Six Strings to Save the World

by Michael McSherry

  “But how’d your mom get a Resonator?” I continue.

  “Some Composer gave it to her back at Juilliard. And a cello for my dad, too.”

  Dorian and Lydia share a weird look.

  “The Composers never had the numbers necessary to support Earth with infantry,” Lydia explains after a moment’s hesitation. “Fleet settled on training and arming local resistances where possible. Rebels.”

  “Where is your father?” Dorian asks Tori.

  “Home. Why?”

  “He’ll be in danger. And we might need his help.”

  “I don’t think he’ll want to help a Composer,” Tori begins.

  “He might not have a choice,” Dorian responds, his voice demanding and urgent. “Tell us where to go.”

  Tori moves to stand beside Mixy, orienting herself to the view outside and starting to give Mixy directions. We watch out the dome as the Carnegie leaps forward, the ground blurring below us. No more than twenty seconds later, Mixy’s drumming slows as the Carnegie makes its steady descent down several miles outside of Tempus. Dex and I always used to tease Tori that her father was a recluse for buying property and building a house in the middle of the woods, but something tells me there’s a little more to the story. Mixy brings the Carnegie down right in the home’s front yard.

  Tori rushes past me, phone held up to her ear, and I can hear a bit of what she’s saying as she rushes past me. “We’re here. Synthesizers, yeah. It’s happening. Drop everything.”

  The Carnegie is on the ground for no more than thirty seconds before it’s lifting off again, rocketing up over the treetops and plunging into a sea of clouds. Tori reemerges onto the main deck a moment later with Mr. Patel following closely behind her. He has a grim look on his face, eyes trained determinedly on Dorian as though the flying submarine and four-armed drummer are entirely unsurprising.

  “What have you done?!” Mr. Patel shouts at Dorian. “We were safe! We were hidden!”

  Dorian puts up his hands defensively.

  “Dad,” Tori says sternly. “Caleb found a Resonator. The Synthesizers found him.”

  Mr. Patel’s eyes turn to me, softening slightly. “Are you okay, Caleb?”

  “Yes, sir,” I nod. “I’m fine.”

  “And Diane?” he asks.

  “She’s here. Shaken up.”

  He gives me a stiff nod.

  “I’ll go check on her,” Lydia offers, leaving us.

  Dorian steps forward, seeming to tower over Mr. Patel. He looks at the pinned sleeve where Mr. Patel’s arm is missing. “They did this to you?”

  “A long time ago,” Mr. Patel nods. “Destroyed my Resonator, too. I escaped with Victoria and Viti’s violin. But my love, my Viti—”

  With a nod, Dorian takes his hand away. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “You two know each other?” Tori asks.

  “He was the one who gave us our instruments,” Mr. Patel says quietly.

  Tori turns on Dorian. “Why didn’t you just say that earlier?”

  “Because he asked us to fight against the Synthesizers and just left.”

  “We did what we could,” Dorian says.

  Mr. Patel furrows his brow. “You Composers do what’s best for you. You left us to die.”

  “That’ not…” Dorian starts to protest, then trails off, turning to Tori and ignoring Mr. Patel’s pointed comment entirely.

  Tori’s expression darkens to match her dad’s. “I never knew my mom. You brought my parents into your war and you couldn’t even protect her.”

  Dorian takes a deep breath where he stands, eyes trained on the floor. It looks like he’s about to say something, maybe to offer some sort of better apology. But then there’s a soft chime from the float-tube.

  Lydia stands beside Mom, who still looks shaken. I breathe a sigh of relief and go to her. She holds me at arms’ length for a long moment, looking me over from head to toe. Then she begins to gaze around the inside of the Carnegie, her eyes taking it all in with a sweeping glance.

  “Where are we?” she asks.

  Dorian approaches, his skin restored to a more human tan. “Thirty-thousand feet up. Currently in a holding pattern over Tempus. Cloaked, of course.”

  “And we’re inside of a… yellow submarine?”

  “The Carnegie, ma’am. It’s an interstellar military-surveillance ship.”

  “My mistake,” she mutters.

  “Do you want to sit, Mom? I think we should talk.”

  She nods. She’s handling it well enough, and to her credit, she doesn’t even scream when Mixy sets the Carnegie on autopilot and goes galloping into the kitchen to brew her a cup of coffee.

  * * * * *

  Mom gets the annotated explanation from three odd-looking aliens while we hover at cruising altitude in a drum-powered submarine. The Resonance, the Composers, the Synthesizers: she hears it all without question, barely blinking. I talk too, when I can, telling her the truth about the meteorite shower, the Gibson—everything I’ve been hiding.

  Once Mom is caught up, Dorian turns his attention to Mr. Patel. “Have you kept in contact with any of the other rebels?”

  “Not since Viti died,” Mr. Patel shakes his head.

  “Do you know where they are?” Lydia asks. “There were hundreds of you, not too long ago.”

  “Most are dead. Perhaps a few in hiding, like me.” Mr. Patel scowls. “What did you expect? The Synthesizers are too powerful. They manipulate entire governments like it’s nothing. They hunted us.” Mr. Patel rubs at the stump of his shoulder absentmindedly.

  “There have to be some left,” Dorian says. “Somebody who knows something about…” He trails off.

  “Knows something about what?” Mr. Patel prompts.

  Dorian purses his lips.

  “Cut the crap!” Dex barks suddenly. “You’re obviously keeping something from us! So I’m going to ask you one more time: Why are you here?”

  “Fine,” Dorian shrugs, yielding. “Fleet has intel suggesting that the Synthesizers found some sort of Prima Maestri artifact on Earth. Some sort of vault they’re trying to crack. We’re here to investigate whether that’s true.”

  “So that’s why you’ve come back.” Mr. Patel narrows his eyes at Dorian.

  “What’s inside?” Dex asks.

  “We don’t know because it’s in a vault,” Lydia chides, sticking out her tongue at Dex.

  “Scraps of Prima Maestri tech pushed multiple civilizations ahead millennia in their development,” Mixy rumbles. “If the Synthesizers have located a Prima Maestri vault on Earth, its contents must be incredibly valuable. Or dangerous.”

  “But if there’s something like that on Earth, why don’t the Synthesizers just invade and be done with it?”

  “That would draw unnecessary attention from the Composers,” Dorian guesses.

  “The vault must have something to do with what that woman was talking about in the apartment,” I conclude, thinking aloud. “And they don’t want any of us getting in the way.”

  Dorian tenses. “What woman?”

  “There was a woman going on about protecting the Synthesizers’ interests on Earth. She looked like a woman, at least. Alpha. She said she was a… Synergist. An android.”

  “An Android 18 sort of android?” Dex’s eyes light up.

  “Flowmetal interior and a gelcircuitry brain,” Dorian explains to Dex. “Some exterior biology. Skin. A superficial circulatory system.” Dorian purses his lips and blows a stream of air up, turning back to me. “I’m surprised you’re alive after meeting her.”

  “You know her?” I ask.

  “Sort of.” Dorian shrugs his shoulders. “Alpha’s a Synthesizer lieutenant. There are twenty-four versions of her.”

  “Huh?”

  “Copies of the same persona—sort of like one program. Identical bodies. Their biological components are genetically identical.” He furrows his brow. “Let’s see… We’ve ran into Theta… Omega… Tau… Who am I forgett
ing?”

  “Sigma,” Mixy offers over his shoulder.

  “Right! Sigma was a piece of work. So, twenty-four lieutenants, all serving under—”

  “The Controller General,” I finish. “Alpha said she’s the Synthesizers’ leader. Another Synergist?”

  “We’ve never crossed paths,” Lydia shrugs. “But that’s how the Synthesizer hierarchy works: Autotuners on bottom, Synergists on top. And the Controller General—she’s at the very top, programming the entire Synthesizer collective.”

  “Programming?” Dex prompts. “How?”

  “Control frequency,” she answers. “Every Synthesizer has an internal communications array tied into the signal.”

  Mixy growls, a low, guttural sound. “Alpha’s presence is indicative of a stronger Synthesizer presence on Earth than we anticipated. How are we to complete our mission with deficient forces and insufficient information?”

  Dorian looks to Tori and me. “Like I said: We need all the help we can get.”

  “Absolutely not!” Mom hisses at Dorian. It’s the first thing she’s said in several minutes.

  “No!” Mr. Patel snaps with equal disdain. “I will not lose my daughter. You Composers come here, looking for fodder, more lives to throw away, and you expect us—”

  “I’ll do it,” I say quietly, even though half of me is still looking for a way out of all this.

  Mom’s eyes widen as she stares at me. “No, you won’t.”

  “It’s bad, Mom. It could get worse.”

  “You just believe what these creatures are telling you?” Mom points, but only at Dorian. “Do you have any idea how crazy all of this sounds?”

  “Dorian saved my life. Dex’s, too.” I look to Lydia, Mixy, and even Tori. “They saved all of us.”

  “It’s true, Mrs. Young,” Dex volunteers.

  “This is crazy!” Mom continues in protest. “Caleb, those things will try to kill you!”

  “And they tried to kill you!” I shout. She recoils, but I keep going. “Don’t you know how terrified I am already? They were going to kill you. I can’t just… not after Dad.” I feel my cheeks burning but I push on. “And they’re not going to stop trying. They’re going to come after us, again and again. Even if we hide, they’ll find us. And it’s not just you and me, Mom. There’s a whole world of us, and what happens to us if I do nothing?”

  “Caleb,” Mom tries out her I-know-better voice.

  “No!” I cut her off. “I was the one who found that guitar. And when I play it, it’s the first time in so long that I just feel… right!”

  “I can’t let you just—”

  “Trust me!” I can’t stop my voice from shaking. “Just—trust me. Please.”

  “I’m in, too,” Tori announces.

  Her father takes several deep breaths, eyes unwavering from Tori’s face. She shows him the tips of her left-hand fingers.

  “Remember how you’d make me practice?” she asks him. “Hours and hours. My fingers used to bleed, Dad. But you always told me that I needed to be ready for when the time came. Not if, Dad. When.”

  “The Composers don’t care about us,” Mr. Patel warns. “They’ll use you up and forget you.”

  “Maybe,” Tori shrugs. “But if Earth is in trouble, we need the Composers. And they need us.” Tori clicks her heels once. “You tell me all the time how much I remind you of her. Would she run, if she were here? Would she hide and just wait for the worst?”

  Mr. Patel opens his mouth to say something. But the white interior walls of the Carnegie suddenly pulse with a bright red and a loud warning klaxon blares. Mixy is up instantly, clambering over furniture as his four arms hurl him toward his pilot’s dome and drum set.

  “What is it?” Mr. Patel asks, panicked.

  “Autotuner aircraft,” Dorian says, looking at one of the displays on the wall. “A lot of them, too. Caleb. And—” he trails off, looking at Tori. “Victoria?” he says, awkwardly.

  “Tori,” she insists. “Only my dad gets to call me Victoria.”

  “All right. Caleb, Tori, grab your Resonators. Things are going to get noisy.”

  * * * * *

  Mixy’s drums pound away overhead. We’re back in the Carnegie’s cargo hold.

  “What’s happening?” Mom asks Dorian as I place my palm against the wall, retrieving the Gibson from its hook.

  “They’re coming for us.”

  “I thought the Carnegie was cloaked?” I ask Dorian.

  “We can cheat most scans. But if you know where to look, there’s no way to cheat a focused scan. Displaced gas distributions, anomalies in Rez wake. Mixy!” he barks. “Scrap the cloak, dump the Rez reserves into the turrets.”

  “Aye, Captain!” Mixy’s voice booms over the comms.

  Dorian and Lydia are working busily near one wall, punching at displays while Dorian talks over his shoulder.

  “Either of you ever drafted Rez at four-hundred miles-per-hour?” he calls out over his shoulder.

  “What?” Tori and I reply in unison.

  “That’s what we figured! Just thought I’d ask. Get over here!” He beckons Tori and I forward as a portion of the flowmetal wall melts away, revealing a pair of what look like rock-climbing harnesses. The displays disappear into the wall and Dorian reaches out to me with a harness while Lydia offers another to Tori. They work quickly, fitting each of us into the rigging.

  Neither Dorian nor Lydia have bothered to tell us why they’re doing it.

  Dex stands beside Mom, pale-faced and nervous as the walls continue to pulse in their ominous red.

  “Ma’am,” Dorian says to Mom. “I’m going to have to ask you and Dex to go back up to the main deck. Once we open up the hull, the gravity mods down here will turn off.”

  “Once you what?” Tori asks, suddenly alarmed.

  Dorian points to the back of the Carnegie’s cargo bay. “We’re being chased. So we’re gonna see if we can’t knock some of their birds out of the sky.”

  “But we’re, uh, really high up.” Tori’s face is draining of its color.

  “You can literally fly and you’re afraid of heights?” Lydia starts cackling raucously.

  “Dex,” I say, ignoring Lydia. “Take care of my mom, okay?”

  “Got it!” Dex says, wrapping his arm around her and pulling her close. I swear, I can almost see him smile.

  “I meant get her upstairs, you moron!”

  “I’m not going anywhere!” Mom yells in protest.

  “Suit yourself,” Dorian shrugs, pointing to a row of flowmetal seats along the far wall. “Just, uh… buckle up, okay?” He tries one of his movie-star smiles on Mom, who in turn lets loose with a string of profanities. Dex pulls her toward the other end of the Carnegie’s cargo hold.

  “Wake up, Caleb,” Lydia snaps her fingers as she tugs at the harness around my waist and arms. “Showtime.”

  Dorian and Lydia stand next to a flat stretch of wall, bouncing slightly on their toes. With a smile, he nods up to the other clips and gives the tuning peg of his bass guitar the slightest of turns. Lydia palms the wall and a panel of flowmetal overhead slides backward, revealing spools of silken-looking thread. The lines spool out, leaving clips dangling in front of Tori and me like fishing lures.

  “You want us to…?” I trail off, pointing to the clips.

  Tori is already clipping herself in, but she’s shaking so badly that I can hear her teeth chattering. As I try to hook myself up I can barely keep from puking. Lydia and Dorian are starting to laugh like a couple of lunatics as they watch us struggle. Once I’m clipped in, I grasp the neck of my guitar and try to feel some hint of the warm, buzzing confidence I got when I first picked it up.

  “Listen, kid,” Dorian says. “Autotuner fighters are fast and strong. You’re not going to be able to take any down yourself, so just play along. Lydia and I are going to take the lead on this one.”

  “What should I do?” Tori squeaks.

  “You know, now that I think about, I don�
��t know that we’ve ever had a violinist in the band before!”

  That makes Lydia erupt in laughter again.

  I’m about to start cursing at Dorian and Lydia when Mixy’s voice booms from everywhere at once. “Approaching!” he bellows.

  Lydia and Dorian grow serious, and I watch as waves of pulsing Rez begin to collect at their feet: a crimson haze at Dorian’s boots, and a royal blue pool around Lydia’s flats. The white wall before us flashes yellow, then settles back to white. Again. Again.

  One flash of red.

  Then, with an explosion of thundering wind, I’m looking out into blue sky and blinding sun.

  As the Carnegie opens up I feel myself slide forward to the precipice as the Carnegie angles upward, climbing in altitude. I hear a girl screaming and look sideways to Tori. Her eyes are wide but her mouth is shut. Oops. I shut my mouth and the screaming stops.

  Dorian and Lydia seem unaffected by the disappearance of the Carnegie’s gravity mods. The Rez and their feet continues to pulse brightly.

  I feel my cable and harness go taut as Dorian and Lydia step forward right to the edge of the floor, the wind ripping at their hair as they point out somewhere over the horizon. I clutch my guitar a little bit harder and lean forward, feeling the cable give me the slightest bit of slack to move. Fighting the urge to vomit again, I look down at a blur of flashing greens below us as the Carnegie drops lower and lower. Raising my eyes, I see what Dorian is pointing at: ten black circles.

  They look like larger, teardrop-shaped versions of the Autotuners’ heads: obsidian black with a circle of red in the middle. But the teardrops have fins, and as they rip across the horizon behind the Carnegie I can see them leaving a trail of shimmering red Rez behind them. They gain on the Carnegie quickly, arranging themselves in a cone shape.

  “Ready?” Dorian asks me.

  “No!” I yell.

  Suddenly Mixy’s drumming just… stops. Noise has a funny way of falling into the background, and when it’s gone you notice just how much you were listening to it. It’s not that subtle with Mixy’s drumming, because when he stops the Carnegie starts to fall. The world outside the bay door falls away and we’re looking up at a clear blue sky as the Carnegie hurtles toward a very hard and unforgiving ground.