by Michael S. Higgins

A jagged lock of hair slipped over the parkling's face and Darius...changed. The music playing in his head, ever-present and always supporting...changed. New notes snatched at his breath and he grasped his keyboard convulsively.

"...there is nothing to fear on Metannin..."

Darius blinked fitfully and tried to reconcile his fears with the soothing words drifting through his mind. He took a deep breath and rose to squint at the monitor above the door to the parkling's cell. He watched her adjust the metal comb in her hair, and watched more sinuous strands come free. That dark hair hanging over her angular face, the heavy air of the Reclamation Center...it all felt sinister, somehow. Why? Darius shuddered and listened, inside, for his own familiar music.

"...music provides us all with focus and power..."

Focus returned as his music came and quietly played counterpoint to the darker theme he heard when he looked at her. Darius' nerves settled. This woman was just another runaway from Landing Park, another lost soul with no music in her head. He'd written themes for a dozen like her this summer, and released them back into society smiling and humming melodies that gave depth to their lives.

"...living without a Soundtrack leads to isolation and madness..." drifted through his mind and he nodded agreeably. The unenlightened always came to understand that truth. Darius' knew his duty as one of Metannin's few Master Composers was to use his talent, and the Jukebox being installed in each inhabitant's ear, to protect wayward Citizens from depression and insanity. To free them from fear.

Just as the original Composers had freed him from fear.

Darius absently clicked his tongue in time to the odd combined rhythm the two competing themes created, and pondered the progress of the Jukebox program. They had enlightened hundreds of thousands in the two years since he became a Composer, starting with the fortunate few who had musical talent and then the civil servants and the the military. But Metannin had millions, and it would take time and enormous resources to Enlighten the entire population. How could they ever enhance so many? The picture of President Gabriet on the wall beside the monitor looked down on Darius' doubt, a benevolent smile on his full lips.

"Answers come to those who listen," flickered though Darius' mind in an echo of the President's famous Inauguration speech. The great leader's words gave him a tingle like adrenelin in his veins.

Darius felt foolish for doubting the President's bold initiative, foolish and ashamed. He had a job to do.

He inserted his ID card into a slot, the metal door opened, and he stepped inside. It shut behind him with a muffled click. The room smelled of concrete and strong detergents, and the parkling smelled of ozone, earth and crushed leaves--the scents of the Park. She hunched astride the bench with one knee drawn up under her chin and a long leg stretched out to the floor. She was young, and intense, with an exotic, heavy-handed beauty. She looked up, dark eyes in a sun-browned face, and crossed her arms warily around her folded knee.

Darius studied her features closely, already forming frameworks for her Soundtrack. Powerful, gothic themes, echoing chords that hung heavy behind the eyes...ahhh. That felt better. Focusing on work strengthened Darius' personal music. Familiar rhythms played louder as he considered the questions he would ask, the tests he would run and the themes he would try for her. He took heart from the cheerful notes and offered his latex-gloved hand in greeting.

"Ankala Rollins? I'm Darius Dolby, and I've been assigned as your Personal Composer." When she didn't take his hand he drew it slowly back. The woman's dusty brown eyes focused on the keyboard slung over his shoulder and her body tightened.

"Keep that thing away from me, Composer." They words echoed too loudly in his ears, reverberating as if they were standing in a concert hall instead of a concrete cell. The derison-laden syllables coelesced in the air and took up defensive positions. Darius' eye's widened--he could actually see the words orbiting breathily around her head. They flickered like embers under a stiff breeze. Ankala looked through them at his face and her eyes narrowed.

The music in his head foundered, and a cautionary oboe crooned. Darius swallowed carefully and tried to smile. He blinked, and the floating words were gone, but now there was an odd, uncomfortable tingle at the base of his spine. He glanced at the keyboard to make sure it wasn't on--and when it wasn't he began to feel foolish again. What was wrong with him today? He swallowed again, and continued.

"This is the key to a better life, Ankala. Don't be afraid of it." But she didn't look afraid. She looked righteous and disdainful, like a caged angel.

"I won't spend my life listening to your poisonous whisper, Citizen." Her mouth twisted as if she could already taste the bitter sounds. Her long hair fell down again and she buried her fingers in the dark mass and spread them to cover the deck-metal flash of the comb. Her bare foot moved off the surface of the bench and lowered gently to the concrete floor. Darius continued his oft-repeated opening speech in spite of his misgivings.

"We are all afraid of things we don't understand, Ankala." Darius sat astride the other end of the bench, smiling as he explained the joy a Personal Soundtrack would bring her. He swung the keyboard around to his lap and ran his white-coated fingers lightly along the keys. "You've always been alone, haven't you? Always had only silence to fill the dark places? I'll use this keyboard to create a notebase that will feed music into the Jukebox implant we'll place just beneath your ear." Darius tapped his own plastic and steel implant. "This will change your life. You'll never feel alone again."

"Is that all you can offer me, Citizen Dolby?" Her eyes were hidden by her hair, but her voice was strong, and full of unspoken challenge.

That uncomfortable vibration at the base of his spine swelled. Darius blinked twice and his warm smile faded. Doubt gripped him.. "Isn't that worth having?" he replied, weakly, against the pressure of his doubt. Discomfort grew as he watched her, and his soundtrack became softer and softer.

Then there was only silence.

Silence? Painful and empty...his teeth suddenly felt odd, itchy, like they were vibrating loose from his gums.

Ankala stretched like a cat and pulled the comb, and her fingers, up through her long hair. It extended above her in a broad spray and then drifted down as she shook her head slowly. She turned the comb toward him, the curved tines orienting on his face. "There is only one thing I need from you, Master Composer Dolby."

He laughed weakly, feeling unexpectedly warm. Why did he feel so strange? And the silence that surrounded her, the terrifying silence...

Ankala set the comb on the bench between her legs and leaned forward to look Darius directly in the eye. The intensity of her close presence reddened his skin, like metal in the path of a blowtorch, and she pinned him that way for a long moment. Darius' lips moved, abortively, but no sounds came out.

"And you will give it to me because I know the power of being alone."

The wave of dread that came over Darius twisted his stomach and a cold sweat oozed from his brow. New music suddenly pounded in his ears, music that he had not written, music from outside the confines of his Citizen's existence. His heart sped up to match the beat. He blinked again, trying to focus, and flexed his fingers. They were going numb, and he could see the hairs standing out from the back of his hand, vibrating in some unseen current. Unexpected details leapt out at him as his vision faded. The callouses on the tips of her long fingers. The flash of silver from the comb between her legs. The triumph in her eyes.

The last thing he noticed before the driving guitars enmeshed him in blackness was how very white Ankala's teeth were when she smiled.