Midnight, and the dancefloor’s squirming like an eel. I filter a square-wave oscillation into the mix. Some flintlock ditzer swings up to the booth, topknot vibrating in the billows. “Hit some fizzle, sib,” he squicks over the rumble. Flap him away and switch the +124 sine tone to +125. The subwoofers whelk. Squirt a mid-fan of pink noise over the heads of the dancers and ignore the flintlock as he points a gun-finger at me. “Meshy,” he says, and drops back out of sight.
Fuck him. Basswave don’t sleep for beat-hounds like him. He’s back with his frimp-chain now, four of them huddled on the far side of the dancefloor like the party’s rotting already. They’re jealous, I guess. But who needs them?
There’s a couple of hundred fleshers in here tonight. This place is bish-bosh huge, hundred meters high huge. Used to be some kind of power plant, big generators, static surges. Skim told me it sparked up half of southeast London before the tides hit and they had to go solar.
Too bad. Squelch a swarm of lo-lo into the gumbo and watch the floor erupt like a geyser. My wrist buzzes. Skim blats me a scallop: triangle.
I pump my fist cos I know she’s watching and piggyback a triangle wave in. One of the speakers pops. Bass-end curves back from the roof, lo-boosted. All the better. Rhythm interference shimmers across the floor, visible ripples of air.
My scallop burrs again:
Feds.
Chigga. Let’s go. Unplug, de-mag, con-snap. The music slams into silence. A groan goes up, then the evacuation rustle as the message spreads. I’m out in seconds. The alley smells of piss and meth. Punters shove past. Fingers grab at my elbow. Whirl around, ready for anything.
It’s Skim. “Nak,” she shouts over the havoc. “Let’s cut.” Klaxon shriek. Behind us t-beams sweep the warehouse. “How about the flints?”
I press my finger to my lips. “Guess they were first out.”
“Prolly called it in.”
“Prolly. Let’s get.”
We scoped out an escape route earlier. Up and over the perimeter fence, along a ditch and onto the riverbank. This late at night the down-east Thames is silent, just the cor-cranes’ lonely hooting. More sirens. “They going in full-bore on this.” Skim leads us onto the river path and switches her scopes to nighty-viz. I do the same.
“Cannons.” The warehouse glows like distress flares. “Listen.”
Behind us a whine picks up, rising to a shriek that echoes over the water and dies on the southern bank. “Shit,” Skim says. “We paid five ‘hun for that PA.”
“Fuck it.” We take a 360. No lights. Our wheels are stashed a klick away. “Anything on?”
“Tonight? Where?”
“Anywhere.”
“You frimping?”
“Guess.”
We hurry on in silence. Our hidey emerges from the gloom, a row of old garages behind one of the blocks they abandoned when the river started to rise every winter. Skim’s trike hums. I settle onto the pillion and hold on as she bloots out to the artery. No one scepters us. We’re back to hers in twenty. “You staying?” she says once she’s stashed the wheels.
“May as.”
She gives me an imp grin as she swipes the conapt entrance door and ushers me inside.
“Meshy.”
Morning light looks as wrong as it always does. Skim heats leaf and watches me drink. We’re squeezed into her kitchen-cell, almost nose to nose. Her window filters need replacing. Apart from that it’s a huffy joint.
“Nak? Got another blatter yesterday. Speaker merchant. Didn’t tell u.”
“Uh-huh-huh.” The roof of my mouth burns. The hi-rise we snarked up when we got back last night is sweating out my pores like genie-juice. She’s wearing my tank. I look down. I’m wearing hers. “From those same vatters?”
“Sound-Core. Frimp by the name of Richy. Says he can get us a ten. For the next show.”
“Thou’?”
“Deep bass joint.”
And? “Catch?”
“Guess so.” She grimaces. “Wants us to go on-stream. Paywalled.”
“Chigga. Chigga that one right off.”
“…’right.” A squirm. “Chigga it off, yeah? But if we did?”
“Go over?” The thought makes me pale out. “Can’t hide in plain sight, Skim.”
“Ah, Nak.” Drop gaze. Bad sign. “You want to spend all your days batting off the t-beams? Firewalling off the flintlocks? Gets us up a level, no?”
“So where’s the boss?”
“That’s us.” She fingers my scalp. I flick her fingers away. She pouts. “Think, Nak. Spreads, streams, all legit. Just gotta tone it.”
“Tone it up? Or down?”
“Either.” Getting a feeling about her. Not good. “You can get yourself a new scallop, huh, with that kind of ink?”
“I can get one anywhere.”
“Yep?”
“Yep.” Fuck this. Sometimes you get a feeling that’s an itch, and you got to scratch it. I drain the leaf and make to leave. “Skim, you got a loose brain.”
“Not loose, Nak.” She taps her head. “Tighter than you know. Look, stay.” She tries to push me back down. I get up in her face. “‘Kay, ‘kay.” She holds up her hands in surrender. “Give it thoughts, no? Hit the neural churn.”
“What’s to think?”
“Up and over, Nak. Into the flow. Wanna keep on till the feds bring us down? Gonna happen. Almost happened laster.”
“Remember Xeeta?”
Shrug. Yeah, so shrug, Skim. We all remember Xeeta—out on the scene like a comet, straight up-rush, ket-out within a year. Funeral made the streams. Now he’s just a name to most.
“Challenge u, Nak. We got something lo-lo here, right? They seen nothing like it out there.” She eases me back into the chair. This time, somehow, I do it. “R-i-i-g-h-t. So let’s get on it. Meshy, yeah?”
She holds up two fingers. As I twine into her I catch a little imp grin again. This one’s got a demon in it, a devil seed. The itch is back; but my hands are full with hers and there’s nothing to scratch it with.
Sound-Core’s in an old rail arch, no logo outside. Frisky move. B’zzed through the comms-gate and down a level. Open-plan space, pulse-net interface screens all over. Desk-droids give us the eye when we pass. Squicky.
Richy’s waiting down in the basement meth-bar, Sound-Core logo cut-tee and ditz look in the eyes. “Hey, hey!” Wolf-grin. “Nak, right? Freak look you got on. You from Mogadishu? Dev scene out there.”
“London.”
The grin widens. “Sweetness. Heard you meshy. Heard you like the bass, huh?”
O buds. Skim slurps at her juice like she’s bubbling not to laugh. Guess I’d best be polite. “You know bass?”
“Hundred-plus,” he says. Forger. Guaranteed he don’t know pink from white. His scallop bleeps, on and on. He glances down. “Fuck ’em. So, guys, I love what you do. Saw u at the ShineHouse show. Got a real Xeeta vibe going.”
“Oh yeah?” Skim gives him a simper. “Nak hit the glass ceiling that night. Total spread-out. No headroom left. Right, Nak?”
The guy’s frumpier than a flinter. That show was corsaired out on the streams, permission unasked. Which would be where he saw it, or more likely two minutes of a rek. Cut to the core: “So you all streamers?”
He feigns vex. “Only if you per, yeah? Sound-Core don’t rip off the talent. We do speakers, buds, wave-runners, you name it. But…” He licks already-moist lips. “Mostly we do energy-derms.”
Uh huh. “Subs?”
“Yeah, you know…” Gaze averts. Cheek twitch. Do. Not. Trust. “Sub-dermals got a rising tide, Nak. Like, total vibe-out. Legal highs. Brain chemistry, tap the veins right out. Can’t be sub-rosa if u make it yourself, right?”
“…And?”
“And you got the difference tones going, right? Neural response, dub-out oscillations, mainline into the cells like a…like a sound virus.”
Skim’s layers are peeling away before my eyes. “Thought we were here for cones, Skim?”
“Not just.” She’s got a look on I don’t mesh with. “Didn’t think you’d swing if I made honest. You pretty unflex, Nak.”
“Only for the wrong chain.”
“Richy says their lab-rats got pretty excited when they stacked your tunes. Pure poison, Nak-chan. Pure dinero.”
“Basswave is the future!” Richy’s dropped the hip act. Unconditional corporate now. Prolly don’t even know it. “Nak, those tones you use…our researchers couldn’t believe it. Feeding them through the bud-shells increased the penetration by more than double. Total shear wave.” He flips a plexus screen out and pushes it across the table. “Sound-Core are prepared to partner with you on our new range. You sign here, right now, you get in at the ground floor.”
Legalese flashes on the shine. Ret-scan bubble below. Catch a glance at Skim. Burn in her eyes, mad glares. Feeling like I’m cornered.
Like I’m fooled.
“These derms…” I want to hear it from him. “Data-reaps, right?”
Hands up and out. “Now come on, Nak. Sound-Core isn’t a harvester. We’re strictly pleasure.” Wolf grin again, harder now, sharper. “Think about your options. You getting a better deal at the house shows?”
“Somehow.”
“Well, whatever you’ve got, we can beat it.”
“Uh-uh. No reaps. Seen too many get grifted on that. You breach the cells, your firewall goes. 101 access to whoever.”
He’s sweating. Skim too. Must be more sizzly in here than it looks. “You got a lawyer or something?”
“I got principles.”
He licks his lips. “Don’t we all?” Even Skim gives him the jewel-eye at that. “Okay. Here’s what it is. We ran into a problem or two. And we really need you on the team to get the project moving.”
“Problem?”
Skim: “They ran a frequency analysis on your tunes. Right, Richy?”
“Yeppers. Pretty fascinating. But when we came to reconstruct them…” He plunges a finger downwards. “Implosion.”
Comprehension. “So you got a freeze-out? Not my dispute.” Give Skim a quiz look. “This why you sold him to me?”
Skim and Richy, nervous fast-glance. “Nak, you can just be a consultant. Easy cashflow.”
“Yalla. Sounds clinged-out. But I make the waves by the vibes. Pure instinct. Non-specific, non-math.” Skim’s face says her plans are dusting out and she wants me to stop. I don’t stop. “So you got no friction?”
Baffles from Richy. “Friction?”
“In the cells, bruh. For your data-reaps.”
“These are just derms, Nak. Pure feels. We don’t care about anyone’s data.” Like hell. His eyes harden to quartz. “You make rent pushing cloth, right? Down in one of those PulpBank boutique franchises?”
What don’t he know? “Guess you don’t need to cull my data. Right, Skim?”
He gives Skim the shush before she can speak. “You know something, Nak? You won’t get a better offer. I don’t have to do this for you. Consider it a favor.” He taps the plexus. “No obligations. Just need your sigil. Then I’ll take you to meet some of the team.”
He’s looking like he wants to eat me up and sell on the bones. Skim’s got a threaded tongue, queasy silence and drowsed glaze. Fuck this. No hesitation: I’m up and out of there without a glance back. Skim shouts something after me. Ignore. Frimp can hit the darkstreams, hear some new waves there. Some dermy shit his guys can ret away on and fuck up all over again.
Up onto the street, breathing in electric runoff from the Mag-lev elevation. Skim…chigga. Chigga-fucking-chigga. Feel like I’ve fallen into the trust hole. Take the lev to Mithraeum Blvd, burning glass in my head, betrayal stench in my throat.
Scallop burrs. Offoff. Who knows who your friends are? Think you know and then…boom. Skim was a bull-whack all along, reckon. Yeah, it’s no glide surviving in the ruins, London mostways. But you gotta make your own peace. You gotta be strong, and Skim’s got no more bone than the flintlocks or the norms.
Shitshitshit. Fucking Skim. Fucking fucking Skim.
By the time I’m back at my cell the solar hate’s down to a candle flame. Ret in, open up -((Flux))- and into the bass zone. Ripples of peace. Through the window the Pineapple Tower lights up square by square; but I’m still in the sound bubble, tapping beats until the waves blur into one and the war in my head declares a truce.
Moon’s out and the city’s up. De-mag the waves and flip the scallop open. About three hundred memos from Skim. Delete the lot without reading. Pump some fuel and get to go. No time to waste on the hidden levels.
In Fishscale Arcade the sibs are out, shoulder-to-shoulder chain-dancers and filter-guards on reflect-mode. Dirty plastic and self-clean glass, clangways up above piped with hushed eyes and deep skin, quick retail-heal then back to their work cubes. Beat-hound themes squirm from hidden speakers, all thumpthump and no deeps. Breathe easy. Yam-tam stench from a takeout, sugar-rush girls clustering on the beechers. Got a feel for tonight; got a yearning, some sub-crave for action now Skim’s in the archives.
Blacklight bar glitters through the haze. Flintlocks flocking at the door, razor-hair and piercies, derm-scrapes and one-piece haz-suits. One of them clockworks me, topknot billow across her brow-ink. “Hey, mesher. Wanna churn?”
“In there? Flick scene. No way, kin-girl.”
Pout. “Open up, sib. Music ain’t all collide-o-tron.” She’s got a bunch of pallys waiting. Recognize them from last night’s funtime now. Gun-finger-boy gives it tooth, enamel filed to points.
Yeah, so fuck it. Nothing else to lose today. You know it’s a squick scene when the flintlocks seem like a mag reckoning. My new friend splays fingers. We twine. “Hala. Pori there you met.” Gun-boy cedes palm. “There’s Hissi and Raunio.” Hissi and Raunio air-swipe too.
“You were there last night?”
“Yippers,” Hala says. “Your set was meshy. Like, real fizzle.”
“Uh-huh?”
Pori snickers. “Don’t look so dazed, sib. U got the bass covered. Total wipeout.”
“They’s got it.” That’s Hissi. Ink-codes all the way down her arms, wrists like whipcords. “150, 160.”
“Speedy.” Raunio rolls his pupils back. “Real beats.”
One thing I got to know. “Thought u called the feds in.”
Hala, eyes wide. “You frimping? Almost got caught ourself.”
“Reckon Skim sold us.” Pori presses gun-finger to skull. “Shoulda known to trust her.”
He’s in the know on that. Let them lead me inside. Glow-worm candleflash from the overheads, laser fracture turning brick walls to lightning. First thing that hits me is the kick-pulse, chest-deep beat and snare rattle floating overhead like light pollution. BPMs at 214, 215. Vocolade stabs on each bar, Mandopop lyra chopped to oblivion.
Kinda meshy, gotta admit. Hala leans in. We click buds so we can hear. “We got some new waves. Wanna stick? I’m up in five.”
“You run the parallels?”
“Uh-huh. Been watchin’ u, Nak. U got a wave going. Bass, huh?”
“Only.”
“Yepper.” She gives it the lip-bite. “Got room in the cube for two.”
She means it. “Think you can take the bass?”
“Think u can take the beats?”
No answer to that. Kicks drop out. Songline floats in, birdsong-like over venus-chords. Hala leads me to the soundcube. Last thing I hear from the rest of her chain is a whoop-whoop, fading into white noise as the final tune runs down.
She’s fit in less than a min, barb in to some cheap Costa Rican soundbank and tearing at the wire. Snares clatter the speakers. She slides in a tom-tom. Out on the floor the topknots are jittering. She taps my wrist. Raise brows.
Confirmation.
Swipe into my own bank, encryption authorize and pump the shallows. Hala brings in the tempo, 211, 212…I rise the waves and hear the burn. Lo-lo, +120. Tom-toms splinter. Snares hit the pink, jangle-popping to +121. Hala flips in a chord scoop. Match her with a change-tone, bass fracture to minus, oscillation-clouds billowing squalls across the room.
Pori’s head pops up. “Meshy,” he screams. I filter in a hi-flec at his voice frequency. “Meshy,” he yippers again and gives me the fingers. Hala pumps the kicks. Tempo rise to 230, 231, 232…Match it with a sub-wave and the speakers cook. Feed in glitch-vox, V-pop cau-lau stuttering to zero.
Head down, eyes in, and Skim’s oblivion, her and the death-ghoul. Tap the mids in and hear the fizz. Hala’s face melts into bass, pure bass, and I click the sparks to +101 until the dancefloor shimmers like a desert mirage.
Hit the city at one a.m. Raunio scored some meep, so we’re up on the hi-clang and watching Fishscale heave. Pori’s got a goof on. “Alltime thought Skim was a frimp. What you skewing with her for anyway?”
“Leave them.” Hissi strokes my knee. “They know their mind. Right, Nak?”
Eardrums still buzzing. Dirty plastic stretches along the roofguard. Smell of gado-gado rising up from the arcade. Raunio blooms his palm-plex. “Yalla yalla, you out on the streams already!”
Someone in there spectered us. Whatever. Hala boosts the signal. Our jam-jam burns air, sub-levels vibing the walkway until it shivers beneath us. “Meshymeshy,” she says. “Nak, u got the freak on, sib.”
Pori gives it soft-shoe, limbs tangling like reeds. “Hittin’ the lo-lo.” He swipes nail across brow, leaving a black-light trace that pulses in time with the beats. “Got a new res on the wires, fiz. Bass controller. Master builder!”
Hala kills the stream. “Nak, you out for tomorrow? Soundwaves going down at Corsica Lite, all-night dreem.”
Check the scallop-blat Skim sent me a half hour ago: Richy wants to sting with us again tomorrow. Got a better deal for u. Wise feels, Nak.
Remember Richy’s face and shudder. Hissi, all concern: “You meshy, Nak?”
“Got it. Corsica. Laters.”
Huff another pouch of meep. Fumes filter through in an instant. Fishscale burrs, stretches out to eternal. Pori makes the benediction, fingers splayed, and we’re good. The jam starts up again as I’m halfway down into the arcade, bass-scud flattening air until it sinks into the dome-bleep and I’m on my own.
Then, a familiar voice: “Nak!”
Keep moving.
“Nak! Heard the stream, dev. Heard the lo-lo, knew it was you.”
Skim’s on her own, at least. She peels off from the gado-cart and steps in. Finger-twist, nerve sweat. She’s got a look about her that says she don’t know if she’s good or evil anymore. Give her the jewel-eye. “You got a better deal with him than treason?”
“Ah, Nak.” Arm into mine. Shake her off. “Richy says sorry. Misreckoning, all the way.”
“You got his palm prints on your fingertips now, Skim.” Past a glimmer-bar and out onto Pale Avenue. Light rain, heavy vibe. “Mis-nothing. Frimp’s fronting for harvesters. You rolled with me for that?”
“Told you. Offer’s good now. You want to pass it up?” Lip-bite. “Remember the first night we put on? Down on the southside, fifty headz in the SteamYard. Knew you were something enlightened then.”
“And now?”
“You’re no Xeeta. No ket-out. No falling satellites. This is next level, Nak. Next phase. Just give it one more.”
She’s got the grin back. Atomic half-life of weakness passes through my veins; then real sensory hits up. “You’re out for the main chance, Skim. See me as a gradient, an up-thrust.”
“I’m out for both. For you and me.”
You and you, forger. “Too tired for this shit, Skim. It’s been free. Fun for a while. But you got a knife-jab waiting for me. Some day, some time. Don’t want my radar on routine.”
“No fucking way, Nak!” Appeal to the heavens. “You want to waste away? For reals?”
Back up. Get out of her zone. “Gotta de-mag from you now, Skim. Shame the jams didn’t work out. You better find someone new. Richy too. We’re on separate elevations, onward.”
Then I’m off with the crowds. She fades down into the street waves, and gone, gone. Cloudburst coming. Rush for the linear-car with the midnight commerce toilers. Blank eyes and worn lips and desolation as the rails spit blue and the rain hits like a drawn-out death rattle.
Over the river, and the tugs are sounding out a whale song. Forget her. Poison people. No trend. Root the music to the DNA, you get lost in the genepool. Fundamental. But I got the edge; curved space, straight down to the churn. No need for mainwave. No need for sellout.
Scallop whelks; Skim. Delete. How many last chances can you blow?
Rain sparks on the window. Scallop whelks; Hala. check the streams
Flip in to the upflux for tonight’s jam. Play load: two million.
Two million??
Blat her back: good start
Return: ciyu at Corsica—tix going fast
Down on the water a dredger’s making a turn beside the mudbank, greasy lights cutting over the swells. Night-gulls circle round the tanks. Pilot hits the klaxon, echoing horns across the water-span like deep-sea dreams swimming to the surface. But I’m gone, and I don’t even hear the last of it cos my bud’s in and the basswaves are cortex-rippling me into bliss-mode, and the river’s a ribbon cutting the city in two; and this time, forever, I’m on the right side of it.
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Matt Thompson is an experimental musician and writer of strange fictions. His work has been published at Interzone, Black Static, PseudoPod, Best of British SF anthology series, and many more worthy venues. You can find him online at matt-thompson.com. |