Six Strings to Save the World by Michael McSherry

Author:Michael McSherry [McSherry, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-04-04T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Even though Dex has connected a few dots, he and Mixy only get so far. From what I understand of it, Dex and Mixy only managed to decode one Synergist’s messages to Alpha. Essentially, they’re getting only half of a conversation. But they try the method across hundreds of stored messages Mixy’s been monitoring since his arrival, rebuilding as much of the information as possible and trying to glean as many details as they can. I come away from that with a good understanding of how boring it is.

I spend the next few days doing something much more productive: worrying obsessively about Mom. At least I’m in good company, in that respect; Tori and I have taken to bouncing excessively more worrying scenarios off one another about what happened to our parents. Blasted by Autotuners. Eaten by goliaths. Dissected by Synergists.

When we’re not busy worrying, we play music. I don’t mean Rezzing out. I’ve gotten the hang of merely playing the Gibson without electrocuting everything around me. Playing it—just playing it—calms me.

It feels strange to know that I’m holding the same guitar Dorian’s life-mate once held. But it makes me appreciate the instrument a bit more at the same time.

Tori teaches me a few classical pieces. She pulls up sheet music from the Carnegie’s library and throws it up on an entire wall of the Carnegie’s cargo hold. I show her a few of my favorite Van Halen pieces, and when she shreds her way through a solo on her violin, I’m left rethinking my opinions on classical. More than once, we delve into the Carnegie’s library of alien music. Lydia helps us understand a few of the other species’ composition methods, symbols, and metering. From there it’s on-the-fly transposing, and for the most part, we slaughter every piece we attempt. But once in a while we strike upon something wonderful.

Playing music with Tori is the only time everything feels good.

Then, of course, it’s back to worrying. It goes on like this for a full week—sleepless nights and ruined appetites—until Dorian finally puts me out of my misery. He storms into my room at what feels like 3:00 in the morning (I’m not really sure, because outside the Carnegie’s portholes it’s either dark blue or black all the time) and pulls my blankets off of me.

“Get downstairs!” he cries.

“What for?” I ask, alarmed and disoriented.

He doesn’t answer me, but instead goes back out into the hallway. Then he’s pounding on Tori’s door too, yelling, “Wake up, Sunshine! Get downstairs ASAP!”

He jogs by me, ignoring me entirely as I try to ask another question. Tori’s door pops open a minute later and she stumbles out into the hallway, violin held in hand as she crouches in a battle stance. Her hair is an absolute mess, and she’s dressed in head-to-toe Supergirl footie pajamas. The alarm leaves her eyes as she sees me standing there, agape, and she blushes furiously.

“I thought we were under attack,” she mutters. “I’m gonna change… You go ahead.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.