pie for breakfast. She pressed a finger to her temple and said something, and Jane Necrophage walked inside. A few people recognized her, but no one built up the courage to say anything. Himari came to the booth and sat down next to Zeb, and Jane hovered at the table, looking at Cheddar Bob. Cheddar Bob scooted over without saying a word, and Jane sat down next to him. He looked at the two women for a moment, then closed his eyes and took in a huge breath of air, holding it in for a few seconds before exhaling slowly. He tried opening his eyes, but then had to close them again and repeat the entire process.

“What’s he doing?” Himari whispered in Zeb’s ear.

“I think he’s letting it wash over him,” Zeb responded.

“Letting what wash over him?”

“Remember what I told you, about his--”

“Oh, yeah.”

Finally, Cheddar Bob opened his eyes and shrugged, as if he was just as curious about his actions as his new friends. “Hello,” he said, shoveling another forkful into his gullet, “I’m Cheddar Bob.”

Himari smiled. “Hi, Cheddar Bob, my name is Himari, and this is Jane.”

“Hello.” Cheddar Bob gave no indication he knew Jane was a famous drummer, but Zeb thought he seemed like a guy who wouldn’t let something like that affect his behavior.

“Why do they call you Cheddar Bob?” Jane asked.

“You know, I don’t remember. People just kinda started calling me that, and it stuck. My real name’s Craig.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, weird, isn’t it? I get people I’ve never met before coming up to me, being like, ‘hey, Cheddar Bob, how’s it hangin’?’ and stuff. The universe is a bizarre place, man.”

“Ain’t that the truth, brother,” Jane said. “So, my friend Zeb here tells me you have three dicks?”

“Yeah. Wanna see ‘em?”

“Not right now, but maybe later. Simply out of curiosity, you understand.”

Cheddar Bob nodded. “Yeah, of course. You don’t have to worry about anything pervy from me. I don’t do stuff like that anymore.”

“How did you get over it?” Himari asked.

“Well, you see, it’s not really something I’m over. It’s like when you hear people talking about how they used to be addicted to drugs, or something, and they say that they’re still like that, but they’ve figured out how to live without doing anything about it. That’s what my deal is, only instead of drugs, it’s being a sex-obsessed degenerate.”

“Interesting. Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

“How long has it been?”

Cheddar Bob’s eyes lit up. “Wow! Not a lot of people ask me that, Himari. You’re cool. It’s been four years, one month, and twenty-nine days.”

“Good for you. You should be proud of yourself.”

“Thank you. I am.”

Zeb said, “So, is that when you got Doc Hodges to give you your extra dongs? Four years ago?”

“Naw, that was more recently, after I had already gotten pretty good at stoicism.”

“Yeah, about that,” Jane said. “It seems like in order to live life the way you do, it would take remarkable control over your own body.”

“I guess so,” Cheddar Bob said. “I mean, I’ve always thought it was kinda weird that people like to get up in everybody else’s business, but they don’t pay attention to what they’re workin’ with, you know? Of course, back in the day, four years ago, I was the same way. But now I see it more like I can pay attention to my body, instead of controlling it.”

Himari said, “Now, don’t sell yourself short, Cheddar Bob. Not everyone is capable of even that. I think that paying attention might be its own sort of method of control. I mean, your French-braid boner trick alone is pretty impressive.”

Cheddar Bob smiled. “Oh, did Zeb tell you about that?”

“Yes, I did,” Zeb said. “I hope that was okay?”

“Sure! People sometimes get turned off when I talk about it, because it involves my genitalia, but I’m still pretty proud of it.”

“How does it work?” Jane asked.

“I’m not entirely sure. Basically, I just focus real hard on where I want the blood to go, and it goes there. The real difficult part is not thinking about other stuff while I’m doing it, but after you practice for a while, I think anybody could do it.”

“Do you think you could do it with things other than blood?”

“Like what?”

“Like the electricity coursing through your nervous system?”

“Uh, I don’t see why not. Does it flow through my body the same way?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Himari said. “Just, like, a lot faster.”

“Then yeah, probably. I’m pretty sure the big thing is getting in the right state of mind. After that, I don’t think it really matters what I’m moving around.”

“Cool. And you could probably monitor it on your brain chip, so you have a better idea of what’s going on, right?”

“Oh, I don’t have a brain chip,” Cheddar Bob said.

“You don’t?”

“Naw. Those things are expensive.”

“More expensive than extra penises?” Zeb asked.

Cheddar Bob laughed. “No, not that bad. But I’ve only paid for one of my dicks. Doc Hodges is kinda in my family, so he did the second one before I could pay him. I think he’s pretty upset that I still haven’t, but I just don’t have the money.”

“Do you have anything against getting a brain chip?” Jane asked. “It could help you with your stoicism.”

“No, chips are cool. I got no problem with them. Just can’t afford it.”

“What if I bought you one?”

Cheddar Bob almost choked on his pancakes. “What? Why would you do that?”

“Well, we’ve got a little job for you, Cheddar Bob, but I think you would need a chip in order to do it.”

“But chips are like three thousand dollars.”

“I’m a millionaire.”

“Oh. Right on, Jane.”

“Yeah, man. I’ll even pay off your second wiener, too, because I think it would be best if we got Doc Hodges to do the installation.”

“You do?” Himari said. “Why? It seems to me like the doctor was in on it with Max.”

Jane shook her head. “I don’t think he fully understands the implications of the program. Zeb, when you were there, was he wearing a Black Sabbath t-shirt?”

“Grateful Dead,” Zeb said.

“Okay, even better. He’s a music lover. I’m sure he thought he was doing a good deed by handing out the Salieri program, but if we explain it to him, he’ll realize how wrong he was.”

Cheddar Bob clapped his hands once for emphasis and said, “Okay, great! I’m in.”

“We haven’t even told you what you’d be doing,” Zeb said, laughing.

“I trust you guys. I won’t have to kill anyone, will I? I’m not really cool with violence.”

“No, you won’t have to kill anyone. You’ll just have to hard-jack into a fancy computer.”

“Oh, yeah, I’ve heard about stuff like that. They say it kinda messes you up if you stay in for too long. Is that why you need me? Because you think I can survive it?”

“Uh, yeah,” Himari said. “We don’t wanna put you in danger, but I don’t think any of us are up to it.”

Cheddar Bob waved his hand dismissively. “Naw, it’s cool. I get a free chip, you pay off my debt to Doc Hodges, and I get a chance to test out my Magneto powers? Sounds pretty sweet. When do we start?”

Jane said, “What are you doing right now?”

“Nothing.”

They paid the check and left. They piled into Jane’s transpo pod just as it started to rain.

The nurse instinctively started shooing Cheddar Bob away the second he walked into Doc Hodge’s office. Jane stepped in to mediate the situation, explaining that she was going to pay Cheddar Bob’s outstanding bill, and that she needed to speak to the doctor as soon as possible.

“Well, he never schedules any appointments between one and two,” the nurse said, eyeing Jane with skepticism, “but that’s because that’s his private time.”

“Well, that’s perfect, because I’m sure he’ll want to keep this conversation between us.”

“I don’t know…”

“Tell him Jane Necrophage is here.”

The nurse walked back into the clinic, returning a minute later and beckoning them to follow.

Doc Hodges was clearly confused, but he did a good job of keeping his cool. He led the group to his private office and sat down behind his desk. Jane took a seat facing him, while Zeb, Himari, and Cheddar Bob lurked in the corner.

“So, Jane. What’s going on? You were supposed to come back two weeks after your last visit for a check-up.”

“Yeah, I kinda went dark after you put that thing in my head, Doc.”

“Thing? You mean the Salieri program? I can’t help but notice that Mr. Nite is here with you, as well, along with Craig, though I haven’t met you before.”

“Hi, I’m Himari,” Himari said. “I’m just, like, helping out.”

“Hello. It’s nice to meet you. But…what exactly are you helping with? And why did you guys pay off Craig’s debt? Not that I’m complaining, of course, but….”

“That program fucked us up, Doc,” Jane said. She held her hands up before he could interrupt. “Not in any medical way. We’re both fine. You did a great job. But that’s kinda the problem.”

It took a little while, but eventually they were able to convince Doc Hodges that what he had been doing would actually have a negative effect on music, both as an industry and as an art. He didn’t play music himself, so he couldn’t understand, at first, why perfect musical knowledge could possibly be a bad thing. It was Zeb who finally won him over.

“Look, man. What if that dude from Black Sabbath…what was his name?”

“Ozzy?” All four other people in the room said at once.

“No, not Ozzy. The guitar player.”

“Oh, uh…Tommy Iommi,” Doc Hodges said.

“Yeah, right. You know how he lost the tip off one of his fingers? Like in an industrial accident, or whatever?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, when that happened, he had to change things around just so he could still play. He fucked around with tuning, got some different strings, and ran his guitar through his amp in a different way. And from that, he developed his sound. What if he had gotten his fingertips replaced with like, robotic ones, or something? There would be no Black Sabbath. Actually, you could also say that about the Grateful Dead, right? Didn’t that guy get one of his fingers chopped off, too?”

“Yes, he did. And I’m sure it changed how he played.”

“Yeah, how could it not? This Salieri program is like taking that away from them. It makes it so that you don’t have to experiment to find your own voice.”

Doc Hodges sighed and pressed his finger to his temple. “Yeah, Jess? Cancel the rest of my appointments for the day. Thanks.” He looked to Zeb. “Okay, that did it.”

Doc Hodges had a hookup for discount chips. He was pretty confident he could get his hands on a Phantom Industries 4D, like the one Zeb had, for half off. But it would take a few hours. In the meantime, he got in touch with a code monkey he knew and sent them over a copy of the Salieri program, so they could write a virus that would corrupt it. That too would take some time, but not as much as Zeb had thought.

“Yeah, lots of this stuff is built on pre-existing code architecture, so all they have to do is modify and replace certain bits of language to fit whatever program you wanna frack. Might take a little extra tweaking to get it to attach itself as part of the transfer process when a customer makes a transaction, but SoyBoy69420 should be able to handle that, no problem.”

“SoyBoy69420?” Zeb asked. “What, is he a fourteen-year-old internet troll?”

“Maybe. Who knows? Could be The Queen of England. My guess is that the name is a form of encryption, meant to throw you off, as opposed to a glimpse of their personality.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

They left Doc Hodges at his office and went back to Jane’s place to put the final touches on their plan. At about nine o’ clock in the evening, they returned to the clinic for Cheddar Bob’s procedure.

“Is it gonna hurt?” Cheddar Bob asked, as he leaned back in the reclining operating chair.

“Do you remember either one of you penile implantations?” Doc Hodges replied.

“Yeah. They were pretty fucking excruciating.”

“This will feel like taking a bubble bath, compared to those, though it will kinda feel like you pulled a muscle in your neck, for the next couple days. But nothing too bad.”

“Don’t worry, Cheddar Bob,” Himari said. “I only got my chip a year or so ago. It’s more weird than painful.”

“Okay, cool. Let’s do it, Doc!”

The procedure only took a few minutes, but Cheddar Bob still had to be knocked out, so that his body wouldn’t reject the addition of a silicon chip to his nervous system. As the patient was slowly fading away, Jane motioned for Doc Hodges to speak with her in private, at the other end of the room.

“After you finish with him, I’m gonna need you to do something for Zeb, too.”

Whereas last time he had just waved Zeb on by, now the smg-toting guard held up his hand and demanded that the transpo pod stop right where it was. Zeb stuck his arms out the window to show he wasn’t a threat, but the guard raised his gun halfway and approached the pod with caution. Either they had been waiting for Zeb’s return, or they had simply battened down the hatches following the security breach of the other day.

“Step out of the pod,” the guard said. Zeb obliged.

“My name is--”

“I know who the fuck you are,” the guard said. “On your knees. Now.”

Kneeling down, Zeb said, “Look, I’m not here to do anything. I just came to talk.”

“Put your hands behind your head. You can talk to whoever you want, once I get you inside.”

“Okay.”

The guard cuffed Zeb’s wrists together and dragged him back to his feet. This time, instead of continuing down the winding drive to the parking garage, they walked back towards the front gate, to the security hut. Once inside, the guard pressed a series of buttons on a desk console, and part of the floor began sliding away, to reveal a set of concrete stairs leading down into a dark room. A dungeon, Zeb thought. They’re taking me to a dungeon.

Not quite. The concrete stairs descended into a maintenance corridor, not unlike the one at the top of the building, just outside of the founders’ living quarters. Zeb had lost all sense of direction, so he couldn’t tell, as he and the guard walked silently down the tunnel, whether they were headed to the building, or back out into the street. With everything he had learned about Tutela Records in the past few days, he wouldn’t have been shocked to learn that they had purchased some out-of-the-way building for the purposes of interrogation, imprisonment, torture, or execution. It wasn’t until they reached an elevator that the guard said, “My orders are to take you to the fourteenth floor.”

“Isn’t that just offices and stuff?” Zeb asked, remembering what Himari had told him prior to his tour. The guard just laughed.

It was, for lack of a better word, a gulag: all concrete and exposed metal pipes, rooms with doors of reinforced steel, and very little else. Behind each door was a cell, visible through a tiny bulletproof window built into the wall. Except instead of the cots and lidless toilets one would expect, each cell had a plastic chair and a music stand, and instead of the acoustically chaotic concrete of the main structure, the cells had carpeting on all four walls, and large foam squares installed every few feet. This wasn’t some CIA-style blacksite. It was a suite of practice rooms. At least, that was what they had been designed to be. Because, a few doors down from the elevator, Zeb looked into a room and saw Max, Captain Skullfucker, sitting in the corner of one of these rooms, very much a prisoner. Max looked up just in time and yelled something, but Zeb couldn’t hear what he was saying. Of course, practice rooms were soundproof.

Earlier, as they were running through the plan one final time, Cheddar Bob had asked them what they had against Felix Osiris. He had never heard of the man, or his brother.

“They’re corpo-fascist assholes,” Jane had said. This answer seemed to satisfy Cheddar Bob.

But Himari had more to say. “It’s not just that. There are a lot of capitalist pricks that need to be taken down, but I’m not necessarily prepared to do anything about it. But the Osiris brothers are poison. They infect and pervert everything they touch.”

Now, Zeb could see just how right she had been. Felix Osiris had found a way to turn even the notion of artistic advancement into something insidious. He had to be stopped.

The guard took Zeb to the practice room on the other end of the gulag. He pressed his finger to his temple, and the door swung open. Zeb tried to say something, but the guard just shoved him inside and slammed the door.

Zeb sat down on the plastic chair. “So far, so good,” he whispered. “How does it look over there?”

“Well, we can hear you,” Jane said, “so obviously Doc Hodges’s digital cloak is working just fine. Unless they’ve already cracked the encryption and are listening in on this conversation. But that doesn’t appear to be the case.”

“Thank you, Soyboy69420.”

Himari laughed. “Yeah, for sure. Say, Zeb, did they give you any indication of how long before you get to talk to someone? Cheddar Bob and I are just circling the skies around Tutela HQ, waiting for that security clearance.”

“Not yet. I hope it’s soon. They’ve locked me in a practice room. There’s no bed or anything, so I imagine they’re not gonna keep me in here too long.” For some reason, Zeb didn’t want to tell them about Max. It sure looked like he had been locked up in his cell since the upload, but there was nothing anyone could do to hurry the process along. This was a hastily-planned operation, and so they had had no choice but to leave some things to chance.

“Well, keep us posted as best you can,” Jane said. “Other than that, I’d recommend us staying off the channel. But don’t forget to flip it back on when you’re supposed to.”

“Yeah, okay,” Zeb said. “Uh, bye.”

“Good luck,” Jane said.

“You’ll do great, sweetie,” Himari said.

“Yeah, darlin’ I believe in you,” Cheddar Bob said.

Zeb laughed and tried to get comfortable.

A little while later (Zeb was uncertain just how much time had passed) the door opened and the guard motioned for him to follow.

“Where are we going?” Zeb asked.

“You said you wanted to talk to someone,” the guard replied. “Word came down from Mr. Osiris himself that you’re only to speak with him. No one’s even sure exactly what you did up there.”

Zeb had to look down at the floor to avoid laughing in the guard’s face. Jane had told him things would transpire like this, but a part of him had remained skeptical until this moment. Whether the plan worked was still very much up in the air, but at least Zeb would get a chance to try.

Felix Osiris’s office was just beneath them, on the thirteenth floor. As Zeb exited the elevator, he was momentarily confused by the space around him. This entire section of the building had been covered in a projection screen, so that the floor, walls, and ceiling could be transformed into whatever environment Felix Osiris desired. It reminded Zeb of the holodeck from Star Trek, only vastly more sophisticated. At the moment, it was programmed to look like the top of Mount Olympus, complete with the sweeping Mediterranean landscape beneath their feet. Even on a good day, heading straight from an elevator and into the sky above a mythical, ancient Greece was a good way to get a wicked case of vertigo, and this wasn’t a good day. Zeb stumbled to the floor in fear and had to be coaxed back up by the guard. Everywhere they stepped, the image of a stone walkway appeared beneath their feet, so that even in the perfectly safe environment of Tutela Headquarters, they could still pretend to be on solid footing. Sufficiently embarrassed, Zeb eventually remembered where he was, and was able to make it to the center of the room.

The head of Tutela Records was sitting in a huge marble throne centered between two massive alabaster statues, one of him, and one of his brother, LAPD Chief River Osiris. Zeb couldn’t tell if these were real statues or part of the intricate projection of the rest of the room. It didn’t matter; the point was obvious.

There was a large pillow on the floor, about ten feet in front of the throne. Felix Osiris made an oblique gesture, and the guard shoved Zeb down atop it.

“Thank you,” Felix Osiris said to the guard. “Now get out.”

It looked like the guard wanted to say something, but he thought better of it. He turned and left. Felix Osiris stared silently down at Zeb.

Inside Zeb’s head, he heard Himari whisper, ”To initiate the siege, you have to close your left eye for three seconds. But don’t just do it. He’ll know something’s up.”

Zeb very nearly responded out loud. He looked up at Felix Osiris and gulped.

“Zebulon Nite,” Felix Osiris finally said. His voice was surprisingly deep and incredibly loud. Zeb assumed it was being enhanced and amplified by the building’s sound system. “Let me get this straight. You play a show in Dallas, and less than an hour later, you’re hanging out with Captain Skullfucker, who tells you you’re going to play on his new album. Then he feeds you an obvious lie and tricks you into acting as a Trojan horse to take me down. Then, when you get away with that, you voluntarily return to my domain, to confess your crimes? Do I have that right?”

Domain? Zeb thought. What an asshole. “Uh, yeah, that’s pretty much it.”

“Well, then, Mr. Nite, I’m afraid I have some bad news. You’re an idiot.”

Zeb couldn’t remember if he had to only close his left eye, or if he could close them both at the same time. He took a deep breath and looked down at the floor, closing his eyes as if hurt by what Felix Osiris had said. Three seconds later, he looked up, hoping that the siege program would kick on.

Nothing happened.

“Well,” Felix Osiris said, “you wanted to talk. Let’s talk.”

Zeb cleared his throat. “Okay. Um, first of all, like you said, I was tricked. I didn’t know what I was doing. I thought the Salieri program was just like a gift from Max, or something, so I could play better. I didn’t know I was going to upload it to the computer.”

“No, you just thought we had killed one of our artists, and you wanted to get evidence of that crime, in order to destroy me, and probably my brother as well. This is not a valid line of defense.”

“I didn’t think anything. Max and Travis told me this story about Jane, and I just wanted to see if it was true. I’m not entirely sure I believed it.”

“You believed it enough to breach my security. To take it upon yourself to look into my business. I don’t appreciate when the talent get ideas concerning how to run the label. You hippies need to know your place.”

“You gotta start the ball rolling, babe,” Himari said. “We can’t circle the building for much longer.”

“You’re right,” Zeb said. “I fucked up. But that’s why I’m here. I wanna make things right.”

“And how exactly do you plan on doing that? We can’t even find the program’s source code in the computer. It’s covered with so much encryption we can’t differentiate it from the stuff that’s supposed to be in there. Don’t tell me you’re enough of a console cowboy to unfuck something that has eluded the LAPD’s cyber division.”

“Of course he involved River,” Jane said in Zeb’s head.

“Shit,” Himari said.

“No, that’s good. We need to take them both anyway. Zeb, seriously, initiate the siege program.”

“What are you doing?” Felix Osiris asked. “It looks like you’re listening to someone.”

“What? No, I…”

“Guard!”

The elevator door opened, and the guard re-emerged. “Yes, sir?”

“Tell me you scanned his head before you let him in my office.”

“Of course. He came up clean.”

Felix Osiris rose from his throne and approached Zeb. “Well, something’s going on. Take him outta here and give him a hard scan.”

“But sir, that could kill him.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Okay, sir, if that’s what you want.”

“Zeb, if you let them take you away, you will die. Do it NOW!” Jane yelled.

“Oh, fuck it,” Zeb said. He closed his left eye for three seconds. He looked back up at Felix Osiris, and now he saw the words SIEGE INITIAING. TWENTY SECONDS TO COMPLETION.

The guard grabbed Zeb by the shoulders and yanked him up.

“Go floppy, Zeb!” Cheddar Bob yelled inside Zeb’s head.

“What?”

“Go floppy! Like Gandhi!”

“Oh, right.” Zeb relaxed his entire body, making himself that much harder to move.

“Oh, Come on, man!” the guard said. “Don’t be obnoxious.”

“No, be obnoxious,” Himari said, “for like twelve more seconds. Don’t let them take you.”

“I’m doin’ my best here,” Zeb said.

“Who are you talking to?” Felix Osiris boomed. “What’s going on?”

Zeb, deciding to diversify his tactics, began flailing around like a toddler throwing a tantrum. He accidentally kicked the guard in the groin, and very nearly apologized. The two men struggled for a few seconds, before the guard let go of Zeb and raised his gun.

“Okay, enough of that! Get off your ass, and make your way out that door.”

“How much time do I have?” Zeb asked.

“Not long, if you don’t start behaving,” the guard said.

Zeb held up his finger. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Three, two, one,” Jane said.

The words SIEGE SUCCESSFUL. WELCOME. popped up in Zeb’s field of vision. The guard lowered his gun. Felix Osiris stopped where he stood and stared blankly at the ceiling. The cuffs around Zeb’s wrists released and fell to the ground.

“You good, Himari?” Jane said, in Zeb’s head.

“Yep. Ready?”

“Ready. Making the transaction…now.”

The guard and Felix Osiris both looked like they wanted to scream, but when they opened their mouths, nothing came out except for a faint whine.

“What exactly are you doing to them, again?” Zeb asked.

“Soyboy’s program turned your brain into something like a wifi hotspot, letting Jane and myself initiate contact with your two friends here. When their chips automatically tried to establish a link with you, we were able to kinda sneak into their brains. We shut down the parts of their brains that make them, like, talk, and move, and stuff.”

“Oh. That’s kinda unsettling.”

Jane said, “Don’t worry. They’re not gonna get hurt. In fact, I’d say their security measures are about to kick in any second now. Which is why we took the opportunity to use their chips to buy this piece of music from Tutela Records.”

“Wouldn’t that give them the Salieri program?” Zeb asked.

“Yep,” Himari said. “And my guy has just finished installing it. Jane?”

“Uh…just a sec. Okay. Got it,” Jane said.

“Great. Initiating playback in analysis mode…now.”

The guard and Felix Osiris both fell to the floor and began convulsing. At the same time, the lush landscape of ancient Greece disappeared and the room was turned into an off-white cube emitting a subtle blue glow.

“Jesus Christ! What’s happening to them?” Zeb asked.

“We went over all of this,” Jane said.

“Yeah, but, like, holy shit.”

“Walk and talk, babe,” Himari said. “Felix’s office is just on the other side of the room you’re in. You need to get in there and access his console. Cheddar Bob and I are just landing now. When you’re done down there, meet us up in the computer lab on the top floor.”

“Okay,” Zeb said, heading in the direction of a barely visible door on the opposite side of the room from the elevator. “How much time did you say I had?”

“Four minutes and thirty-three seconds from when playback started,” Jane said. “Better call it four minutes, now.”

“Right. On my way.” He pushed the door open and found himself in a slightly smaller room with an enormous tinted glass window overlooking a courtyard, thirteen floors below. There was a desk by the window, and Zeb hurried over to it and sat down in the gargantuan leather chair.

“Okay, so what am I supposed to do?” He waved his hands over the surface of the desk, and a screen turned itself on and lifted itself up at an angle. “Oh, nevermind.”

“Just hang out there for about a minute or so,” Himari said. “The siege is cloning the contents of the console and storing it in your brain. You’re about to have potentially trillions of dollars’ worth of secrets in your head, honey.”

“Remind me to give Soyboy69420 a five-star review, or whatever,” Zeb said. “This is really impressive.”

“It’s something of a deus ex machina,” Cheddar Bob said.

Jane laughed. “Yeah, it is, isn’t it? I wonder who they really are.”

“I think it’s the doctor.”

Himari said, “Wow, Cheddar Bob. You really think so?”

“Yeah. Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but my stepmom told me that Doc Hodges was like this big underground hacker dude, when he’s not at work.”

“Well, that makes sense,” Zeb said, “considering what he’s able to do. I’m just glad he’s on our side.”

“Okay, we’re in the computer lab,” Himari said. “Whenever you’re ready, meet us up here. Let me know when you’re outside the elevator, I have to use my key to let you in.”

“Got it. Uh, good luck, Cheddar Bob.”

“No sweat. We got this. See you in a few.”

Zeb had to walk back through the holodeck to get on the elevator to the top of the building. Felix Osiris and the guard were still convulsing on the floor, eyes wide open, mouths silently screaming in horror.

“Are you sure we’re not killing them?” Zeb asked.

“No, Zeb, we’re not killing them,” Jane said. “We told you.”

“Yeah, but you can’t see what I’m seeing. They look like they’re dying.”

“Your concern for your fellow man, even a piece of shit like Felix there, is admirable, but I promise you no harm is being done to them. When Himari and I gained remote access to their brains, we bought this piece of music by this dude named John Cage. It’s just four and a half minutes of silence.”

Zeb stepped into the elevator. “Yeah, you told me that. I’m just still confused about what’s happening to them.”

Jane sighed. “There are tons of recordings out there, but most of them are live recordings of a person ‘performing’ it. That means that it’s not completely silent. Sometimes you can hear people coughing or sneezing in the audience. But the version we wormed into those dudes’ heads is literally just nothing. It’s not a live recording at all, just four minutes and thirty-three seconds of digital emptiness. We linked their chips together, like what you and Himari did, and played it, telling the Salieri program to analyze the music. Since there’s nothing to analyze, the Salieri program started desperately searching for music wherever it could find it, so (and we’re just kinda guessing here) now it’s trying to make sense out of the tiny, usually inaudible noises generated inside the human body. This is probably too much for the program to handle, so they’re just glitching out for the duration of the song.”

“Won’t that stroke their chips?”

“With the high-end protections these guys have? Doubtful.”

“How did you know that would work?” Zeb asked.

“Uh.…I didn’t.”

“What?”

“Not really. But you’ve seen how the program counts your pulse. It’s obviously listening to your body. Honestly, I just figured that it would be really disorienting for them, having never experienced the program before, and you’d have the chance to run away. I wasn’t exactly expecting them to go all epileptic on us. But I’m sure they’ll be fine. Himari, how’s it going? Is Cheddar Bob ready for round two?”

“Almost. Zeb, go ahead and start sending him the contents of Felix Osiris’s console, whatever it is. By the time he’s got it all, he should be ready to send it out.”

“Cool,” Zeb said. He pressed his temple and began the file transfer. It was a enormous amount of data, but Zeb’s ultra-fancy chip had compressed it to a manageable size. Assuming he lived through the next few minutes, he was excited to see what else a fully-utilized Phantom Industries 4D could do.

The elevator came to a stop on floor one hundred and sixteen. Zeb stepped out into the long corridor and headed for the founders’ living space. Before he got there, the door flew open, and one of the founders, EL, came racing out to greet him.

“Zeb! What the fuck’s going on? There’s some dude in the computer lab, doing something. And I think we saw Himari in there with him.”

“Yeah. His name’s Cheddar Bob.” Zeb led EL back into the fake house and found the other three hologrammatic friends standing anxiously in the kitchen, looking up Into the glass structure above them. They noticed Zeb, but didn’t acknowledge him.

“Okay,” EL said, “Cheddar Bob, what exactly is he doing?”

“Well,” Zeb said, “remember the other day, when I was here, and I hard-jacked into the computer?”

“Yeah,” AK said, “it made us go cloudy. Gave me a headache.”

“Yeah, sorry. I didn’t know that was gonna happen. Anyway, I fucked up when I did that, and now I’m back to fix it. I gotta go up there with them, but I came here to let you know what’s going on. Don’t get your hopes up just yet, but we’re trying to take down the Osiris brothers.”

“Fuck yes!” KB said.

“What, you gonna kill ‘em?” MJ asked.

“Uh, no,” Zeb responded, tapping his head. “But I just got all the shit off of Felix’s personal console in his office. I’ve only been able to scan a couple things, but already I can see there’s plenty of criminal evidence. We’re gonna send it out as a free gift to all Tutela customers, then, when we’re done here, we’re gonna give it to every journalist we can think of, and spread it out on social media.”

“Hell yeah,” EL said. “Expose those fuckers.”

“We’ve got this really powerful hacker on our team. About four minutes ago, he received all of Felix Osiris’s security credentials. He’s already forging documents and stuff, using Felix’s authority to name you guys as the heads of Tutela Records, if anything were to happen to him. Our hope is that during whatever investigation takes place, someone will find those documents, and you guys will get your label back.”

“Woah,” KB said. “I don’t know what to say.”

Zeb turned and headed back to the corridor. “Don’t say anything yet. We still have to pull this off.”

In the maintenance corridor, Zeb found Himari pacing back and forth by the elevator door.

“Hey, how’s he doing?”

“I don’t know, Zeb,” Himari said, running over to give him a hug. “There was a sort of weird jolt that happened when he first connected, but since then he’s just been kinda zoning out.”

They went upstairs. Himari motioned over to Cheddar Bob, who, if not for the rapid-fire flickering of his eyes, would appear to be meditating. “That wasn’t happening to you, when you tried this.”

“No, I collapsed to the floor in pain,” Zeb said. “He looks like he’s handling it okay, though.”

“Yeah, but we have no way of knowing whether he really is or not. He could be dying, and we wouldn’t be able to tell.”

Zeb wanted to reassure her that Cheddar Bob would be alright, but he couldn’t. If their companion had been stroking out, it very well could have looked something like this. All they could do was wait until the upload was complete.

Himari said, “Did you transfer all of Felix’s files to him?”

Zeb nodded. “Yeah, it said he got them. I hope this doesn’t take--”

Cheddar Bob let out an intense, deep groan. Zeb and Himari both jumped in terror. Himari ran over to the console.

“Uh…Cheddar Bob? Are you okay?”

Cheddar Bob cleared his throat and turned around in his seat. Noticing Zeb for the first time, he smiled. “Oh, hey, Zeb. How’d your thing go, man?”

Zeb said, “Uh, fine. How about you? What was that noise you just made?”

“Well, the computer tried to stroke me, but I was able to keep it from doing that. While the stuff uploaded, I kinda thought about the way I move blood around, you know, for my boner trick? I pictured that I was sending all that energy to my dicks, and I guess thinking about my dicks made them think they were a part of this, or whatever, because they all got super hard at once. Like harder than they’d ever been before, and, well, this is kinda embarrassing, but…uh, I came in my basketball shorts.” Cheddar Bob blushed and looked down at his lap.

“Don’t worry about it, man,” Zeb said. “I’d rather do that than die, any day.”

“Yeah, that’s true. Anyway, are we done? Can we get outta here?”

“Yeah, looks like it,” Himari said, expertly avoiding giving any indication she had even heard about Cheddar Bob’s predicament. “The virus is uploaded, all the incriminating files are being sent out to the people, and Felix Osiris hasn’t even called security on us yet. I don’t wanna speak too soon, but it looks like we won.”

“Fuck yeah.”

Just then, the glass walls of the computer lab began to rumble. It was subtle at first, but it intensified quickly, and soon it felt like the entire building was shaking. It stopped after a few seconds, but then started up again shortly after, this time accompanied by a loud booming noise coming from just outside. Something was happening.

The lights turned off, and were replaced by the same backup lights that had switched on the last time Zeb had been in this room.

“Holy shit!” Jane yelled, in all of their heads at once. “Get the fuck outta there!”

“What’s going on?” Himari asked.

“I don’t know, but from where we are, it looks like the whole complex is going up in flames.” She and Doc Hodges had taken a bird’s eye view of Tutela Headquarters, circling high above the city in the doctor’s transpo pod.

Zeb looked down into the founders’ house, and once again he saw the four men evaporate into clouds of flying robots.

“We gotta go save them!” he yelled, barging through the elevator door. Himari tried to stop him, but she couldn’t make it to him in time.

Downstairs, the rumbling was even more violent. Whatever shock-absorbing technology kept the computer lab relatively stable during earthquakes had clearly not been applied to the rest of the building. Sirens were going off, and the emergency backup lights were not bright enough to see more than a few feet in front of his face, but still he ran frantically through the fake house, trying to find and rescue the four founders of Tutela Records.

Someone grabbed him from behind, and he spun, expecting to see either the founders, or a security guard. It was Himari. Bits of the wall were starting to come loose and fall to the floor around them, but she stood there with zen-like calm, a look of sad worry on her face.

“You’re not gonna be able to help them, sweetie,” she said. “When this happens, their constituent bots fly in all different directions, to be collected at various nest sites placed in the ceiling. There’s nobody left for you to save.”

Hearing this, Zeb glanced anxiously up to the ceiling, trying to identify these nests she was talking about. There were lots of technological-looking things on the wall--fuse boxes, pipes, power lines--but they were already falling apart, crashing down and breaking into thousands of tiny little pieces. She was right. There was nothing he could do.

They scrambled back into the maintenance corridor and took the elevator up to the roof. Cheddar Bob was waiting for them by Jane’s pod, looking uncharacteristically un-mellow. He was gazing out over the vast city-state of Tutela Plaza beneath them. Several buildings had exploded, and several more were on fire--including the central skyscraper they were currently perched atop. As they flew away, something inside the building ignited, and glass and concrete were spit out hundreds of feet in every direction, and a massive fireball shot up to the sky like a mushroom cloud. Their transpo pod was rocked to the side briefly, but it quickly righted itself, and the three were able to escape, just as the robotic firebusters arrived on the scene.

Zeb returned to Dallas believing he and his new friends had somehow been responsible for the destruction of Tutela Plaza. Himari had wanted him to stay in LA, but if they came for him, he at least wanted a chance to say goodbye to his family and friends back home. They stayed in touch, promising to tell each other if any heat started coming down.

Only it never did. Days passed, then weeks, then months, until eventually it was clear that if they had indeed been to blame for the attack, they were going to get away with it. Thanks to the robust system of tunnels underneath the complex, most Tutela employees were able to escape with their lives, but still, seven people died, including Felix Osiris, the smg-toting guard, and, to Zeb’s horror, Max. Captain Skullfucker’s body had been found in the wreckage. Except it wasn’t where anyone had expected to find it. When Zeb had last seen Max, he had been locked up in the practice room gulag, barricaded behind the steel-reinforced door. Of course, Himari had unlocked every door in the entire plaza when she got a hold of Felix Osiris’s security credentials, so Max would have been let out of his cell just as she and Cheddar Bob were landing on the roof. It wasn’t any surprise he had made it off of the fourteenth floor.

What was surprising was where exactly he had been, when the complex fell. His charred corpse had been discovered twenty feet underground, in the exact center of the plaza. It appeared he had been hard-jacked into a terminal that controlled Tutela’s independent power plant. It would be another few months until anyone understood why.

In that time, lots of things happened, but most of it seemed to involve Zeb only tangentially. River Osiris promised to devote the full naked power of the LAPD to learning who had killed his brother and blown up five square blocks of prime downtown real estate, but he never got the chance. There had only been about forty-five seconds between Cheddar Bob completing the virus upload and the whole place coming down, but that was still enough time for thousands of people to open a transaction and claim their free gift. The virus worked, and any remnants of the Salieri program were deleted from their brains, but that was mostly overshadowed by the multiple terabytes of incriminating evidence they got in return. Zeb had hit the mother-lode when he cloned Felix Osiris’s personal console. There were tens of thousands of documents and bank statements betraying a history of financial crimes dating back almost half a century, to before Felix had even purchased Tutela Records, in the wake of the final founder’s death. Most of them were hidden behind numbered accounts and pseudonyms, but eventually investigators found enough to convict both Osiris brothers a hundred times over.

But that wasn’t what turned the tide for River Osiris. Hidden among the pages and pages of boring financial mumbo-jumbo was a video. It was a feed, streamed directly from an LAPD SWAT officer, of what was very clearly a premeditated murder. It was the killing of Lil’ Ouija. The whole thing had been recorded, and the entire time, River Osiris himself had been in direct contact with the officers. No one was sure why Felix had kept a copy of such a damning video, but it would turn out to be his brother’s downfall. River was indicted, convicted, and sentenced to life in the newly-built super-max prison on the Moon. All the officers in the video shared the same fate, and Lil’ Ouija’s family received a generous settlement package. They donated it to charity.

Cheddar Bob, feeling bad about what had happened, decided he wanted to take a little break from society. Himari had told him about the Cyber-Sangha Buddhists, and he had been intrigued.

“Do they fuck?” he had asked her.

“No, they do not,” she had responded. “I think it would be a good place for you.”

Zeb still got the occasional message from Cheddar Bob, and he could tell the kid was happy. He was glad at least one of them was.

Jane and Doc Hodges both also felt quite guilty, and they coped with their feelings in very different ways. Jane produced a concept album detailing the rise and fall of Elephants Gerald. It was basically a symphony in four movements, the final one being a cacophonous auditory hellscape depicting the destruction of Tutela Plaza. It was far more musically impressive than anyone had known she was capable of, and it gave Zeb satisfaction to know that it had only been possible because she had had the Salieri program obliterated from her brain chip. But it was too accurate in its recreation of the events of that day, so Zeb listened to it once, then vowed to never listen to it again.

Doc Hodges immediately got to work finding out what had gone wrong with their plan. He shut down his clinic and devoted all of his time to being Soyboy69420. It took him a little while, but eventually he was able to piece together a timeline. Zeb hadn’t really known how desperate he had been for information until the day Doc Hodges called him.

“Hey, Zeb, how you holding up?”

“Uh, okay enough, I guess. You?”

“A whole lot better now, my friend.”

“Oh yeah?” Zeb asked, feeling the first hint of hope in months.

“First off, let me just lay it out for you: it wasn’t our fault. Well, not exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was able to get my hands on the security camera footage for that day. It was really fucking hard, since all the servers were on site. Really shouldn’t have consolidated everything like they did, but they wanted to keep the government out of their business. Anyway, I won’t bore you with how I got it, but I got it and erased it. I saw you knock out Felix and that guard and go into Felix’s office. There weren’t any cameras in there, but we know what you were doing. Then I followed you up the elevator, where you talked to the founders, then went up and talked to Craig and Himari. Everything kosher on your end.”

“Okay, so why did everything explode?”

“Remember where they found Max’s body?” Soyboy69420 asked.

“Uh, yeah, the power plant. What was he doing there?”

“Drugs.”

“What?”

“Someone had left some weed in a brown paper bag on the control console. It was waiting for him when he got there.”

“Where was everybody else? The workers and the guards?” Zeb asked.

“They left five minutes before you even did your thing on the thirteenth floor. There was no one in the power plant when Max walked in.”

“Why did they leave?”

“Still looking into that, but it probably means someone tipped them off. They were either threatened, or paid, to walk away.”

“By who?”

“Don’t know. But the point is, when Max showed up, he walked directly up to the console and took the weed from the bag. He sat down and prepared his hit. You gotta kinda shoot that shit up into the air and then push your head into the cloud and suck it in. He did that, then he reached forward and grabbed the contact pad to hard-jack into the terminal. Then he leaned back in his chair, and kinda zoned out for like half a minute. Then, it looks like he had some sort of seizure, and he died hunched over on the switchboard. Then, only after he was dead, did the explosions begin.”

“So what does that mean?”

“It means he power-stroked his chip on purpose, and sent the jolt of energy into the machinery of the power plant. He overloaded the terminal, which overloaded the power core, which exploded, causing a chain reaction that eventually took down the entire complex. He bombed the place.”

“And he was the bomb,” Zeb said.

“That’s right.”

“Jesus Christ. I mean, thanks, Doc. That’s a load off my mind. Except he was only able to even get in there because we opened all the doors for him.”

“I doubt he was relying on us. Someone left him that bag. Someone cleared the place out for him. I’m sure he just got up and left his cell when Himari and Craig landed, but it seems like whoever was pulling his strings could have easily gotten him out by themself.”

“Who?” Zeb asked again.

“I don’t know. But I’m gonna find out.”

The answer came about a week later--not from Doc Hodges, but from the news. Tutela Records was dismantled and sold to Phantom Industries, who immediately moved into the little downtown Vatican and began rebuilding. They were branching out to music production, and they had a new Executive Vice President leading the charge: Travis Scabalone, Max’s former manager. He had been working for the enemy all along. Once that was revealed, it was almost too easy for Doc Hodges to put the remaining pieces together.

Max’s entire plan, it turned out, had been Travis’s brainchild from the start. The Salieri program was a Phantom Industries project, designed not only to take down Tutela Records, but to commoditize musical genius. Travis manipulated Max into believing the only way to reclaim his artistic integrity was to upload the program to Tutela’s system. But, since Max couldn’t install the program himself, they needed another. Jane refused, so they had to find someone else, ideally someone inexperienced and naïve. Originally, this person was going to be a patsy. They were supposed to take the blame for what Max and Travis had done. But then Max had gotten himself captured, and Zeb escaped, so Travis improvised. He bribed a guard to let him speak to Max in his cell, and he once again played his supposed friend for a sap. He explained how Zeb and Jane were likely to reverse the upload, so the only way for Max to protect his legacy was to take the label down, by any means necessary. By this time, Travis had already greased several palms, and it was no problem convincing the minimal crew working the power plant to take a fifteen minute break so Max could do his thing. Travis had been in control the whole time. It was even his doing that the secret door from the founders’ living space to the maintenance corridor was unlocked.

“He wanted y’all to upload the virus, then he wanted y’all to erase it,” Doc Hodges explained to the entire group, in a cross-country conference call. “In fact, sorry to say, but we didn’t even have to go through all that trouble.”

“What do you mean?” Jane asked.

“Well, he owns the Salieri program, and he knows damn well what it is. He knows that if everybody had it, they wouldn’t buy any of his music. But he also knows how good it feels, so he’s gonna try to profit from it. That’s why he’s planning on doing precisely what we did, in a little over a month. He’s basically gonna give everyone a free trial of musical genius, then charge them to re-subscribe.”

“Like a drug pusher,” Himari said. “Fucking disgusting.”

“Yes, it is,” Doc Hodges said. “Which is why I’m gonna stop him. Gonna erase it from everybody’s head permanently, make them kick it cold turkey.”

“Woah! How?” Cheddar Bob asked. Zeb could hear humming coming from the background.

“Don’t know yet. Anybody wanna help me?”

Zeb sighed. “No, thanks, Doc. I don’t think I’m cut out for stuff like this.”

“Yeah, me neither,” Himari said.

“I can’t,” Cheddar Bob said. “I’m going on a mission to Hong Kong next month, to learn how to integrate with neural networks and control them with my respiratory system.”

They all told Cheddar Bob how cool that sounded, then fell silent for a few seconds. Finally, Jane said, “I’m in.”

And so, life went on. Zeb had gotten the Salieri program deleted from his chip before he left LA, along with the siege program that had allowed him to take over Felix’s and the guard’s minds. He now had no musical enhancements whatsoever, and he was worried he would forget how to play the drums. His first practice back with his band, he could barely pay attention to the music, he was so nervous they were going to find him out. They couldn’t tell a difference. It turned out they were just a good band. Good bands play together, and the grooves they get in are greater than the sums of the individual talents of the members. They were now tighter than they had ever been, and Zeb was finally able to enjoy it.

One day, as Zeb was getting ready to head to band practice, he felt a slight buzzing on his chip’s insertion point, on the back of his neck. He was getting a call. The number was private, and there was no avatar. Normally, he would simply ignore a call such as this, but he was in a good mood. He was a pretty good drummer, and he wasn’t a killer. What could possibly go wrong?

“Hello?” he said.

“Zeb, what’s up man?” There was still no video feed. Not too big of a deal; not everybody liked showing their face in a call. But Zeb wished this person had, because there was something familiar about their voice, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Um…hi? Who is this?”

“Don’t you recognize my voice?”

Zeb cringed a little. This was one of the first things Captain Skullfucker had ever said to him. “Um…kinda. But you’re gonna have to help me out, man.”

Then, before his caller could respond, it hit him. “Holy shit! EL?”

EL laughed. “Naw, not anymore, man. We’ve all got new names. I’m Axe Ryder now.”

“Cool.”

“Thanks.”

“But, wait. I thought you guys were all dead?”

“I mean, yeah, we’ve been dead a while.”

“No, I meant--”

“I know what you meant, bro. Sorry, little joke. I don’t know what to tell you. When shit started going down, we went cloudy, which was no big deal. We’ve gone cloudy before, and I’m sure we’ll do it again. But this time was different. Usually, we stay connected to the network, so we can still talk to each other. This time, it all went black. I don’t remember dying, but I bet it was like that.”

“Woah. So what happened then?”

“We woke up again. Only this time, all the buildings were destroyed. The fires had all been put out, and it was like midnight, so there was no one there, except, oddly enough, a few tropical birds flying around. We just kinda left, and no one saw us.”

“How did you wake up, if the central computer exploded?”

“We have no idea. It’s not just the bots that make up our bodies that need the computer to function. Our minds do, too. At least, that’s what we thought. But here we are. All four of us, no worse for wear. Might fall apart tomorrow, or we might live forever. Who knows. Anyway, what are you doing right now?”

“Huh? Oh, I’m heading to band practice. But I’m not in LA anymore.”

“That’s cool, man. ‘Cause neither are we.”

“Oh,” Zeb said. “Where are you?”

“Where you think, dude? We’re home! Dallas!”

“Oh, shit, really? That’s awesome!”

“Yeah, man.”

“Um…I don’t know how to say this, but, like, I’m sorry I couldn’t save Tutela Records for you. I know I told you I would, and now it’s destroyed.”

Axe Ryder chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. Everything has a time limit, and maybe it was time for our old label to go. But that doesn’t mean we’re done making music. I don’t think anything could keep us from doing that. I mean, shit, we’ve died twice, and we’re still chuggin’ on. Nothing is perfect, and everything is impermanent, right? What was that called, wabi-sabi?”

“Wait, what did you say?” Zeb asked.

“I caught your show last week, at the New Galaxy Club,” Axe Ryder said, instead of answering.

“Oh, fuck, you did? I didn’t see you there.”

“Yeah, I was wearing a disguise. I looked really cool. Anyway, I liked what I heard. Reminded me of our old shit, from last century. You guys are good, man.”

“Woah, thanks.”

“We wanna sign you.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Tutela Records might be gone, but, like I said, we’re still around. We’ve started a new label. Much more underground and badass. We want you guys to be our first act. What do you say?”

“Oh, my God. Well, I can’t speak for the other guys, but…wait. Of course I can. Yes. We’re in.”

“Awesome. I knew you would say that. That’s why I sent our head of A&R to your place. Should be pulling up any minute.”

The doorbell rang, and Zeb froze. “Is that them?” he asked.

“Yeah, probably,” Axe Ryder said. “Anyway, talk it over with them, then let’s meet up later. Peace.” He hung up.

Zeb pressed the button on his wall, and his door slid open. Once he saw who it was, he almost fainted.

“Hey, babe,” Himari said.