distribution. Where in hell, did you find that sinner?”
“Synthesizer,” I muttered, already asleep. “The actual word, my boy, is synthesizer.”
Crazy old dreams. I was back with Man-O-War in the big CA, leaving him again, and it was mostly as it happened, but you know dreams. His living room was half outdoors, half indoors, the walls all busted out. You know dreams; I didn’t think it was strange.
Man-O-War was mostly undressed, like he’d forgotten to finish. Oh, that never happened. Man-O-War forget a sequin or a bead? He loved to act it out, just like the Krait.
“No more,” I was saying, and he was saying, “But you don’t know anything else, you shitting?” Nobody in the big CA kids, they all shit; loose juice.
“Your contract goes another two and I get the option, I always get the option. And you love it, Gina, you know that, you’re no good without it.”
And then it was flashback time and I was in the pod with all my sockets plugged, rocking Man-O-War through the wires, giving him the meat and bone that made him Man-O-War and the machines picking it up, sound and vision, so all the tube babies all around the world could play it on their screens whenever they wanted. Forget the road, forget the shows, too much trouble, and it wasn’t like the tapes, not as exciting, even with the biggest FX, lasers, spaceships, explosions, no good. And the tapes weren’t as good as the stuff in the head, rock ’n’ roll visions straight from the brain. No hours of setup and hours more doctoring in the lab. But you had to get everyone in the group dreaming the same way. You needed a synthesis, and for that you got a synthesizer, not the old kind, the musical instrument, but something—somebody—to channel your group through, to bump up their tube-fed little souls, to rock them and roll them the way they couldn’t do themselves. And anyone could be a rock ’n’ roll hero then. Anyone!
In the end, they didn’t have to play instruments unless they really wanted to, and why bother? Let the synthesizer take their imaginings and boost them up to Mount Olympus.
Synthesizer. Synner. Sinner.
Not just anyone can do that, sin for rock ’n’ roll. I can.
But it’s not the same as jumping all night to some bar band nobody knows yet . . . Man-O-War and his blown-out living room came back, and he said, “You rocked the walls right out of my house. I’ll never let you go.”
And I said, “I’m gone.”
Then I was out, going fast at first because. I thought he’d be hot behind me. But I must have lost him and then somebody grabbed my ankle.
Featherweight had a tray, he was Mr. Nursie-Angel-of-Mercy. Nudged the foot of the bed with his knee, and it sat me up slow. She rises from the grave, you can’t keep a good sinner down.
“Here.” He set the tray over my lap, pulled up a chair. Some kind of thick soup in a bowl he’d given me, with veg wafers to break up and put in. “Thought you’d want something soft and easy.” He put his left foot up on his right leg and had a good look at it. “I never been rocked like that before.”
“You don’t have it, no matter who rocks you ever in this world. Cut and run, go into management. The big Big Money’s in management.”
He snacked on his thumbnail. “Can you always tell?”
“If the Stones came back tomorrow, you couldn’t even tap your toes.”
“What if you took my place?”
“I’m a sinner, not a clown. You can’t sin and do the dance. It’s been tried.”
“You could do it. If anyone could.”
“No.”
His stringy cornsilk fell over his face and he tossed it back. “Eat your soup. They want to go again shortly.”
“No.” I touched my lower lip, thickened to sausage size. “I won’t sin for Man-O-War and I won’t sin for you. You want to pop me one again, go to. Shake a socket loose, give me aphasia.”
So he left and came back with a whole bunch of them, techies and do-kids, and they poured the soup down my throat and gave me a poke and carried me out to the pod so I could make Misbegotten this year’s firestorm.
I knew as soon as the first tape got out, Man-O-War would pick up the scent. They were already starting the machine to get me away from him. And they kept me good in the room—where their