• The last message of the day from the president was blaring over the speakers in our classroom. It meant that school was done for the day.
    “Right, Time to get out of here.”
    I did something very stupid this morning. The effects of which were ringing through my head like a mission bell Irrevocably smashing back and forth with no end. I got in my car and jumped at the sound of my navigation interface pinging on.
    “Welcome back man! goin’ home?”
    They program these things to use slang terminology so they sound more friendly and relate-able.
    “No, not today take me to Mikes”
    “Right, I’m already gone”
    Mike was an old friend from adolescent school. We kind of went our separate ways when he dropped out and started selling illegal probiotics.
    “Where here space man!”
    Mike was already at the door.
    “Did your car just call you space man?”
    “Shut up, we need to talk.”
    “Stellar, come to my office space man!”
    Mike conducted all of his business in his basement. His dad knew what he did everyday he just didn’t care.
    “So what’s up man?”
    The basement was a mess and always smelled like someone died in it earlier that afternoon. It was filled with all the things he or his dad couldn’t let go of, which was everything.
    “You know what’s up. What the hell did you do to me?”
    “Aah didn’t I tell you? Right stuff wasn’t it?!”
    “I can’t get it out of my head! When does this stuff wear off?”
    “Ha-ha it doesn’t man. There’s only one way, you gotta listen to more”
    “This can’t be permanent. I have my function test next week and I can’t study if I can’t stop tapping my pen”
    “It was that good huh? Which one did I show you?”
    “I don’t know, they kept saying we’ got the beat, and there was these, I don’t know, sounds. I can’t make it stop man!”
    “Ha, I think space man has a quantum case of the Go-Go’s!”
    “Stop calling me that. You said this stuff was harmless. I can’t get addicted to this. It’s Illegal! My dad’s on the watch. If he hears me so much as hum something like this I could be in a lot of trouble.”
    “Listen man, this stuff isn’t supposed to exist. When it was banned 100 years ago people fought and died for it.”
    “How do you have it then?”
    Mike prompted me to sit, like a grandfather might before reciting an old war story to his grandchildren. I looked around for something that resembled a chair and sat across from him.
    “After my mom died, dad started collecting everything he could get his hands onto. It was like he was trying to fill a bottomless pit. One day he was out lookin’ for scrap and he found one of those old walk in basements locked and buried under years of dirt and trash. It was just sitting in an empty lot over in the old industrial sector. We figure the house that went with it must have burned down”
    “So?”
    “So he went in man”
    “And… What was in it?”
    “What do you think was in it?”
    “Music?”
    “Masses of it! All in MP3 format! You can’t even download audio-books anymore in that format! There were even those old books with pages except they’re all colorful and glossy. The pages feel like plastic.”
    “So where is all this stuff?”
    “He only took what he could carry. He said he heard the watch coming and got the SOL out of there. When he left he covered it up as best as he could and left an old boot on top so he could find it again when he came back.”
    There was a silence as I waited for him to continue but he didn’t.
    “Did he ever go back?”
    “Nah, I’m sure he’d like to. He had one too many accidents building that memorial before they let him retire. He can’t even get down stairs without my help. He just sits up there looking at those weird books. He won’t even let me see them.”
    “So you finally found something to sell that doesn’t run out. You can just sit down here and charge people to listen in. That’s great man, just keep me out of it.”
    “You’re not even in the same galaxy as me right now. Here, check it out.”
    Mike got up and walked through what looked like a fort of greasy rags and old computer boxes. He motioned to an area recently cleared of trash that I hadn’t noticed before. It looked like a clearing in a massive forest. He sat himself down in front of two boxes turned with their open end to the ground, one bigger than the other. Next to those he placed the tail pipe and break drum from an old road car. Mike looked up at me as if to make sure I could see everything alright. He smiled and then began tapping at them carefully with a spoon and piece of wood that looked like it might have been a handle for something. Each Item he hit made a different sound depending on whether he used the stick or the spoon. I watched as he hammered out 2 or 3 minutes of what seemed like a practiced routine. Then he finished and threw his make-shift mallets over his shoulders into the abyss.
    “That was smoke on the water”
    He sounded pleased with himself.
    Well, kind of I’m still trying to figure it out”
    “Are you Insane?!”
    I must have stood up at some point as I was now towering over him.
    “You can’t…”
    I looked around as if someone could hear us down in the basement and continued in a hushed tone just in case.
    “You can’t make music. Listening is bad enough. You’re in deep space man”
    “You’re not getting it. This isn’t like the drugs I sell. I may be the only one in the world with this stuff. I have a responsibility”
    “You don’t even know what that word means”
    “Man, stuff it alright! just because I’m not gonna go join the watch like you or your pops doesn’t make you any better than me!”
    “I care about you man, but I can’t do this. You’re going to get yourself put away, or worse! You said it yourself. People died for this! Are you really ready to die for something you don’t know anything about?!”
    “Maybe man! I don’t know!”
    “Well I’m sure as SOL not! See ya around man.”
    I started walking upstairs without waiting for an answer.
    “Yea! Go run home to your dad. You sound just like him!”
    I never saw mike again after that.
    The next few months I couldn’t stop thinking about music. That song was never far from my mind and with it were thoughts about mike. I passed my function test. I was well on my way to becoming a member of the watch. For some reason I was sad. Mike would say I sold my soul for a paycheck. It was hard thinking about him and what happened to him. About 3 weeks after that day I got a message from mike. All it said was “I did it man, come over!” I never responded. I never even apologized for what I said that day. Now I’d never get to. Either someone said something, or someone found out, and the watch found Mikes music and his dads weird books. Four of them, including my dad, went in and had them both put in stasis and taken downtown. When my dad came home he had all kinds of pictures. Mike had been making a whole bunch of strange looking devices. One was an empty box taped shut, but you could see it was empty because there was a big square hole in the bottom. He had taped rubber bands across the hole like little bridges. There was another picture of a huge open vase like 3 feet high. It used to have peacock feathers in it, but he had stretched a blanket over the open end and kept it tight with Permo-tape. I didn’t understand any of it. Every time I look at those pictures or think of that song, an insatiable curiosity comes over me. I can’t get rid of it. I remember Mike saying there’s only one way. I grabbed my keys and never looked back.
    “Where to, Space man?!”
    “The old Industrial Sector.”