Space Opera, Page 6

  Dess froze, and his whole life nearly threw an axle and tipped itself into a ditch full of Mr. Five Star’s fryer oil. He felt ridiculous. In these ugly green paisley trousers and stupid glitter bat wings and half a discontinued makeup rack. Not Robert, of course. Robert was fine. Robert was grand. Robert was right. But all he had up Robert’s perfect sleeve was two rubbishy songs that were more gimmick than the white-hot fire of real music, the sort of music people would play over and over in their bedrooms at night, the sort that scrambled up your senses so wonderfully that you laughed and cried into your pillow at the same time, the sort of music that felt like you’d always known it even though you’d never heard it before, the songs you’d put on a mixtape and press into someone else’s hand saying, This, this says how I feel better than I ever could.

  Additionally, standing up there in mascara and platform heels with plastic goldfish in the soles was no way to not get the shit kicked out of you for being a mincing little ponce. In his mind, he’d thought of them playing the witching hour at Robot Custard under magenta and ultramarine lights to a crowded dance floor full of yearnful students, not hipsters but tricksters, grooving on the wub-wub bassline of the whole throbbing universe, sucking MDMA and hope out of locally sourced glow sticks. What was magical at two in the morning was tawdry and cheap and dangerous to your general health at two in the afternoon. They were supposed to look like those acoustic-hearted flanneleers at the front tables, with their carefully stubbled jawlines, sipping their responsible preset soda waters, mentally calculating whether to soulfully close their eyes at the key change or at the big note so it really, really looked like they believed in love after layoffs at a mill they’d never known as anything but high-end lofts for lease. That was what was hot right now. That was what record labels wanted to hear. Those nice white boys with their pre-distressed jeans and pre-distressed hearts mumble-crooning artificial grit. Nobody understood what the Absolute Zeros believed so hard, they couldn’t even wedge it into their lyrics yet: The world had gotten gritty enough. The only thing left to do in all that dirt was to shine.

  But Dess wasn’t shining. He was just a dumb tart in someone else’s frock staring down failure like you could ever make failure blink. Failure was here before you and she’ll be here after you and she won’t even notice you go.

  Fucking hell, what was he doing? He was going to fail, right now, in front of Mira and Oort, the only people in his life who’d never seen him behind a counter, only like this, the way he wanted to always be, his Arkable Gelato nation, his Acme Brand Instant Tunnel to the Future. He was going to be little Dani forever, seven years old, wearing all Nani’s silk scarves at the same time, his face covered so proudly in lilac-lipstick doodles he’d drawn himself, standing in the middle of the lounge room singing along with Marvin the Martian like it was straight-up Wagner, so eager to please Nani, so thrilled to show her he really could sing like the people on TV, dying to be the utter focus of her attention.

  And they’d all ignored him.

  That old Blackpool flat was a dingy mirror of this Brighton pub. No one said anything. His sisters had snickered and whispered and texted furtively, most likely telling everyone they knew what fuckery was going down before their very eyes. His oldest brother had kicked a soccer ball expertly into the side of his big Danesh-head. The younger boys had wrestled obliviously in the kitchen. And in the end, Nani had looked up from some murder book or other, groped in the side table for her hearing aid, and said:

  “Eh? Did you say a thing, my handsomest? Nani did not have her magic ear in. Why have you dressed like Creature from the Scarf Lagoon? What is happening to your face?”

  She’d squinted at him, because her reading glasses turned the non–murder book world into a watercolor smear. Dani knew even at age seven and three quarters that she hadn’t meant the next bit to be cruel, that the poor old thing had only been startled out of the butler staving the mistress’s head in with a pipe by her grandson becoming Decibel Jones before her very eyes and who could ever be prepared for that, but Nani had laughed at him, and it was the end of his childhood. Nani had called out to his brothers and sisters, erasing any possibility that they hadn’t seen, that plausible deniability was maintained, and that none of this was really happening, and she’d announced to the capacity crowd at the Royal Jalo Hallway: “Look who has done an art on himself, our wee Mr. Tate of the Modern!”

  He’d frozen. Just like now. Just like then. He was standing on that worn red rug and he was going to sing Wagner the Martian in a hundred scarves that smelled like home and love and safety and everyone was going to laugh in his face or, worse, ignore him like a stain on the ceiling, like he wasn’t even there, like he’d never existed in the first place.

  Mira saved him. The first time of many times. She banged out a riff on her kiddie drums behind him, leaned into her mic, and yelled like they were already playing a sold-out arena, loud enough to blow a dart from 20 to 1, loud enough to stun your old Gormer sober:

  “WE ARE DECIBEL JONES AND THE ABSOLUTE ZEROS!”

  Oort St. Ultraviolet opened up the throttle on his gran’s concertina, and for the first time, in front of God and the dartboard and shrimp-flavored crisps and everyone, Decibel Jones began to sing.

  No one ignored him. But Archibald Arthur Gormley did laugh. He laughed and laughed in total silence while bright-eyed, ambitious Lila Poole patted his shoulder and tears streamed out from under his glasses, down his booze-blooming cheeks, and into the soft darkness of his smoke hole, seeping toward the last part of him that remembered what it was like when he was young and everything in the world sounded just like that.

  He wept into his single pint.

  6.

  There Must Be Another Way

  These are the rules, guidelines, regulations of the Metagalactic Grand Prix as agreed to by everybody left standing after the Battle of Vlimeux:

  1. The Grand Prix shall occur once per Standard Alunizar Year, which is hereby defined by how long it takes Aluno Secundus to drag its business around its morbidly obese star, get tired, have a nap, wake up cranky, yell at everyone for existing, turn around, go back around the other way, get lost, start crying, feel sorry for itself and give up on the whole business, and finally try to finish the rest of its orbit all in one go the night before it’s due, which is to say, far longer than a year by almost anyone else’s annoyed wristwatch.

  2. All species currently accepted as sentient must compete.

  3. All species applying for recognition as intelligent, self-aware (not a huge barrel of dicks), and generally worth the time it takes to get to their shitty planet, wherever that may be, must compete.

  4. One song per species.

  5. Special effects and stagecraft of all kinds are encouraged; however, no harm must come to the audience, the audience’s families, or the linear timelines of any active spectators.

  6. Please dress accordingly–that is, in the traditional costume of your people. But make it cool, all right? Give it a little showmanship. Make an effort. If you do not comply, your representatives will be sentenced to not less than six years of hard labor. We’re not trying to run the trains on time in Drabtown here.

  7. Please provide a written translation of your lyrics to the umpire. And no trying to show off by singing in Alunzish! Stay in your linguistic lane. Your accent will always be terrible.

  8. New compositions only! No sloppy seconds.

  9. Judging will be conducted in two phases: by audience acclamation, and a considered vote by a panel consisting of the representatives of the Great Octave, the new applicant’s chaperone species, and an old computer from Kogu the Belligerent’s house on Planet Yoomp.

  10. At no time may anyone cast a vote for their own species, as this is selfish and boring and ruins it for everyone—looking at you, Alunizar.

  11. Offensive verses must confine bloodshed to the staging area.

  12. In the event that an applicant species comes in last, their solar system shall be unobtrusively
quarantined for a period of not less than 50,000 years, their cultures summarily and wholly Binned, their homeworld mined responsibly for resources, and after a careful genetic reseeding of the biosphere, their civilization precision-incinerated from orbit so we can all sleep at night. Every effort will be made to spare unoffending flora and fauna. The planet’s biological processes will be allowed to start over without interference, older, wiser, more experienced, and able to learn from its mistakes. Any new species arising from said ecological matrix may reapply in the future without prejudice.

  13. In the event that an applicant planet defeats at least one species of proven sentience and achieves some rank other than miserably dead last (so to speak), they shall be welcomed with open arms, spores, antennae, tentacles, wings, or other preferred appendages into the Untidy Lounge Room of the Extended Galactic Family.

  14. In the event that a sentient species finishes in last place, they shall all go home and have a hard think about where they’ve gone wrong in life and promise never to do it again.

  15. The final scoreboard shall determine the proportional distribution of all communally held Galactic Resources for the next cycle. (See attached documents for a full explication of said resources.) As this is kind of a big deal and has been, historically, the source of every war other than this one, see Rules 10, 17, and 18.

  16. The undersigned, all their descendants, and any subsequently discovered civilizations we decide we can stand to talk to at parties, unto the heat-death of the universe or the next bout of belligerent stupidity makes all this maximally moot, whichever comes first, solemnly swear to play fair, listen with open minds, vote their feelings, not their ambitions, and not stack the roster with too many rookies all at once, so that everybody gets a really solid chance at not being vaporized if they don’t deserve to be.

  17. Any violators of Rule 16 shall be subject to the gentle ministrations of Rule 12.

  18. The winner shall compel their government to pick up everyone else’s drink tab, as well as put us all up and pay for the catering when we do this whole thing over again next year, no take-backsies, no changing mobile numbers, no pleading planetary austerity—take out a loan from the Intergalactic Happy Friendship Bank like everyone else, you skinflint.

  19. Try your best and have fun!

  After the Corking Incident at the thirtieth Grand Prix on the Utorak homeworld of Otozh, the subsequent trial, surprise exoneration, and politico-musical ascendency of the perpetrators—Igneous Lagom Opt, Aukafall Avatar 0, and the Entity Known as Monad—a twentieth rule was added. At the time, the change was so controversial that protesters threatened to blow the thirty-first Grand Prix out of the sky if the Octave adopted it. However, with the launch of the Keshet Holistic Live Total Timeline Broadcast, the effects of Rule 20 proved so unreasonably, voyeuristically, nail-bitingly fun to watch from home that the protesters got completely addicted to viewing parties, and it became the galaxy’s favorite guilty pleasure and fundamentally changed the way the game was played, spectated, and won.

  20. If a performer fails to show up on the night, they shall be automatically disqualified, ranked last, and their share of communal Galactic Resources forfeited for the year. Do try not to actually kill anyone. It’s a dreadful bother to clean up the mess.

  7.

  Miracles Are Happening from Time to Time

  The watery drop of light that had been busy swelling at the tip of the Esca’s proboscis reached critical mass. It plopped onto the filthy floor of Decibel Jones’s flat. It splashed as it hit the carpet, and the splashing light formed itself into an image, a projection, alive with intention. As he watched, an army of musical notes and scales and flats and sharps danced and whirled over a photo-topographical neon watercolor of the Bataqliq sonic swamps and the Occasional Mountains of Caj that were valleys in winter and Himalaya-crushing peaks at the height of summer.

  Decibel Jones knew those notes. He’d know them anywhere. They were “Raggedy Dandy,” which was, just maybe, the only really good song he’d ever written.

  The conversation between Decibel Jones and the roadrunner bore almost no resemblance to the global template. It was mostly sung rather than spoken word, for one thing, and involved an extended dance sequence and a bit with a cat.

  “Is that really it?” Dess interrupted halfway through. “We just sing better than one other beastie and we get to live?”

  “Yes. Does it seem barbaric to you? Sixty-seven percent of your population used that word.”

  “No, it makes sense to me. It’s perfect.”

  “Why?”

  Decibel shrugged. “Life is stupid and beautiful that way.”

  The Esca smiled; for the Esca can and do smile. All its feathers flushed an excited shade of cobalt. He had said something good, then. Somehow, the world’s luckiest fuckup had done something right for once, though God and all his angels knew what. He’d only said what he meant, which was, when you thought about it, a minor superpower, because so few people ever did. The blue creature danced coquettishly toward him on those impossible, dumb legs that couldn’t hold up a plastic garden flamingo, let alone this living, breathing version.

  “Three hundred light-years from here, there is a small world called Bataqliq flying through the black, as blue as this world, and as dear. It is my world. It is where the antique Esca first opened their eyes and looked up into a sky filled with the mutation-nurturing warmth of a single white star, burning as if for us alone, looked out beyond the bracelet of our twenty mountainous moons, into the all-possible cosmos, and first pondered whether to save some seeds and berries against the possibility of a lean and hungry winter rather than devour them all at once. Do you know what your people call that sun that gives my people life?”

  “No,” said Jones.

  “You call it Mira Wonderful Star.”

  “I knew somebody called that once.”

  “I am aware, Mr. Jones.”

  “Sure you’re not after her? I’ll warn you, she’s tough to get ahold of these days.” Decibel stared out his grimy window. “She could have done your job, no problem. Save the world with a song? Just give her a minute to tune up. I’m just . . . Mr. Elmer of the Fudd. Not even that.”

  The roadrunner crossed the little garret room, leaving wet, mandala-moldering footprints on the scuffed carpet. It bent its enormous head and brushed the tip of its lantern against Dess’s forehead.

  It felt like a kiss.

  It felt like every kiss anyone had ever laid on anyone else, the good, the bad, the all-time great, the let’s just be friends. All those kisses, all those mouths, all those feelings, electrified and painted blue.

  Dess didn’t know why he did it, or even, honestly, how. It had been years since this sort of thing had been a prominent water feature in the courtyard of his life. It had been years since it was how he made friends and self-medicated and got inspired and entertained himself and borrowed a cup of confidence from friendly neighbors. It had been years since he’d felt himself enough to try. He put a hand on the roadrunner’s thin, jeweled, holey rib cage, and the hand was welcome there.

  “I’m not sure I know this song,” he whispered. “How does it go?”

  By the time the rest of the world was finishing its exposition, an exhausted Decibel Jones had agreed to it all, to go to the stars and sing for his species, to follow that wascally wabbit, confessed his sins, called out for breakfast, and become, entirely unbeknownst to him, resoundingly and inexplicably, though not by any human definition, pregnant.

  Point to Dani.

  Water

  The house is full of children, the relatives have come.

  I am going to put on my green dress.

  —“Party for Everybody,” Buranovskiye Babushki

  8.

  White and Black Blues

  Decibel Jones was already well on his way, but not to the Metagalactic Grand Prix.

  To Whitehall.

  The instant the hungriest unpaid intern shadowing the lowest-ranking secr
etary to the most unremarkable Member of Parliament saw that the only living name on the alien’s pop chart was a British subject, a nondescript black car carrying two nondescript men in black suits and black sunglasses spontaneously materialized out of a zebra crossing halfway to Croydon.

  Unfortunately, that trod-upon intern was merely quick, not alone.

  Thus, just as Dess and the roadrunner were arguing the merits of Richard Harris’s version of “MacArthur Park” vis-à-vis Donna Summer’s, a veritable unkindness of nondescript black cars descended furiously onto the pavement outside. A flock of fists pummeled the door and rang the buzzer, a gaggle of angry men’s voices squawked out, “Danesh Jalo, Danesh Jalo, this is Insert Steely-Eyed Organization Here! It is imperative that we speak with you immediately!” A murder of identically loafered feet kicked the door down and marched up the rickety staircase, and by the time Decibel Jones thought to wonder where the Esca had gone all of a sudden, he was crowdsurfing back down the walk-up staircase on a chattering brood of government shoulders.

  But the flight of the G-men broke apart when they hit their wall of parked cars. One after the other, square-jawed men born with surnames like Brown, Davies, Evans, Taylor, and Price and given names like Mister, Officer, Agent, Leftenant, and Specialist pecked and flapped at him. They took turns grabbing Decibel’s McQueen-sheathed elbow with extravagantly aggressive masculinity and attempting to assert their dominance using only biceps, baritones, and a genetic inability to remove their sunglasses.

  “Watch the Swarovskis, boys,” Dess protested. “Damage this little number and I’ll drop a whole fucking tax bracket.”