Portals of Infinity: Book Two: The God Game

by John Van Stry

  “If they sucked, we’d have a hostile audience. I don’t want to have our first show ruined before it starts.”

  Joseph sighed, “Makes sense. I hate waiting anyway.”

  We sped through the sound check, the band on stage was already on their last song, and I checked the headset mike I was wearing one last time as they finished and the applause came up from the audience. They were a pretty good act and definitely had everyone going. The gap between them and us was supposed to be a little longer than normal, an entire minute apparently, to give the crowd a chance to shift gears with the change in format at ten.

  As their stage started to rotate out and ours rotated in, I looked around. The rotating stage apparatus that they were using here was pretty neat, and with the number of bands they had playing everyday, I could see why they used it, set up time on stage was reduced to however long it took to rotate out the next platform. I saw the assistant stage manager watching us and I blew her a kiss and winked, she actually blushed and her boss gave her a look and said something that made her blush even more.

  I laughed and could hear the announcer over the PA telling the audience about the line up change as our platform moved out into the open. I was looking out at the crowd just as the stage clicked into position and the lights came up. Wow, there were a lot of them! I felt the adrenaline spike and it suddenly felt like I was about to go into combat, the crowd noise dropped for just an instant as everyone waited.

  And off we went. The song I had picked could be sung nice and loud, it was one of those you could really belt out at the top of your lungs, it had softer spots, and a nice instrumental part to help keep the pace moving.

  The crowd... well I was having a hard time judging them, they weren’t booing which was great, but they weren’t exactly cheering either. I could see they were starting to pick up with the rhythm slowly. I checked around the stage as we drew near the end of the song, I saw the assistant was standing there watching us, she had that same expression on her face, this was different, unexpected. I got it then, we were breaking the mold and they were all undecided.

  I danced over towards her as Joseph did the intro rift for the next song, the spotlight following me of course. I was about to make a friend for life, or an enemy.

  Coming up in front of her, I started singing; the song was originally a guy singing for a gal, even if the words were mostly neutral. I was originally going to pick a guy in the audience and sing it at him, but I had a feeling that she would be a better target, and I went with it.

  “You know that I would be a liar

  If I was to say to you

  Girl, we couldn't get much higher”

  She had that deer in the headlights look as I circled around her and started herding her out towards stage center. She didn’t even realize it as she was so focused on me and what I was singing.

  “Come on baby, light my fire

  Try to set the night on fire”

  She started to blush furiously, and as the last line left my lips she looked around and realized exactly where she was standing and started to look angry at me. I stepped forward as I raised the guitar and brought the neck down behind her, she was trapped, pulled up against me now with nowhere to go and as she tried to push away from me, she suddenly realized that I was stronger than she was. I smiled, looked directly into her eyes and sang the next verse to her.

  She settled down a little as I let my voice glide into that sultry range that I was rather pleased to find that I had, and when I finished that verse and we went into the bridge I pulled her closer and kissed her while we worked our way through the instrumental.

  When she grabbed me and kissed back, I could hear the crowd start to go wild.

  “Bitch,” she whispered in my ear.

  I smiled at her and when we came out of the break I sang the next verse, then let her go and sang the final verse, which I belted out at full volume. The crowd loved it.

  “Hi, everybody!” I called out to the crowd, “Guess I know who I’m doing tonight, what about you?” I said and laughed and they all joined in. “This next one is called ‘White Room’.” Stephanie counted us off and off we went again.

  We finished that one and the crowd was definitely with us now, it was a bit different from the previous song, what they used to call ‘psychedelic’ where I came from. They loved it all the same. I looked at the clock, we had a little over four minutes, so I decided to do the song I’d sung in the pawn store.

  “This one goes out to Mike and all the great guys down at South Central Pawn!” I called out, “Without their help we wouldn’t have made it here tonight after we lost our instruments in an accounting mishap. Thanks, Mike!” And we did ‘Sunny Afternoon’.

  I changed the part about ‘girlfriend’ to ‘bass player’ on a whim and I actually got the audience to sing along on the last chorus.

  We bowed and the stage rotated off to a rather loud applause.

  “Wow!” Was all I could say as I looked at the others.

  “Yeah, wow!” Stephanie said.

  “Definitely wow!” Joseph added.

  “That went well,” Cenewyg said and started moving our stuff off the stage, “With any luck we’ll be out of here soon enough.”

  I had just put my guitar in its case when I heard someone cough, turning I stood up, it was the assistant stage manager.

  “I’m going to get you for that!” She said staring at me.

  I smiled at her, she was rather attractive and while I may be in a woman’s body I still appreciated a good looking woman, and to be honest after being on stage I was still rather wound up myself. “I like that idea!” I said and she suddenly looked rather panicked as I grabbed her wrist.

  “I call dibs on the dressing room!” I yelled out and dragged her off as she protested to someplace more private.

  Seven

  When we showed up for practice the next day our 'fans' were already there and waiting for a change. They congratulated us on our debut performance and gushed over us a bit, like I guess fans did.

  "So now what?" Cenewyg asked.

  "Ask Will," Stephanie said, "He seems to understand this place better than any of us."

  "We work on our catalog," I said.

  "Our what?" Cenewyg asked.

  "The songs we know. We've got ten right now, well from this point on they're going to expect two new songs a night until we've shown the people who run the show here that we can do two weekend shows without repeating any songs."

  "That's what, twenty?" Joseph asked.

  "More or less, but once we get to the weekend show we're going to be expected to vary the songs from weekend to weekend. So we'll probably need to get our catalog up to thirty or forty. Especially if we want to move on to the big show down at Sirenum Scopuli."

  "Where'd you learn all this?"

  "Alice told me."

  "Alice?" Joseph asked looking confused.

  "That gal he dragged off into the dressing room after the show," Stephanie said.

  "Gods this is so confusing," Joseph said.

  "What?"

  "He didn't drag her off, she dragged her off," Joseph said pointing at me. "Look, we're going to be here a while, right?"

  "At least a couple of months," I agreed.

  "Yeah so all of this 'he' 'she' pronoun stuff is going to trip us up." Joseph pointed at me, "Wilma, she," then Stephanie, "Stephan, he," then himself, "Josie, she."

  We all thought about that a moment.

  "That's going to take a bit of getting used to." I said.

  "Seems obvious to me," Cenewyg laughed.

  "She has a point," Stephan said.

  "Yeah, yeah, I know," I nodded. "Anyway, Alice told me that if we did well again tonight we'd get put in the weekday lineup."

  "So practice, practice, practice."

  "Yup."

  The show that night went as well, if not better, than our first night; we knew what to expect now after all. The other bands were also willing to talk with us backstag
e now that we were no longer 'virgins', and our willingness to switch with the other band the night before also made us popular with the stage manager.

  Trouble started in our second week. We were getting more and more popular every day; the tunes we were playing were different enough that no one had heard them before, and good enough that we were drawing larger and larger crowds. Alice told me it was a given that we would be working this weekend, and of course a lot of other bands were jealous of our fast rise to fame.

  We were packing up our stuff after one of our performances and one of the other bands on stage suddenly played one of our songs! I looked up shocked and the others looked up a bit confused. It was one of the songs we hadn’t done yet, but which I’d taught them just yesterday.

  “Son of a bitch!” I growled.

  “What?” Alice said looking at me.

  “That’s one of our songs,” Stephan told her. “We just haven’t gotten around to doing it here yet.”

  “Oh,” She nodded. “Did you practice it today?”

  I thought about that a moment, “Yeah, we did.”

  “They must have sent a spy around to listen to your practice session.”

  I swore loudly at that.

  “Guess we need to find a new place to practice,” Joseph said.

  “That’s not the worst of it,” I grumbled.

  “Oh?”

  “They’re messing it up!!” I said loudly. “At least they could get it right!”

  I noticed we got a lot of looks then from the other bands that were either setting up, breaking down, or just hanging out by the stage.

  “Maybe you should show them how it’s played!” The member of one of them teased.

  “Once they get their asses off stage!” I shook my head, “They’re just murdering that poor song!”

  A lot of them laughed at me for saying that, because the song was pretty good, but it could have been better. When they finished their performance I jumped up on their platform before it had even stopped moving.

  They all smirked at me and I stepped in front of the lead singer and yelled at him, “It’s ‘Girl, I want to be with you all of the time’! If you’re going to steal it, get it right asshole!”

  “Hey now wait a minute....” He started to say, but I had already turned on the guitar player.

  “And just what the hell were you playing?” I ripped his guitar out of his hands, shocking the hell out of him, “That riff goes like this,” and I played the bridge for him then shoved the guitar back in his hands. “If you were so desperate for a song, maybe you should have asked!” I yelled and stomped off the stage.

  The other musicians and half the stage crew were all laughing pretty hard by now, and I could see that the guys I had just chewed out were looking pretty pissed.

  “Hey, we wrote that song!” The singer tried to bluster.

  “Busted!!” Alice said and laughed in their faces. “What do you want to do about it?” She asked turning to me.

  I waved back at the band, “Just put them on after us tomorrow, this way we can perform our songs before they can steal any more of them.”

  “That’s all?” She said looking surprised.

  “I’ve got so many songs losing a couple isn’t going to hurt, not like we can perform them all anyway.” I sighed and went to help the others finish packing our gear up.

  We left Cenewyg to take it back to our room and then went to watch the show for a while. Cenewyg didn’t really care for the music much, whereas the rest of us really got into it. It was like doing drugs without having to inhale whenever a really good band got on stage. In this sphere, music apparently had a pretty potent effect on your nervous system. As performers, I think it affected us less, because I’d noticed the non-performing crowds appeared to almost be in a trance half the time.

  “So how do you think they stole our song?” I asked Stephan as we watched one of the bands on stage.

  “Like Alice said, probably one of the people who’ve been sitting outside listening to us practice.”

  “Joseph was right; we really do need to find a new place,” I sighed.

  “Definitely.”

  “I know I shouldn’t be all that surprised about this,” I said shaking my head, “No reason for people here to be any different than people anywhere else.”

  “You really like it here, don’t you?” Stephan said putting an arm around me and pulling me closer.

  I nodded and smiled at him, “Yeah, I do. I’ve always loved music and to be able to actually play and sing like one of my childhood idols? What’s not to love?”

  “Thinking of staying?” He asked.

  I shook my head ‘no’. “Oh it’s tempting, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think I could live here. Still, it’s definitely a nice place to visit.”

  Stephan laughed, “Yeah, it is.”

  We stayed another hour but eventually left to head back to the rooms we were renting. We got about halfway there when suddenly the members of the band that had stolen our song were in front of us.

  “We don’t appreciate you making fools of us!” The guy who was the lead singer said as the other four members of the band spread out around us.

  “Well, maybe you shouldn’t have stolen one of our songs,” I replied.

  “Because of what you did, all the other bands are now making fun of us. Some of our fans in the audience even heard you and now they’re questioning us.”

  “Not my problem,” I said and yawned.

  “Now get out of our way,” Stephan growled.

  “So you’re going to teach us all of those songs you say you have, so we can prove we didn’t steal that song,” he continued.

  “I ain’t teaching you shit,” I said angrily. “If you’d come up to us and asked first, I probably would have. But now? No.”

  “Then I guess we’ll have to force you!” He said pulling out a knife and attacking us, the rest of them also pulled out knives and joined in as well.

  As I expected, everything slowed down for me. The three of us moved forward, each engaging a different attacker. Even in this ‘weaker’ female form I was still faster than my attacker and almost as strong. I disarmed him quickly, stuck the knife in his chest, and left it there. I turned to take on another one but stopped in surprise; Stephan had literally cut the head of the lead singer off and had thrown it at one of the others. Josie had stuck a knife in the one she was fighting as well, but that one was scrambling away in apparently horror.

  “These are my women!” Stephan yelled. Brandishing a rather large knife that I hadn’t even realized he’d been carrying.

  Just like that, everything snapped back to normal time as the two wounded ones crawled off and the other two ran.

  “Wow,” Josie said.

  “Your women?” I asked arching an eyebrow.

  “Damn right,” Stephan smiled, somewhat covered in blood.

  “Works for me,” Josie said in a rather low voice, which surprised the hell out of me, because I’d been about to say the same thing myself.

  “Let’s get back to the hotel,” Josie said huskily grabbing Stephan’s hand and starting to pull him along. “You coming?” She said looking at me.

  I looked at Stephan who looked a cross between embarrassed, and rather lustful.

  I smiled back at her, “Oh, I wouldn’t miss this for the world!”

  The next day we found a new practice spot and made sure no one followed us there. Obviously secrecy was now important. We also realized that traveling alone probably wasn’t safe, at least not at night in areas without lots of other people around. Stephan had the good graces to look embarrassed all day as well, but it didn’t help that both Josie and I were almost hanging off of him.

  Apparently Joseph had as much of a thing for Stephanie as I did, but until last night Stephanie had never admitted to feeling the same way about us. Josie had made the comment that it took Stephanie becoming a man in order for her to confess her feelings, and obviously that meant that men where ju
st much more honest about their feelings and proceeded to give Stephan one of the smuggest looks I’d ever seen.

  Cenewyg became much more important to us as well. Up until now he had been using his roadie status and access to the band mainly to get laid, but after the attack he started on finding out who we could trust and who we couldn’t. Some of our earliest fans he signed up to help with our gear on stage, apparently working for a name band was a huge status symbol among the lowest class. He also found out who else was trying to steal our songs and discouraged them rather physically. He didn’t kill anyone, but a few musicians had their careers interrupted while they healed from either having an arm broken or a good solid thrashing.

  This was an underside of the culture that I hadn’t realized existed, but once I saw it, I knew I should have expected it. Being a top act meant a lot of money and a lot of status, so of course there were people who would do anything to get ahead.

  When we finally hit the stage that Friday night for our first ‘big’ performance, we played a lot of our new stuff, mainly to prevent it from being stolen by someone else. I was trying primarily to stick to songs from just two bands, that had both been three-piece groups, to make it easier and to try and get a ‘sound’ that was distinguishable. But I grabbed a few from some other bands that I thought would fit in as well.

  It worked well for us and a lot of the songs which had been hits back home were very popular here at the show as well. We were a huge hit with the audience that night and I can’t even begin to describe how that felt. Again I was fairly certain that the rules of this sphere were making it feel a lot more intense than it would have otherwise and the result was that the three of us were becoming even closer both on stage and off.

  Saturday was another big night for us, after that we were off until the next weekend. Sunday’s shows were a bit different, you played two hours on Sunday, and you only played every other week. We went to Sunday’s show to watch, the three of us that is, Cenewyg said he was busy researching what we would need to know when we got to Sirenum Scopuli, but we all suspected that he really was just chasing skirts.