“Welcome to the Carnegie,” Mixy says. “Now construct your digits as such,” he instructs, closing my hand into a fist and straightening my thumb so it looks like I’m giving a thumbs-up. In turn, he extends another one of his four hands up into the air, spreading out his seven fingers in a flat-palmed gesture. He guides the bottom of my thumbs-up fist to his open-fingered palm.
“See with your eyes, Caleb Young. This is the one who gobbles. A customary Earth greeting.”
I look to Dorian. “Did he just give me the turkey?”
“He thinks he understands Earth humor.”
“Caleb Young,” the woman says. “My name is Lydia.” She offers a slender blue hand to me and I take it. It feels wet, damp, and as my skin touches hers she flashes a mischievous smile.
Then her hand starts to… melt.
It slides up my arm like moving water, enveloping my skin with a cool touch. I shiver and tense as the liquid flows up inside my sleeve, creeping over me. The crawling liquid seeps halfway up my neck before withdrawing back down my arm. Lydia reaches to grab my cup of coffee and takes a sip, her hand restored to a recognizable, solid form. Her lips flourish with a surge of yellow that seems to ripples across her skin again, and she leans in to plant a wet kiss on my cheek.
“Cut it out,” Dorian says. “We don’t want to give the kid a heart attack.”
“Just a bit of fun,” Lydia says, slinking away. “He’s scared. Confused. But angry, too. We can use angry. He’s got my vote.”
“How do you—” I begin.
“I’m an empath,” she answers, turning to look back. “I can feel others’ emotions.”
I make a sound somewhere between a cough and a hiccup. My mouth doesn’t feel like it’s working.
“So this the one who picked it up.” Lydia’s eyes give me a quick once over.
“Looks like it. So how about some question and answer, kid?” Dorian asks me. “Get the hard stuff out of the way, you know?”
“Yeah. That’d be… yeah.”
Mixy responds by grabbing a pot of coffee from behind the counter. With three hands on the counter, he lifts himself up and vaults over to my side, while his fourth hand pours an uninterrupted stream of coffee into my cup, topping it off without spilling a drop. Then he guides me back toward the couch where Dorian dumped Dex.
Dorian takes a seat across from Dex, whose ripcord snoring continues uninterrupted. Mixy doesn’t go for a chair. Instead, he eases himself down onto his lowermost pair of arms, locking them at the elbows, while he curves his legs at the knees to hold himself in a rough chair shape. With his free hands, he hands me my coffee, and I sit down next to Dex.
Lydia comes to stand over Dex and looks down at him. “You want him awake for this?” she asks me.
“Uh, yeah. Sure.”
She sticks her finger in Dex’s ear.
His eyes snap open and he gasps. I’m expecting him to scream, but instead, he just looks up at Lydia, eyes still wide. But he’s not nearly as panicked as I was expecting.
“You—” he says, halting. “You are gorgeous.”
Lydia snorts and turns around, finding a chair next to Dorian. Her skin flares with a wash of pink.
Dex looks to me. Then to Dorian. Then to Lydia. Then to Mixy. Then to me again.
“Don’t freak out again,” I say, raising my hands in an attempt to calm him. “Short version. Dorian isn’t working for the government, and he’s red. They’re all aliens. That’s Mixy. That’s Lydia. And we’re flying on their spaceship. Which is, by the way, a giant yellow submarine. Now you know as much as I know.”
Dex’s eyes do a few more quick circuits around the room. He sits up slowly and plants his feet on the ground. Mixy tumbles forward, rolling into an awkward ball until he’s directly in front of Dex. Two of his arms seek out Dex’s hand, forming his hand into a thumbs-up. With a flat palm, Mixy gives Dex the turkey.
“The one who gobbles,” Mixy whispers reverently.
“Okay,” Dex answers quietly. And for once, Dex doesn’t go for the notepad in his pocket.
“So, Caleb,” Dorian says, leaning back in his chair. “Questions?”
“Well, for starters,” I begin. “What’s the deal with my guitar?”
Chapter Five
“Tens of thousands of years ago, an ancient civilization called the Prima Maestri invented technology capable of harnessing a cosmic energy source known as the Resonance.”
“Cosmic energy,” Dex repeats, making finger-quotes.
Dorian fixes Dex with a nasty glare that shuts him up before continuing. “The universe is in a constant state of motion. It’s expanding, and accelerating, and there’s an energy driving it. Your physicists call it dark energy. The more evolved species,” Dorian smirks at Dex, “call it the Resonance. By reverse-engineering old Prima Maestri relics, our civilizations learned how to induce harmonization between the Rez and baryonic matter.”
“Regular stuff,” Dex clarifies with a nudge.
“And so the guitar is…?” I trail off.
“The guitar is a Resonator: a weapon capable of channeling the Rez.” Dorian adjusts in his seat, eyes unblinking.
“And that’s why it… shoots lightning,” I conclude.
Dorian nods. “It differs based on the Resonator pairing, but yes. Resonators augment physical characteristics. You get a mixed bag. Levitation. Endurance. Enhanced strength. Your guitar is a tool, but think of it more as a circuit that you’re helping to complete. When you use the guitar, you are part of the mechanism that’s tuning the Rez.”
“It’s more than just that,” Lydia cuts in. “There are variables in the tuning. Resonators require a host capable of resonating with the instrument. Not just anybody can pick up a Resonator and channel Rez. The technology maps itself to the genetic code of its user.”
“But I can play the Gibson,” I say.
“There’s only one way to decode a Resonator.” For a moment, Dorian’s face clouds, the characters on his skin writhing and shaking with excitement. Then his face returns to a placid calm. “Death.”
Lydia gives Dorian a somber look while Dorian settles back into his chair, busying himself by looking at one of the display screens. “Your guitar belonged to someone else,” she says.
“We lost a great warrior.” Mixy rocks quietly on his arms.
“I’m sorry,” I say, not knowing what else I can.
Dorian looks back to me and Dex. “That’s war, kid.”
“War?”
“The war between the Composers and Synthesizers,” Dorian nods. “Us versus them. Biologicals versus machines.”
“And you’re a Composer, then?” Dex asks.
“It’s an umbrella term for the alliance of species fighting against the Synthesizers.”
“And that thing in the woods was a machine?”
“A Synthesizer foot soldier called an Autotuner.”
“The Synthesizers are advanced artificial intelligences capable of manipulating the Rez,” Lydia explains. “They use it to conquer worlds. To conquer people.”
“Conquer?” I repeat, my mouth gone dry.
“They embed themselves first,” Dorian grimaces. “They watch, and wait. But eventually—inevitably—they call down a full invasion. They’ve incorporated dozens of planets already, subjugating billions.”
“And they’re here now? On Earth?”
“Some have been here for decades.”
“How long have the Composers known?!”
“We’re fighting a war that spans the galaxy.” His voice betrays a bit of exhaustion. “We can’t be everywhere at once.”
“Then why are you here now?” Dex interrupts.
Dorian and Lydia share a look that seems like an entire unspoken conversation. Neither of them answer.
“There’s been an unusual spike in Synthesizer activity on Earth,” Mixy says, filling the silence. “We arrived to investigate, but we were ambushed upon our arrival as we took the Carnegie out of Overdrive. We fought th
em. We took losses.”
“The night we were evacuated,” Dex guesses. “It wasn’t meteorites.”
“Fallout from the battle. Synthesizer ships. Debris.” Dorian glances pointedly at me. “And one powerful guitar.”
“We have to call the government,” I urge. “Call… the Army, Homeland Security, or NASA, or… someone!”
“The Synthesizers control the flow of information, and therefore control numerous aspects of your world’s governments. They evacuated your town to hide evidence, not to save you.”
“Call the other Composers then!”
“Fleet is spread too thin already.” Dorian stands up from his chair and stretches. “But that does put a fairly fine point on our staffing problem. You found the Gibson. Till death do you part. So how about it?”
“How about what?”
“Want to join the crew? Kill some robots? Save the world?”
I stare blankly at Dorian, who looks deadly serious. Lydia, too. Even Mixy’s near-featureless face seems solemn.
“I’m sixteen,” I say at last. “I haven’t even started senior year!”
“An education is a tool with which to shape the future,” Mixy says. “What use is it if the Synthesizers deprive you of your future?”
“Look, I’ll give you the guitar back,” I say, even as Dex begins to protest from beside me. “I can’t just… drop everything to… you know… fight robots, or whatever.”
“That guitar is worthless to us without you now that it’s coded,” Dorian growls. Lydia reaches out to take Dorian’s hand but he shakes it away. He looks at me in a way that makes me feel small. “You can’t just ignore this. The Synthesizers know who you are, and they’re not the kind to just let potential threats slip through the cracks.”
“Not to put too fine a point on things,” Lydia adds, “but if the Synthesizers find you, you’re bread.”
“Toast,” Mixy corrects Lydia. “Though I admit, the nuance of Earth’s crisped cuisine escaped me for quite some time.”
“If the Synthesizers find you, you’re toast,” Lydia clarifies in the same grave tone as before.
My head is buzzing. Robots are trying to kill me? Aliens want me to join some sort of interstellar war? There must be a way out of this. I’m sure of it. I just have to convince the Composers to decouple the guitar somehow and take it back. Convince the Synthesizers that I’m not a threat. Convince the bank to rebuild Dad’s shop with the insurance money. Hope the robots leave Earth alone.
I don’t know what to say, and they’re looking at me. “I missed curfew,” I blurt. Smooth.
“That’s how you want to play this?” Dorian shrugs. “Fine. Bring the kid home, Mixy.” Dorian slinks off and disappears up the float-tube.
“Come, Earth-Sons,” Mixy beckons us from our seats toward the front of the Carnegie where the strange drum set sits in its glass dome. Lydia follows us, her pale blue skin pulsing with dark purples.
Dex and I look out the domed window of the Carnegie. The sky is full of stars. We look down over a vast expanse of forests and lakes caught in the moonlight. Homes dot the terrain like candle-flames in the dark.
“The Carnegie is a stealth-class military ship,” Mixy explains. “In non-combat situations, we cloak the ship with active camouflage. We are presently invisible to most light- and sound-based scans. A focused scan might prove problematic.”
“How fast does she go?” Dex asks, like he’s asking about some muscle-car.
“In linear or non-linear space?”
“Both!” Dex demands excitedly.
“Were the Carnegie to operate on traditional thrust, it could easily handle Earth-standard escape velocity of 25,000 miles-per-hour. We rarely pace the Carnegie under such conditions. It’s too slow.”
“I was wondering how you got between stars,” Dex says expectantly.
“The Carnegie also has an Overdrive engine.” Mixy thumps a foot to the ground. “It manipulates Rez fields to produce a space-contracting effect.”
“Like a wormhole?” I ask, trying to follow.
“Not quite,” Lydia shakes her head. “We haven’t cracked instantaneous travel yet. We’re pretty sure the Prima Maestri did. Overdrive engines shunt spacecraft into a type of subspace, where a distance traveled increases exponentially relative to normal space.”
“Sounds like a Slinky,” Dex offers. “Short from end to end, until you stretch it out.”
“I was unaware humans were experimenting with Overdrive technology,” Mixy says. “Where can I find this Slinky prototype?”
“Another time,” Lydia waves Mixy off, urging him forward. “Let’s get going.”
Mixy climbs onto the drum-throne before the drum set and settles into position. He takes two pairs of drum sticks from atop the kick drum, holding one in each of his four hands.
“What are you doing?” Dex asks.
“Taking the Carnegie off of auto-pilot, of course,” Mixy grumbles. “I am the pilot.”
“But you don’t have eyes.”
I elbow Dex in the ribs, hard.
Mixy merely laughs. “My people have evolved with a sense for the Rez. It flows through and around everything. The ship’s autopilot is a poor substitute for my guidance. And I assure you, Earth-Son: there is nothing of importance one can perceive with eyes that would escape me.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?” Dex asks, holding up three.
“I can tell you that you will have three fewer fingers in short order, if you continue to test me.”
Dex has the good sense to shut up. Mixy’s arms stretch out as he places a foot upon the kick-pedal. Two of his drum-sticks come down on the snare drum together, buzzing the drum in a perfectly even roll. His remaining arms flash across the toms from high to low, drumming out a complicated fill that ends with him crashing four cymbals at once.
As the cymbals crash, the walls of the Carnegie flash a bright red and the ship jumps forward. All I feel is a slight flutter in my stomach as the stars dance before us and the horizon suddenly slants ninety degrees, straight up and down.
“So cool,” Dex breathes beside me.
Tempus spins into view, several thousand feet below us as the Carnegie spins about. I feel a cool tap on my shoulder. “Come now.” Lydia beckons me toward an empty stretch of the Carnegie’s wall. Dex and I follow her and watch as she places one of her hands against the flowmetal. It dissolves, and in a moment I’m looking at the Gibson.
“Take it,” she instructs.
I tentatively reach out and grab the guitar off its hook.
Lydia sighs sadly, her features permeating with black clouds. “This instrument was made for great things. And I refuse to believe that a miracle of chance would deliver it into your hands to see its potential wasted.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t know… I don’t know what to do.”
“Watch your back, of course. Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?” I ask.
“To go home.”
Lydia places her hand on the wall once more and it slides away from her touch. There’s a roar of wind and cold and I’m looking out into the dark night sky. “Safe flight!” she yells, reaching out to grab my shirt before propelling me violently forward.
I scream as I tumble forward out into the dark. My stomach drops. I’m falling. Falling! The world spins and I catch a glimpse of a giant yellow submarine caught in the moonlight. I continue to scream, flipping end over end, my legs flailing as I try to correct my fall. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die! Eventually, I stop spinning enough to get a clear look down at the rapidly growing lights. I’m going to splatter right in the middle of Tempus and people are going to wonder why the heck some idiot jumped off the water tower with his guitar.
The guitar!
I’m still holding it. It’s still strapped over my shoulder. I remember floating in the woods, and Dex screaming at me: You’re flying!
Even as I continue to topple through the air, I plac
e my left hand on the strings and feel out an E chord. I close my eyes and sweep my fingers across the strings, hearing a blast of sound overcome the rush of wind in my ears. The buzz of warm electricity courses through my veins and I open my eyes.
Blue lighting crawls over my skin and I look down over the town still several hundred feet below me. My feet are held steadily underneath me, and as I begin to strum one string of the chord with my thumb, the electric buzz mellows somewhat. Directly beneath me is my apartment building. I can recognize it by the rough “H” shape it makes. Dorian did tell Mixy to drop me off.
My descent has slowed to a controlled float. I keep the E string buzzing as I continue to lower toward the ground. My heartbeat is still crazy and my head is swimming, but the fear of immediate death is turning to a thrill of excitement.
I touch down in the middle of the parking lot, lucky to find cars and not people.
When I open the door to the apartment, guitar slung over my shoulder, Mom is waiting. I lie and tell her that I was haggling for the Gibson with some kid from Craigslist and she lectures me until midnight. Only when I’m curled up safely in bed with the guitar zipped up in an old cloth case do I take a moment to check my phone.
I’ve got a message from Dex.
Still alive?
My hands are shaking so badly I can barely text him back.
* * * * *
Tori and Dex ask me to meet them at the park after Tori’s violin practice the next day. I didn’t sleep. At all. I just sat there facing my bedroom door, expecting some murderous robot to break in and blow me up.
I sneak out with the ratty guitar case strapped back-pack style, Gibson tucked safely inside. Mom took my keys away so I walk two miles, taking the time to replay the events of last night in my head over and over. I entertain the possibility that I am actually going insane, but the thought is countered by the stream of pestering text messages I get from Dex. If I’m insane, we’re at least sharing the same delusion.
I find Tori and Dex sitting together at a park table, Tori’s violin case and a small square box in front of her.
“You got another guitar?” Tori asks when she sees the case. I try not to make eye-contact with Dex.
Six Strings to Save the World Page 5