by H. A. Swain
I turn to welcome the stage rushers to sing with me but then I see Medgers, a cruel smile on her face. Behind her is Billingsley, followed by Smythe and Beauregarde. My fingers tangle in my strings and my voice goes sour, then the roaring of the standing crowd fills my ears as Medgers tackles me. We stumble sideways, my ZimriDoo smashed between us. People clamor toward the stage. Frantically, I look for Orpheus, but Medgers has me pinned. Then Billingsley is on the ground beside me. “Just hold on, Zimri,” she shouts over the erupting chaos. “We’ll get you out of here.”
Medgers wrestles me to my stomach and yanks my arms behind my back.
“Easy there!” Billingsley yells and pushes her away. She kneels down, one knee beside me, her hands on mine. “I have to cuff you,” she says, “but it’s going to be okay.”
Then I hear someone else on the mic. “You must all remain in the auditorium. You have all violated copyright laws by attending this concert.”
“No!” I scream and writhe around. Billingsley allows me to turn my body so I can see. In the center of the stage at the mic is the blue-eyed woman who always speaks on behalf of Chanson Industries whenever there is news in the Buzz. The crowd goes berserk. People push one another through the aisles and out the doors into the dark night.
At the side of the stage, I see Orpheus trying to break free from Smythe and Beauregarde who have his arms twisted behind his back as they drag him toward the wings.
“Orpheus! Orpheus!” I scream and kick. Billingsley and Medgers haul me to my feet. From the corner of my eye, I see Harold Chanson. He claps his hand on Orpheus’s neck and yanks him away. Then he glances over his shoulder at me and smirks as if I don’t even warrant his full attention.
ORPHEUS
With his enormous hand clamped on the back of my neck, my father pulls me out of the theater.
“Let go of me!” I yell. “Let go!” But his goons, Smythe and Beauregarde, have a hold of my arms and keep me in line.
“You want us to go after them?” Smythe asks my dad, pointing at the people escaping through the side doors of the old theater and disappearing into the night like squimonks on the riverbanks making themselves scarce.
“Let them go,” he says. “We’ll track down the ones we need the most.”
“For what?” I ask but they don’t answer.
“Call his Cicada,” Dad tells Smythe.
“I’m not leaving!” I say.
“Yes, you are,” he says. “You’re going back to the City, tonight.”
“No.” I jerk away from him but there is no place for me to go. We’re inside a fenced-off area beside the building. In the dim light I can see ramshackle playground structures—a bent slide lying on its side, empty chains of seatless swings stirring in the breeze, the backboards of old basketball hoops standing like sad soldiers at either end of the lot. “I won’t go anywhere without Zimri,” I tell him.
“I’ve had enough of you slumming out here with the Plebes,” Dad says. “At first it was okay. Our Buzz ratings went up when you went missing and we got another bump when you were miraculously found. But now you’re beginning to tarnish our image.”
Overhead, the lights of my Cicada sweep the playground. People duck and run for cover in the trees, likely afraid a security helicopter is coming to arrest them. The Cicada touches down at the far end of the playground on an empty patch of broken concrete. I back away.
“I won’t go. You can’t make me. Where’s Zimri?”
Dad grabs my arm and shuffles me toward the car. “Your little Plebe slut is going on trial. Piracy, among other charges. I’m tired of people like her, Calliope Bontempi, and that scum DJ HiJax trying to take what’s not theirs.”
“You stole from her!” I yell.
But he just shrugs. “Doesn’t matter anyway. I’m making an example out of Zimri Robinson. It’ll send a message to brain activists everywhere that if they take me on, they will lose.” He commands the doors of my car to open. “Smythe,” he calls. “Take him to my office. He can watch the trial from there. I’ll come get him when the surgeon’s ready.”
“Surgeon?” I ask. “What surgeon?
“You’re going home for an ASA.”
“No!” I bend my knees and drag my feet but he easily pulls me through the dirt. “Leave me alone! Let me go!”
Smythe jogs up beside me. She puts her hand on top of my head and together they shove me in the car. My dad bends down next to the open door while she runs to the driver’s side.
“You would have made a decent producer, Orpheus,” my father says. “Zimri’s very talented. I haven’t seen someone like her since your mother.”
I gasp as if he’s punched me in the stomach. “So use her,” I plead. “Let her sign a contract with Chanson. I’ll get the ASA. She and I can be a duo. The public will eat it up!”
“You still don’t get it, do you?” he says, shaking his head. “Like I always said, you’re not a businessperson at heart, Orpheus. Because if you were you’d understand that if I sign someone like Zimri, then the whole system falls apart.”
“Dad, please,” I beg.
He stares at me for a moment. “Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?” he says.
“What is?”
“That tomorrow when you wake, you’ll be the musical genius and her brain will be scrubbed.”
“No!” I yell, struggling to get free, but my hands are locked tight behind my back and his body fills the doorframe. “You can’t do that.”
“Maybe, if you want, I can ask the surgeon to scrub a little of your short-term memory so you’ll have no recollection of this part of your life. That’s all it takes to forget her.” He reaches out and presses his fingers into my temples and says, “Bzzzt!” Then he stands up and hits the top of the car twice, calling, “Best be heading out now before traffic in the City gets too thick.”
* * *
On the flight back to the City, I beg Smythe over and over to let me go. Finally, near tears, I plead, “Please, anywhere. Just land and let me out. Say that I forced you. Say that you stopped for something to eat and I got away. I’ll leave and never come back.”
But she doesn’t budge. Doesn’t flinch. Without taking her eyes off of the WindScreen NewsFeed (covering every moment at the Complex with running Celeb commentary) she says, “If I let you go, you’ll head straight to that girl. I saw the way you looked at her.” She shakes her head and sighs, “I hate to squash young love and see all that talent go to waste, but there’s no way I’ll cross your father.”
ZIMRI
Everything happens so quickly. Billingsley and Medgers take me to the Complex security office and put me in a cyber courtroom with a justice broker named Fernando who’s been sent out by the Justice Consortium to handle my case.
“Why was I arrested?” I demand.
“Piracy,” Fernando says. “You performed copyrighted material for profit, right?”
“No!” I say.
“It’s okay,” Billingsley assures me, her hand stroking circles on my back. “We’re going to get this straightened out.”
The blond woman from the stage comes in the room. She nods curtly then settles at a table across from us. “We’ve located an Arbiter who has contracts with both sides,” she announces. “She’ll be online momentarily.”
“What’s that mean?” I ask.
“The Justice Consortium, which represents you, and Chanson Industries agreed on an Arbiter to hear the case,” Fernando explains.
“I didn’t agree on anything!” I snap. “I don’t even know you.”
He shrugs. “You have the right to hire any broker you like. But I follow the unified legal code and am in good standing with the Justice Protective Association, plus I’m covered by your insurance plan through Corp X. If you choose to go with someone else, you’ll have to pay out of pocket.”
I look to Billingsley, my only ally in the room. “Best to use him,” she says. “They can make me hold you in jail if you delay and it’s very expensive to hire
someone. You’ve already paid for this.”
Then the Arbiter comes on screen. She’s old, with thick stripes of gray through her black hair. Her forehead wrinkles as she looks over her tablet and scowls. “What’s the charge?” she barks and settles into her seat. “And why can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
“Hello, thank you for agreeing to oversee this matter, ma’am. My name is Esther Crawley and I’ll be representing Chanson Industries.”
The Arbiter’s eyebrows shoot up. “Chanson?” she says, clearly impressed. “Out here?”
“Yes, we have an urgent matter,” says Ms. Crawley. “Due to the public nature of the incident and the distance I’ve come from the City, we’d like to take care of this matter tonight, if possible.”
“Do you have your witnesses and materials in order?” the Arbiter asks.
“Officers Medgers and Beauregarde are collecting witnesses now and we’re prepared to begin,” says Ms. Crawley.
The Arbiter looks at Fernando. “And you?”
He shrugs, noncommittal. “Now is as good a time as any.”
“No wait!” I cry. “This isn’t fair. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
The Arbiter scowls at me. “Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?”
“Where’s Orpheus?” I ask. “I want Orpheus here with me!”
“Who’s Orpheus?” the Arbiter asks.
Fernando shakes his head, as confused as the Arbiter, but Esther Crawley says, “Orpheus Chanson’s role in this matter is immaterial to the complaint. He’s decided to return home with his father.”
“You lie!” I yell. “I saw Smythe haul him off. He didn’t want to go.”
Ms. Crawley whips her head toward me. “At the request of his father,” she says firmly, “he’s been removed from the premise and no charges have been filed against him.”
My stomach rolls as I realize that they’ve taken Orpheus away and are blaming everything on me.
“Ma’am.” Ms. Crawley turns back to the Arbiter. “We are prepared to prove that Zimri Robinson has willfully and repeatedly promoted and distributed music illegally for the past five years through pirated radio and for-profit concerts and by hijacking a LiveStream. Her actions culminated tonight in a bold and egregious act of piracy at a public, for-profit concert in which she blatantly stole Arabella Lovecraft’s copyrighted song ‘Nobody from Nowhere.’”
“That’s my song!” I yell and jump up from the table. “I wrote that song! They stole it from me.”
The Arbiter leans forward so her face glowers at us from the screen. “Then this matter should be quite simple and you will get your turn, but you cannot disrupt these proceedings or I will have you removed from the room. Do you understand?”
Billingsley tugs on my wrist for me to sit down. “Yes,” I say quietly and return to my seat.
The courtroom door opens and people file in, followed by ’razzi drones. At first I’m relieved to see so many people have come to support me—Brie, Elena, Tati, Jude, Veronica, Marley, and even Dorian, along with many others from the warehouse and Old Town, but as Esther Crawley calls them up one by one, it becomes clear that they’ve been rounded up and brought in by Medgers and Beauregarde to testify against me.
“To your knowledge, when did Zimri Robinson first sing for the public?” Ms. Crawley asks Brie’s mom, Elena.
Elena squirms as she hems and haws until the Arbiter sternly compels her to answer. “Four or five years ago,” Elena says. “She was around eleven years old at the time.”
“That wasn’t a concert,” I whisper to Fernando, but he doesn’t seem to care.
“And did you pay to see her perform?” Ms. Crawley asks.
“We, um, sort of, but not exactly. I mean after Zimri sang, we donated money to her grandmother to help pay some of her bills,” Elena says then turns to the Arbiter. “You have no idea what they were going through.”
“That’s immaterial,” Ms. Crawley says. “Can you recall any of the songs Zimri Robinson sang at that show?”
“It was so long ago,” Elena says.
Crawley refers to the notes on her tablet. “Did she perform songs by Sarah Vaughan or Libellule?” How she knows the details of what I sang when I was eleven years old is beyond me, but clearly someone has ratted me out. Probably Medgers.
Elena looks at me. “I’m so sorry, honey,” she says, then she turns back to Ms. Crawley, nods, and says quietly, “Yes, I believe she did.”
“And after that, you gave money to her grandmother?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And would you have given money to her grandmother if Zimri hadn’t sung?”
“If she’d asked me to.”
“Did she ask?” Ms. Crawley demands.
Elena hangs her head. “No,” she says. “She didn’t ask.”
This goes on and on as Ms. Crawley ruthlessly works her way through nearly everyone who knows me, asking questions that paint me as a self-promoting music thief. No one says that I made my own music because Ms. Crawley never asks them that. And they can’t admit to attending one of my concerts for fear they’ll be implicated in a crime none of them committed, but they don’t know that because Fernando rarely counters or asks a decent question on my behalf.
Then halfway through Ms. Crawley questioning Tati, the door in the back of the room opens. Everyone turns to see who it is. An audible gasp goes up when Calliope Bontempi slips inside. Ms. Crawley stops badgering Tati long enough to do a double take while everyone in the room whispers. But Calliope seems to take no notice. She quietly slides into a seat near the back and speaks to no one. Ms. Crawley continues questioning Tati about how long ago I set up my transmitter, how often I broadcast, and how far my signal can reach. Tati keeps her answers short, vague, and hostile, but she can’t deny that I regularly broadcast music.
When Ms. Crawley excuses Tati, she turns back to the Arbiter and says, “Ma’am, I’d like to submit records of radio transmissions by DJ HiJax that correspond to the times Zimri Robinson broadcast from this setup nearby. It is our contention that Zimri Robinson is DJ HiJax.”
I burst out laughing along with every other Plebe in the room.
“Our records show that DJ HiJax began broadcasting at roughly the same time Zimri built her antenna. All of our records of HiJax’s transmissions come from near here. We believe the link is clear.”
“That’s absurd!” Tati says.
“Then produce DJ HiJax,” Ms. Crawley says, “and disprove my theory.”
At that moment, Calliope Bontempi shoots out of her chair and runs from the room, leaving everyone stunned as the door bangs shut behind her.
Finally, Ms. Crawley stands to make her closing argument. “Ma’am,” she says to the Aribiter, “I stood here five years ago, a younger and more naive justice broker at the beginning of my career with Chanson Industries, and I brought a very similar case against this girl’s mother.”
I inhale sharply. Esther Crawley’s bright blue eyes have dulled somewhat and her skin has become more mottled, but the picture is clear in my mind. She told me to stop singing then, and now she’s back to stop me again.
“Zimri Robinson is a product of her mother’s deviance regarding music, but that is no excuse. She is sixteen, an adult under the law who holds a full-time job, and she knows the difference between right and wrong. But like her mother, she has no regard for private property and is a thief. Rainey Robinson never paid her debt to Chanson Industries and she never served her jail time. I implore you not to let this Robinson get away with the same thing.”
“Zimri,” the Arbiter says, “would you like to make a statement?”
“Yes,” I say and stand up. In that moment, I understand why my mother never named names and I know that I won’t pass the blame either. I lift my chin the way my mother had at her trial. “I admit it. I have put on concerts many times. I found the places to play, I promoted the shows, and I sold the tickets. I played alone. No one else was involved.”
The crowd shifts
and murmurs. I hear Brie gasp and say, “No!”
“But,” I add and the room gets very quiet, “the music I make and share is mine and mine alone. The only exception was when I was eleven, a child grieving the loss of my parents. Then I sang my mother’s favorite songs because I missed her. Money had nothing to do with it. I would have sung those songs whether people gave my grandmother money or not. Since then, all of the music I’ve made and shared is mine. And Harold Chanson said himself that anyone is free to promote and distribute original music. That’s all I do.”
“That’s not true!” Ms. Crawley says. “This very evening you knowingly sang an Arabella Lovecraft song.”
“That’s my song!” I shout at Esther. “I wrote it. I sang it. I even recorded it long before Arabella stole it.”
“Wait a moment,” the Arbiter says. “Can you produce a recording of this song prior to the release of Arabella Lovecraft’s version?” she asks me.
I stand, my mind reeling. I think about the digital and video recorders I scrubbed clean, the waves I sent out that dissipated into the night. I was so careful to erase all of the evidence of my music that I can’t give her what she wants. My eyes sting and my nose itches like I might cry. I start to shake my head. My knees begin to give out, but then I remember. “Piper McLeo!” I shout. “When I auditioned for Piper McLeo, the engineer recorded me singing ‘Nobody from Nowhere.’” The whole crowd lets go a collected breath. “That recording will be time-stamped a few hours before Arabella dropped her sneak peek of the song.”
The Arbiter sits back and turns her attention to Esther Crawley. “You’ll need to get Piper McLeo on the screen.”
