Six Strings to Save the World

by Michael McSherry

  It’s all I can do just to keep from getting hit. Five of the Autotuners have trained their red-ringed faces on me, launching bolt after bolt of energy at me. I dive low behind some trees and hear the sounds of explosions behind me. As I emerge back onto the beach, I decide enough is enough. I whip myself around and baseball slide across the sand, and with a sweep of my strings I send a bolt of lightning rocketing to the closest Synthesizer.

  It strikes the Autotuner in the center of its skeletal shell but doesn’t stop there. The bolt jumps to another robot, and a third behind the second. They don’t explode. The red glow disappears from the first two Autotuners and they drop to the sand, motionless. Smoke pours forth from the seams in their metallic bodies and gel oozes onto the sand. The third Autotuner survives, shrugging off the residual electricity and preparing to attack again.

  “Keep it up!” Dorian yells as he flashes past me. He has an Autotuner held by the face, its body writhing to free itself from Dorian’s grasp. Dorian smashes it against the base of a tree in an explosion of gelcircuitry.

  The surviving Autotuner hits me with a bolt of Rez in my right leg. It feels like the bone breaks and I go pin-wheeling across the sand, but by the time I come to a stop I can see that my leg is still straight. I climb up, testing my weight on it as I send a lance of lightning back at the Autotuner, sending that bot and another one beside it sinking to the ground.

  “You okay?” Tori asks me, landing in the sand beside me.

  “Yeah,” I gasp through the pain.

  By the time we’ve turned back around, we’re looking at a small Synthesizer graveyard. There are charred robot parts everywhere across the sand, and only a few Autotuners remain on the far end of the beach. But their attention isn’t on us anymore; they’re firing rapidly into the trees at something neither Tori nor I can see.

  “How many did you kill?” she asks me.

  “Like, three or four, maybe. You?”

  “Eight. I think the rest were all just—”

  A pillar of flame erupts from the trees, glassing the sand on the beach and melting two of the Autotuners. Dorian emerges from the tree cover a moment later, dragging his bass guitar by its neck. He’s enveloped in blue flames, blindingly bright at night. The remaining Autotuner has both of its palms up, sending bolt after bolt directly at Dorian’s face. But each bolt of red Rez dissipates into a haze of disappearing energy as it nears Dorian. As he walks onto the molten glass runway he just paved, I can see that the Synthesizer bot has already had its feet melted in place.

  Dorian approaches it, standing before it. He raises his bass guitar over his head like an executioner’s axe, preparing to deliver the final blow. But the Autotuner is already finished, melting down into the ground in a pool of metal, completely destroyed merely by its proximity to Dorian’s glowing flames.

  “He killed them all so easily,” Tori breathes, her voice filled with awe. I feel it too.

  The flames evaporate like somebody doused a torch. Dorian points upward just as one of the Autotuner fighters passes overhead, pursued by a glowing blue torpedo. Lydia launches a spear of blue Rez directly through the Autotuner fighter and it plummets from the sky, crashing into the ocean several hundred yards from shore. A moment later Lydia descends, landing on the sand a few feet from Dorian, still glowing with waves of blue Rez. Then, just like Dorian, she flicks it off.

  “You two are—” Tori trails off, and I’m too stunned to speak.

  “That’s just the warm-up,” Lydia says. “Aren’t you two missing something?”

  “Where’d the carriers go?” Tori asks, wheeling about and peering up at the star-lit sky.

  As if in answer, the shallow water twenty feet out into the cove begins to bubble fiercely. Then the water begins to glow with a dull red light, pulsing brighter and brighter as the bubbling grows more intense.

  “Well, the Synthesizers take a sort of waste not, want not approach,” Dorian explains. “Carriers are great for transporting Autotuners. But there’s more to them than meets—”

  “Don’t finish that sentence!” Lydia barks.

  Dorian’s attempted joke becomes apparent as something begins to rise out of the water. It’s dark black, shining in the moonlight as sheets of water pour off its surface. It glows with lines of dark red against deep black metal. It takes a more defined shape as it continues emerging from the water. A giant black head, with two red-rimmed, pulsing eyes. Long, spindly limbs with the same oversized joints of the small Autotuners. But the limbs are also bulging and protruding with the shark-like fins of the Synthesizer fighters and carriers.

  “Did those things just Voltron themselves together?” Tori asks.

  “Well, I was going for Transformers, but sure,” Dorian says.

  The full figure, now standing thirty feet high out of the water, turns to us with glowing red eyes. With a shrill screech of machine-noise, its eyes rake across the sand with a continuous beam of Rez. Tori and I jump backward, flying into the tree cover as Dorian and Lydia dash forward toward the goliath. The burst of modulated static drops into a heavy, fast bass drum with synthetic tones laid over. I’m getting tired of EDM.

  “Weakest at the joints!” Dorian cries to us over his shoulder. He’s enveloped in blue flames again, a torch that goes flashing over the water. Lydia moves parallel, glowing a softer blue as she skims the water’s surface. The two of them are moving in concentric orbits, launching attack after attack at the goliath’s legs. But every attack they launch breaks against a shimmering wall of Rez surrounding the beast.

  “Come on!” Tori yells, slapping my shoulder. We launch up into the air while Dorian and Lydia continue battering against the energy field. I let loose with a beam of lightning while Tori slices at the Rez buffer with repeated bows. None of us are able to even scratch the goliath while its glowing eyes send focused beams of red Rez at us.

  “We have to get in closer!” I yell to Tori. We both draw in closer, continuing to fly in tight circles around the goliath.

  Too close, it turns out. As I try to short out the barrier with a focused burst of lightning, the goliath stretches out a hand and grabs me. Its fingers envelope me at the waist, squeezing me tightly. It turns its glowing eyes upon me just as I turn to look up. The red rims narrow and the goliath apparently decides on a better way to kill me, because it doesn’t laser my head off right then.

  Instead, a gaping mouth opens up beneath the red eyes, and I’m looking down into a furnace of boiling red Rez. “He’s going to eat me!” I scream down at the others. Dorian and Lydia are hammering away at the Rez bubble now, and Tori is frantically sawing away at the barrier with high, vibrato-filled notes from her violin.

  The goliath tosses back its head then throws me into its mouth.

  I expect to feel something incredibly painful. But instead I hear a weird, mechanical choking noise as I come to an abrupt halt. I’m dangling now, with one hand held to my guitar, and I’m looking up at the stars and moon. The Gibson is caught sideways across the goliath’s gullet, and I’m just dangling in this thing’s throat, a minute away from being nothing more than robot indigestion.

  I pull myself slightly higher up, pressing my knees against the goliath’s throat, stretching until my back is up against the opposite site. The entire tunnel tries to contract but my Gibson holds strong, and the goliath gives another weird choking noise. Not knowing what else to do, I seek out the strings of my guitar with my left hand and play a low power chord. As I struggle about, the pitch bends lower.

  I hit the chord again, feeling the electricity crackling around my body.

  That sounds familiar. And so, lacking any better idea, I start to play a song: Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.”

  The progression is simple power chords followed by a quick riff. The goliath gives a monstrous, distorted roar as electricity starts to pulse all around me. The red Rez furnace below my feet blazes more intensely, but I continue playing, as fast and strong and loudly as I can. My Rez buzzes throughout my entire body,
jumping across the goliath’s metallic surface with cracks and pops. The world outside the goliath’s mouth is spinning shadows as it thrashes wildly, attempting to dislodge me.

  My entire body is burning with Rez now, and I think about what happened to my arm, and what Dorian and Lydia have been trying to teach me. Control. So I focus as hard as I can, channeling every bit of electricity away from me, outside of me and through the Synthesizer goliath. With a defiant surge of strength the goliath stretches its head back and opens wide to roar, the furnace below me bubbling up and threatening to consume me.

  I let loose with a burst of Rez, hammering down on more power chords from “Iron Man.” A shaft of bright blue lightning erupts upward, pouring out from the goliath’s mouth. At the same time, the beam launches downward into the thing’s furnace of a stomach, seeking ground through the goliath’s feet, still half-submerged in water. The red Rez furnace blazes in a strange mixture of blue lightning and red energy until the red at last relinquishes with a spark.

  For a moment, it’s just… quiet.

  Then I feel myself falling, still peering up out of the goliath’s mouth until I see sand rushing up to meet me.

  Everything goes dark. I can hear muffled voices outside.

  “Stand back, I’m going to cut it open!”

  I feel something like a gust of wind just below my toes and dim moonlight fills the tube. Something is grabbing me by the feet and pulling on me. I dislodge the Gibson and let myself get dragged out into the sand. I’m looking up at three faces: one worried and two laughing.

  “I think that’s a passing grade,” Dorian nudges me in the ribs with his toe. “A few points off for the execution, but otherwise, well done.”

  Lydia chokes with laughter. “Caleb, do you need new trunks?”

  I’m trembling too badly to make words. I’m just staring at the stars. Dorian reappears a moment later, hovering over me. He’s got something in his hand, which glows softly with a bit of his fiery Rez.

  “You know what would really help you calm down?” he asks quietly, pressing the thing into my hands. “Some warm coconut milk.”

  For a moment I want to punch Dorian in the face. But instead I take the coconut husk from his hand and take a long swig.

  It helps.

  * * * * *

  Mixy frees the Carnegie fifteen minutes later, but only after slicing through several feet of rock with the Rez turrets. When we’re all back on board, Mixy sends the Carnegie hurtling deep back into the Atlantic.

  “How did they find us?” Dorian demands.

  “I do not know for certain,” Mixy retorts from his drum throne. “The fact that the Earth-Son was able to hear Synthesizer transmissions on his communicator indicates that there is some sort of interference in the Rez entanglement. If a Synergist were able to modulate his or her own transmissions correctly, feedback from the interference would allow for rudimentary triangulation.”

  “So they can… what, exactly?” I ask.

  “If they have discovered a method to trace our Rez interference, a high frequency of communications would allow the Synthesizers to track us.” Abruptly, Mixy says, “We must destroy the personal comms.”

  “But that’s the only way we can get in contact with our parents!” I say. Tori snorts disgustedly at Mixy’s suggestion.

  “Mixy is right,” Dorian nods. “If local comms are compromised, we need to shut it down until we can work something else out.”

  “My dad is out there right now!” Tori exclaims. “There’s no point in him and Caleb’s mom going out and doing anything if we lose touch with them entirely!”

  “If the Synthesizers can track us, do you want to risk your parents?” Lydia’s voice is cold, calculating. “Would you really cling to the communicators if it meant putting your father’s life at risk? If we break the comms, we break the entanglement. Sai will know what it means. We’re saving them.”

  Mixy leaves his drum throne and goes to the Carnegie’s kitchen, returning momentarily with a familiar bin of acid. “Comms, please,” he says, throwing his own disc into the liquid with a hiss of bubbles.

  Dorian and Lydia do so immediately. Tori moves hesitantly, but at last drops her communicator into the acid with a pained expression. Dex drops his in without any hesitation, but looks about at each of us with a glazed expression on his face. He’s holding his notepad up in front of him, jabbing it triumphantly with a finger.

  “They were musical notes!” he exclaims.

  “Shut up already!” I yell at him. “Aren’t you paying any attention to what’s happening?”

  He looks at me like I said something as boring as commenting on the weather, then trudges away to the float-tube.

  “Give it up, kid,” Dorian says to me.

  “No,” I say firmly, clasping the communicator in my fist.

  “Give. It. Up.” Dorian’s tattoos give an angry shake.

  “No.” I put as much strength into my voice as I can muster.

  “Would you stop being such a short-sighted little idiot? We know where your mom is. We can find her later. But if you insist on holding onto that, you’re putting us and her at risk.”

  “You’re not the one up at night worried about what might happen to somebody you love, what happens if they get hurt, or worse!” I shout. “You don’t care what happens to any—”

  Dorian’s arm shoots out and grabs me by the wrist. He twists it and pushes me to my knees. I feel like my arm is going to break. He wrenches my fingers open and plucks the communicator from my hand then drops it into Mixy’s acid vat. Then he lets me go, but not before shoving me fully to the ground.

  “There’s a bigger picture here,” he says quietly. “Try and see it.”

  Dorian walks away and I’m left with my face burning. All I want to do is run after him and hit him, again and again and again. I’m halfway to my feet when I feel Lydia’s hand upon my arm. “I know you’re angry. But now’s not the time for that. Come with me.”

  Lydia leads me firmly away from the others and down the float-tube to the cargo hold. She doesn’t let go of my wrist until we’re in the middle of the space. I turn to her, meeting her eyes. “He’s being completely—”

  “Sit,” she says.

  “I don’t want to sit,” I snap back angrily.

  “Please,” she says softly. “Your anger is poison. Don’t you taste it?”

  Reluctantly, I sit. Lydia takes a moment to turn the Carnegie’s walls transparent, then sits across from me. It’s nighttime, the ocean too dark to see. It looks like we’re merely sitting in the middle of black space, except for the ceiling overhead, which pulses a dark red.

  “We empaths are not natural fighters,” she tells me, closing her eyes. “War demands a certain detachment. The ability to rule first with the mind, second with the body, and only last with the heart. Do you know how I have survived, through all of this?”

  “The war, you mean?”

  “Life,” she smiles. “But the war, too.”

  “How?”

  “I embrace it all, Caleb. Joy and despair. Anger and happiness. But I refuse to be ruled by these things. They lead to brash decisions. Foolish desires. Ignorant words.” One eye pops open to look at me.

  “Whatever,” I sigh, disgusted.

  “Go to the wall and grab your Resonator,” she says.

  “Why?”

  “Trust me.”

  I trudge over to the Carnegie’s wall and palm it angrily. A moment later, the Carnegie delivers my guitar to me, slung up on its hook. “Bring it back,” Lydia instructs, and I slowly return back to the middle of the cargo hold. At Lydia’s beckoning, I sit down across from her again. She takes the guitar from me. It bristles with the slightest bit of electricity, but she holds it in her lap all the same.

  Her skin ripples with a deep blue.

  “Do you like your guitar?”

  “Of course,” I nod.

  “And you know it belonged to someone else.”

  “A warrior, Mixy
said. One of yours.”

  “One of ours,” Lydia smiles sadly. “You are part of this team now. What do you know about her?”

  “Her?” I say, surprised. “Barely anything. The Synthesizers killed her, the night you came to Earth.”

  “Her name was Ionia.” Lydia runs her hand fondly over the guitar’s curves. “She was strong. Fiercely loyal. She believed in the Composers’ cause with all of her being.” Lydia’s skin flickers with a bit of yellow and green. “But she was so much more than a soldier. She was funny. Loving. Caring. The best of us, in many ways. She was my best friend.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know.”

  “You inherited her instrument. Now you stand with us, against those who would destroy everything she worked to preserve. There is a burden that comes with that. When you speak without understanding, when you aim to inflict pain, you do a great disservice to her memory.”

  “Dorian was being so—”

  “You said he doesn’t care,” Lydia interrupts me. “But do you know how painful it is for him? I do. I feel it. When he hears you play, it is torture. When he sees you wear this guitar, it is despair. But still he watches over you. Protects you.”

  “What are you—”

  “Ionia was his life-mate, Caleb.” Lydia’s skin flares red. After a moment, it cools to a soft blue. “He is coping as best as he knows how. You are a reminder of great pain. To all of us, but especially to him. It took Mixy two weeks to trace this Resonator after you found it. Do you know what Dorian did during that time?”

  I don’t say anything.

  “Locked himself away. Refused to eat. Resigned himself to death, until I put him into the auto-med, forced liquids and nutrients into his bloodstream, and convinced him that Ionia wouldn’t want him to waste the life he still had.”

  She stands up and takes a step back toward the float tube. “How do you feel now?”

  “Can’t you feel it yourself?” I ask.