Our Dirty Little Secret

“Alrighty! Carpe diem and all that jazz!” Robbie stood up, eager and expectant.

I paid and we left. An autotaxi took us back to my apartment. Robbie kept trying to encourage the AI to go faster, promising a 300% tip which he clearly wouldn’t be paying. Thankfully safety and sense prevailed.

Robbie shot into the house like a bee out of a bottle, giving himself a speedy tour. “Your place is nice but boring, man. Where is it?” There was only one thing he could be after.

He came across the gleaming red Strat in the corner of my bedroom.

“Oh. My. Can…Can I?”

I nodded. He picked it up.

He tried to play it. He did so very badly, like someone who had taken only a handful of lessons and was suffering from cramp and callouses.

“This is a dream – it plays so well. You really need an amp. I wanna hear that thing sing!”

I wanted ear defenders. Give him back his gauntlets.

“I don’t know if it’ll work, it hasn’t been plugged in for probably 93 years.”

“That’s intense, 21st Century Dude! Let’s find out if it still screams! You’re super flush, aren’t you? Order an amp. I’ll tell you what’s what, tech has changed since ye olden days.”

“Even guitar tech has changed? Bet there’s still valve amps.”

“Yep!”

“I rest my case. Stuck in a time warp – thankfully.”

“You wanna order a gauntlet, too?”

“Hell no!”

Robbie babbled on about amps and whatnot for some time, at a speed I found exhausting and almost incomprehensible. He recommended some hybrid modelling one that emulated every effect pedal ever made (including a Bow Wow peddle, and a Meow Meow peddle, which made me cackle). Delivery was rapid – ordered and arrived inside twenty minutes, while I let Robbie thrash away on my (probably priceless) 160-year-old guitar. I really should insure it before I regret it, I thought, as Robbie started abusing the tremolo arm by gleefully making divebombs.

The amp arrived. As I switched it on, my holomask cut out – aha, I’d forgotten about that again.

But – It sounded great. Really great. Well, not so much when Robbie played it. But he handed it to me for a turn…

There were far, far better guitar players than me around, even in my own school, but I was creative and expressive, and I could bend a note well. I was playing with new hands, bigger hands – and they seemed far more dexterous than ever before. Perhaps that was just my memory fooling me.

Robbie wowed. “You’re a fake Jesus but perhaps the real deal at guitar: the Guitar Messiah!”

In fairness, given the sorry state of musicianship in 2118, that wasn’t much of a compliment. But I really, really lost myself in the moment, just playing solos and random chord progressions and whatever came into my head. My sort of therapy.

“You know, I’ve only really seen you smile tonight. Not ever from the whole 'Adem Son of God' guff, but from the music.”

It was true.

“Think about this…” He looked at me like he wanted my full attention. “You can go one step above your Jesus show. Become a rock star – you’ve got the fanbase already! Everything you do will sound new!”

I smiled. “That would be. Great. But egotistical. Crazy. I’m sick of my ego being fed.”

Robbie smiled. “I get up on stage to polite applause, the gauntlets do the work really, but I like my ego being fed, just a little.”

“Maybe you were born to do it.”

“Probably, yeh! I love what I do.”

“Don’t the gauntlets feel like cheating?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. It’s just a compromise. People want to hear Optimal Music.”

“Ahh, enough with the optimal stuff! Art isn’t optimal, it’s a messy explosion in a paint factory sometimes.”

“Huh? I don’t get that.”

“I do. That’s the beauty of art. You ever written a song?”

“How on earth would – why would someone bother when AI can do it perfectly?” It dawned on him. “You – you write songs?”

“Ages ago. I wasn’t too shabby. I think.”

“And people would listen?”

“They started to, who knows what would have happened if – but the music business had kinda crashed for guitar music. It all became more and more mass produced around the time I was born. Great life if you wanted to be broke and sleeping on couches.”

“And here you are, money no object. Hmmm. Methinks you’re betraying to me tonight your real direction, O Son of God”.

“Enough with the Son O’ God malarky.”

He sat up straight, decided. “Join the band. You’ll like the guys, they’re almost as crazy as me.”

“I’m practically certifiable.”

“I know, I know. So, you’ll fit in perfectly! I prefer you like this: all this energy is buzzing off you…we’ll play your songs; they’ll be chanting your name. And that blue haired gal will be rocking out –”

“– Whoa. Stop.”

“The one totally checking you out during your speech. What’s the deal with her?”

Ugh. “Pass. I don’t know her.”

“I don’t believe you. I saw you making eyes back at her. Tell me that again and again, then listen to the cock crow thrice.”

Or the chicken in the helicopter. “You’re really annoying, you know that?”

“Yeh! So, do we have a deal, Mr Second Coming?”

“…Maybe. Hell, maybe part time for the kicks, let’s see how it shakes down.”

We both had infantile, stupid grins.

“Now you’re living!”

“But the deal is – and this is non-negotiable – no gauntlets live. Ever. You guys better learn your instruments. And – we’re called ‘Our Dirty Little Secret’.”

“Okay. Okay.” He paused.

“Do you know, until tonight, I was worried about you. Now, I’m not.”

“Really?”

“Yep. You’re hopelessly doomed. I’ll waste my energy learning the guitar instead!”

“You’re such a muppet.”

“Back at you, whatever muppet means.”

We talked about Robbie arranging a band practice, the first one where the band would play without gauntlets, to simple three-chord punk-pop arrangements. I then mentioned my own demos that I had uploaded onto a famous old musical website a long time ago, under an alias. Robbie told me with a smile that a lot of the old internet was still preserved, and ‘compacted’ under the painful prefix of ‘owww’ (old world wide web). We looked and, to my astonishment, my old demos were still online. We listened together. When we heard them, they didn’t feel like they had anything to do with me, so there was no personal bias on my part. It might sound arrogant, but I had to admit: they were pretty decent. Robbie said they “sparkled, grooved, growled, like a disco panther,” which I took to be quite a positive yet bonkers endorsement. “If the others like them, or don’t fancy writing their own, we should definitely play these live and imperfectly perfect!”

“Well, it’s not like the original artist will complain if they aren’t spot on!”

I went and made up the second bed in the spare room. Robbie had grabbed the Millipede Megaquake carton from my fridge and was watching telly, slurping slothfully in the front room. I found his lack of formalities/politeness refreshing. I needed real, above all else.

Dismissing my trashy garage band daydream, I went back to my room and unplugged the guitar. I decided to put it away in its tweed case, after wiping down the strings lovingly. I failed to notice…an envelope in the case – a powder blue one, with a heart on it.