RESONANCE BETWEEN OUR SUNS
chapter 1 - heard
I’m standing on the biggest stage of my life—and I’m planning to lose.
Tonight’s jackpot is one million credits. Unfortunately, winning anything from Mericor Industries comes with a price. Winning tonight’s Battle of the Bands would make us Mericor’s marketing monkeys for the next six months, and that’s a price no prize is worth.
Waiting in the wings for the emcee to open the show, I feel a hot flush creep up my chest. There’s a balcony backstage with a view of the vacant harbour; beyond, the verdant North Shore mountains, but even the April sunset fails to soften my nerves. I fan out my embroidered blouse while considering the other bands milling around me, their jagged excitement prickling the cool spring air.
Familiar arms encircle my waist. “You’re doing it again.” I turn to find Soren smiling crookedly down at me. “Finding something to worry about before you ace the show.” His voice is honeyed steel; the same voice he used to convince me into playing a Company-sponsored event.
I link my hands into his, relaxing even with his guitar digging into the small of my back. “You know my stress breeds backstage.”
“Nonsense. The Valia I know is dead against surrogacy,” he quips, making me laugh. Playfully, he rests his chin against my forehead, a shock of his long hair tickling my temple. “Relax. This is great exposure.”
“Who cares? That’s not why we’re here.” I turn towards the full amphitheatre beyond the translucent PolyGlas screen shielding us from view. “Besides. These aren’t our people. They’d never vote for us.”
“They might.”
Soren always had the larger ambition, though it hardly mattered when we were in harmony. Now, I catch the sound of a different tune, something I don’t recognize.
I shake my head. “We’re here for a grab-and-go. A hundred thousand to play. We are not angling to win.” When he stretches his face into a hopeful expression, I nudge a corrective elbow into his ribs. “Aim lower, Icarus.”
The device in my pocket buzzes, and I break our embrace to pull it out. Scrolling past multiple last-minute well-wishes from fellow indie artists in the Collective, I pause to read two from Naoko, an old friend.
Pub is packed for the livestream!
Enjoy your last gig. Can’t wait to host your launch party.
I let Soren read it. “Don’t get swayed by the shiny,” I murmur. We’re trying to launch an independent radio station, and what started as a pipe dream has gathered artists who also want freedom from the corporate systems. It’s taken these two years, but I finally managed to convince the ambitious crooner beside me on the merits of a stationary career. We’re so close.
He grins, back to his old self. “You sing for me, and I’ll play for you.”
That was what we always said in the decade we’ve been making music together, building a life most artists can only dream of. For a long time, it was enough. But now there’s a lot more at stake. Tonight, I’m singing for the Collective—and, if I’m being honest with myself, I’m playing for a stable future with Soren. We’ve been something more than friends for far too long.
The lights dim, and Soren pulls me closer to the stage so we can watch the emcee sashay up the steps. She’s got the waist-long shining hair only execs can afford to maintain and a pair of iridescent Glasz shading her eyes from the spotlights.
“Welcome to Battle of the West Coast Bands, sponsored by Mericor Industries!” Her tone is all affected grandiosity. “Let’s give a warm welcome to all our musicians!” She makes a grand gesture, and the spotlights twizzle a colourful pattern. “To you, Metro denizens, and”—her hand sweeps to the hundreds of twinkling drones above—“to all Mericor shareholders streaming the show tonight.”
I glance up and am surprised to see how close the drones are. That’s not ideal. Drones can interfere with our gear, and I don’t need any more complications tonight. I take a few breaths to quell my thrumming heart. Three groups, then it’s our turn. My fingers are tingling, and I try to shake them out without drawing too much attention.
The Companywoman waits for the cheers to subside and turns somber. “This night, thirty-five years ago, is one we will never forget. It is what we remember tonight. Mericor’s discovery of The River”—she pauses, and there’s an audible murmur of veneration rippling through the crowd—“changed humanity forever.”
She presses her hands together and inclines her head towards the Reverents, their section a pool of serene grey and white robes luminous against the vibrant sea of humanity beyond. “Whether you consider the faster-than-light highway a cosmic phenomenon or an invitation from a higher power, we owe our gratitude to those who gave their lives to bring new hope to the world. Tonight, Mericor Industries celebrates the anniversary of the Revelation through song. The winners will join our six-month promotional tour for the next launch—Voyage 5!” More cheers.
I lean into Soren. “Thank you for spending fifty trillion on a new planet colony, instead of rebuilding the world our grandparents bombed.”
As I hoped, he plays along. “Oh, but we’ve paid it forward! Free transportation in every major city, to track your every move! Free medical clinics on every corner, to analyze your DNA for recruitment!”
“Free ball, don’t forget the chain on your way out.” We both snort, and turn back to the emcee.
Her voice warms. “And of course, we dedicate tonight’s competition to…Lance Galleron! Our hero, survivor, trailblazer!”
She gestures grandly behind her, and the thirty-foot translucent PolyGlas wall hiding the backstage from the crowd flashes to reveal a larger-than-life head and shoulders. His tousled raven hair makes him look younger than 32, even if by Earth-count he’s 44.
“Together, we can build a better future.” In this canopied amphitheatre, Galleron’s deep voice reverberates so loud it rattles my ribs. “Do your part—for Primis.”
“All this space fever is making me itch,” I grumble to Soren.
He squeezes my shoulders. “She’s priming them for us. Don’t sweat it, ace.”
The screen fades to the space program’s logo, an inverted capital lambda overlaid with two planets; Earth and Primis. The emcee waves to the whooping crowd. “Our man of the century, whose courage and innovation continues to amaze us. Lance, we salute you!”
More cheers. “C’mon, let’s hear it for Lance! We’re beaming this all four-point-two light years to his ears right now!” The crowd crescendos, and I wince. Don’t they know it’ll take the Company’s poster boy three weeks to hear them?
“And now, for our opening act…please welcome…Beguina!”
“I’ll be back,” Soren hollers as he gestures towards the exit door.
The wordless dirge from the all-female a cappella Reverent group enters my pores, lifts the hair on my arms. There’s a part of me that almost wishes I could fall back on their crutch of faith; a communal order of design in this unfathomably large universe. But I’ve travelled enough of the West Coast to know The River is no deus ex machina to save humanity. It has changed everything, and nothing.
During the next two groups, I try Soren’s trick of making small talk with the other acts, but it feels forced, selfish to distract their own preparatory time to ease my own. I remember Naoko’s reminder to have fun, and force myself to lay aside my prejudice against Mericor and the space program. Tonight is the means to tomorrow, and if I have to be here, then I might as well give it my full effort.
I turn my poise back on when Soren returns with Thrum and Clash, our bassist and drummer. We’re up next.
I lean into our customary pre-show huddle. “Showtime, boys.”
Clash flashes a rock-out hand gesture. “Play, slay, get paid!”
“Get laid,” Thrum mumbles in his dry monotone, and we chuckle.
Soren looks at me, a decade of memories in his eyes. Then he grins. “Let’s show ’em what Fringe talent sounds like.”
♬
Something always goes wrong on stage. I sense the levels are off because the higher frequencies of our music are getting absorbed by the audience, so our earlier sound check in the empty auditorium wasn’t quite enough to calibrate our instruments. A nameless A/V tech gives me the odd update through my in-ear monitors, but I have to play on like nothing’s wrong.
The crowd is receptive, enthusiastic even, but I feel we can hook them further. Halfway through our first song, I lean over to the talkback mic, switch it on while continuing to play the keys with one hand, turn my head so my main mic doesn’t pick up my voice.
“Skip the last verse. Soren, let’s punch up the next song. Faster beat, Clash.” Switch off. I make eye contact with each of them as we close the song to get confirmation before I line up the tracks on my tablet for the next one.
Soren strums the first chord, shaking the neck of his guitar, warbling the tension on the strings to shimmer the sound. “On your feet, Metro! Show me your dance moves!” He glances at me, and I cue the background tracks.
He’s so good at this. By the end of the first chorus, Soren’s got the crowd singing along. When I glance back at Clash, he gives me a wild, rock-out expression. I let my true smile show, feeling the clench in my jaw finally release.
Perhaps I’m a siren self-ensnared. Every time we perform my music, I feel like there’s nothing else in the world I’ll ever need. I might not love the particulars of this event, but I’ll never get tired of this feeling. Every pore suffused in beauty; the sound-version of sunbathing while every sense is employed in producing an experience for the audience.
I know Soren feels it, too. He feeds off the crowd’s energy, pouring it back to them until they are salivating for one more song, more and more encores after every show until I am almost unnerved by their fervour and our growing popularity.
Could he be right? If tonight really does amplify us into a much larger fanbase, maybe one last tour wouldn’t be such a bad thing. A rogue wave of turmoil flips my thoughts upside down. Nonsense. Setting up a station is going to be a very different rhythm, one we will both have to get used to. I’m going to miss this. More than I realized, until this moment.
My earpiece squeals, jolting me out of my reverie, but my hands don’t flinch on the electric keyboard, a 20th century antique I’ve juiced to perfection. We’re approaching the last transition, when we suspend the last chord of this song into the first chord of the next, and I adjust the mic stand for my entry into the final chorus.
Kkkkksssssss!
Right when I’m supposed to harmonize with Soren, my earpiece shorts, flooding me with painful static. Freck.
As I tug it out, I can see the culprit: it’s a Company drone, that dodging dragonfly hover pattern auto-focusing its camera lens, hovering well within the exclusion zone around the stage. Mericor never misses a chance to shoot some footage, and their upload frequency often messes with our gear.
I’m behind all the speakers facing the crowds—and I don’t have an audio implant to hook up like the rest of the band. Without a functioning earpiece, I can’t hear my own voice or my synth through the wall of noise.
If we get disqualified for messing up our performance, we won’t get paid.
In the talkback mic, I mutter, “House, I hope you can hear this, cuz I can’t hear a thing.”
