Six Strings to Save the World

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Six Strings to Save the World Page 13

by Michael McSherry


  “I suppose you haven’t practiced as part of an outfit,” he shrugs. “Well, lesson one for both of you: sharing is caring.” Dorian flicks his bass’s head slightly and I feel myself swing upright, rising to their level. “This is called drafting. It’s a way to share Rez, that way you don’t drop out of the sky every time you get butterflies or stop Rezzing.”

  Tori hesitantly stops bowing her violin, and sure enough, a shimmer of Dorian’s red Rez holds her upright.

  “Try again, Caleb,” Dorian instructs me. “Lose yourself.”

  Again, I close my eyes and start to strum at the strings. I match Dorian’s notes with a simple chord progression. Tori matches us with her violin, soft pizzicato matching our rhythm. Overhead, I can hear Lydia continuing to play her music, laughing with bubbly delight as she dances around in the sky. The sound of waves crashing fades.

  When I open my eyes, we’re about two hundred yards out from the island with nothing underneath us except the ocean.

  “Come on down!” Dorian calls to Lydia.

  She stops playing and abruptly begins to fall, turning to face us like some sort of semi-transparent rainbow skydiver. The wind whips her white hair around her face as she plummets toward us. She tucks into a cannonball shape at the last moment and in a wash of red Rez, rebounds back upward, drafting into Dorian’s web.

  “What’s up?” she asks.

  “Caleb’s a newbie and I don’t think Tori knows what it’s like to really fly. Lay down a little speed and let them see what you can do.”

  “Sure thing.” Lydia starts tapping out the frantic melody of “Flight of the Bumblebee” on her keytar. As I watch, her regular shimmering form starts to vibrate. There’s a blue glow coming from her Resonator. She turns to us, smiling, then looks at Dorian expectantly.

  “Hit it!” he yells.

  With an explosion of air, Lydia is gone. It takes me half a second to realize that she launched herself away from us, farther out to the ocean. I find her by the trail of water she kicks up as she descends, skimming over the ocean. There’s a line of white against the water’s deep blue.

  “How’s she so fast?!” I cry out.

  “She’s just warming up!” Dorian laughs. “Check it out.”

  Lydia turns, arching a wide right turn until she’s travelling parallel to us. With a shimmer of blue, a cone of white vapor forms around her. A moment later, I hear what sounds like a cannon firing as she accelerates even faster, hurtling over the water.

  “Sonic boom,” Dorian comments. “She’s faster than most. But not by too much. Your average Composer can break the sound barrier. Your average Synergist, too, if they’ve got a Resonator.”

  “You can do that too?” I ask.

  “And you, if you train enough,” Dorian nods.

  “How fast are you, Tori?” I ask. She’s staring agape at Lydia as the alien races across the horizon.

  “Not that fast—” she mumbles. “I kinda suck at flying.”

  Lydia comes ripping back around toward us, hurtling like a missile over the water. We watch her as she gets closer and closer, moving directly at us. She’s not slowing down at all. I push back a bit, distancing myself from Lydia’s trajectory. Tori does the same.

  “She’s gonna stop, right?” I ask.

  Dorian, in answer, closes his eyes and leans directly toward Lydia, tapping the point of his nose. The shimmering projectile closes the last few hundred yards in an instant. But with a flash and an explosion of air, Lydia stops directly in front of Dorian, her arm extended. With one finger she taps Dorian on the nose and says, “Boop!”

  “That’s incredible!” Tori exclaims, laughing.

  “Practice makes perfect,” Lydia responds. “So let’s play a bit of a game.”

  “Game?” Tori echoes.

  “Follow the leader.”

  “Well that doesn’t sound too bad,” I say.

  “Twist on the rules,” Dorian barks. “Every time one of you messes up, I’m gonna roast you. Just a little.”

  “Screw that,” I say, watching Dorian’s Rez give a flicker in anticipation.

  “Here we go!” Lydia says, and dives down toward the water.

  “Seriously?” Tori rolls her eyes.

  In answer, Dorian’s bass guitar lights on fire. “Count of three, Ms. Patel. One… Two…”

  Tori dives down after Lydia and I follow, strumming at my guitar to try and keep pace. Lydia levels out just above the water, racing quickly over the ocean. Tori makes her turn, mimicking Lydia’s movement. I try to do the same and feel my toes skin the water just a little bit.

  I spare a glance behind me just in time to see Dorian, right there, with a demonic smile on his face and bass guitar at the ready. He lets loose with a lance of flame that scorches the soles of my feet. I howl with pain and lay on a bit more speed as I catch up with Lydia and Tori. All I can think is faster, faster, faster. And soon I’m overtaking Tori, following just on Lydia’s heels.

  Lydia puts us through our paces. Sharp turns. Slaloms. Speed runs. Barrel rolls. Even a few wide loops. Tori loses it on that one and Dorian’s there to broil her feet for her. After an hour or so of this, Tori and I are both dripping with sweat, panting from exertion, and we’ve each had our feet blasted by Dorian enough that we’re getting better just to save our own skin.

  That’s when Lydia launches up. Straight up. Higher, and higher, and higher.

  I follow, watching the ocean below us falling away. Tori’s right behind me, but I can tell that she’s hesitant. We continue up together, tracing after Lydia. She’s not going fast, and it’s easy enough to keep pace. We pass through a wisp of cloud. Up and up. But the height is making my head swim. The air is getting colder—I can see frost starting to cling to my skin—but the Gibson seems to be keeping me from freezing.

  I’m getting a little bit dizzy.

  Okay, a lot dizzy.

  Lydia stops moving as we catch up to her, and Dorian joins us. Tori’s eyes are wide with panic, and I can see her chest heaving as she takes deep, gulping breaths. I take a moment to look around. We’re up high enough that I can see the ocean below us curving.

  “Your Resonator makes you strong. But not invincible.” Dorian’s voice sounds distant. The feeling of lightheadedness is increasing. “Feel that?” he asks Tori and me. “Feels like, no matter how deep you breathe, you’re just not getting enough air, right? You are not invincible. You are not untouchable. And right now, your brains are screaming for a breath that just won’t come.”

  I try to say something but all that comes out are slurred words. Tori’s eyes are drooping and her breaths are going fast and shallow. “Know your limits, or find them out the hard way,” Dorian says, just as Tori’s eyes close and she begins to fall. Her violin and bow slip from her hands, hurtling downward alongside her body.

  Blinking away the darkness clawing at the periphery of my vision, I dive after her, free falling. She’s tumbling wildly through the air. I catch up to her just as she starts to come to again. The air is more breathable. I pull her in close. But she looks around quickly, eyes seeking something out that I can’t see.

  She points, yelling in my ear: “My violin!”

  I follow her finger and see the Resonator a few dozen yards away, still being whipped violently about by the wind. Tori claws her way around my back as we continue to fall, though with a push from my Gibson I take us into a more controlled descent, directing us toward the violin. Tori stretches out her hand as we near it and misses her first attempt. I give it a grab but the Resonator is spinning uncontrollably and I can’t get a finger on it at the same time as I try to keep us in a controlled fall.

  “Screw it!” Tori screams, and I feel her feet plant on the small of my back as she shoves off and away from me.

  I see her diving through the air, fingers outstretched. She snags the neck of her violin and brings it in close to her body as she streamlines herself, still pointed down. “There’s the bow!” she calls out, pointing below us.

&
nbsp; The bow is moving like an arrow, spinning slightly but dropping much faster than either of us. It’s merely a small dark line against the blue ocean beneath us, which is growing closer every second. “It’ll float!” I yell to her. “We’ll pick it up after!”

  “Go throw your guitar in the ocean!” she yells at me angrily.

  “You can’t get it in time!”

  She takes her violin and turns it so that the neck runs parallel with her body. Head facing straight down and toes pointing like some sort of Olympic diver, she plucks a furious staccato melody. Then she’s rocketing downward toward the water, faster than I can keep pace. The air hisses as she slices her way toward the bow. For a moment I’m sure she’s going straight down into the water. But she stops herself about three feet short, bow in hand as a wash of her white Rez ripples the water all around her.

  She looks back up at me triumphantly.

  “Atta girl!” Lydia calls from overhead as she and Dorian float down to my level.

  “Come on up,” Dorian says to Tori. With a quick, pitch-bending draw from her bow, she ascends to our level. “Like I was saying,” he continues. “Know your limits. Know when to push yourself, and when to back off.”

  Dorian’s face slides into something entirely unreadable. “But understand that there might come a time when you have no other choice. Do or die. And if that time comes, then the only thing you’ll be able to count on is one another. Got it?”

  “Got it,” I say. Tori nods her head in agreement.

  “Good,” says Dorian, smiling again and yawning. “It’s not going to get any easier. I promise you that.”

  * * * * *

  Dorian isn’t lying. He works us from dawn until dusk for the next two weeks. Not just speed training, although that remains an integral part of his regimen. For strength training, he makes Tori and I roll slabs of rock the size of vans across the beach, plowing deep troughs into the sand. For endurance training, Dorian flies overhead and launches fireballs down at us while we are restricted to a forty-yard square of white sand. He eventually reduces a patch of the beach to glass. Target practice becomes sparring, as Tori, Dorian, Lydia, and I fly over the ocean, trading and countering low-power bursts of Rez at one another. Dorian’s Rez hits like hot iron. Lydia’s Rez smashes like a heavy hammer. Tori’s Rez feels like a razor, and she laughs when she slices a “T” into the back of my shirt a la Zorro.

  I’m still amazed by what we can do.

  By what the Resonators can do.

  But it’s still exhausting, and at the end of most days I’m shaking by the time I slink back aboard the Carnegie, too exhausted to form a complete sentence let alone understand the complicated babble of reporting that Dex and Mixy make each night at dinner. I dream about coconuts more often than I’d care to admit.

  At the end of a particularly exhausting day, I hang my Gibson up on its hook and head up to my room. I take a quick shower and press my communicator disc onto a wall display and call Mom. She’s got a Blu-ray player in her hotel room in Cairo, so we’ve been using video to chat with one another lately.

  “Hey Mom,” I say as her features take shape on the display.

  She moves her mouth and waves, but there’s no audio. Just a weird static sound.

  “Hold on,” I say. “There’s a, uh, bad connection or something.”

  I walk up to the wall and swat the screen a few times as Mom mimes and points at her ear to see if I can hear her.

  The static grows louder in a wash of strange, pulsing noise. Then the noise begins to take shape. It pulses with… rhythm. One, two, three, four. The static begins to modulate with different pitches. It sounds almost… melodic. Electronic. My heart is pounding, and as my brain catches up, I cut the connection.

  “Synthesizers!” I yell down the hall. Tori, Lydia, and Dorian come crashing out of their rooms a second later.

  “What do you mean?” Dorian asks.

  “My communicator! I heard techno!”

  I’m diving down the float-tube before I can hear Dorian’s retort. Mixy and Dex are on the main deck, poring over their individual displays. “I heard Synthesizers on my communicator!” I shout at them.

  “Impossible,” Mixy responds. “I use an attenuated Rez frequency and high-level encryption.”

  Rather than trying to explain, I pull my communicator back on and set it to an open channel, dialing up the volume. It pipes out electronic notes harmonizing to form a multi-layered chord.

  Mixy erupts from his seat, dashing toward his drum throne. “Battle stations!” he cries out. Just as he’s settling in, there’s a tremendous explosion from overhead. I run forward to look up through Mixy’s dome, just in time to see a titanic slab of rock come crashing down from overhead. It slams down onto the Carnegie like a huge hammer, pushing the nose of the Carnegie down into the water, sinking the dome into the sand.

  I feel a slight flutter in my stomach as the gravity mods compensate, making the deck feel like flat ground even though my eyes tell me I’m standing at a 45 degree incline.

  “Machine devils!” Mixy cries out. “They’ve immobilized us!” he yells.

  “How many?” Lydia shouts. She, Dex, and Tori have already retrieved their Synthesizers and are standing on the deck.

  Mixy’s hands flash over a display near his drum set. “Three fighters and two carriers. They’re sending the Autotuners in to finish us off!”

  “How quickly can you get us out of here?” Dorian asks.

  “Too long! I need to cut through the rock. Buy me time!” Mixy begins to hammer away on his drums, double bass pedals erupting in a flurry of movement as his drumsticks flash across the snare and toms.

  “It’s music,” Dex says quietly, coming beside me and pulling the communicator from my hand. “Why would we hear music?” He grabs his grubby pencil and flips to a new page in his notepad.

  “What?” I say. “Never mind, man. Dorian, what should we do?”

  “Strap up, kid,” he says, pointing to the Carnegie’s wall.

  I rush to the wall, palming it and retrieving my Gibson from its hook. Then Dorian leads us down the float-tube and to the far end of the Carnegie’s cargo bay. With a hand on the wall, the Carnegie opens up to starlight and a full moon directly overhead. The Synthesizers blasted away the entire cliff-face hiding the Carnegie, and now the submarine’s tail is protruding a few yards above the water. Dorian steps out of the Carnegie and swings forward as the gravity field dampens. Lydia, Tori, and I all follow.

  We stand together on the Carnegie’s tail. We see two of the Autotuner’s fighters in the distance, making wide, arcing turns that trail shimmering waves of red Rez wake. But hovering over the cove are two larger Synthesizer ships, glowing with rippling lines of Rez as the water and sand beneath them churns in a maelstrom.

  As I watch, I see dozens of Autotuner bots dropping from the ships, falling heavily onto the beach. They all turn toward us, training their red-ringed eyes onto us. They begin to pulse in unison, and over the chop of waves and wind I can hear the sound of electronic kick drums and snare drums filling the air in unison.

  “Well,” Dorian grins, adjusting his bass guitar strap. “We’re just gonna call this final exams. Cool?” He and Lydia turn to face us, shimmering with fields of Rez, eyes wide, and teeth bared in crazed smiles.

  I can’t decide who’s more terrifying: the small Synthesizer army, or these two Composers.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Lydia, see if you can take down those birds. Caleb, Tori, you’re with me.”

  Lydia crouches low against the Carnegie, knees bent as she begins tapping away at her bass keys. The notes bounce, syncopated, repeating. A wave of shimmering blue Rez starts to pool around Lydia’s feet as she narrows her eyes on the two Autotuner fighters completing their high-speed turns out over the ocean.

  Lydia chooses that moment to launch off of the Carnegie’s tail. The air booms around us and she’s gone, a blazing blue missile tracing the Autotuner fighters out over the water. I w
atch for a second longer as the fighters scramble, jogging left and right and beginning to fire pulsing red Rez bursts at Lydia.

  “Check it,” Dorian says, and enters in with his bass, slapping notes out with the side of his thumb to match Lydia’s fading bass line. The Rez around him gets so hot that the water clinging to the Carnegie starts to evaporate in clouds of steam.

  I turn up the volume on my Gibson and start to play along, taking background to Dorian’s bass lead. Electricity brims around me, leaping through the cloud of steam in a flurry of arcing tendrils. My hair is standing on end as my feet leave the ground. Tori comes in a moment later, matching my guitar with smooth precision, bow flashing back and forth.

  The Autotuners on the beach launch a volley of Rez at us, orbs of red, shimmering energy racing across the water.

  “Come on!” Dorian shouts. “We have to lead them away from the Carnegie while Mixy cuts her loose!”

  Dorian jumps forward, flying straight toward the incoming volley. With a sweep of his bass guitar, a wall of expanding flame leaps forth, meeting the Autotuners’ first volley in an explosion of flame and rippling Rez. The Autotuners are matching their modulated electronic noise to us, trying to drown us out. Dorian leads us, racing forward toward the beach while Tori and I draft behind him, picking up speed.

  They let loose with another volley. I veer right, Tori veers left, but Dorian lays on a bit of extra speed, dodging and weaving between incoming shots. The spindly, black-orbed Autotuners crouch lower to the sand, bracing for Dorian’s approach. As Dorian rockets over the shallows, he slides his bass guitar’s strap from over his head and drops a few feet, skimming the surface like a barefoot water skier.

  The Autotuner nearest him doesn’t stand a chance. He swings his bass guitar like a baseball bat and takes the Autotuner’s head clean off, sending the black orb rocketing into the sky. “He knocks it out of the park!” Dorian screams. He hits the sand and vaults upward, turning with his guitar in hand and spraying fire down upon another pair of Autotuners.

  As I’m flying sideways through the air, I get a quick count of somewhere between forty and fifty Autotuners. Dorian is ripping through them like grass, and on the far end of the beach I can see Tori beginning to slice through them as she dodges red bolts of Rez.

 

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