With the guitar being horribly out of tune, it took a few minutes to get everything set up and ready to go. Thankfully I was pretty well practiced at tuning without needing an electronic tuner, but it meant that it took a little longer than usual since it was so out of tune.

  “So what is this supposed to do?” Flint asked for the third time as I was setting things up.

  “She told you to wait” Abel said, her arms crossed.

  “I’m almost there” I said as I plucked at the last string, making sure it was in tune with the string before it, “it doesn’t usually take this long but the strings were so loose for transport that I’m basically setting it up as if it’s being fully restrung. I’m almost there though.”

  “So…” Flint said “it’s doesn’t take this long every time, right?”

  “She already said ‘no’ to that earlier” Abel said in growing frustration.

  “I think he’s just excited to hear it” Nori said from the couch.

  She’d been sitting there the whole time but seldom said anything. She seemed curious about what I was doing but didn’t want to get in the way.

  “There we go” I said as I sat up and strung the claw of my thumb across all six strings.

  Flint and Abel both turned their heads to the side as the instrument sang out into the room. To me it sounded like an old familiar friend but to them it was an entirely new sound they’d never experienced before.

  “Hmmm” Flint said, leaning forward “So is that what it’s supposed to do?”

  “Uh, well it does a lot more than that. Let me think for a moment” I said as I realized I’d been so focused on getting everything together that I didn’t put any thought into what I’d play for them.

  The possibilities were endless, but I didn’t want to jump into anything too complex. It needed to be something simple and something they could understand.

  I sat back for a moment, trying to think of anything I could play for them, but they wouldn’t understand any lyrics to any of the songs I knew since it was in another language and the language they spoke didn’t have as much of a musical quality to it as English. As I thought about it, I had a hard time thinking of a way to make their words rhyme with each other. They tended to form sentences in a way that made each word distinct, without much ability to confuse one word for another. But that came at the consequence of making it feel a lot more rough.

  “How… How are you doing that?” Abel asked.

  “Hm?” I asked as I realized I’d been strumming the guitar as I was going through my thoughts.

  Flint and Abel both stared at me, their eyes wide as they both sat perfectly still, their attention focused on me.

  “I felt… Something. Did you feel that too Abel?” Flint asked.

  “Yeah it was like, you’re thinking about… Uh…” Abel started to say.

  “Thinking about how to say something” Flint said, finishing Abel’s sentence.

  “Yeah but you’re trying to think of it in a way that feels strange to you” she said.

  “Okay uh, I think this is gonna be easier than I thought” I said as I thought back to the past few months. I wanted to play something for them that made me happy. Something with excitement. It didn’t take long to focus on the first encounter I had with the gravity games.

  Just as I was about to start playing, Nori spoke up from the couch.

  “Wait hold on, you got all that? From the noises?” she asked, looking incredibly confused.

  “Did you not feel it?” Flint asked.

  “Feel it?” Nori asked, looking more confused. “I mean, I heard it, sure but I don’t know how you got all that from it.”

  Flint tapped me on the shoulder, bringing my attention back to the two melodians.

  He seemed eager for me to continue so I decided to just keep going, hoping Nori would understand better later.

  I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath as I brought my thoughts into focus. I didn’t go in with any plan for what I’d play or how I’d do it, but instead just let my hands play along as I played the scene back through my mind.

  I was upset, confused, lonely, angry with myself for leaving everything behind. I was in a low state without any feeling of hope that I’d be able to find a place on board the ship. The song I was playing was one of sadness, it was a song of loss as I focused on the feeling of losing everything that was important to me.

  I focused on those feelings for a few minutes as I played back the experiences in my head of wandering the ship, feeling like I had made the biggest mistake of my life, feeling like there was no way out, how much I missed my friends. I was shaking as the thoughts came back to me, but I didn’t pull away from them, instead I felt as though I was jumping straight in, letting those feelings wash over me and letting them take me wherever they needed.

  It was hard returning to that place in my mind but in a way it felt freeing to finally be able to put those feelings out there in the world for others to hear.

  I frowned as I remembered my last MP3 player dying, hearing the last of my music leaving me in the cold quiet musical drought of lifeboat 8. The feeling of loss overwhelmed me. I did my best to keep breathing, but it felt like the air was getting caught in my throat as an overwhelming sense of sadness took over my every thought, each feeling pouring out of the instrument in my hands.

  I opened my eyes for a moment to see both Abel and Flint sitting in front of me, leaning back in their seats. Both were crying, their eyes looking at the guitar as it spoke my emotions in a language they didn’t realize they already knew.

  I smiled in anticipation for what was about to happen.

  A loud strum of the strings snapped them out of the place they were in as I remembered the moment I’d first heard the music. I thought about the song at the beginning of the gravity games, the memory of my mother that came to me in that moment and the feeling I had as I realized that all hope wasn’t lost, that music did exist in the lifeboat.

  Their mouths were agape as the tone of the music changed from doubt and loss, to wonder and excitement.

  I stood up in the chair as I slowly increased the tempo, the tone changing to a rock and roll style melody as I focused in on individual strings, imagining that I was following individual melodians along their track, then shifting to the whole group as I brought all six strings into the mix, then back again to focus on an individual.

  At the time I’d watched it, I had no idea how the game worked, but I knew the music was telling the melodians how to move and how to find the fastest paths forward, so I focused on those feelings, bringing in that confusion along with the excitement I felt as I was hearing their music for the first time.

  After the first round finished playing through my head I brought the song to an end, finishing it off with a gentle escalating tempo that faded quieter until it eventually trailed off.

  I took a deep breath, looking up from the instrument to see Abel and Flint in a stunned silence.

  The tears from the earlier part of the song were dried along their fur, their hands were held up to their chests.

  “So… What’d you think?” I asked, awkwardly breaking through the silence in the room.

  They both looked at each other, then turned back to me. They were both trying to say something but were too shocked to make any sound come out.

  “Sorry” Nori spoke up from the side of the room “but was that supposed to do something? What was supposed to happen there?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean” I said.

  “Okay so, you made the sounds happen, but what were they supposed to do?” she asked.

  Flint turned his head, finally breaking out of the stunned silence he’d found himself in “What do you mean?! Did you not hear it? It… It was a story but… It was different. It was like… like…” he said, trailing off.

  Abel jumped in “It was like she was speaking with emotions, it was… Wow I…” she shook her head, her eyes wide as it looked like she was lost in thought.

  “I don’t get it…” Nori said, crossing her arms as she looked incredibly confused.

  “Can I try?” Abel asked.

  I nodded, holding the instrument out for her to take.

  “Yeah but I should mention it takes a lot of practice, you won’t be able to just…” I started to say as Abel suddenly strummed the strings.

  “Okay okay wait so you just… Do this right?” she asked as she brought her hand up, grabbing some of the strings and pressing them into the neck of the guitar as she started strumming the strings again.

  As expected, she produced an incredibly harsh note as she gripped random strings and tried to strum the instrument with far too much force.

  “No no you’re doing it wrong” Flint said, grabbing the guitar from her.

  He attempted the same thing to find similar results.

  “Like I was saying” I said, continuing from the previous thought “it takes a lot of practice, you won’t be able to do that right away.”

  Flint continued to try to play it but was getting more frustrated with each passing moment.

  “I don’t… grrrrrrrr” he said as he held it out to me “How do you do that? Can you teach me?”

  “I can teach you but it would take a lot of time” I said as I took the guitar back from him “but I think it might be better to start you with something a little easier.”

  I thought for a moment but quickly realized what I should do.

  “Alright so we’re gonna try something. I want you to repeat what I say, okay?”

  They both nodded.

  “Okay so Abel I’ll start with you.”

  I figured I’d work with an instrument they already knew how to use.

  I cleared my throat “This song is called ‘Barbara Ann’, it starts like this…”

  Starting with Abel, I focused on a higher pitched set of vocals for the song, singing a lyric, then asking her to repeat it. I could feel how awkward she felt but I kept repeating the lines until she felt more comfortable with them. She didn’t know what the words meant, but I told her to focus on the sounds and ignore any meaning for the moment.

  After getting through the song a few times I turned to Flint.

  “But why are mine different?” he asked as I was showing him that his version of the song had a few variations from Abel’s version along with a much lower tone to it.

  “Trust me it’ll make sense” I said as I went back to coaching him, holding my hand up and using it as a guide to tell him where his pitch should be.

  Once both had practiced a good amount I decided it was good enough to give it a shot.

  “Okay so, when I motion to you, that means you do your lines” I said as I pulled the guitar into my lap.

  “Wait so we’re gonna be singing at the same time?” Abel asked.

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  I nodded.

  “Exactly, just do your lines how we practiced, I’ll be singing something else too, but when we do it together… Well I’ll just let you hear it for yourselves.”

  I started on my own, taking the lead voice in the song, motioning to them when it was their turn to join in.

  Almost immediately I watched their eyes light up when they heard the guitar join in as the three of our voices joined together with the instrument to make an entirely new sound.

  The first few times we tried it they got out of sync with each other fairly quickly, but after a few attempts they seemed to understand how the rhythm was supposed to move throughout the song.

  As they got more comfortable with the lyrics and understanding how their singing worked alongside the rest of the group I saw their enthusiasm for it grow with each round of the song, getting a little better each time.

  I’d normally get bored singing the same song over and over again but I felt the energy coming from them as they built upon it each time, learning and growing with each round of the song.

  After singing it for at least an hour Flint stood up with a frantic look in his eyes.

  “More, I want to hear more, you said those other things down there were instruments right?” he asked.

  “Oh, yeah there were a lot of them” I said.

  “Which ones should we get?” Abel asked.

  “All of them” Flint said, practically jumping up and down “we should grab all of them.”

  I looked around Nori’s apartment for a moment, realizing it was too small to put any larger instruments like drums in it.

  “How about…” I said, thinking as I spoke “How about you get as many as you can. There was a lot of space in that place we had the meeting. If you could bring them there I can teach you some of them.”

  “Okay, I’m on it” he said as he started making his way to the door.

  “Wait!” I called after him as I turned around, reaching into my bag.

  I pulled out one of the MP3 players I had inside and tapped on the bottom.

  “Find a few of those big black panels and some cables that plug these in too” I said, handing him the MP3 player.

  “You aren’t joining us?” Abel asked.

  “I’ll join you down there. I think I should talk to Nori for a bit first” I said.

  “Okay, you got it” Abel said, grabbing Flint’s hand and leading him out of the room.

  Just before the door closed I could hear them both starting another round of Barbara Anne as they made their way down the hallway.

  The apartment was silent once more as I turned around to find Nori looking just as confused as before, her hands on top of her head as she leaned back against the couch.

  “What was all that?” she asked, shifting her weight a bit.

  “Music. It’s just like what happens during the gravity games” I said.

  “I… Sorry, no that was different. They understood all those emotions and feelings from just sound. How does that even work?” she asked.

  “Um… I don’t… I don’t know how it works I just know that it does I guess? What does it sound like to you?” I asked.

  Nori shook her head “It was just noises. What does it sound like to you?”

  I crossed my arms, unsure of how I should describe it.

  “It’s like… Hmmm” I thought as I looked around the room for a moment until my eyes found their way to the large moving sculpture on the wall.

  “Oh, it’s like this” I said, moving over the sculpture and moving the large gear, bringing the entire structure to life.

  “When you described this to me you spoke about it like it has all this meaning behind it. You express a lot more with these types of structures than just movement, you can make it inspire certain emotions and feelings, right?” I asked.

  Nori nodded “Right.”

  “So, music is like that, but maybe it’s how melodians express that stuff. I… I don’t know why you don’t hear it like that, but I mean, you saw them right? They understood it immediately.”

  “Yeah that was what had me so confused. You were thinking of a specific moment when you were playing that, right?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “And they understood what you were thinking about and how you were feeling when you had that experience” she said.

  I nodded again.

  “But… It wasn’t just understanding it, they felt it too. As if they were experiencing it themselves” she said.

  “I think… Yeah. Music can have that effect. I think they felt that” I said.

  “The part I don’t understand is how they knew that just from that thing” she said gesturing to the guitar.

  “I don’t know, I guess I’ve been around music my whole life, I don’t know how to describe it any better, it’s just something I do” I said.

  “Okay so, why don’t the others ‘just do it’ too?” she asked.

  I stood up from the chair, holding my hands behind my back as I started pacing across the living room, feeling like I needed to move a little to think.

  “I’ve been wondering that since I first got here. I noticed that the younger melodians had… How do I say it…” I thought for a moment, “More… Life to them. They seemed to think more clearly than the others. Then I met the listeners. They seem to be a lot more like me, but they keep themselves secret. I think they only came out to you because they needed information from you and maybe they saw that you hadn’t uh…” I stopped for a moment before saying in English “ratted me out.”

  A look of excitement went across Nori’s face “Oh I know that one!”

  I smiled, it was kind of cute how much she loved human expressions.

  Switching back to mecharan, I continued “They don’t trust your people. I think it’s because they know what the assembler does to them.”

  “What does the assembler have to do with it?” she asked as she crossed her legs.

  “I can’t say for certain but I think it puts that part of our brain asleep. The part that understands music” I said as I thought back to my brief encounter with my other half when the mechara shined the white light at me, “Without that part of us, we’re just not the same.”

  “So… Why do they use it then? Nobody makes them use it after all” she said.

  “I was having a hard time understanding that myself. But I mean… It’s a machine that lets you skip past all your work, live inside your head while you’re doing whatever you need to do to make money, then when it’s done, you have the rest of your time off. It sounds so easy. But the more they use it, the more they rely on it. I think they forget to live their lives outside of the assembler. It seems like they’re just getting by as they wait for their time in the assembler again. After enough time inside it, that side of them that understands music just… stops working I think. The assembler takes over their lives and they don’t even know that they’ve lost such a big part of themselves.”

  “Okay but, if that’s what they want then who are we to stop them? They seem to be pretty happy doing what they’re doing” Nori asked.

  “What?” I asked, taken back by her response, “Did you not hear what I said? They lose a part of themselves, they stop being a melodian, they start being…” I paused as a horrible word came to mind, but it was the only one that described what they were “slaves…” I said quietly.

  Nori frowned as she sat back in her seat.

  “Tess that’s not what this is…” she said softly.

  “Think about it Nori. You mentioned that the mechara and melodians were seen as equals when the lifeboats were built. But they aren’t any more are they? The only times the mechara interact with the melodians is while they’re under the effects of the assembler, asking them to do stuff for them. Everyone in charge of the ship is a mechara despite the majority of the inhabitants being melodians, does that make any sense to you?” I asked.

  “What about Rosa?” she asked.

  “Rosa… I remember shortly after we met, you said she should have been put in charge of the contact with earth, but you were put in charge instead. Why was that? Why did you think she would have been a better fit?” I asked.

  “I… I mean, she seemed to pick up the language stuff more easily but they wanted me to be in charge, so they…”

  I cut her off.

  “They wanted you to be in charge of it because you’re a mechara” I said, crossing my arms.

  “That’s not fair Tess” she said.

  “Did you stand up for her?” I asked.

  “What?” she asked, looking up from the floor.

  “You said she’d be a better fit. Did you stand up for her? Did you tell them you’d rather have her do it?” I asked, standing still as I looked at her.

  “I… Don’t remember…” she said.

  “I bet Rosa remembers it. Next time you see her, why don’t you ask her about it?” I said.

  “What are you trying to say here Tess?” Nori asked, sounding a bit more defensive.

  “I’m saying that I think I know why Artemis started the listeners. I think I know why he’s trying to get them to kill him. I think he wants the assembler shut down, and I think the mechara are getting in the way of that” I said.

  The more I thought about it the more it made sense. The person that designed the Artemis computer was a melodian himself. When the computer injected himself into the memory from my dad, he showed himself as a melodian. If the computer was able to think like a melodian, it probably wouldn’t be happy seeing what had happened to what he saw was ‘his people’.

  “Tess that doesn’t make any sense…” Nori said slowly.

  “Why?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips.

  “Artemis isn’t the one that did all that. Sloan was. She was the one that destroyed lifeboat seven, not Artemis” she said, crossing her arms.

  “What if Artemis used Sloan? Like what he’s doing with the listeners? What if the two worked together?” I asked.

  “Tess that’s not what happened” Nori said, starting to sound a little angry.

  I paused for a moment, frowning as I didn’t expect such a strong response from her.

  Nori shook her head “No, what happened on Lifeboat seven was all Sloan. Do you know anything about her history?” she asked.

  “Um… Admittedly, very little…” I said as I sat down in the chair next to Nori.

  Nori took a deep breath before she continued “Sloan… Was always ‘different.’ She was bitter, angry, and did everything she could to join in with anyone that was doing anything nefarious. She was secretive, the mechara on lifeboat seven had no idea, but we learned about her when the repairs to seven started. We learned that she caused as much harm to as many people as she could. It looks like she did it just because she liked it, she never gained anything from it. If she found a group aboard the lifeboat that was causing harm, she’d join them. She just wanted to cause harm. She even… Gosh I don’t even want to say it…”

  Nory shook her head.

  “What?” I asked.

  “She… Well, she did some unspeakable things. Things I don’t feel comfortable repeating. When she was caught, she stopped keeping herself a secret, she lashed out, attacked anyone that attempted to stop her and eventually she learned how to shut Artemis down and turn off the safety systems on the ship. As soon as she had the opportunity, she destroyed lifeboat seven,, along with everyone onboard the lifeboat. All she wanted to do was kill. She’s a monster. If anything, Artemis didn’t use her, she used him.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “How else could she have learned to do what she did? She knew exactly where to attack, where to destroy the safety systems we had in place and in which order to destroy them in order to keep Artemis or anyone else from stopping her. Somehow she learned how to take him out. With the way she was able to lie and manipulate people, she might have figured out how to get Artemis to reveal things to her that she wasn’t supposed to know. I think she tricked him.” she said, “That’s why I’m nervous about this ‘listener’ group you’re with. Whether they know it or not, it looks like they’re being led down the same path that Sloan found herself on. To their credit though, they seem pretty nice. I don’t know. I don’t know what to think about all this…” she said, trailing off a little at the end.

  “I… Don’t know…” I said, looking down at my hands.

  “I do think you’re right about something though…” Nori said softly.

  “Hm?” I asked, looking up at her.

  “The melodians… They weren’t always like this. They used the assembler, but not as much as they do now. I think… I think you might be right about it being used to keep that part of them shut off” she said.

  “Why would they want that?” I asked.

  “The mechara might be afraid of the melodians. Maybe we keep them like that because we’re afraid of having another Sloan. Maybe that’s why we need the black shard. Without it, we’ll never know what truly happened on lifeboat seven, and if we don’t know exactly what happened, then how could we trust Artemis to be fully booted up again? How could we trust the melodians without the effects of the assembler?” she said.

  “So you think to get things back to the way they were, we need to get this black shard?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  Something still seemed strange though, “It sounds like you’re guessing. Do they not tell you this stuff?” I asked.

  Nori shook her head “No. I don’t get told much to be honest. I… Think I need to talk to Rosa about all this…”

  “Rosa? Wouldn’t they trust her even less? Why would she know more than you?” I asked

  Nori leaned forward, placing her hands on her knees.

  “She’s different. Very harsh, very untrusting, but she tends to know a lot more than she should. For what it’s worth, she also never uses the assembler. I didn’t know that was the reason why she was so different but it seems so obvious now… Anyway, she once told me that the mechara don’t pay attention to melodians, so she’s found she can learn just about anything from anyone as long as she stays quiet and listens. She told me she learned it from an old friend of hers on lifeboat seven. That’s how she knew about the escape pods, it’s how she got out. If anyone knows about all of this, it’s her. I think… I think I need to talk to her…”

  “You pay attention to us” I said.

  “Huh?” she asked, looking up at me.

  “You’re not like the other mechara. Actually, you’re the only mechara that ever… You know… Talked to me, rather than just acting like I wasn’t even there. Why is that?” I asked.

  She smiled.

  “My dad, back when we were on lifeboat seven. He told me there was a lot more to the melodians than the mechara gave them credit for. He said I should treat them the same way I treat the mecharans, and if I did, I’d learn a lot from them” she said with a smile.

  “I wish I’d met him before… Well, all of this” I said, frowning.

  Nori nodded.

  Before Nori could respond there was a loud knock on the door.

  “Nori?” asked a mecharan voice I hadn’t heard before.

  Before Nori could get up the door opened as two mechara quickly made their way into the room.

  “Nori! You’re okay! Oh we were so worried!” he said as he made his way over to the couch.

  As Nori stood up he quickly wrapped her in a hug.

  “We saw what happened” the other mechara said, holding her hands to her chest “we had to come see if you were okay.”

  “I’m fine I’m fine” she said as she looked at me over the man’s shoulder, making a motion with her hand to suggest I should head out.

  Without a word I nodded, grabbing the guitar as I made my way out to the hallway.

  I needed to catch up with Flint and Abel anyway.