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This is the first part of a story about the future
[255D[20C[0;36mT[1mh[37me [0;36mR[1me[37mtarded
[A[33C[0;36mW[1ma[37mrrior [34m[[0;36mi[1mC[37mE[34m
[A[45C] [37mPresents:[0m
** The Music Quest: Part 1 **
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
February 26, 2025
-----------------
"Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak."
-- William Congreve, 'The Mourning Bride'.
* * * * *
As a child, Ryan Morgan hated the dark. He wasn't afraid of it, but
instead, held a deep contempt for its lack of light. He hated the fact that
he was unable to see anything shrouded in darkness. In general, Ryan had a
great deal of trouble trusting anything that was invisible to his five
senses.
Silence was something that he hated slightly more than darkness. In total
silence, he felt muffled and buried.
The one thing that he hated more than silence or darkness was something
of them both. Pitch black and noiseless nothings really made him uneasy.
Outer space, in its mssive void, fit that bill and made him restless. The
same was with unconsciousness, death and eternity. These things all made
Ryan squirm. Or at least, they used to.
* * * * *
Ironically, despite all of his childhood hatreds, Ryan sat in a dark and
quiet rectangular basement of fifty-by-seventy feet, the only illumination
coming from a lighter that he held in his right hand. He stared at the dimly
lit room, or more specifically, at the floor. The small, pitiful flame
couldn't generate enough light to penetrate to the farthest corners of the
basement, though it glowed wildly with valiant attempts.
Had he been sitting here on May 2, 2006, he would have been fried by the
nuclear missile that fell on Toronto, exploding precisely twenty feet over
where his head was currently tilted forward.
Ryan sat motionless on the edge of a twelve-by-twelve foot square stage
that rose three feet off the ground. It was made of iron bars and sheet
metal, covered with a thick plastic floor mat that had 'Atomic' scripted
neatly in large typewriter fonts in the centre. The platform continued
behind him and stopped at a wall with electric sockets scattered liberally
across its length.
Across from him, in the opposite end of the room and well out of reach of
his lighter flame was a bar made of polished mahogany. It wasn't stocked
with anything but a few bottles of club soda at the moment. Behind the bar
was the door leading into a small office, where he would conduct his
business in the future.
To his left, in the corner, was a wide spiral staircase that led into the
apartment complex above.
To his right were a set of double-doors made crudely of heavy iron
leading into the sewer system. As far as he knew, the doors were bulletproof
and the only way to see to the other side without actually opening them was
through the peephole which was currently covered by a sliding iron plate
made of the same material as the door.
In front of him, keeping the four walls apart, was a concrete floor with
a layer of foam insulation on top, a two-inch layer of high density,
water-proofed lipid plaster on top of that and lacquered hardwood tiles
covering the whole thing. In the middle, Ryan had just finished painting the
words 'Atomic Nature' in red and yellow letters and currently, though as
boring as it may sound, he was watching it dry by the romantic light of his
Zippo.
The darkness and silence now, in his adulthood, helped him to think.
* * * * *
Ryan was born on February 15, 2003. He was three years old when his
parents packed him into the car and headed to Hamilton in a panic. That was
also the day he lost everything he knew in an ugly, grey mushroom cloud.
After Reconstruction, Ryan and his family moved back to Toronto, into the
apartment complex above the spacious basement where he was presently seated
and staring at the floor.
When he was six, Ryan's father joined the Gestapo. He never caught anyone
important but he managed to kill enough rebels to keep their ruling
corporation's ration supplements on the table.
He lost his mother to typhoid when he was eleven. To help relieve him of
his grief, Ryan's father gave him a large CD collection contained in a plain
cardboard box, hidden away in the same basement that he was sitting in now.
Ryan fell in love with the music on those CDs and listened to them whenever
he wanted to relax or break the monotony of life. Sometimes, he'd become
easily provoked and edgy if deprived of the rhythm of music. This
pseudo-withdrawl was one of the two reasons he was eventually called Rhythm
Addiction. He decided at that point he wanted to be surrounded by booming
bass and wailing tremble as much as fate would allow, and in order to do
that, he decided to start up a dance club like the kind his parents had in
their youth. This was his quest for music and he went about it for twelve
years in a dreamy and unorganized fashion.
In early-December, 2024 (which was only a few months ago), a renegade
band of soldiers from Nexxus Industries, the company that ruled New England,
came into Toronto with a highly classified piece of biosynthetic
engineering, or at least that's how the rumours went. Aurora Inc., the
company that controlled Southern Ontario and Northern New York State, sent a
division of Headhunters to intercept them downtown. Ryan's father was with
them. Needless to say, the two factions got into a big firefight and when
the dust settled, Ryan was an orphan.
Aurora was rather generous with the compensation: they gave Ryan custody
of the building in which he lived. In exchange for freedoms regarding
corporate property, he was to become the acting superintendent for the
complex. Since only two families besides his own lived there, he pretty much
retired.
With control of the building, Ryan's lifelong music quest took a giant
leap forward. He cleared out the basement and set it up to resemble a club
which he affectionately called 'Atomic Nature' in honour of the significance
of its location. Of course, this transformation would have been frowned upon
by the board of directors at Aurora since people were seen as drones and
were supposed to enjoy as few pleasures as possible (happiness makes a
person hard to control). By following through on his dream, Ryan had, in
this respect, become one of the rebels that his father hunted up until his
untimely demise, another example of the irony in Ryan Morgan's life.
* * * * *
Strangely enough, despite his on-again-off-again dream of Atomic Nature,
Ryan still found the time to fall in love with something besides music.
Hank Finn was one of Ryan's father's buddies in the Gestapo. Everyone
called him 'Hankleberry Finn'. Mr. Finn had a daughter who shared Ryan's
enthusiasm for music, though she favoured mid- to late-90's R&B and rock as
opposed to Ryan's love for anything related to house music. If his life had
been COMPLETELY clich?, they would have fallen in love at first sight. But
it wasn't and they didn't. The two fought furiously over what to listen to
at first, even though she spent a lot of time in the Morgans' apartment
listening to their CDs.
One day, Ryan returned from fixing the pipes on the second level of the
building (those pipes were ALWAYS causing trouble). Through the door to his
apartment, he heard the stereo softly playing something by Mariah Carey. He
opened the door quietly, hoping to catch her in the act of doing something
embarrassing. Instead, she was in the kitchen fixing two sandwiches, and
soulfully singing along in a sultry voice. That was the precise moment when
Ryan Morgan fell in love with a girl named Nikki Finn.
* * * * *
The fluorescent lights flared on with a crackle and ran like pale fire
across the ceiling. Ryan flicked the lid of his Zippo with his thumb,
smothering the flame. He looked up and saw Nikki standing next to the spiral
staircase, in front of the light switch, staring at him with her large brown
eyes. She was wearing a white sweater, jeans and tennis shoes, which was
more-or-less what she always had on. Her long, sandy brown hair was tied
back in a ponytail which was more-or-less how she always wore it.
"Why were you sitting in the dark?" she asked.
"It wasn't dark," Ryan replied. "It was DIM. I had my lighter."
"Oh sorry," Nikki said with a sarcastic bow and a flourish. She walked
over and sat down next to him. "So why were you sitting there in the dim and
silence?" she asked of him again, this time emphasizing the word 'dim'.
Ryan said nothing at first, then: "I was just painting the floor..." He
stuck a hand out at the 'Atomic Nature' written in red and yellow letters in
the middle of the dance floor, as if presenting her with an expensive gift
that was to be observed and admired. After a short pause, he added: "And I
was thinking..."
Nikki wrapped an arm around him and leaned in close and looked Ryan in
the eyes. "Daydreaming," she said.
Ryan smirked. "Yeah, daydreaming..." He held his Zippo between the thumb
and the middle finger on his right hand and started to spin it around with
his pointer finger.
"Dreaming about what?"
"Success...greatness...you know, the usual."
"Success and greatness of your club right?"
"Yeah...and plus everything that's happened for me to get to this point."
He looked at her. "If you didn't know me and this club DID take off, would
you consider the owner to be successful?"
"Sure," she answered quickly. "Successful clubs don't just happen." Nikki
looked up at the ceiling, pretending to be deep in thought. "Come to think
of it, successful MEN don't just happen either." She giggled coyly with a
'hah-you're-a-loser' undertone. Ryan figured she was probably kidding but he
wasn't sure.
Nikki didn't finish at that. She stuck a finger in the air and recited
academically: "Behind every successful man is a woman." She grinned.
"...waiting to take his job," Ryan added and he grinned as well. He
wrapped his arm around her too and they sat there on the stage under the
fluorescent lights, grinning at each other like a couple of maniacs.X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X
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