Six Strings to Save the World

by Michael McSherry

  Then the snare-drum comes drilling in, fast sixteenth notes that level the Carnegie off just over the treetops as the submarine lurches forward with a new burst of speed. Dorian cranks his bass’s volume knob and starts strumming away with equally fast notes, filling the cargo hold with powerful, distorted, grungy music.

  Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades.”

  The black teardrops swing back into view, and Dorian just—starts on fire. I feel a wash of heat from my side as flames cover Dorian head to toe. Brilliant reds, yellows, and oranges dance about him in a whirling motion as the wind whips the flames into a fury. I’m almost ready to force a stop drop and roll on Dorian when I see that he’s still strumming away on his bass guitar, hammering out “Ace of Spades” together with Mixy’s drumming.

  “Watch!” he yells, angling his Resonator toward the array of approaching Synthesizer ships.

  The flames flicking across his skin intensify to blue and white and his bass guitar explodes outward with a lance of flame and a deafening roar. I blink against the light and see a spear of fire rocketing through the air, trailing a plume of black smoke as the fire rips through the sky. The Synthesizer ships try to veer away, breaking formation and jogging sideways. But Dorian cranks the neck of his bass sideways at the last moment and the firebolt jumps violently to the side, hitting one of the ships.

  The Synthesizer ship explodes with a burst of static.

  “Yeah!” I hear clapping from behind me. Dex is at the other end of the cargo bay, strapped into a seat with his hands slapping together seal-style. Mom is sitting beside him, wide-eyed and looking like she’s going to puke.

  “What do we do?!” Tori yells from beside me.

  “Play along!” Dorian yells.

  I grit my teeth and turn to look back out the cargo bay. Mixy’s drumming is still fast and strong, hammering away, and I do my best to just focus on the downbeats. Fingers on strings, Dorian’s distorted bass repeats another familiar measure of “Ace of Spades.” I crank the volume on my Gibson and press my fingers down between the frets, slamming across the strings as I rip out my first chord, bending the notes up to match Dorian. One more measure and I fall into the rhythm of it.

  I’m brimming with electricity. I feel it coursing through me, crackling out into the air around me. My hair is standing on end as I continue to play, gaining confidence. Dorian glances sideways, giving me a nod. “When I shoot, you shoot!” he yells.

  His flames turn from red and orange to blue and white again, and he hold his hand over his head. I scramble to sweep my guitar strings at the same time he lets loose with another surge of fire. Electricity arcs away from my body and my guitar, jumping sideways and joining the fireball, which blossoms with white streaks of electricity and rockets toward the Synthesizer ships.

  Before the Rez nears the Synthesizers, they abandon their formation, breaking into different paths. The fireball erupts early as lightning forks in two directions, touching on two of the obsidian ships. They glow white for a moment then fall out of the sky, down into the trees below.

  “Not bad!” Dorian yells over the wind.

  The remaining Synthesizer ships are closing in. They’re pulsing with red light in unison, a synthetic but fast bass drum sound thundering through the air, growing in volume to match Mixy’s drumming.

  “They’re gonna fire!” I say, slapping Dorian’s arm.

  “Not my show now.”

  Lydia, who’s mostly been watching so far, leans forward until she’s stretched far over the precipice of the Carnegie’s cargo bay, only her feet held against the lip of the sub’s floor. Rez continues pulsing near her feet, like it’s keeping her glued to the ship. She’s singing loudly, staring into the array of Synthesizer ships with a dangerous look in her eyes.

  As she sings the Synthesizer ships erupt with a volley of glowing red Rez. The balls of energy fly forward at the Carnegie, sizzling through the air and bathing the forest beneath us in a nightmarish red glow. The bolts hurtle toward us and I feel my heart pounding away in my chest.

  Lydia hits a chord on her keytar and a wave of blue Rez pours out of her Resonator, blossoming in the air behind the Carnegie in a blur of color. The wave breaks against several of the Synthesizer’s energy bursts, commingling together in bright purple explosions. But Lydia’s counter doesn’t stop all of the incoming missiles.

  Two of the bursts continue directly at the Carnegie.

  “Hold on!” Mixy’s voice bellows from overhead.

  The world turns upside down as the Carnegie barrel-rolls through the air. The force of the turn keeps my feet on the floor even as we complete a full inversion. The whole horizon spins twice more as the energy pulses hurtle by the Carnegie, erupting outside with booms that shake my teeth. The Carnegie levels off as the remaining seven Synthesizers begin to pulse in unison again.

  “I don’t know this song!” Tori yells beside me.

  “What?” I yell back, a little distracted by the murder-robots chasing us.

  “I don’t know this song, you idiot!”

  “Improvise?”

  Dorian and I continue to play as Lydia gets ready to drop another chord. Tori bows a high, keening note on her violin that slides down an entire octave, landing on a note matching my guitar, tracing the same lead as me. Dorian lets loose with another burst of electricity-imbued fire as shimmering discs of energy slice in wide arcs from Tori’s violin. A couple of the discs pass low, taking the tops of trees off as they curve back up.

  One of the Synthesizer ships tries to dodge left as one of Tori’s Rez bursts curves up at it, but it’s not fast enough. One sweep of energy hits the ship. It lurches slightly but continues in its pursuit. Locking in, Tori lets loose six more discs, three of which pepper the Autotuner ship’s hull. The single eye fades and for a moment the Synthesizer continues up, propelled by its momentum. Then it starts to fall as portions of the hull fall away, cut apart by Tori’s Rez.

  Dorian catches one more of the Synthesizers with his Rez, sending it careening to the ground. The remaining Synthesizers abandon their erratic patterns and cluster together, drawing even closer to the Carnegie. The ships touch, pulsing in quick unison as their synthetic drum-noise builds in intensity, drowning our music out.

  “Not good!” Dorian yells. He turns to me, pulling the hook loose from my harness. Before I can protest, he plants a solid palm against my chest and pushes me backward, farther into the cargo hold. I tumble and slide, propelled back by Dorian’s enhanced strength, until I hit somebody’s feet. I look up and see Dex and Mom looking down at me, startled.

  Dorian wraps the cable around his waist and secures the hook again. Then he jumps out of the doorway into the air behind us. The pursuing Synthesizers fire a beam of concentrated red Rez, combining their firing power. Dorian, flying to meet the Synthesizers with a trail of cable behind him, strums his bass’s strings. Lydia slams a chord down. Rez flies in both directions, mixing then exploding with a deafening roar as the waves of Rez swallow Dorian’s shadow.

  Lydia screams something and the Carnegie jogs left, sending me sliding on the floor, the beam crashing into the ship’s wall. The white interior boils red and black, rippling as the Carnegie gives a violent shake. “Grab it!” I hear Lydia yell, and see that she and Tori are busily pulling on Dorian’s taut cable. As the smoke clears I see that Dorian’s limp figure is still being trailed behind the Carnegie, spinning in the wind. He’s badly burned, his skin and clothing charred.

  The Synthesizer cluster is pulsing together once more.

  The Carnegie pulls up sharply, angling straight up, rocketing toward the sky as the ground fills the space below us.

  I look sideways at Dex and Mom. Then Tori and Lydia, still busily pulling at Dorian’s cable even as they dangle together from their own cabling. I settle my guitar into position and plant my feet as steadily as I can on the ground.

  “What are you doing?” Mom yells at me, eyes wide.

  I ignore her, adjusting the guitar strap over my shoul
der. Everything seems a bit more… quiet now. Tori spins to look at me, eyes wide as she realizes what I’m about to do. With a quick power chord, I push myself forward on a jet of Rez, aiming for the open bay door.

  Then I’m falling.

  Flying?

  I’m out of the Carnegie either way, the air around me popping with electricity as Rez crawls over my skin. Straight below me, exactly where I’m falling, I see the pulsing red eye of the Synthesizer cluster.

  The Synthesizers fire.

  I yell, sweeping across the strings with a full chord, my guitar held tight against me as I plummet downward.

  It feels like every bit of air is sucked out of my chest. Everything goes white for a moment and my left arm explodes with pain. A beam of lightning cracks through the air, the sound deafening as it forks downward, splitting the red Synthesizer Rez in half as it continues downward. The bolt touches upon the cluster and the Synthesizers explode simultaneously, fire and sparks scattering in the air below me.

  I try to breathe. My breath won’t come. The world is spinning, darkening. I tumble through the air, the wind roaring in my ears. Tumbling. Spinning. Can’t breathe.

  There’s the sky.

  And there’s a girl, falling from the sky.

  Violin in hand.

  Darkness.

  Chapter Seven

  It feels like my left arm is covered in angry fire ants, but the sound of Tori crying is what pulls me awake. I crack open an eye and see her hovering over me, tears running her mascara down her cheeks as she shakes me. My body feels heavy and the air smells like ozone. But there are birds chirping nearby, and there are tree branches overhead, swaying in the breeze. We’re on the ground.

  “You jumped out after me?” I ask.

  Tori’s eyes widen as she realizes I’m awake. She pulls me up off the ground into a tight hug. Her hair smells like peaches.

  “I thought you were afraid of heights?” I wheeze.

  She laughs and cries at the same time, a noise that sounds more like a sneeze than anything else. “I thought you were dead.”

  Some of the feeling is returning to the fingers in my right hand. I wiggle them around and feel around in the dry leaves beside us until my fingers come to rest on the familiar smooth surface of my Gibson. Tori’s hair does its best dandelion impression as the static sends it straight out in every direction. Just touching my guitar helps dull the pain a bit.

  Overhead, the Carnegie swims into view, sweeping over the treetops in a small circle as it searches out a clearing to land in. I watch it, dazed, as it settles down a few dozen yards away, crunching dirt and grass below it.

  “Can you stand?” Tori asks. “There might be more coming. We have to go.”

  “Maybe,” I lie, testing out my feet. They feel like rubber. “I don’t think so, actually. Not yet.”

  “I’ll carry you,” Tori says, pulling me up off the ground with one arm. She’s got her violin in her other hand, so it’s not hard work for her. I drag the Gibson up with my right hand.

  “Tori?” I say as she walks quickly. “I can’t feel my left arm.”

  “Don’t look at it,” she tells me. So, of course, I look at it.

  The skin is charred up to my shoulder, black and cracked, the sleeve of my shirt burned away. I’m bleeding, too. Somehow, just looking at it seems to wake my brain up to the idea that something really terrible and really painful happened. White-hot pain shoots through the arm, throbbing with my heartbeat. Every jarring step Tori takes shakes me further awake. By the time we reach the Carnegie I’m gasping for breath between clenched teeth, head swimming.

  The Carnegie’s cloak activates as we approach, and with a shimmer, the behemoth yellow ship disappears from view, leaving us looking at the trees on the opposite side of the clearing. Then a seam in the empty air materializes from nothing as the Carnegie’s cargo bay opens to receive us. It’s a strange illusion, like a portal popped open in the middle of the field.

  Mr. Patel and Mom are waiting at the threshold. Mom’s eyes go straight to my arm and she draws a sharp breath as Tori brings us onboard. She takes a few brief seconds to examine the cracked skin of my left arm, then orders Tori and Mr. Patel to help me upstairs. It shouldn’t surprise me, I suppose. I imagine she’s seen a lot worse at the hospital. Or back in Israel.

  Mixy’s voice booms through the cargo hold just as we’re nearing the float-tube. “Straight to medical!”

  Tori helps me over to the float-tube. We pass by the main level where I catch a glimpse of Mixy pounding away on his drums as the Carnegie rockets skyward once more. The float-tube dumps us out into the third-level corridor and Tori helps me stumble through the doorway into the clean, white room where I left Mom before. She and Mr. Patel come in right behind us.

  Lydia is already there with Dex, both of them standing near an enclave. Dorian is lying in the enclosure, eyes closed, looking way worse than me. He’s burned all over, his clothing tattered, his shoes half-melted. As I watch, Lydia taps away furiously at her keytar, set horizontally on a bench beside the enclave. The music is frantic, erratic, and she’s shouting instructions at Dex over her shoulder. Dex, for his part, is interfacing with foreign characters on a wall display. They briefly turn when Tori and I stumble in.

  “You’re alive!” Dex cries elatedly.

  “Yeah,” I say, smiling weakly as Dex’s eyes go to my burned arm.

  “Dex!” Lydia barks. “Start the sequence now.”

  Dex reacts immediately, tapping at a series of icons on the display as Lydia’s music mellows considerably. Pulsing lights fill the enclave over Dorian as a series of robotic arms descend, tipped with painful-looking needles. I catch a glimpse of Dorian’s chest as it rises and falls, just once. Then the wall seals itself, encasing Dorian within it.

  “Is he going to live?” I ask.

  “Don’t know yet,” Lydia shudders, her skin rippling with a cloud of black. “The auto-med needs to operate. I’ll know more soon.”

  Dex comes and puts a hand on her shoulder. “You did what you could.”

  “Miss,” Mom says, voice flat. “My son’s arm. Third-degree burns.”

  The cloud disappears from Lydia’s skin, cooling to its pale blue. She presses her palm against the wall and it ripples, reshaping itself into a reclined seat protruding from the wall. “Sit,” she orders me, passing my guitar off to Dex. Tori helps me drop down into the seat as my arm gives another painful throb. “Can you feel it?” she asks.

  “Oh yeah,” I huff.

  “Can you move it?”

  I attempt to move it, and watch as the charred fingers give the smallest twitch in response. Suddenly the pain is overshadowed by a thought: What if I can’t play guitar anymore? The thought is so terrifying that I can barely draw another breath. My chest feels tight and all I want to do is shut down.

  “We need to disinfect it,” Mom says. “Something for the pain, too. Then we need to get him to a hospital.”

  “Our doctors won’t be able to handle this as well as the Composers,” Mr. Patel says. He and Tori are standing together, his arm wrapped tightly around her.

  “Forgive me if I don’t think that the blue lady’s little keytar is going to—”

  “Lydia,” Lydia interrupts.

  “What?”

  “My name is Lydia. Not blue lady. And since Dorian is incapacitated, I am the commanding officer of this ship.”

  Mom stares at Lydia for a moment. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me.”

  “Caleb is your son,” Lydia ignores the apology. “You want to protect him. But I have studied my instrument for several of your lifetimes. Sai is right when he says that we Composers can treat Caleb better than your doctors.” Lydia’s voice is calming, but I can see Mom’s nostrils flare like she’s about to say something.

  “Mom,” I say. “Just… watch, okay? I need you right now.”

  Mom’s face changes, and she looks at me with worry in her eyes, the calm gone and replaced with genuine fear. She comes o
ver to me and stands at my right side, kneeling down beside me. Running her fingers through my hair, she says softly, “I’m here. You know I’m here. That was a brave thing you did. And stupid. And dangerous. Did I say stupid already?”

  I attempt a smile, just to see her smile too.

  “This is going to hurt a little bit,” Lydia says, coming to stand on the opposite side of my chair. As she moves, the platform holding her Resonator follows her, tracing a path along the wall until it comes to rest next to my head.

  “You could at least lie,” I say, taking a deep, shaky breath.

  “I was lying,” she murmurs. “It’s going to hurt a lot.”

  She starts to play again while Tori, Dex, and Mr. Patel look on from across the room, their faces caught in the blue glow of Lydia’s instrument. I watch as the flow of blue Rez drips down the length of my arm, from shoulder to fingertips. It feels like ice at first, but then turns to needles, like hundreds of them driving straight down to my bones. The Rez vibrates violently with the peaks of Lydia’s music, slowing to a bruising massage with the valleys of her bass notes. Five minutes into this and I’m shaking violently, sweating through the most unbearable pain I’ve ever felt.

  “There’s muscle and nerve damage,” Lydia explains. “The Rez needs to penetrate in order to be effective. Just hold on.”

  Mom grabs hold of my hand, pressing my fingers between hers. “You know, your father broke his fingers when I went into labor with you,” she says. We both know I’ve heard the story a hundred times. “We pulled up at the hospital, and Aldus was in such a rush that he slammed his fingers in the car door. Seventeen hours of labor and he didn’t make a peep about it, because he didn’t want to miss you.”

  She’s crying and smiling at the same time.

  “He was planning on playing you lullabies on his saxophone when we took you home. At first, he was upset that he couldn’t play for you, but you know what he did instead? He bought a cheap kazoo at the gift shop and played your lullabies every night, one-handed, for two months.”

  I laugh a little at that. Mom laughs too.