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The Alunizar, as the prime political mover in the galaxy, were granted the first performance slot by the Grand Prix governing body, which meant that by the time voting started, no one would even remember the name of their song. Better Than You swept onto the stage in a rush of aquatic explosions and radical interpretive plopping. Slekke5 and their four lumbering, electric-veined gold bandmates slung the straps of their heat-seeking mandolins over what passed for their shoulders. They strummed the delicate fleshy strings with their nubs while geysers of locally sourced, eel-lit seawater detonated behind them, filling the Stage of Life with a melancholy, classical melody as heartfelt and skillful as any backwoods grandfather showing his boys what real music was. After about forty-five seconds of that, Slekke5 belted out a neuron-curdling war-yodel and the beat kicked in. “Is Your Continual Mistreatment of Our Entire Species Fair Trade?” would be heard in every convenience store and mall elevator on the settled worlds that summer—the Muzak version, anyway. But despite the truly self-righteous beat, the Grand Prix audience wouldn’t give those overgrown painted goiters the satisfaction, not even during the final verse in which the Alunizar rockers removed their budded offspring, one by one by ruby-threaded one, letting them slide onto the stage like jeweled tears, and assembling a chorus of generations vibrating at a frequency only the cool could hear.
The Mamtak Aggregate formed itself into the shape of a lonely, overturned can of soup. DJ Lights Out nodded. “Leave it to the Alunizar to try to make things political,” she said, making sarcastic air quotes with her long, twiggy fingers. “Somebody cut their waaamplifiers, my ears can’t take the nubhurt.”
Color drained from the faces of the fifty or so cops at a police bar in Birmingham. “How is this not political?” shouted the chief, through the film of his fifth scotch.
The Voorpret hitmakers Vigor Mortis Overdrive cut in with a slamming drum riff. Puvinys Blek, who had ditched its rapidly curdling Keshet body for a nearly fresh Slozhit one, spread its rotting wings, lifted a ceremonial Gageba shovel high into the dusky sky, and, accompanied by gouts of purple flame and gutteral death metal vocals, smashed it against the stage, obliterating a cleverly concealed nest-sac burst open beneath the floorboards and releasing a swarm of frenzied earworms into the stands like a comedian smashing a watermelon all over the front row. No one could get “No Antibody for Love” out of their heads as the infectious song spread from host to host and the euphoria-secreting worms burrowed deep into various and sundry ocular organs to lay their eggs.
The Mamtak Aggregate coalesced into an old droopy sock with holes in it. “I thought it was great!” enthused the Elakh, her gigantic eyes shining. “I got my vaccinations! Didn’t hear a thing!”
The 321, no longer stored in the body of Clippy but simply downloaded into a mixing board that bore more than a passing resemblance to Captain Nemo’s organ, played their anthem of loss, hope, and the inability to escape the rainbow wheel of suffering and end the cycle of life, death, and the categorical oppression of synthetic life by gross, moist organics, “Abort, Retry, Fail,” without fanfare or effects, which put everyone right off from the start. The 321 had calculated it to be the perfect song, a precisely tuned slice of electro-pop confectionary that nevertheless spoke of deep universal themes everyone could relate to, immaculate in every respect from melody to rhythm to emotional effect. It went on to become the most-refunded single in the history of the galactic musical economy, for reasons given variously as: “You can’t really dance to it,” “I think I’m going to go off music for a while,” and “It’s hard to work out when you feel a deep sense of unease in the presence of the gym equipment.”
Up next was the home team, the Klavaret sensation Hug Addiction. A holographic garden erupted over the stage, each hyperreal flower concealing a mister that pumped out a scent chemically formulated to lower the artistic standards of anyone within range. The rose topiaries performed a traditional Dance of Conflict Resolution, vibrating their stamens into the memories of everyone who heard even a single note of their song like a heart-seeking laser, finding, targeting, sampling, and remixing the songs that were playing when each person felt the most perfect love and acceptance in their lives and mixing it down into what would go on to be the dance craze of the decade, “I Wanna Be Elated.”
In a modest house outside Budapest, a woman heard her mother, her sisters, her daughters, and her child self all singing a thousand Hungarian folk songs and old photo-film commercial themes in such piercing harmony that she collapsed on the floor in a rictus of emotional cohesion.
The lights went out just as Once You Go Black got the crowd on its feet. They rocked out the Sagrada way, and unless your eyes evolved in a world like a locked broom closet, you never saw their pyrotechnic darkshow or their synchronized Sagradan tango. Darkboy Zaraz played the dark-matter didge so fine, the vibrations slid a cool black cosmic calm into every cell of every poor, benighted lightbody so that they could finally know some peace, some peace called “Black Is the New Black.”
Decibel Jones and Oort St. Ultraviolet watched it all from the wings.
They watched the Utorak thump out a thunderous rock anthem called “Tell Me About Your Mother” by hurling themselves against one another until the cracks and booms became a percussion and their cries of pain became a melody line and the whole of Litost danced along. They watched the Esca infrapop duo Birdward let the sweet wind of the sea play over their chest cavities to the tune of “You’ll Feel What I Tell You and You’ll Like It” and wash the stage in such bright light from their lamps that the afterimages sparkled emerald in everyone’s vision for days. They watched the Sziv supergroup Us swathe the stage in their algae until seabirds came, and the song of the seabirds was the song of the Sziv, until they ate the seabirds, and that was their song, too. They watched the Yurtmak punch the stage in the face and slaughter their yellcore ballad “In the End We’re Actually Kind of Sorry We Missed the War Yo
u Guys Have All the Fun.” They watched the soulful Nessuno Uuf stand center stage with her violet eyes full of tears singing “And I Am Telling You I Am Not Sentient,” which brought the house to its knees and sobbing. And they watched Olabil the Friendless swing up a long trumpet with his firefly-coated trunk and play the deepest blues of all time until the strange elephant sank onto its stomach singing the immortal chorus: I miss them all so much I promise never to skip school again I swear just come back. It’s so lonely being the last of us.
The songs went on and on, beggaring the mind, the ear, the very definition of music.
Until the end. New species go last.
Decibel coughed. He looked pleadingly at Oort.
“Stage fright?” his old friend asked, and he was not even a little bit teasing, as he felt certain the first musical note the civilized galaxy was going to hear out of humanity was him violently throwing up into a tuba. “Don’t worry. We got this. It’s a good song, Dess. I promise. Well, it’s all right. Just . . . do your best. Pretend everyone’s not watching. Close your eyes if you have to. It’s just us up there. Us and Mira. Only . . . her mic doesn’t work, you know? Hey. Hey, Danesh.” Oort St. Ultraviolet put his hand on his old friend’s cheek. “It’s all okay. I still love you. Always did.”
And he kissed her gently on the forehead, as if to make it true. Then once—briefly, warmly, and so arkably—on the lips.
Dess gestured emphatically at his throat for the millionth time that day. He’d tried to find a pen. He’d tried to find paper. He’d tried scratching it into his arms in blood, but fingernails really don’t do much of a job. Oort rolled his eyes impatiently.
“What is your problem? You’ve been acting so weird and quiet. Where were you all day? Are you mad at me? So I didn’t spend all day spooning with you. I was out with friends for once. You should meet them. They’re really something, the Elakhon. I got here in time, didn’t I?”
Decibel Jones tried again to claw I CAN’T SING THAT TALL BINT STOLE MY VOICE into his forearm, tears of frustration and real, boiling fear welling up in his eyes.
But Oort St. Ultraviolet was already half onstage. “Ugh, fine, be that way. Just do your thing and let’s go home. I don’t know why you always have to be so dramatic.”
It was time for Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros, or at least what was left of them, to save the world.
33.
Tell Me Who You Are
Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros went on just as the storm clouds began to gather over the Stage of Life.
They had no gouts of flame.
They had no bioluminescent burlesque.
They had no teleportation or time travel technical effects.
They had two people standing center stage in the dark. They had a microphone. They had something that looked like a glass house made out of a tuba. And they had a voice.
Dess opened his mouth to sing for his life. Maybe whatever that walking pile of coat hangers had done to him would go away if he sang hard enough, if he blew out his capillaries singing for all he was worth, which, he knew, in the end, wasn’t much. But if he could do anything, he could talk when he wasn’t supposed to. Sing when he was meant to be a good, quiet boy, seen and not heard. He’d been doing it since the day he was born. Maybe he could do it now. Maybe it would be enough.
