Bach put some of the notes in just for dogs and others for aliens, so when the Centauris show up with an old probe in tow and demand proof that it’s really human music, the rehearsals are a bit panicked. Lily’s orchestra has done command performances before, but not for enigmatic states of plasma with gravity rays in high orbit.
Some genius rigged them a “quantasonic resonance deviation heuristic” that will, purportedly, flash red if they go off-hyperkey. Lily’s going to ignore it. Human music. You want it, you got it, she thinks, and tunes up to tension of contact.
“We’re not the same person,” says Jake at 29. “The self is transient, and every atom of our bodies cycles out within seven years.”
“We’re not having that argument,” says Jake at 48.
“I’m not you,” says Jake at 29, “and I’m definitely not–” He curls his lip at Jake, 21.
“Ignore him,” says Jake at 48, with kindness. “Your pain is real; your fears aren’t illusions. You’re living through the crucible that shapes us all.”
“But why doesn’t she LIKE MEEE,” wails Jake at 21.
“No one likes you,” glares Jake at 29. “And what the fuck are you wearing?”
Eventually there are so many of the dead that Karaaz has to start animating some corpses to bury the others. They aren’t good at it. They dig with determination but little forethought, and once they hit six feet they just amble back and forth between the walls.
Karaaz surveys them with a parent’s weary resignation. The wards of her purgatorium need checking and she hasn’t seen a carrier crow in months. Is this how unlife works, an endless accretion of concerns until one day your phylactery falls off a shelf?
Bump, go the dead in their self-made prisons. Bump bump.
The first thing Nasser says to Hidebound is “it’s about damn time,” upon Hidebound’s entry into the holding cell; this despite the fact that Nasser has no idea who Hidebound is. It’s the kind of thing Nasser does.
He’s right annoyingly often.
Hidebound’s got a thick bandage over one ear and one drug interaction or another has made things alarmingly clear and bright, but he kills a sufficient number of prisoners and police officers to effect their escape.
“There have been complications,” he says, “in eliminating the girl.”
“Forget her,” says Nasser. “I’ll pay you double for her little American fuck.”
There are two Legions VI for a while, one under Octavian, the other under Mark Antony: one carries the epithet Ferrata, the other Victrix. Victrix ends up kicking the shit out of Ferrata at Actium, so in retrospect that’s pretty apt.
Longinus only joins the remains of Ferrata a few decades thereafter, when their brass bulls have been knocked around, their she-wolves tarnished. Mostly they repeat cruel jokes about Herod, tell war stories and dice. He doesn’t care. He’s young, strong and ironclad, eager for his glory days, ready to grind the heathen under the wheels of blood and summer.
The band is called Tristram Coffin for cool reasons and there are five people in it: Derrick sings and plays drums, Judah and Chareth trade lead and rhythm, Wade has a fretless bass and Katie plays keyboards. Everybody sings backup too, even Judah, who sort of shouldn’t.
People seem to like them but there’s this fog of pervasive worry, among eighty percent of Tristram Coffin, that the only reason they keep coming to shows is because of Katie, and also she’s Derrick’s sister, so the unspoken and iron rule is this: NO DATING KATIE.
Which never causes any drama! The end!
“But think about it,” says Hedy Lamarr. “Torpedoes you can steer, by radio, immune to jamming–”
“Sure, sure,” says Mr. National Inventors Council.
“It hops frequencies based on player piano rolls! How steampunk awesome is that!”
“Listen, sweetheart, if your husband put your name on the patent too then that’s awful nice of him,” says Mr. National Inventors Council. “But howzabout you put that pretty face to work and do War Bond fund-raiser instead?”
“Dick,” says Hedy Lamarr.
Then she goes out and raises seven million dollars in one night, which in 1941 is supervillain money (seriously, look it up).