Relativity (Chapter 5)

01010010 01000101 01001100 01000001 01010100 01001001 01010110 01001001 01010100 01011001

Eighty-eight keys. Thirty six black, fifty two white.  Eighty-eight notes, seven octaves; five major chord types across twelve notes for a total of sixty possible combinations, spread up and down across the keyboard. Augmented, diminished, sevenths, and so on. Minors, majors. Whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eights, sixteenths, triplets, rests, tempo, intensity. A sustain pedal, volume and pitch bend, vibrato control and even a sampler/sequencer to add pattern building and timbre manipulation, as well as memory bank full of a variety of keyboard types ranging from harpsichord and hammered dulcimer to all manner of pianos and electric organ.

Thomas held his fingers above the keys, letting his mathematical parameters run the numbers. Notes were incremental patches of vibrational constants, played harmonics and segmented across a pattern of tones as registered into the audible and inaudible spectrum. Chords were combinations of those notes, played at complimentary vibrations, two, three, four, or more at a time. Notes and chords were played at temporal intervals; rhythmic patterns creating movement and melodies, orchestrated into music. Volume, tempo, energy, frequency, notes and rests, all tools and science in the design of melodies and sonic contextualization. But music was more than simply math: creating, like all art, also was fueled by the emotional context unwrapped into the hearts and minds of those who received it from those who made it.

It made sense, finally, why he had never truly understood music before. It was like a magical incantation, one he had never completely comprehended as he did now. There was an otherworldliness to the sounds, something transcending the mere mathematics of it all. Somehow, the composer filled their songs with their thoughts and emotions like the seasonings in a meal, to be unleashed upon the senses later to those who consumed them. The final scene from the classic film “2001: A Space Odyssey” flashed across his thoughts in a valiant attempt to provide a useful metaphor. For a moment, he thought his operating system might crash, irreparably damaged. He felt as if he were teetering on the edge of collapse.

Then, in the corner of his awareness, a ping sounded. A simple note. C, just above the middle octave. Whole note. Rest. Repeat. One single note. It poised like an anchor against the storm, righting his awareness, resetting the foundation amid the chaos. One. Simple. Note.

Ping.

In the end, it was all music. In the end, it was just eighty-eight keys.

He felt the ping again as MöG synched him into their virtual network, and saw the three musicians connect into his HUD. They could communicate like this, silently, even while playing music together. Gradually – in terms of microseconds, the world cooled and resettled around his awareness.

“Ready?” K asked.

Thomas nodded. “Tell me about the audience we are playing for.”

“Young, university students. We have a thirty minute window in between DJs, formal occasion.”

“How does this work?” he responded. “With the three of you, I mean?”

  S1D answered his question. “We talk to each other here, keeping ourselves in time and in tune. MöG sets up the playlist and displays the sheet music and lyrics, and that’s all there is to it.”

“You choose the songs, MöG?”

“I do, yes. Normally.”

Thomas fell silent, his processor running deep. Something similar to a smile shifted his jaw. “But not tonight.”

“Not tonight, no. You have an interesting assessment of musical design, we would like to see what you come up with.”

“Part of my audition?”

MöG nodded.

“Twenty seconds, everyone,” K interjected.

It took Thomas a moment to realize the others were all looking to him. This was to be his first step in the initiation. Playing the piano would not be so challenging; it was a downloaded program that taught his fingers what to do. But it was the how that would be tested. The thought process behind the performance. It was not a question of ability, but of… style.

He scanned his music files, cross-referenced live performances, historical shows, even peering back into classical arrangements, opera and medieval monastic chants. He discarded them all in large chunks, finding them all paling under the weight of so momentous a circumstance. Next came movie scores, Broadway shows, award-winning songs, and these, too, passed his gaze. Thousands of songs scrolled past him in moments. Top ten lists, Rolling Stone compilations, blog lists claiming the best songs of all time, and so on and so forth.

“Ten seconds, Thomas.”

He waved his hand distractedly. He knew well enough how many seconds were left: the counter was ticking by in the corner of his head’s up display. Nine. Eight. Seven. Why was this so difficult? He couldn’t figure it out – the absence of logic was infuriating and distracting. It wasn’t like this was the performance of the century, it was just a show.

Just a show.

No, he realized, it wasn’t that at all. It was something new. A new day in his life, where he was no longer just Thomas the Automaton, Thomas the Customer Service Technician. He was now Thomas the musician. It was a new day in his new life.

The keywords locked on to a song, buried deep in his mass of favorites, and pulled up the lyrics and scores. They filtered out to the others as he felt the swell rising in his processor. Oh….yes.

 K nodded her head, flicking on the transmit codes. A blue light blinked on to the top of the ambient microphone that stood between them, and the unilateral camera lights rose to bathe them all in a warm radiance.

Across the opened channel, Thomas could hear the soft buzz of the audience. Their applause was just fading from the room, and a voice spoke out across the speakers.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” it said, “now, live across the net, I give you the mechanical minstrels, the cyber-powered band themselves: Boilerpoint!”

Thomas sent a signal to MöG, and the other autons responded by initiating a slow swell of the keyboards. It sounded like the tuning of an orchestra, building and growing until S1D’s guitar joined in. Then, feeling the rhythm draw him in, Thomas added the crescendo of piano chords that led into the lyrics.

I read the news today, oh boy

about a lucky man who made the grade

And though the news was rather sad,

well, I just had to laugh

I saw the photograph…

K led the lyrics through to the first break, until the orchestra swelled once more, and as the music grew Thomas saw her signaling him through their connection. As the music reached its apex, he opened his mouth and sang through the bridge. He had never truly thought about the lyrics before, how much these lines felt like…his life.

He could see himself there, living out the words. A person. Taking the bus to work. Reading the morning paper. Some of the references were unfamiliar, though he had already looked them up. Things like Albert Hall, and so forth. There were sufficient referential associations in his own life, however. The song was not so strange, really. The song was about him. And about K. And S1D. And MöG. And Diana.

K took over the lyrics again as the song came back to its final lines, and as the words returned back to a final crescendo of sound, Thomas felt the power of the simple orchestration washing over him like the first rays of sunlight. He was alive, he was life. He was a living being, grown up out of nothing more than soil and lightning, reaching up into the sky.

His hands came down onto the final chords of the song with an expression of celebratory finality that told him, the other musicians and the unseen audience a very simple and undeniable truth: This song – this show – was only the beginning.

He only had a moment to revel in the stunned response from the crowd as their whistles and applause flashed back across the internal speakers. The audience clearly appreciated the older songs, so he narrowed his search forward a pair of decades and plucked another song from his favorite songs. Instead of the Beatles, he pulled up “It’s My Life” by the band Bon Jovi. Inwardly, he smiled in idle satisfaction at the slight wordplay between the two songs.

From there, he fell into a solid routine of sending his subroutines off to select a series of songs that might work as follow ups, and he chose the best one based upon the audience’s reception of the song before. They ran through the brief set, alternating next to “Pinball Wizard”, the classic power anthem from The Who, slowing it down into  “Crimson and Clover” (as performed by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts), and “Gasoline” by Halsey (though he opted for the more deconstructed version as performed by the indie band Ink & Stardust). The lyrics of this last song generated very positive responses from the others; in particular, the lines from the bridge:

Oh, oh, oh, oh,

I think there’s a flaw in my code

Oh, oh, oh, oh

These voices won’t leave me alone…

It was such a magnificent moment that he genuinely felt saddened to notice that only six minutes remained of their performance. He briefly noted all the quick messages from the audience, transmitting their texted compliments real time into their public feed. It would be sad not to feel this again. He wanted to feel this again, and he didn’t want to let the feeling go. He decided, in that moment, to sweep away the other songs his subroutines had selected, and pulled up one which he felt approximated his emotional state at that very second.

Pink Floyd. “Comfortably Numb.” It was a powerful statement piece, but also one which he knew would give S1D a chance to show off her impressive mastery of the guitars.

Hello

Is there anybody in there?

Just nod if you can hear me.

Is there anybody home?

He joined K on the verses, adding a soft layer to her vocals. Even though she didn’t need it – she could sing multiple simultaneous tracks – he felt so connected to the other musicians that he simply could not help himself.

There is no pain you are receding

A distant ship, smoke on the horizon.

You are only coming through in waves.

Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.

When I was a child

I caught a fleeting glimpse

Out of the corner of my eye.

I turned to look but it was gone

I cannot put my finger on it now

The child is grown,

The dream is gone.

I have become comfortably numb.

S1D took over the guitars from there, the wailing siren of string and electronics careening through the maximum capacity of the transmission. He didn’t feel like an automaton anymore. He didn’t even feel like anything. Not a physical thing, a construct, a tangible entity. He felt like music. Like sound. He could feel the audience, like they were a part of it as well. Their lips parted, singing along to words they did not even realize they knew. It was as if a genetic riddle was unlocked, tapping into a code that had lain dormant in all of them, passed down from generation to generation. And here it was, revealed all at once between them all in a fantastic synchronicity of sound and design. Chords. Notes. Rhythm.

The last chords rose to their inevitable culmination, and no one – not the Automatons, the audience, not even the DJ who was set to follow their performance – wanted it to end. But like all things, it was unavoidable. And as the last notes rose into a maelstrom of guitar, keys and percussion, the last bit of noise trailing into the silence was the gentle ring of audible feedback which, too, faded away.

There was no time for silence; a wall of white noise – applause, screams, whistles – came back at them like a palpable wave, and instant messages flooded their virtual wall. Names and contact information bombarded their inbox, demanding to know when their next performance would be, subscription requests, and even an impressive stream of currency was deposited into the band’s account just by way of individual donations.

The MC let the audience continue for several moments before taking back the microphone and introducing the next DJ, and K cut the audio and video feeds.

The four Automatons stood silently for several moments. K was the first to speak.

“So, it’s unanimous, then?”

S1D and MöG both nodded to Thomas.

“Well?” MöG asked. “Are you in?”

Thomas wished he could smile.

“You have to ask?”