The night of the show, I saw Vijay at the bar arguing with the burly drummer from Narcoleptic. He gestured at the stage and I caught his eye and he grinned, a big shit-eating grin, as I worked the boards for the band - video, audio, and of course, enhancements for the holograms.
Pitch was a dervish on stage, glowing with the crowd’s energy and of course, her boards. Between songs, she kept up a steady monologue for her audience, as Pitch Plus, with wings, fairy ears, halos and horns all flickering in and out of existence as her mood shifted.
Zeke and Billy were her foils; Billy prancing on lead guitar, Zeke striding between bass and keyboards. And in the back, pulsing like a dying sun, Ned, on the drums. But it was Pitch at the center of it all. When she was in the song, she was a goddess, at times looming over the crowd fifteen feet high, crouched so her head didn’t go through the ceiling, then a fairy fluttering above the stage, scarcely more than a throbbing point of light with a voice that drove the crowd to dance in frenetic, sweaty time.
Of course I cursed when she pulled that giantess stunt, it was really pushing the edges of what my tech could do, but it worked, and I worshipped her damn near as much as the crowd did. And they offered up their exultation with the flash and glow of dermals shining from their faces and flickering across raised hands lifted into the air; dermals which were recording the show as they sent out images of us on stage, bringing in virtual crowds in realtime. We were a hit.
After that we were doing two or three gigs a week in T.O. and then we toured for a month in the States, with three gigs in New York.
We got back into Toronto late Wednesday night at the end of March, and dropped the gear at the studio. We were lying around on the battered furniture, throwing back a few beers, when Billy, who had gone out in search of salty snacks, burst into the studio only a couple of minutes after he’d left with a copy of inSight clutched in his hand.
We’d made the cover.
I watched Billy bounce around the studio, giving everyone a big kiss on the lips (including me; he was a good kisser, but could use a shave), saving Zeke till last. “Baby, you did it baby, you got us to the big time.” yelled Billy, and then leapt into his lover’s arms, toppling them both to the dusty floor. We all laughed, but when they started to pull at each others’ clothes, Pitch poured half of her beer over their heads.
“I’m as fond of a little boy-on-boy as the next girl, but I’d like to see this article that you two are bumping and grinding all over.”
Billy laughed again, bounced to his feet and gave Pitch another kiss, surprising her with the intensity of it. Still, being Pitch, she gave as good as she got. While they were occupied, Zeke got to his feet, blushing furiously, trying to look nonchalant about an obvious and, considering the tightness of his pants, probably highly uncomfortable erection.
I looked around, trying to capture the moment in my mind. Pitch trying to look hardcore and driven, but with a grin constantly sneaking onto her face. Zeke serene and content, his gaze focused on Billy, who was still hopping and dancing around the studio, singing “We are the Champions” at the top of his lungs. I knew that I had a huge, shit-eating grin on my face, but what was most memorable for me was Ned’s reaction. Phlegmatic, burnt-out Ned had a spark in his eye that I’d never seen before. Like there was some hope in the world after all, something good and real. I wondered what sort of junkie he’d been – it wasn’t as though he never touched anything now; he still drank, or took a hit on a toke now and again, but nothing excessive. And he’d always felt a little dead to me, as though he’d buried something of himself. But now it seemed as though our walking corpse had some life in him after all.
“Pretty cool, eh Neddy?” I prompted, over Billy’s terrible singing.
“Yeah,” he said, and then for emphasis, “Yeah.”
***
After that, we started to see the normals at our shows. It was at our gig at Arisen, a big venue in the industrial lands near the lakeshore, that it became obvious. Guys in suits; girls in miniskirts. Not our usual black-on-black crowd. I even thought I recognized a couple of the suits, from other shows.
I turned to Ned to ask him about that, when I saw he was already staring at them with a peculiar intensity. The deadpan look that he’d worn when I first met him was back in force.
“Noticed our serious boys from the ’burbs have you?”
“Yeah,” answered Ned, seeming distracted. “Not sure if that’s what they are though.”
“You expecting trouble?”
He shook his head, “No, they just remind me of my old crowd.” He smiled and looked at the band tuning on stage. “But fuck the past, eh? We’ve got a future. Don’t we?”
His tone threw me. “Um hell, yeah, we’re the bomb. Look around you.”
He smiled and headed towards the stage. But I noticed that his path through the crowd carried him well away from the guys in the black suits.
When we’d hired Ned he’d seemed a bit of a burnout. And a bit old, too, but he was a hard drummer and rock solid. Nothing seemed to rattle him. Not the crowds, not the club owners or bouncers. So I didn’t know what to make of his reaction to the suits. Maybe he was a disgraced derivatives trader, a refugee from Bay Street. I smiled at the thought of Ned in a suit.
Still, after that night I started looking for them at our other shows and I began to share Ned’s unease. They weren’t at all of our shows, and when they did show up, they blended with the young wannabe hip crowd. But whenever I saw Ned looking tense, or just a little too flat, I’d look closer, and sure enough, there they’d be.
Then Aria offered us a record deal. – They were the new big thing around town - fresh to the game, but they talked and acted like they had deep pockets. Turned out that one of the suits that Ned had been worrying about was from the label. That night Ned got drunker than I’d ever seen him.
“You ever worry that someone might use your electric ink to do shit? Rob banks or plant bombs or stuff like that?” he asked me.
I laughed. “Fuck, I’ve thought of doing that. But nobody knows this shit like me. My old prof at York might’ve, but he blew his brains out over some faculty politics. And even if they could work it out, it would be fucking idiotic, no one relies on video security anymore. It’s too easy to hack. It’s all DNA-linked biometrics now. I mean, hell, that’s why you had to give a blood sample last time you got your health card. The government’s been using DNA-linked cards for what, five, six years now? And even that’s getting to be old news. The BlueChip Corps have proteome-responsive dermals now, they don’t bother with your DNA, they just look at how it expresses itself. No bluffing that shit.” I shook my head and continued.“Not that they’ve licensed it to the spooks though. It’s just another example of how governments have to lick the boot-heels of their corporate overlords - that’ll teach ’em to cut research funding. It’s one of the big reasons I never finished grad school you know, all the cutbacks.”
“And the expulsion,” said Ned.
I laughed and took a sip of beer. “Yeah, but still, I coulda worked that out.” I leaned forward, “You know, it’s kinda funny how desperate the Feds are for new tech actually, and how out of touch they are. I mean I know some wetware punks that are starting to hack the DNA imprint on their driver’s licenses so that they can get drunk on a Saturday night. When I was in school, it was cutting edge, but now it’s one step from being a joke.”
“So your tech wouldn’t really be useful to the spooks or anyone?”
“Nah, not unless you combined it with all sorts of biometric shit.”
“Could you?”
“Shit, yeah, if some punk in the street can do it, I could. But why would I?”
“No reason.” He paused. “You wouldn’t, would you?”
I looked at him, shook my head at the strangeness that was Ned drunk. “No man, I’ve got no interest in that shit. Besides, why would I rob a bank? The band keeps up like this and we’ll own the bank.”
He smiled at that and said, “We are so going to kick ass,” and then he leaned to one side of his bar stool and puked.
***
Billy and I were sitting around arguing about some of the levels on the ‘Hot Tamale’ track when I met him the first time.
“Richard Howard,” he said, “from Aria. I’m very happy to meet you. I hear that you’re the best sound guy in the business.”
His smile seemed genuine and his handshake firm, but to call me the best sound guy in the business was bullshit. I was good, no question, but I wasn’t the best. The band kept me on sound because I understood how it worked with the holoimages. I didn’t trust him from the beginning; the vibe was all wrong. He was too eager, too positive and had too little sleaze. A sincere suit; I should have known then.
It didn’t get any better with time either. At first it was just my own paranoia – I’d been in the business long enough to see what the big labels could do, and every time he came by I was constantly expecting the hammer to drop: for him to announce a cut in studio time, cancel the contract, or, god help us, initiate a discussion about market numbers with gentle suggestions about changes in our ‘artistic direction.’ Anticipating disaster didn’t help my temper; I was irritable and Zeke was frustrated with me, since Howard was our main contact from the studio.
Ned, though, seemed to share my distrust. At least I could vent my frustration to him. “The son of a bitch keeps asking me questions about the electric ink and I sure as hell don’t want him using it for some other band,” I complained one day. “And how does he know so much about this shit anyway? I’ve quizzed him and he just avoids my questions.”
Ned looked worried, well, as worried as Ned could look. Then he gave a ghost of a smile. “Why don’t you ask Pitch to explain it?”
“Pitch? She doesn’t...oh.” I smiled.
So Pitch explained the holo-boards, which she was happy to do, delivering a steaming pile of techno babble on demand. Some of it even made sense, and was perfect to snow someone with a hacker-lite understanding of the technology.
So I was happier, for a while. But then Pitch decided to practice her skills at cosmetic holography, flirting with Howard and showing more cleavage than should have been physiologically possible. Which sent my mood into another tailspin. Made worse by the way he kept praising her for technical ingenuity while he stared at her tits. Hell, technically they were my tits; it was my work that made them.
The others got used to him, even Ned, who just seemed happy that he was talking to Pitch about the boards. But I couldn’t stop complaining about him and his stupid baritone.
Eventually, one day, Pitch snapped at me. “Oh, why don’t you just kill him, then?”
I smiled, “A great idea,” and activated my boards.
Zeke shook his head while Billy laughed. Pitch just looked a little disgusted.
I looked in the mirror and saw what they saw – Howard – well, almost: mine was a bit of a caricature. Howard was tall and well-built, but stiff, like he had a stick up his butt. On me, well, you could see the stick. He had sandy blonde hair, thinning a bit. I made it look like a bad hair transplant. His suits, usually grey or navy blue and utilitarian, were now too tight and poorly tailored, and complemented by cheap patent leather shoes. His face, square and strong, I made lantern-jawed and a little stupid.
“Lovely, lovely, you kids are doing a bang-up job,” I said, the voice more nasal than Howard’s plummy baritone. “But I know I’ve offended your wise technician and I’m going to do the right thing.”
And I grasped the short blade I’d conjured, and slipped it into and across my belly. Guts spilled onto the studio floor.
Ned walked in, looked at the guts and said, “Good to see that the old traditions are still respected.”
I felt better after that; my frustration at the situation had an outlet. The rest of that week the boys and I had considerable fun inventing ever more elaborate deaths. One night, Billy, in an exceptionally perverse mood, programmed something new. When I cleft Billy’s version of Howard from head to toe with a flaming sword, the separated halves of his body boiled maggots, even as he kept walking towards me. It was fucking eerie; I was torn between the urge to run or to hurl, but did neither, slamming a neutral image on my face and looking around. I wasn’t the only one that looked way too calm. In fact Ned was the only one looking like himself, and he gave the impression of someone who found such horrors boring and distasteful. Like he was too jaded to be scared shitless like the rest of us.
When we all realized that we’d been projecting the ultra-cool faces we started to laugh, cursing Billy as a sick (if brilliant) bastard. Then Pitch made the fatal mistake of saying, “Oh I don’t think our Mr. Howard’s that bad.”
The rest of the night consisted of enacting a series of increasingly saccharine and pornographic romantic scenarios between Pitch and Howard, with accompanying music by Disney, though with far ruder lyrics. It was when Pitch managed to cast me as Cinderella (baby blue is not my colour) that we all finally collapsed with laughter. After that, Pitch did stop saying nice things about Howard, but she still kept flirting with him.
A couple of days later we did manage to come up with something that bothered Ned. I had just devised another lovely vignette with Billy, which culminated with Howard’s head exploding. Then we ordered a couple of pizzas.
“Jesus,” Ned said, “how can you guys eat after that?”
Billy shrugged. “Dunno, creative energy expenditure I guess. I’m always hungry after a big illusion.”
I laughed. “That’s because the electric ink works off your body’s energy – ATP coupled. Heh, I could come up with a new weight loss program – look pretty to be pretty.”
***
Later that week, the album was essentially done. There was still some technical work to be done, cleaning up and prepping the tracks for production, but the thing was pretty much in the can. The band decided to take a short holiday and I decided to go out and celebrate with a bit of a bender.
I took Ned along. I was beginning to feel like an old-timer, and he seemed like good company. We wandered into one of the big nightclubs, and that’s when I saw her. Dress of midnight blue, cut low and cut high, hair of jet, Christ, she was gorgeous. Obviously in from the suburbs, but not with a man, just a gaggle of girlfriends. I gave Ned the wingman signal and went in kamikaze. And who’d a believed it, she had a thing for sleight of hand and I was drunk enough to show her a few tricks with the holo-board, and she was primed. Ned seemed to be working his own charm with the friends. With a nod we left them and went off to her place, which wasn’t the 905 area code after all, but high on the waterfront, with lake view and shit.
It was 4:30 in the morning by the time I staggered home. I felt like I’d run a marathon. I was stumbling up the walk when I saw Pitch and Ned on my front porch, sharing a cigarette, and all the alarm bells in my head, every foul instinct from my bad youth, started raising an infinite amount of hell.
Ned was pale, shock evident on his face. Pitch wasn’t. She was green, and when Ned gave a quick wave I saw blood and I just knew it wasn’t his. I looked at Pitch closely and saw Ned’s fingers pushing hard against her side. There was a slow liquid ooze coming from between his fingers. I felt sick, understanding where the blood was coming from, but had enough sense to get my keys and help them upstairs. Ned settled her on my new couch — the only improvement I’d made to my apartment since the money’d started coming in. A place for me to watch the tube in comfort, play a few video games with Zeke and Billy. Now it was covered in her blood.