Skyglass: Chapter 4

PHOENIX

I crouched alone in Marko’s van, in a jumble of empty instrument cases, working frantically on Zinn’s p-com as I put the final polish and shine on my Blowup. Skyglass had just gathered around Moss and the lemon he had squished so zealously; I had maybe five minutes to go.

I could feel the liquid fire beneath my skin scintillate with tension. I was almost ready. My Blowup was beautiful–perfect as a giant, crunchable pearl full of explosives and sugar dust–and I even had a decent-sized crowd of poppers and purists to show it off to. The day before, I’d sent out a taste of the Blowup to the popper-hubs. It had gone up in flames, burning into their hungry hearts like viral kindling. The purists, on the other hand, were absolutely and obviously not here for the Blowup–just the music.

Probably. Sable had sent out some sort of threat, so it was possible the purists had come because they didn’t want to die. I certainly wasn’t going to question her methods; personally, I found them sweet.

Outside the van, Marko departed for the crowd, while Skyglass headed for the stage. I made a few last swipes across the screen of Zinn’s com and–there! Done.

I stripped out of my clothes, shifted to my cat-self, scooped the com into my mouth, then dashed out of the van and up into the branches of the cherry tree. Red leaves and pink blossoms flurried around me.

Below, another kind of show had already begun: some delightful clashes and repulsion between the poppers and the purists. They rarely shared space, so it was quite a treat. Purists liked their holes and solitude–they could be with other breathers, but only one sense at a time. The only way they enjoyed art was by killing all their feelers, except for the one they’d chosen to obsess over–they closed their eyes for music, their noses for food, their ears for paintings. Poppers, though, shot themselves to the sky–usually with needles and pills and VR–and enjoyed getting all cuddly with each other, too, in shadowless ’scraper suites and sunslabs and bubbleships. They liked their atmosphere as thin as possible; the less resistance, the better the sex!

More importantly, though–and au-so-contraire to the ideals of the purists–was the popper need for 7D sensory blowout, which was why Blowups were their very favorite form of consumption. The kind of art I made was more real than real–the kind of real experienced in dreams. Sometimes Blowups would be a full-blown virtual immersion, or, like that night’s, a live enhancement. My layers of story and image and sensory enhancement would stimulate every sense and weave through Skyglass’s good, old-fashioned stage presence. That night, Skyglass would go from real to extraterrestrial and beautiful.

As to be expected, the clashing of popper and purist had spelled a few fights on the edges of the crowd, between drugged-up poppers and those purists with spines stiff as hard candy. For the most part, though, they bubbled away from each other like oil and vinegar, the poppers eyeing and kissing and syncing beneath a VR instamoon (set to forever-full), while the purists sat before the stage, eyes closed or blindfolded or missing.

Zinn’s com bleeped, telling me that the band was ready. It was time. I licked my rough cat-tongue across Zinn’s screen, commanding my Blowup to blow up.

I felt like a god.

The instamoon died. The roof suffused with light that turned the leaf-bellies white. It was already crowded down there, but in two seconds, it was jammed, with the introduction of a tide of Phoenix-made VR people stalking in from the back. I’d given them long, glittery knives with blades as ragged as the scream Devin belted out as he stalked across the stage.

He was barefoot, wearing pants so long and flowing that they looked like a skirt or a tail or the whipping body of a black ghost. He wore no shirt; the light brown skin of his torso was covered in jump-ink, crawling up from his crotch and along his spine, lines and vines and spinning new moons just about to burst, and I thought, Devin’s a Blowup all by himself.

Behind him, Sable was stoic and hard-eyed, wearing her usual, time-eaten, white shirt and pants, plus something I’d never seen: a bare knife strapped to her neck. Its tip pricked a slip of blood from the tendons in her neck as she screamed counterpoint with Devin. The movement of her fingers across her guitar strings made me think of another kind of blood, my blood: pretty, fast, molten.

Moss was a shadow, as always. He was playing fast and precise and complex, but something about him made me think ghost. I’d heard about him collapsing at their last practice. It almost made me worry for him, but I couldn’t. It was hard for me to feel sympathy for a human. That was something I reserved for myself.

As for Zinn, well. I didn’t have time to look, since my creation was too entrancing–the VRs stabbing and killing each other with bursts of silver, vaporous blood gracefully leaving their virtual bellies. The crowd was a frantic, cosmic stew of poppers and purists with projected lyrics streaming over their skin as Devin sang.

Scythe

moon-face paradise

mouth open

teeth broken

circle-spine, throat to stars

oracle read our bellies

bind our fingers, joint to joint

toss our knuckles, watch them spin

watch them spin

WATCH THEM SPIN

And then the song ended, and the VR bodies dissolved. The purists looked confused and breathless, and the poppers were trembling, drooling for more–which they got just a moment later, as Skyglass breathed in deep and pitched headlong into their second song.

The smell of citrus crackled through the air. I could feel it fizz against my skin as part two of my Blowup began, an ambient narrative of smell and color and touch. The citrus scent dissolved into a bouquet of cucumber and blood, as every single purist and popper felt the press of disembodied lips along their jugulars–then that, too, passed, washed away by the heavy slick beat of rain.

Everything was perfect–but it was the perfection of a tightrope made of sugar-threads. Even from my perch up in the tree, I could see how frail Moss was. Contrary to his earlier, dismal attitude, he was playing hard–his hood had slipped back and he was playing wild, and it even seemed like he was having fun as he did it.

But he didn’t look strong. He wasn’t strong. The second, third, and fourth songs passed in a thrill, but by the fifth, Moss was striking at cymbals and missing them.

Zinn put his back to the crowd so the weakening drummer could see the rhythm of his fingers, but the Blowup had made them white roots and I could tell that Moss didn’t understand them in his starved haze. Devin was lost in the clot of purists beneath the stage, keening, distracting misery with misery. Sable wouldn’t look at anyone, but I could see her bared teeth beneath her hair of tangled vines and obsidian worms.

Moss dropped his sticks. His body followed, slipping to the ground.

Everything went quiet, except Devin. Devin kept screaming.

MOSS

Beneath the massive cherry tree, Phoenix’s Blowup exploded. My mouth was raw and stung of lemon–I’d finally taken a bite of it, just before going on stage. I was blissful now–faint, but with just enough energy to play, for my feet to flutter at the back of my pedals, to lift my arms and reach.

I wanted to close my eyes and just drum, because we were playing better than we ever had, ever, but I couldn’t because I would’ve missed the show detonating below the stage. Under the scarlet canopy, my eyes burned with the light of Phoenix’s Blowup–the first thing she’d done that hadn’t pissed me off.

The visuals were impressive: starry knives stabbed in tandem with every one of my cymbal hits, trees creaking through the crowd below and pulsing up to meet the cherry blossoms. Each trunk had a face that grinned with the gash on my own mouth because–rot it–I was grinning, too, I was, and it felt like I’d lanced myself. Freedom. Release.

I wasn’t the only one who liked the trees–Devin walked among them, until he found one without a face. It had blue bark and leaves made of rain. He sang to it, his amplified voice just a whisper in the back of his throat.

I threw my head back, and my hood slipped off. Marko’s hat stayed on. I was exhausted, running on bliss-fumes, so I just let my skull and the meat inside hang. This was perfect, this music, this show, this band–it was all I wanted. Ever.

It didn’t last. I swiped at my crash, made contact, but the hit was weak. Its shimmer split in two as my eyes lost focus and the fumes burned out. I reached for another cymbal again and again–I missed each time.

My hands went numb, my feet stopped working. I dropped my sticks. I collapsed.

I broke. I broke my promise. I just broke.

Proceed to Chapter 4, page 3–>