Kato's War

by Andrew C Broderick

  “But, you’re still playing Movement! The biggest EDM festival in the world! Do you know how many DJs would kill for that?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Both girls looked out of the nearby window. One hundred and fifty meters below, the crowd was growing by the minute, and stretching into the distance like a large colony of ants. The Sun headed towards its resting place for the night, as it burnt the clouds to a golden orange.

  “Got your set together?” Kiyoko asked.

  “Sure do.”

  “Alright! Good luck! Can’t wait to hear it! I’ll see you after.” With that, Kiyoko took the next elevator platform up.

  Zara turned around and looked at Akio’s friends. “I saw you checking her out. Horn dogs!” Embarrassed grins. “And no posing behind me when I’m on. I’ll be on the big screens, visible to the whole world.” The boys nodded.

  “Five minutes,” a voice announced to all the occupants of the sphere. Zara pulled another record from her box, deftly flipped it horizontal, and placed it on the second deck from the left. She hit the start button to test it one last time. The decks were directly behind the window. Lifting her eyes slightly, she could see an enormous crowd. Glowsticks and laser pointers were already punctuating the dusk, like a sea of stars. Zara was much too high up to be seen directly from below. Is this really happening? she thought. This was scarier than hijacking a spaceship. She blew air out through puckered lips. Zara took her trademark disguise from a cluttered workspace to the right of her decks, and put it on. It molded itself instantly to her face. Princess Leia was reborn, complete with her signature hairstyle, sporting circular side buns. She smiled nervously at Akio and the others, who had retreated to her left, well out of the way.

  “Why don’t you want them to know who you are?” Akio asked.

  “Simple. I want to be known for my talent, not for my other exploits.”

  A deafening cheer rose. The MC was clearly on the suspended stage, below the sphere, kicking things off. “Welcome to Movement 2355!” The roar grew louder. “We have the finest DJ talent in the entire world, here in the greatest city on Earth.” He paused. “Heading up the bill tonight, having come up through the Tokyo club scene and proven her amazing talent, is StarPrincess53!”

  The vinyl was cued. Zara, whose image was now displayed on football field-sized screens, hit the start button. The fast, galloping beat of Jon O’Bir’s Out of Touch pumped out across the arena. The crowd began to move. Pulsating light followed. Zara’s head bobbed to the music. The second, much harder trance beats followed thirty seconds later. Zara whipped out the next track and cued it up, completely absorbed in her art. The boys watched admiringly from the side. She started the next turntable and deftly began to mix in the beats of Arty’s remix of Ferry Tayle’s track Trapeze. The beat softened, while a melodic piano rhythm repeated in the background. Cheers rose and fell like waves on the sea. Lasers pierced the night, while a colorful disc of pure light radiated undulating colors and shapes radiated out from below the sphere.

  Next came a seamless blend into the soft beat and electrifying melody of Mat Zo’s Synapse Dynamics (Arty remix). The piercing keyboard tones enraptured the dancers. Zara looked at the sea of people below. It was impossible to make out individuals any more. She could no longer read the crowd. Then, as if Zara’s mind had been read, a display appeared to her half-left. It showed a close up as a camera panned across the partiers. They were swaying slowly, heads back, hands in the air, eyes closed, caught in the trance. Zara smiled, her head still bobbing. She let Synapse Dynamics play for two more minutes. After that came a seamless cut into Adam Szabo’s Two to One. “Absolute classic,” Zara muttered to herself. The beat of this track was stronger. Two layers of trance piano melody, were overlaid with beats, and began to make the crowd move faster and really begin to dance again. Then the lyrics began:

  The second time around,

  I’ve got this burning feeling,

  Something’s come over me,

  Everything you say it burns my skin…

  After the first verse, hard-edged keyboard tones cut through the track like lasers. Now… Zara thought. Through a keyboard next to the decks, she could type messages to the crowd, which would appear on the giant screens. The sentence she entered appeared in huge, blocky, eight bit-style letters over her still-moving face. It read: “DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHO I AM?”

  A cheer rose. The boys looked at each other. Zara held up three fingers to the cameras. Then two. Then one. She removed her disguise. The face seen by millions became her own. The crowd went wild. Two to One continued, with it’s simple, addictive two-layer melody. “Za-ra! Za-ra! Za-ra!” the chant came from the ground. The second verse began:

  I see it all so clear now,

  I’m falling away from yesterday,

  It’s all behind us now,

  Tomorrow will be a better day.

  The beat then took a hold again, and the one million gathered revelers moved with it. Zara smiled. “Never heard anything quite like it,” Akio whispered.

  For the next twenty minutes, Zara mixed track after track of classics that few of those gathered had ever heard. They lapped it up. Then, the pumped, sweaty girl just let her last tune play, so that the torch could be handed to Kiyoko. She blended her set seamlessly into the end of Zara’s. Kiyoko’s style was very different, as she tore up a selection of 24th century tracks.

  Akio jumped up and bear hugged Zara. She exhaled deeply, returning the hug. “You did it!” he said. Zara nodded, her eyes closed, and her arms still around Akio. Outside, lasers, 3D sprites, and the displays neighboring skyscrapers combined with the moving mass of people to create an almost transcendental experience. Zara sat down next to Akio on the couch that the boys had occupied. The other two high-fived them, and then got up to make room for them.

  Zara nodded. “Yeah, I did it.”

  “Call from Dad,” her earpiece said.

  “Accept.”

  “I’m proud of you, love. Yes, I was watching it on TV.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  After Zara had rested, the four youths snuck in and hung out in the back of other DJs’ areas while they played, including that of the mighty XFire. It was only after the exhausted performer was done that he noticed them. He jabbed a finger playfully in Zara’s direction, in a gesture of admonishment. She smiled back.

  Chapter 41

  I am Zara Sasake-Robbins, she wrote in a small journal. Zara looked up at the California surf, as it crashed onto the beach nearby. Then she resumed writing. I have led a life beyond imagination. Why me? I really don’t know. Why was Genghis Khan Genghis Khan? Destiny, or fate, I guess. I now believe, however, that there are forces at work in human affairs that we don’t understand. Some things just seem pre-ordained somehow. In some people, either good or evil seem to be perfectly formed. The rest of the time, these forces are in the diffuse and nebulous forms that most of us encounter and act out all the time. And good seems to grind away at evil over time. Little by little. I believe it wins in the end. And I believe I was meant to be on its side.

  I have already lived an entire lifetime. Well, three if you go chronologically. But, I feel like I’m just beginning. Being physically renewed has a lot to do with it, of course. There’s more to it though. I’ve drawn a line under the frustrations and pain of the first time around. I also have a new appreciation for life, after Dr. Evil tried to assassinate me. And I also love my dad to the ends of the earth, for saving me. It was like seeing an angel!

  Tokyo is as nuts of a city as I’ve ever seen. But then I am too, so I’ll probably fit right in. Besides, Akio and I are an item. With Dr. Evil now gone, life is an open book for me. Believe me, I am gonna fill the pages. This is just the beginning.

  Author’s Note

  I hope you enjoyed this book. That’s all I real
ly want from writing: to craft tales that people enjoy reading. Please sign up for my mailing list to stay up to date on my new releases: http://www.andrewcbroderick.com/subscribe

  Haunted by the death of his father, John Rees is certain he will never have a chance to redeem himself for a dark past he cannot escape. But when 100 colonists go missing on an alien planet, John sees his chance to prove once and for all that one decision doesn’t create a monster.

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