Expert Assistance

Chapter 3 - A Clause for Everything

Jake had been watching Evvie’s first “performance” for less than half an hour when boredom overtook him. The songs had melded together in an amorphous mass of up-tempo pleasantries. Anonymous and toned male and female dancers were moving in endless synchronization. Holographic images were merging into brightly colored blobs.

With the right pharmaceuticals, he thought, this might make for a nice little buzz.

Jake could not escape the images on the screen so easily. He had to maintain a watch on the “concert” so as to properly perform his job. Sid had provided him with the list of songs Evvie would perform, so Jake would know when the show was over. It was a good gesture, but it also gave Jake more information on her career than he’d ever wanted.

The first song of her concert was “Sweet Kisses and Sour Grapes.” It was her seventh hit and by far her most popular song. If pressed Jake would admit that the tune had some merit. It told the story of a girl who wanted a boy but was rejected by him; while she dreamed of giving him “sweet kisses,” she wondered if he was better in her dreams than in reality. It had some spark of imagination, but it was also entirely predictable.

The second slot in the concert was held by her first hit as a pop singer, “Baby Move Your Groove.” It was like every other teen dance hit Jake had ever known of, and naturally was Evvie’s second most-popular hit. The song was followed by two upcoming releases, the cloying “Toys and Candy” and the nauseating “That Famous Little Girl.” Jake suspected that if those two became hits, they’d switch places in the lineup with the first song.

Following those two were a handful of ballads, the first of which was Evvie’s third hit, “Diary Of My Heart.” After that came “I’m Looking His Way” and “That Should Be Us.” Each was full of the teen love angst that had been a staple of the genre since time immemorial. When he heard each for the first time, Jake had to struggle from bursting out with laughter. The songs contained the sort of unintentional humor that the genre had become notorious for early in the Twenty-First Century. He felt their only redeeming value was that Evvie sang them without the annoying vocal effects that cluttered up her other singles.

The ballad break was followed by the most cluttered of those other songs, the assertive dance hit “Back On My Feet.” After that was “(Don’t Be A) Silly Boy,” and then to end the show came “Hot & Cold Love.” The second-to-last song in the lineup was the one that truly baffled Jake. It was simultaneously an up-tempo dance song, a flirty come-on, and a female empowerment tune. It managed to be trite one moment and ponderous the next. Yet despite what seemed to be obvious flaws, it was the song most popular with Evvie’s diehard fans.

It must be one of those songs, Jake concluded, that seems brilliant at fifteen and pointless at twenty. That is the only possible explanation for it.

Partway through the concert Jake began to wonder if it might be a good idea to hand off the monitoring task to Odin. He’d just about decided to make the request when Odin said to him, “Jake, I have a transmission request from Antioch Two. Shall I patch it through?”

“God, yes. Anything’s better than this. Oh, and keep watch on the show for me, please. Let me know when Evvie gets near the end.”

“Certainly. Stand by.”

The concert image became a tiny and silent box in the upper left corner of the screen. Daniel Rosen’s face appeared on the rest. He wore an expression of stern determination. In any other context, someone might have asked him what he’d eaten that was making him frown so much. Jake himself wondered if he might have to amend his last sentence.

“Robin Hood, this is Friar Tuck,” Daniel began.

Jake glanced up at the ceiling and rolled his eyes.  He exhaled, then asked, “Odin, you are scrambling this, I hope?”