FUNCTION-L₃ #40

You remember what kind of dark rumors circulate the æther about this band.

“They say you’re real nice and support your local scene and keep playing shows like this even after your success and interplanetary tours,” you say.

“Lies, every word,” says one of the four, a short, slender enby with dark skin lined with reflective metallic tattoos over the pathways of their neural conduits, the heavy locks of their hair wrapped in gold-colored foil up to their pink-dyed tips. “Æther Panic are the worst kind of sellouts, don’t you know?”

“Well, you’re here aren’t you?” you say.

“If this one ever stops playing the Starquake, it is either dead or AtaraChiba has fallen to Earth,” it says.

“They’re real ones, they practically built this scene after the last time it collapsed,” Satori of Seishin signs.

“So if we want to learn about how the music scene works we came to the right place!” Akiko signs.

“I wanted to see Æther Panic during your Lunar tour!” you sign. “But my moms said it was ‘dangerous.’”

“Heh, how’d you find these kids Satori?” signs the tall synthgirl from Æther Panic, turning to look at you. “You’re what, 170?”

“I’m 184!” you sign.

“I’m 192,” Akiko signs.

“You’re academy kids, aren’t you?” the girl with magnetic hair signs, looking over your implants on the surface and in the æther. “A third year and a second year.”

“Right. I’m Akiko, of AtaraChiba.”

“I’m Aydan of Luna, I’m...just visiting.”

“This one is designated 10.13 of Æther Panic,” signs the tall girl in the silver jacket, the numbers she signed flash in the mirror-glass of her visor.

“This one is 18.23,” signs the enby with foil-wrapped hair next to her.

“This one’s designation is 27.01,” signs the girl next to them, wearing a long black skirt and a heavy synthleather jacket lined with long narrow spikes.

“This one is known to the æther as 31.91,” signs a taller enby on the opposite side of their couch, its metallic eyes pure black and its face covered in a shiny circuit-trace pattern that makes your mind’s eye feel fuzzy just looking at.

“So these little ones are interested in music?” signs 27.01.

“Yeah, maybe I am!” you sign.

“What does it play?” it signs.

“I kind of play theremin,” you sign. “I’m not that great yet but...”

The door opposite the one you entered opens, a girl with metallic-dyed purple hair pokes her head in. “Come on Seishin, sound-check.”

“Right!” Kujo says. He and his bandmates stand.

“Come with us,” Satori signs to you and Akiko. Looking to each other, you follow them through the door directly onto the bar’s little stage. Strips of purple LED lights line the edges of the platform, mirrored by an identical line of them directly above on the ceiling, framing the stage above and below. Behind them above you, a bright white sphere hangs down, rotating and shining bright beams of light from spots on its surface, scattering you into many shadows over the soft carpeting, patched together and covered in every color of stain. Thick rubber cables cross the stage in clusters, a web connecting everything to the board of switches and faders positioned in the back corner.

Dominating the center-back area of the stage the bright lights draw your eyes to the chrome shafts of a rack of drums, their shells transparent fiberglass with black mylar heads fastened down by chrome rims. Transducers touching each drum head and electronic pads positioned in between them and the metal cymbals above run cables to a smaller module in a rack behind the throne of the drummer, while its output and that of the microphones hanging overhead run to the main mixing board. The front-facing heads of the two kick drums are painted in fluorescent paint glowing under the lights: 精 震. Senka takes her seat on the throne, picking up black drumsticks with white plastic tips.

“Kick left,” says the purple-haired girl, now standing at the mixing board. “Kick right.”

At each command Senka’s tall black boots press down on the kick drum pedals---the sound from the monitor speakers at the front strikes you, you feel the impact hard in the chest as the soundgirl hones in the channel. They proceed through every piece of the kit, wrapping you up in a corridor of stimmy sounds, modulated further as Senka makes adjustments to the module behind her.

“Bass,” says the soundgirl.

Stage left you find a towering speaker cabinet taller than you with its amplifier sitting on top. Kujo picks up his bass, a semi-hollow polymer body with six strings, its tuning pegs positioned at the bottom, its black fretless fretboard having no head. The cable running from it connects to the array of pedals at his feet, mostly looking like DIY modules, some not fully enclosed with their circuitry exposed.

After a quick turn of the volume knob on the instrument’s body, he launches into a pulsating bassline, a drone on the lowest string with an arpeggio of higher notes woven in between, distorted and shaped by the series of analog circuits the signal passes through into stimmy fuzzy sonic sandpaper. Each sharp pulse of his hard plastic fingertips striking the heavy strings shakes the entire stage, vibrations traveling up through your body. Then the soundgirl turns him up in the room’s main speakers and even the walls around you vibrate, lingering a moment even after he stops.

“Synths.”

Stage right, you see an even more elaborate array of modules tied together by little cables, lights of every color blinking and pulsing all over the wall of knobs and switches, interconnected analog devices standing up in a rack mounted over two rows of keys. And mounted on a stand next to that, connected to this synthesizer of every young synthgirl’s dreams, your eyes are drawn to a small plastic box and the two antennæ protruding from it, one long and straight pointing upward and the other a small loop perpendicular to it on the side.

“Akiko, I think I understand the feeling you get when you really need to touch something,” you sign to her. In your case, it is something intangible, æthereal, that calls to you with the gravity of a neutron star, the magnetism of a beautiful girl. A device that fascinated you from a young age, the theremin---each antenna forms half of a capacitor, and the other half completing the circuit will be the hands of some lucky technopath. It is perhaps the closest you can come to touching the æther from the surface.

Flipping a switch on the theremin, Satori stands aside, sending you a sideways glance, raising their eyebrows.