milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

duster,
enzo matrix

(no subject)

As you walk into the bar this evening, there's a man wearing red pants and a light blue blouse standing by the piano. He's tuning a double bass, tapping the fingerboard as he judges the tone. Satisfied, he stands up more straight and begins playing a simple bass line, fingers flying effortlessly as if he has done this many times, and this is just a warm-up. It's relaxing and stands well enough alone but would benefit from another musician.

If you walk up to him, you can see that he seems to be focused on the space below him as if he were deep in thought.

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Enzo considers Duster and his bass for a while.

Then he heads home and returns with his guitar.

Duster doesn't mind Enzo joining in, does he?

Duster looks up and sees Enzo with the guitar.

He smiles and nods his head.

Once Enzo is ready, he taps a steady beat with with right foot and mouths "One...Two...One, two, three, four!" and immediately breaks into an energetic bass line.

Enzo listens for a few counts and then starts riffing along. He's not a pro like Duster, but he's been playing as a hobby for nigh on seven years now. He can keep up.

The guitar needs to take charge here, Duster thinks, and slows his playing, focusing on harmonizing and supporting Enzo's part. He's pretty good, actually, but he'll need to see what the other man's style is before adding his own.

Although the manner of Enzo's playing is very much hard rock, the actual melody is evocative of nothing so much as J.S. Bach. (Sprites, as a rule, like Bach. It's the mathematicality of it.)

How long has it been since a stuck-up ghost played that sort of music at him? It's a bit strange for Duster to play with that sort of melody, but after a couple of measures, he figures out that there's a simple system to what Enzo's playing.

He goes back to using complex rhythms and melodies to this bass, adding a jazzy feel to the guitar.

Enzo rocks the Bach.

The mun has no idea what else to say on this matter, and apologizes.

A few minutes of improv, with some mandatory bass-spinning thrown in, and Duster wraps up his section, signaling to Enzo to finish up in a few measures.

After the last string is plucked, he keeps his arm up for a second before slowly putting it down.

"That was a great session."

Edited (corrected spelling) 2014-07-18 03:14 (UTC)

"No kidding! You really are good. Too bad we didn't have a drummer."

"A drummer would be nice. It would be even better if we had a keyboardist and a saxophone player." Actually, Duster wishes he had the entire band here with him.

"It hasn't been that long since I last played in a concert, but after all that's happened, I kind of miss it, you know?"

"I hear you. It's only a hobby for me, but even so, it's kind of... I dunno, grounding."

"I started playing bass as a hobby as well, thought mostly because there wasn't much else to do when you lose your memories and the people that look after you are musicians. After a while I found out that I felt more relaxed and happy when I'm playing music.

"Even if I don't go back to touring and performing every week, I'd still play. It's one of the few thing I'm good at."

"Gotta follow your function," Enzo agrees.

"My function?" What does that refer to? His abilities? His purpose?

"I never knew I had a talent for music until three years ago. Up until then all I knew were the Thief Arts my dad taught me and how to fight and run with this bad leg of mine."

"Oh, yeah, sorry, function is a sprite thing. We're a lot more... designed for a purpose than humans are. What we do is what we are. Like I told you before, 'to mend and defend,' that's my function. Guitar's just a secondary function. It's not the same for humans, it's just easier for me to think of it that way sometimes."

"So your function is decided for you when you're born?"

That wouldn't be too unfamiliar to Duster.

"No, not that early. We do have a choice. But once we are formatted, it's a little more… permanent than it is for humans."

"And what if you're not happy with your function? For humans, it's hard enough to reject your lifestyle and disobey your elders, but even I had the chance to restart my life.

"But then to fail the task I was prepared for all my life and lose my memories, so maybe it's difficult for both of us."

"It's hard to explain, but that's not really something that happens with sprites. Like I said, my format, my function, is what I am. It's like asking what I do if I decide I don't like breathing, it's just not something that comes up. We might not like the circumstances we're operating in, but your format is your format. Although you can expand your functions, and sometimes your format changes that way. My sister did that."

"Really? What does your sister do?"

"She started as a business format, and she was so organized she started organizing things for our system, and she became military commander and now she's COMMAND.COM."

"So she's in the military," Duster frowns at that word.

"What does your military do?"

"She's in charge," Enzo corrects. "Of the whole system. Like a mayor or a president. And the CPU forces are sort of a combination of what a lot of human places have separate as the military and police. They defend the system, kind of like Guardians, except each system has its own CPU force and they just protect that system, from internal and external threats and illegal operations, while the Guardians protect the whole Net, you'd call that 'international', and we handle specialized stuff that's outside their scope. We interface a lot, though."

Of course someone in charge of the military was in charge of the place.

"So, the military is in charge of your place, while Guardians protect your city and the places around it, did I get that right?"

"Not quite. Um. A country's military protects that country, and the Guardians protect the whole world. My sister was in charge of the military, and she moved up to being in charge of the country."

That's the simplest he can translate it, even if it misses some of the nuances.

It's good enough for Duster, someone who never knew of world outside of the Islands, to understand.

"You and your parents must be pretty proud of her being the leader."

A flicker of regret on his face, quashed in an instant.

"We are. I mean, it's just Dad, but... we're all super proud."

Duster notices that Enzo seemed somewhat bothered by what he just said. Something to do with his sister being in the military? Or is it about the mother...?

Oh.

"Sorry, you and your dad must be proud of having someone important in your family. And I'm sure your mother would be proud too."

"I know she would."

He's subdued for a moment, but then he shakes it off and grins. "Hey, want to see just how confusing my family is?"

It's possible he enjoys confusing humans a little too much. But at least he's honest about it.

Duster has been confused many times by Enzo, but this shouldn't be as bad, right?

"There's more to you family than your sister and dad? Well, I'm sure you have grandparents, or is it just big?

Not that I would know much. I only had my dad all my life."

"No, we... no. Not grandparents." Another flicker.

"Here, I'll just show you." He opens a file window, like the chat window from their earlier conversation but displaying a family photo instead.

"That's my sister," he says, pointing out the shortest and seemingly least imposing adult in the picture. "The blue one is her husband, and the flying girl's their daughter. The big guy's my brother, who's also me. That's my sister-in-law, she's kind of a fish. The younger girl is their daughter. The little blob in the dome there is my dad, and the one in the hat is my fiancée, who's a sprite in the picture but really she's half human and half ghost."

Alight, this mostly makes sense, there are some odd-looking people there, but Duster handwaves it as a computer thing. But then-

"He's you and your brother at the same time?" That's more confusing than family members that look like they belong to a different species.

"I'm a copy. We have the same past up to age 9."

"...How do you even copy an entire person? Do you just find another kid and give them the same memories as you do?"

Poor kid, then.

"No, no, I was made from scratch, there wasn't anyone before the copy was made. It's... hmm, actually, I think I can explain this one so you'll understand. You know how Lucas needs to rebuild your world? In my world, we'd call that restoring it from a backup. The backup is an image of how the system was whenever the backup was made. My system needed to be restored once, only Matrix was still there but he did something wrong so the system didn't realize he was still there, so it restored him along with everyone that wasn't. And it only had a backup of him from when he was nine, so that was me."

Edited 2014-07-19 05:00 (UTC)

"I don't know if it works the same way with Lucas." Or does it? He really has no idea.

"That would be kind of terrifying to see a younger version of yourself, but going through different events in life and then ending up as what you could have been.

I really don't know what my life could have been if I never had to train with my dad instead of socializing with the other villagers."

"It freaked us both out pretty bad at first. But we got used to it. It helped when we started thinking of ourselves as brothers."

"It must have been nice having an older brother."

Duster takes a look around the bar and turns to Enzo.

"Think we can have another jam session, or do you want to sit down and take a break?"

"I'm good! But let me order something for after."

He beckons a waitrat over and orders an energy shake.

"You want anything?"

"I'm good with anything."

Duster thinks back to what the rest of DCMC would do after a practice session. Sometimes they'd head to the bar to order whatever was left, but the first day Duster was there, OJ got him a milkshake after he spent too long deciding what to get.

"I guess a shake would be fine."

"Milkshake for him," Enzo tells the rat, who scuttles off.

Enzo raises his guitar. "Ready when you are."

Duster picks us his bass and adjusts his grip until he's comfortable.

"Ready."

As they do not have a drummer with them, Duster taps his hand on the fingerboard to signal the beat, and begins a newer, slower bass line.

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