Rock and rap. Portia hated rock and rap. Portia was a product of her
generation. She liked Feedbaq™. That’s what everybody younger than the
dinosaurs liked in 2044.
Feedbaq originally seemed like a gift from Heaven to the recording industry. It was completely computer based and required no actual pesky musicians.
People would go to special booths set up by a record company and put on a set of biofeedback monitoring sensors. Then the computer would begin playing what were called outbeats, making changes every fraction of a second until the person listening started to subconsciously get into the groove. Then the bass sounds would be added, rapidly changing timbre until the right instrument sparked a bio-reaction. Then the melody line was added, augmented by little hooky riffs, all based on the computer’s reaction to thousands of biofeedback choices provided by the subject. Within 7 minutes the composition was finished. Usually the person who had been the Feedbaq subject stood up and said that it was the best song they’d ever heard.
This method of generating music made tremendous sense to the recording industry because it was a repeatable model – something they’d been desperately searching for since the boy-group craze of the turn of the Century. Unlike other businesses, only the music industry was forced to embrace whatever angst-ridden wunderkind came along next, hoping against hope that they could capture a share of the profits from a rapidly dissipating music scene.But with Feedbaq, hits were easy to create. Feedbaq dance music; Feedbaq easy-listening music; Feedbaq bash-your-head-against-a-wall music; Feedbaq bash-somebody-else’s-head-against-a-wall music – all based on a vast array of varying instruments, tempo’s and rhythms.
The only problem was the hackers. Thieves broke into the main network at a small record label that couldn’t afford to purchase that week’s firewall upgrade and the Feedbaq code was stolen. Pretty soon anyone who wanted to make their own Feedbaq music could just go to any MediaShed® and buy the perfectly legal biofeedback units necessary to provide data to the SPECTACL. Despite the fact that most Feedbaq music was now created using bootleg software, every major electronics manufacturer came out with a machine that would not only store your Feedbaq files but allow you to generate new ones, if you had the stolen code to upload into it. The Feedbaq people sued the electronics manufacturers; so a major Chinese electronics giant purchased all the shares of Feedbaq Software Ltd., a privately held company out of India, just to infuriate their archrival, a Japanese conglomerate with a controlling stake in the recording industry.
By 2044, everybody was sharing their personal Feedbaq files and the recorded music industry was reduced to offering historical tours of the Capitol Building Museum in Hollywood, California, as well as the bigger, more modern copy in Orlando, Florida. Tourists would gape at all the stuff collected from the now defunct Hot Rock Cafés and wonder how somebody could get rich from selling something as easy to create as music.
But in the Benny’s Jets Bar and Grill, Rock and Roll ruled the
day. “Born to Be Wild” was
permanently programmed to play once an hour on the juke box and the
ex-astronauts that frequented the bar would always sing along, especially if
their total alcohol consumption put them close to the outer atmosphere.
Before coming here, Portia had searched the 'Net and called around to
a few self-proclaimed "freelance" astronauts but it became clear in the
intimate immersion afforded by SPECTACL conversations that they were all
nuts. So here she was at a
Boomer-club, feeling very out-of-place.
The term “Boomer” had lost any sense of its original meaning by the late
2020s. For Portia, like the rest of her generation, calling someone a “Boomer”
just meant “old,” but when hurled as an insult, the term also insinuated the
person was pre-disposed to reckless self-indulgence.
Portia sat at the bar and looked around. She had a thick coffee-table book with
her, “The History of Manned Space Flight” by Dr. Herman Newton with Han
Ng. There were lots of pictures and
Portia kept looking around the bar and trying to match the aging faces of the
men in plaid pants and golf caps with the photos of young astronauts in the
book.
Inevitably some brave old “Boomer” saddled up to Portia. Cliff Dunlop was six parachutes to the
breeze and trying his luck just to keep his hand in.
“Hey, beautiful, what’s a nice girl like you doing in an old space bar
like this?”
“Looking for someone,” said Portia.
“Oh, let me see your book.”
He grabbed at it clumsily and almost fell off his barstool but Portia
slid the tome across to him and he used it as a counterweight and regained his
composure. “I know this guy!” he
said referring to the astronaut photo on page 342.
“Oh, yes,” said Portia.
“He’s dead,” said Cliff.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Portia.
“It’s okay,” said Cliff.
“He was a bit of a schmuck, you know what I mean?” Cliff’s breath saturated the air with
the stench of bourbon.
Portia chose not to answer, except for a nod indicating that she heard
what he said. She placed her finger
surreptitiously under her nose while placing her elbow on the bar.
“This is great,” said Cliff, slurring his words. “Lot’s of tourists come in here looking
to find Neil Aldrin or Buzz Armstrong, you know, the really famous astronauts,
to get an autograph or a lock of hair or some sperm. But you, you’re in here and you’ve got a
book. You’re usin’ the old noggin’,
lady.”
“Are you an astronaut?” asked Portia, sneaking a peek at the index.
“Yes!” declared Cliff, raising a finger. “I’m Cliff Dunlop, mission
specialist on six shuttle missions.”
“D – Dunlop, Cliff … pages 221, 223, 310,” whispered Portia to
herself as she read the index. Cliff
may be old and drunk, but he sure was an astronaut.
The loud music stopped and Portia saw her opportunity. “Cliff, sugar, could you possibly
introduce me to some of the other astronauts in the place?”
“A pretty Amazon like you needs no introduction,” said Cliff. “Hey, guys! This is… What did you say your name
was?”
“Portia, Portia Summers, mission psych… er… Human Resources for STC,”
said Portia, loud enough for everyone to hear. “I’m looking for a good man.”
Backs stiffened. Eyes
brightened. Portia was 21 years
old, almost six feet tall, with well coifed amber hair that curled atop her
shoulders in a way that framed her relatively average but more than
pretty-enough features. Many of
these men hadn’t been propositioned by a 21 year old in… well, ever.
“I need to recruit an astronaut to go up on an important mission, to
clean up the mess we’ve left behind during the first 60 years of space
travel. Any of you gentlemen want
to float in zero gravity one more time?”
They all stared at her.
“She’s talking about the Waste-REL,” sputtered Cliff, bursting into
laughter. Seven veteran space
jockeys all joined in on the levity.
“I wouldn’t get into an STC crate for a billion dollars,” laughed some
bald card sitting by the window.
“Come on, honey,” said Cliff.
“Let me buy you a drink.
You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
The bartender took one look at Portia and asked for proof-of-age
identification. Portia just rolled
her eyes, but she decided to take the drink, mostly to give one of the old
astronauts a chance to sidle up to her and drop her a note. Maybe one of them was embarrassed to
discuss volunteering with her in front of his cronies, or maybe one of them
knew somebody who might want to fly one more time.
Celebrating the fact of Portia’s company, Cliff increased his
consumption to the point where he had completely undermined his equilibrium and
his fine motor skills. He was, for
all intents and purposes, out-of-order.
“Sweetie, you don’ mind if I call you sweetie, doyuh?” asked Cliff
while utilizing Portia for stabilization and support. “I think you’re makin’ a big
mistake. That so called garbage up
there – that’s our legacy.
Those old rocket parts careening around the planet are a memorial to the
great men and women who gave their all exploring the final frontier. That garbage is the single most
important metaphor of the 21st Century. We’ve crapped all over the planet and
we’ve crapped all over space.”
Cliff stood up proudly, “We are the single most incontinent generation
in the history of the human race.”
As if to prove his point, Cliff chose that moment to pass wind.
“That’s just beootiful, Cliff,” said Biff Jones. “I tell you what. I’ll go. I’ll go up there!”
“No, Biff, no,” declared Cliff.
“Don’t let him go!” Cliff pushed his face into Portia’s hair and
whispered into her ear. “He can’t…”
Cliff burped. “He can’t go because
he’s bipolar. That’s why we’re all
here tonight, Biff’s on a
round-the-clock suicide watch.”
“I’ll go!” declared Biff.
“Take me!”
“We can’t let you go,” Cliff insisted. “We promised the doctor we wouldn’t let
you do anything stupid.”
“Well, if you won’t let me go up with the girl, at least let me run
with the bulls in Pamploma!”
“We’ll get on a plane for Greece tonight!” insisted Cliff, finger
raised in certitude.
“Pamloma is in Spain,” hiccuped Portia.
“Shhhhhhhhh,” sputtered Cliff.
“He doesn’t know that, he’s not from around here.”
After 2 more drinks, Reed Inkelis, another aging astronaut, did sit
down beside her, but he just wanted to know if she needed any sperm.
There were 2 reasons Portia wasn’t interested. The first was her engagement. The second was the fact that every man in the joint probably had a replacement heart that was originally cultivated in a genetically modified pig. This use of pigs for human part production had inevitably led to cross species infection. As a result, trichinosis had recently become a sexually transmitted disease. In 2044, if you were in your heart transplant years, you probably weren’t going to enjoy sexual congress any time soon, unless you were actually in Congress.
In some strange ritual of self-deprecation, the entire astronaut
contingent at Benny’s Jets bar in Cocoa Beach, Florida began to sing along with
The Big Swinging Dicks' rhythm and blues hit “I’m a Big Hearted Man” and Portia
was absolutely certain that all of them were singing “Pig Hearted Man.”
The Big Swinging Dicks were a sensational girl-group from the “Flaming Thirties”, all of whom were, coincidentally, named Richard and weighed over 300 pounds. This anomaly of the culture presented a disconcerting paradox to some people because the girls were happy, intelligent, creative, successful and talented, but also condemned as “obese slobs” by publications supported by cosmetics industry advertising.
It was the outrageous success of the Big Swinging Dicks that inevitably forced the fashion and cosmetic industries to support the widespread distribution of free Feedbaq players just so they could undermine the growing lack of self-hatred among teens that was a direct result of the incredible success of the "Fabulous Four Fatties."
Inevitably, Portia remembered she had a fiancée to go home to and the
party of astronauts poured her into a taxi and sent her on her way, all the
time singing “Born To Be Wild,” which, more than anything, made Portia throw up
in the back of the cab.
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