Six Strings to Save the World

by Michael McSherry

  Tori is a pineapple.

  Once Dorian and Lydia are done admiring their work, they finally pull their Resonators out of the pod, inviting us to do the same. Tori holds her violin bow in her hand, eyes trained on Lydia. I know what she’s thinking, but somehow pineapple Tori is a whole lot less intimidating than regular Tori.

  “All right,” Dorian announces, clapping his hands together. “Tori, how long have you been playing that thing?”

  “Since I was a kid.”

  “And your dad taught you the basics?”

  “Of course,” she says.

  “Okay, then step on up. You’re going to help me out with Caleb.”

  Tori trudges forward to join Dorian, who stoops down and picks up a rock from the sand.

  “Give me an open G, nice and quiet, just enough to float this,” he instructs.

  Tori tucks her violin under her chin and readies her bow. Her face goes calm and she begins to play, whisper quiet. The disc of her Rez washes forth from the string but stays close, forming what looks like a small, spinning plate of energy right in front of her.

  “Resonators are incredibly powerful pieces of technology,” Dorian explains to me, stepping forward as Tori continues holding her single note. “But for all of that power, they are also incredibly sensitive. An instrumentalist who is properly trained and attuned to her Resonator can manipulate her Rez in very precise ways. Watch.”

  He puts his hand out and drops the stone atop the small disk. It bounces slightly, caught upon the disc of energy, before coming to a stop. As Tori reaches the end of her draw the disc gives the slightest shudder, sending the stone wobbling in the air. But Tori transitions seamlessly enough to continue the note that the stone returns to merely floating.

  “A delicate touch,” Dorian commends her. “Increase the intensity a little bit.”

  The note grows in volume very slightly. And as I watch, the disc of Rez glows the slightest bit. As it does, the stone begins to turn to dust where it touches the disc, sending fine, powdery residue dropping to the sand. “Stop!” Dorian says, bringing his fingers together like a conductor. Tori immediately stops the note and the remainder of the stone falls to the ground.

  Stooping over, Dorian lifts the rock and shows it to me. It’s perfectly flat on one side, as though it were machine-polished. “Now, obviously, your Resonator doesn’t Rez out in the same way as her violin. But what you need to master is precision. You need to be in sync with it if you ever plan to face the Synthesizers.”

  “Okay,” I agree eagerly. “How do I do that?”

  “Coconuts.”

  “What?”

  “Go find some.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you want to learn or not?”

  “Fine.”

  “I’ll go too,” Tori volunteers, and together we trudge up the sand and into the dense trees and brush.

  “What do coconuts have to do with anything?” I whisper once I’m sure we’re out of Dorian and Lydia’s earshot.

  “Like I know,” she says. “I’m pretty sure they’re both insane.”

  “No arguments. You’re good with your violin, by the way.”

  “The rock?” She shrugs. “That’s pretty basic stuff.”

  “Even without the Rez stuff,” I say. “I mean, I don’t know that I tell you enough, but I like hearing you play.”

  Tori smiles. “Are you saying you’re a fan of classical music?”

  “Hey, hey, hey—Don’t put words in my mouth. Classic rock still has my heart.”

  “There’s hope for you yet.”

  “How do you play it without, you know—”

  “Without shooting Rez blades all over the place? You don’t have to Rez out, you know. Sometimes you can play just to enjoy the music.”

  “Really?”

  In answer, Tori plays a triumphant phrase from Zelda. She, Dex, and I used to stay up late in middle school playing the gold-cartridge on an NES older than all of us.

  “What does a coconut tree even look like?” I ask.

  “Like that!” She stops playing, pointing with her bow to a cluster of trees stretching up over some of the brush. I follow her pointing to a tree where a cluster of husky, under-ripe coconuts hang.

  “How do I get them?”

  “Well, I could cut the whole tree down,” Tori shrugs. “But I think that would be cheating. Dorian told you to get the coconuts.”

  “So…?”

  “So fly up there and get the coconuts.” Tori says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. I’m starting to realize that Tori has been living a second life for as long as I’ve known her, a life where killer robots were always a looming threat. It’s disconcerting, in a way.

  “Right,” I say. “Just fly up there.”

  “Just fly up there,” Tori urges. “Go on.”

  I set my feet apart and brace myself with my Gibson held tight. I take a breath and strum a few notes, picturing myself coming up off the ground. As I play a few quick notes, I begin to float up off of the ground. I continue picking away at the strings, moving up slowly, approaching the cluster of coconuts. Finally, they’re within reach.

  I grab one of the coconuts and give it a tug, expecting some resistance. I forgot how strong the Gibson makes me, because the entire tree shudders, sending down a shower of coconuts. “Look out below!” I yell down.

  As I look down, I realize how high up I am. I imagine myself falling to the ground, only then I actually am falling to the ground. It’s a twenty foot fall and I hit the ground, landing hard on my back with a yelp. It doesn’t hurt, again thanks to the guitar, but it’s nonetheless terrifying.

  “Flying takes some work to get used to,” Tori assures me, gathering up an armful of coconuts as I stand and dust myself off.

  “You can do it just fine.”

  “It’s… I don’t know, it’s a confidence thing. You have to know it, before you do it. Overthink it and you’re toast.”

  “Great,” I sigh, slinging the Gibson behind me as I start gathering up the remainder of the coconuts.

  We come back to the beach to find Dorian and Lydia stretched out in the sand. “How goes the hunt?” Dorian asks.

  “A fruitful bounty, M’Lord.” I dump the coconuts onto the ground near him.

  He doesn’t stand up, and barely even looks. His hand seeks out a coconut from the sand and he lobs it several feet away from us.

  “Shoot the coconut,” he says.

  I don’t bother arguing. I turn to face the coconut with my Gibson held in hand, then strum a quick power chord. Lighting arcs brightly from the neck of my guitar, leaping first to the sand around the coconut, but eventually finding the husky fruit itself. It explodes in a shower of milky water and hard shell.

  “Great!” Dorian says, his voice betraying nothing of a genuine compliment. He lobs another coconut into the sand among the remains of its predecessor. “Now shoot the coconut without blowing it up.”

  “Uh, okay,” I say. This time when I square up, I rotate the volume knob to the point that it’s barely turned. For good measure, I don’t go with a power chord this time. I play a single G note and watch as lightning arcs out again, this time not as wide or bright. But as soon as it touches on the coconut, it explodes instantly.

  “Batter up!” Dorian shouts, lobbing another coconut into the sand.

  I try again. And again. And again. And again.

  Six coconuts spent and no more coconuts to go. “What now?” I ask.

  “More coconuts!” Lydia orders.

  So Tori and I go off into the trees again, returning with even more coconuts. It goes on like this for hours: We get coconuts, I explode coconuts. We get coconuts, I explode coconuts. Tori offers pointers. Dorian and Lydia aren’t much in the way of instructors. The greatest ambition they show is turning over every fifteen minutes to sun themselves on the opposite side. Lydia refreshes herself in the ocean once or twice.

  By the time the sun begins to set, I’ve roasted well over
a hundred coconuts in my own personal coconut hell.

  “Think of something calm,” Tori says. “What’s that song your Dad always played at the coffee shop?”

  “Summertime,” I answer.

  “Give that a try.”

  So I take a deep breath and shake the tension from my arms. I think about Dad playing at the coffee house, he and his friends tucked away in one corner playing for a full crowd of fifteen people while they sipped away at their lattes. He had a way of playing “Summertime” on his saxophone while swinging it around with exaggerated movements, raising and furrowing his eyebrows like spastic caterpillars. He said that was the secret to putting the right amount of stank into the song.

  I play the melody and watch the lightning dance across the sand. Breathing as evenly as I can, I move the arc closer and closer to the coconut. The buzzing in my bones fades away and I merely watch the electricity dance, hearing the melody surround me. The light touches upon the coconut. And for the first time, it doesn’t explode. The coconut trembles a little bit, but I hold the arc on it, my fingers shaping the melody as I work my way through the first verse.

  Tori claps as I let the note ring out.

  Dorian finally stands, walking through the coconut graveyard to retrieve the one whole coconut. “Good work, kid,” he says, passing the coconut between his hands. Then he looks to Tori. “Mind taking a bit off the top?” He holds the coconut out.

  Tori obliges, and with a quick, pizzicato pluck at a string, cuts the top of the coconut cleanly off. Steam rises up from the coconut and Dorian wafts the vapors toward his nose. Lydia stands up next to him as Dorian takes several gulps of the juice. With a satisfied sigh, he hands it off to Lydia, who finishes off the drink.

  “That’s about it for the day,” Dorian says, stretching and yawning.

  “What?” I ask, angry. “I did that so you could have warm coconut milk?”

  “It helps me sleep,” Dorian shrugs. Then he grabs his bass guitar from the pod and strums a low E. With a blast of sand he flies toward the Carnegie, over the water fast enough to leave a trail of rippling water behind him.

  “Thanks for the drink, Caleb!” Lydia says, retrieving her own Resonator and rocketing toward the Carnegie.

  “I am so done with them.” I turn to Tori. “Want to head back?”

  “I’m not going to lie,” she says. “Some warm coconut milk sounds great, right about now. Do you think, you could just,” she nods back to the trees, “Ya know?”

  I groan loudly and trudge back up the beach.

  God help the Synthesizers if they ever build any coconut robots.

  Chapter Ten

  I’ve graduated from roasting coconuts to… well, exploding coconuts again. But this time on purpose! Mixy and Dex take a break from their deciphering to join us on the beach. They take turns hurling coconuts into the air while I rip riffs and try to shoot them out of the sky with bolts of lightning. I’m lucky if I hit one in five, but I’m getting better at controlling my Rez. It’s good target practice.

  I even get to choose my own swim trunks.

  Dorian seems disappointed when Dex is legitimately pleased with the pair of Bill Nye trunks Dorian selected for him. The scientist’s face is printed all over the trunks with obnoxiously red lettering repeating BILL BILL BILL over the pictures.

  Mixy is explaining the finer points of their Synthesizer communication conundrum while two of his arms continue hurling coconuts into the air. Those that I miss, Tori minces into coconut shavings with erratic, pitch-bending notes from her violin.

  “You see, Composers and Synthesizers alike communicate across the galaxy using Rez entanglement in the same subspace we navigate using overdrive. Rez entanglement produces something like a wake in subspace, and we are able to monitor that disturbance to glean what information is being passed.”

  He locks the fingers of two of his hands together and does the wave, as though that explains anything.

  “That’s just a fancy way of saying you’re eavesdropping,” Tori points out.

  “Such communication,” Mixy grumbles, ignoring Tori, “is integral to the Synthesizer collective. The proper control frequency and encryption allows the Controller General to direct Synthesizer armies across the galaxy.”

  “We’ve been able to tag Alpha, based on the number of off-world communications she’s directing to the Controller General,” Dex explains. “Planet-side queen bee, and all. And there are only a handful of Synergists communicating directly to Alpha. But we have had zero luck breaking any of their encryptions!”

  “It’s best to take a break, now and then,” Dorian suggests, lounging on the beach and watching coconuts explode overhead. “Things have a way of working themselves out, in time.”

  “It’s not like the whole world depends on us, or anything.” Dex kicks at the sand.

  “You brood too much,” Lydia complains. “I can feel it, Dex. And you’re harshing my mellow.”

  “Sorry,” he apologizes. “I forget about your whole empath thing.”

  “Come here.” She invites him over onto the sand next to her. She sets her Resonator onto the ground with the keys facing her. Dex plops down beside her. “Any good at piano?” she asks.

  “Decent enough.”

  “Well go ahead and play,” she suggests.

  “It’s not going to… I don’t know, explode me or anything?”

  “It’s not coded to you. Here.” She grabs his hand and envelopes his fingers within hers, liquid flowing over Dex’s hands as she brings them down onto the keys. Together, they play a simple chord progression. As Dex gets a little more confident, he continues on unassisted as Lydia improvises an accompanying melody an octave higher. I give up coconut blasting to simply sit down and listen. Dex and Lydia pass a melody back and forth a few times.

  By the time they finish, Dex has dropped his shoulders a few inches lower, visibly relaxing.

  “Sometimes people forget that music has its own power, Resonance or not.” Lydia smiles at Dex, drawing her hand back from his and flaring with a burst of yellow and pink. “See, you’re already stinking less of despair!”

  “It helped,” Dex nods. “Thanks.”

  “Hello? Hell-ooooooo?” The tinny voice comes from my pocket.

  I pull out the small black disc, recognizing Mom’s voice as the others fall quiet, gathering around. “Mom?” I ask. “Everything okay?”

  “Good news on our end!” comes her reply. “But how are you? Are the aliens being nicer to you?”

  That gets a round of snickering from everyone. “Yeah, Mom, they’re actually all here right now. Thanks though.”

  “Ah, good,” Mr. Patel’s voice cuts in over the communicator as well. “As Diane indicated, good news from us.”

  “Did you find your friend? More rebels?” Dorian asks, his air of casual calm evaporating as he leans forward, focusing on the communicator.

  “Well, no. Not exactly.”

  “Well, what did you find out, exactly?”

  “The dead drop was an old book of sheet music. Baahir left instructions to find passage on a commercial cargo ship running from Italy along Africa’s eastern coast. Beyond that, I know nothing.”

  “Not an awful lot to go on.”

  “We don’t know Baahir’s current circumstances,” Mr. Patel answers. “But I must trust that he would have anticipated these conditions. We will find more information soon, if there’s any to be found.”

  “We’re going to be careful,” Mom says. “We’ve been keeping a low profile in Venice.”

  “Anything else?” Dorian asks.

  “Nothing at the moment,” Mr. Patel responds.

  “Be nicer to Caleb,” Mom says before the channel cuts dead.

  “Well,” Dorian claps his hands together. “You heard the lady. Be nicer to Caleb! So howsabout it, kid? Want to have some fun today?”

  “Why do I think you mean exactly the opposite of fun?” I’ve got that cold feeling in the pit of my stomach.

 
; “Grab your guitar. We’re going for a bit of a trip.”

  * * * * *

  “Thinking is bad for your health.” Dorian is hovering off the edge of a cliff over an impressive number of sharp, pointed rocks. He strums another note on his bass as the waves crash against the sharp rocks below. Lydia plays a bouncing melody as she flits around overhead, bubbling with a wash of happy colors.

  “Those rocks look bad for my health.” I lean over the precipice to look down.

  “You know you can fly,” he says smugly. “So come on and jump.”

  “I’m good,” I assure him.

  “How about you, Tori?”

  “I hate flying.”

  “Sir Young must learn the way,” Dorian intones in a posh British accent. “If the Lady be not too afraid to demonstrate.”

  Tori sighs and matches Dorian’s note on her violin, leaping from the cliff and floating over the breaking waters as her Rez buffers around her. “Let’s get this over with,” she says to me. “You already know how to do it.”

  “Yeah, but before I didn’t stop to—”

  “You didn’t stop to think about it!” Dorian interrupts with an exclamation. “See?”

  “It’s harder than you make it sound!”

  “It’s easier than you think!” comes his retort.

  More angry than anything, I swallow hard, strum a chord, close my eyes, and jump. Then I’m out over the water, buzzing with electricity as I move slowly to join the others. Everything is going great until I look down and imagine myself falling onto the rocks below. I know the Gibson would stop me from getting hurt, but still… some things are hard-wired.

  I start to fall.

  “Caleb!” Tori yells.

  Something catches me. Cradles me mid-air. It feels hot. Not painful, just… intense. Like the wave of heat that bubbles up from an oven when you first open it. That feeling surrounds me, envelopes me, and I’m not falling. I notice the shimmer of red Rez around me and look up to Dorian, who has started to thumb out a simple bass-line.

  “How’d you do that?” Tori asks Dorian, incredulous.