D A M I E N   I N   C O N C E R T
                                
     Tim Curry leered down at him from his perch on an antique poster as the coffee lost its steam,
  forgotten amidst the absorbing details of his work in progress. The air was still and chilly in this dark
  downtown studio with the vaulted ceilings that had appealed to his appreciation of cathedrals. The
  building itself was ancient, towering endless flights above him in a stone and iron monument to the
  insurmountable will of mankind. 
     Damien scrolled intently through the progressions on the screen before him, an industrial
  symphony pulsing from eight speakers in tandem with the motion of the mouse. With a twitch of his
  wrist he sent the dancing arrow over to the Reverse triangle, the music playing backwards as he
  backtracked a couple of bars. Eyes unblinking and focussed on the farthest reaches of space, body still,
  he ran the tune at 65% speed, paused it at the trailing end of an effect, then cut a newscast voiceover
  and pasted it over the drums in the third channel. Damien paused, played the twenty-second section at
  full speed, backtracked to the end of the voiceover; he had to drag the audio footage of the Bangkok
  riots an extra eighth of a second to cover the gap. When he replayed it the riot fadeout forty seconds
  down was off, and he had to splice out the fractional syllable of an anonymous protestor to avoid
  repeating the whole three-second chant. He replaced that with the soft whump of a grenade launcher in
  full bass reverb, pasted the spitting hiss of tear gas four-point-five seconds later under the drawn-out
  military march beat. 
     Now for context. He cued the song back to the beginning hoarse drill-sergeant yell, an
  incoherent incarnation of authority, then sat back as the "sir-yes-sir" 's shot forth in unison, torn up by a
  caucophony of battering drums. The bass picked up the theme and carried the song into full swing,
  punctuated by the occasional deviant snare. Then he noticed.
     "How long have you been there?" he asked.
     Michelle looked down at him, hands in the pockets of her jeans, dark hair draped over one
  shoulder. "Just a few minutes. Didn't want to interrupt." She shifted her weight casually, then added, "I
  knocked."
     "I figured," he replied, turning his chair to face her. "How did you get in?"
     "You left your door open again," she told him, climbing into a chair outside the bank of
  keyboards and monitors.
     "Really?" Damien looked at her almost in disbelief, then realized it probably was the case. He
  shook his head. "Getting old, I guess. So what's up?"
     She shurgged. "Not much. Just stopping by." Eyes glancing here and there about the room.
  Searching. "So how'd it go last night?"
     He grinned. "They ate it up. I'm putting the final touches on it now, getting it ready for release,
  but man, Michelle, you should have seen them. The whole pit was going, yelling and stomping and
  fighting...it was beautiful. I've never seen an audience respond to a show like that before." He reached
  over to pause the work, save it. "I can't wait to see what this does on the open market."
     "You gonna work on the light and effects? Make it full-sense and all?"
     Damien shook his black dyed hair. "Nah. I wouldn't want to detract from the purity of the
  single medium. The lights and smoke are necessary for shows--create that sense of disbelief and all
  that--but when people actually hear this, I don't want to give them any idea that it's fiction or
  entertainment. You know, any idea to hold back." He grinned again, gazed fondly at the blue-green
  computer screen. "I can't wait to see what it does to people."
     "It is rather...violent," Michelle remarked, as if uncertain what else to say.
     "Thanks," he flashed back to her with teeth, eyes green and  malicious.
     "But I doubt I'll be attending the concert." She stared straight ahead, inexplicably, as he leaped
  deftly over a low bank of equalizers and headed towards the fridge in the adjoining room. 
     "Why not?" he tossed over his shoulder lightly. "Couldn't stand the rapture?"
     "Something about an arena full of people worked into an anarchic frenzy and bent on each
  being the only person still standing amidst a pile of broken bodies," the woman told him in
  ever-softening tones as he drew closer, "Puts me on edge."
     "It's O.K.," he forgave, handing her a pilsner before rubbing the back of her neck, underneath
  the long dry brunette hair. "You'd probably ruin my act anyhow, what with me having to dive into the
  pit and mangulate anyone who bumps into you."
     She gripped his hand and held it upon her shoulder silently, her skin cool from the bottle.
  Finally she asked, "Mangulate?"
     Damien shrugged. "I dunno. Just came out. Mangle. Strangulate. Maim. Exacerbate. You
  know."
     "How sweet."
     "...As saccharin," he grinned, giving up on trying to find what she was gazing at so resolutely.
  
     The wide screen of his main console beamed with the white glare of the communication
  program framing the more comfortable blue-green of his MIDI application. To his left and right sat
  secondary monitors with status and sequencer displays, down low by his knees where he could glance at
  them without turning his head. A 40 of dark ale sat within reach of his left hand, a browned glass husk
  empty save for the final two swallows of flat, lukewarm brew. He was on-line in-concert, with an
  audience of one, the sweat on his back and neck a testimony to his straining concentration.
     Damien was in his element, composing, weaving subvocal conversations of pure emotion that
  bypassed the limitations of language to get right to the heart of the matter. The matter of the heart.
     He began simply, his original inspiration gaining impetus with each new effect, building into
  the chaotic crescendo that was the trademark of all his work, an elegant complexity just two steps shy
  of caucophony. The composition began with the lulling of ocean waves meshed with the sound of
  rythmic breathing. A basic, calming rythm was established, a peaceful sound with hints of wind and
  water, lips and hair.
     He faded in a slow heartbeat, two beats per in-breath, to drive the point home, then flipped the
  pulsing tone onto autocycle so he could focus on the organ. As a sonnet this was a failure; there were
  no lyrics to speak of, and the only vocal bites he used were in fact wordless singing derived from tribal
  and operatic sources. He knew better than to try to compose his thoughts into rhyme; they were
  complex and abstract enough as it was. Keeping things on a basic, emotive level ensured that there was
  virtually no chance Michelle would misunderstand him.
     The one-way call lasted almost an hour as he toyed with the keys, exploring, playing,
  describing. Harmony was broken here and shifted there, hidden and emphasized throughout the work as
  he let his feelings take full control of the fingers, of the keyboard, of the airwaves. He wondered,
  towards the end, if she had been recording this.
  
     The studio was dark and icy, lit by scattered red candles that stained the walls with flickering
  scarlet ghosts. Damien sat behind the mass of keyboards and cables, draped in black, a triangle of white
  tuxedo shirt gleaming from under his coat like a bared fang. His eyes were hollow and darting, glinting
  white with hunger and pain. 
     How dare she, how could she? 
     His long black hair, wrought from style by high-tensile fingers into a shapeless looming mass,
  bobbed backwards as he tossed off a bottle of wine, gulping the remaining third in thirsty destruction.
  The merlot trickled down the side of his chin, along his throat, getting lost amidst the rough hair
  beneath his shirt. He dropped the green bottle by his foot, heard it roll into one of his surge protectors,
  and glared at the invisible ceilings.
     It had been on the voicemail when he'd returned, her sweet, sweet voice that wielded such a
  tiny, wicked blade. I don't think I can do this anymore, she'd said, but not what "this" was or why it had
  gotten so bad. Just that he had to stop, that they had to stop, lest something unspoken but assuredly vile
  should come to pass. What, he wondered now to himself, that either of us might actually be happy for
  once? That either of us might even be free from the anxiety and confusion that mires the human race in
  rat-infested concrete hells like this? Was that what lay in store, the fear and instability of a change that
  signified utter freedom?
     Fine, he told himself in deep gravelled resonating James Earl Jones tones, Okay. That must be
  the way its going to be.
     The building was iron at its core, one giant forty-story antenna, and the two black leads snaking
  into the hole he'd smashed in the wall had bought him its service. Now he would go online, really
  on-line, with the virus he'd written back in his teenage anarchist days. He bounced the computer out of
  Shell Mode and into Compiler, quickly checking the endless code scrolling up the screen before he
  shifted to Comm mode and launched the program with a light click of the Send key.
     The virus was simple and relatively benign; it existed simply to revert each host to Comm
  mode/Audio Receive, and to send clones of itself to every listing in the host's phone directory. He sent
  it to Network 4.
     Within half an hour, ninety percent of the city's computers would be locked into receiving
  transmissions from whatever frequency the user had tuned them to; each frequency, courtesy of the
  improvised transmission tower looming above and around him, would broadcast anything Damien could
  pack in the audio spectrum. He leaned back in his chair, the Composer Occupant in the shadowy base of
  his tower, waiting for Synth Patch-in window to explode. Now this, he smiled to himself as he leaned
  forward to grip the mouse, is how to rage.
     The city had a resident population of forty-six million; each resident had an average of 4.5
  communication-receiving devices. Of these, perhaps thirty precent were in operation, not counting the
  various stereos, televisions, and computers currently powered on in public places. And so it was that, as
  Damien began his broadcast, more than seventy million speakers would break out of their dead-air
  silence with the machine-punch rythm of marching boots.
     Without a thought he kicked on the blacklight, painting the room with a soft violet glare. He let
  the military beat pick up the pace, punctuating it with excerpts from misguided political speeches and
  press releases. This was it: the final concert. Dancing with Mr. D. 
     Out of the full spectrum of emotions available to the human psyche, anger is the easiest to
  inspire. Cities thrive on anger and frustration: the paranoia caused by overcrowding feeds back on the
  rage inspired by traffic and missed appointments. The mood is spread on sight; if only one of the
  hundred-odd people you encounter in a day is angry, it adds that much to your own exasperation, such
  that at any given moment a city is like a powderkeg with an unlit fuse. 
     Seventy million speakers now broadcast a spark.
     When the riots began Damien was in the height of his playing frenzy, one hand working the
  organ keys while his foot punched a bass pedal that sent boxer-punch rythms through the night, the
  mouse in his free hand clipping certain phrases into repeat/reverb for maximal effect. The sounds of
  people breaking windows and denting cars fell in so harmoniously with his work that he almost wished
  he had an outside mike hooked up to his system.
     After the first hour of his broadcast, the city was in flames. Fights broke out in bars and in the
  streets; torches and tire irons split the night with barbaric frenzy. Damien broke up the beat every ten of
  fifteen minutes to throw off the rythm and further incite the populace; before long, the asphalt maze was
  a den of battery, rape and murder. Damien laughed, fingers pounding at keys, his eyes gleaming in the
  artificial light, and worked in a chorus of explosions. The forty-six million enraged and slavering hordes
  followed his example and began using cars as Molotov cocktails. His high-vaulted studio rocked and
  creaked with the explosions.
  
     "I can't believe you're doing this." Damien looked up. 
     Michelle looked down at him, her expression scornful and petulant, her dark lips mocking him.
     "How'd you get in here?" he snapped, the music going on automatic. Absently he threw in
  sound effects with his left hand, broke up the beat with his foot.
     "You left your door open," she sneered, those beautiful white teeth flaring in the blacklight's
  glow. "What the fuck do you think you're doing? Do you realize people are dying out there?"
     He grinned maniacally. "That's the whole point," he told her indulgently. "What else good is a
  rage?"
     "A rage, a rage," she taunted, hands on her hips. "You're screwing with people's lives out there,
  you know that?"
     "That, my dear," he slurred. "Is what art is all about."
     "The city is burning, for christ's sake," she shouted, all the more ravishing now that she was
  angry. "Don't you have any decency, any respect?"
     He paused as if in thought, threw in a barrage of Reagan sound bites. The mayhem increased.
  "Nope."
     Her hair whipped about savagely as she stalked impatiently,  boots kicking amongst the wires
  and bottles of his wrecked life. "You're im-fucking-possible, you know that?" Michelle threw up her
  arms in helplessness. "Like I'm going to fucking apologize now?  Cause of your misconceptions, your
  childishness? Grow up, Damien," she seethed. "I am the fuck out of here." The door slammed behind
  her.
  
     Damien sat there, numb, eyes sunken, hair wild and black. He let the organ override the song,
  then faded it out slowly to a background thrum. He hung there for a moment in indecision, overcome,
  and the sounds of madness filtering in from the outside began to cease. His fingers moved the keys
  slowly, breaking into a dirge, the melancholy aftermath of Michelle's exit commandeering his mood.
     The city was silent and still, swaying in the streets as the dark strains echoed amidst the glass
  and concrete walls. Screams and wails of anguish, drawn from a library of horror and truecrime flicks,
  pierced the fog-like organ drone. The entire population was outside, congregated in the streets whose
  lights had been broken, their faces vague in the frail glow of dying fires.
     Damien hunched over his keyboard, breathless, fingers moving slowly and resolutely, the hands
  of death. Each note, each slow sonorous transition was dragged out of him, as if from the darkest,
  deepest pits of his very being. He faded in a low throaty saxophone, every chord draining him further as
  he siphoned his life, his soul into this cloudy, towering funeral march. Out in the streets the crowd
  breathed in the same deep, rasping breaths as their composer, their candles and lighters in hand as if
  they had gathered together for a long religious vigil.
     They swayed slowly in the streets as Damien swayed slowly at his keyboard, the sweat being
  drawn from him to stream down his cheeks and arms as he melted together bass and oboe, drum and
  organ. With a solemn, final burst he soared into a high bridge, his slim fingers working intricate patterns
  from the keys, patterns that could never have been produced without blood, patterns that were woven as
  powerful and as trancing as any incantation. 
     Damien closed his eyes, his back arching as the dirge reached its final climax, an explosion of
  the soul that drained the last breath of life from him and left him limp and hunched over his fading
  keyboard, white fingers stiffening on their final drawn-out note. And every light in the city, every flame
  in every candle and every gleam in every eye, winked out.