Twitchy Tales of the Whale, Music

A/N: July 2057. With the one year anniversary coming up, people are getting weird on the Whale. Can Vandham solve all the problems being handed to him? And does anyone get their nose broken for them? (Answers: yes, and not today.) Set pre-game, sorrow, swears, spoilers to Ch. 5. All the good stuff belongs to MONOLITH SOFT. The music was composed by Hiroyuki Sawano, but the Bug House crew is mine.


The music was blaring down the corridor. He could hear it before the elevator reached the level, could feel it through the deck as soon as he stepped off. A distorted howling cutting through a terrible thumping loop. Snippets of guitar riffs surfaced and disappeared in no particular pattern, some quite juicy, if you could hear it. But it was jacked up so loud it could only make his ears hurt, and his skin itchy.

As Vandham got closer, he realized somebody working there was singing along, or maybe just "whoo hooing" along. A cross between karaoke and scream therapy, but without quite enough weight behind it to cut into the original song, and uneven at that. It sounded pathetic and real, and made him grit his teeth even more. It wasn't that it made the music worse; that was hardly possible. Rather, it reminded him that somebody really wanted to have this noise turned on, and he was there to turn it off. Not a job he wanted to do, not today.

He stopped at the open door of the relay room, unnoticed. One technician was standing by the main board, smacking buttons in time to the beat, occasionally tipping his head back to add to the howl, "One two three four!" Ah, that must be the contestant for White Whale's Got Talent. Vandham recognized him, of course. Gino, scrawny, scars crossing his dark arms and face, a man so short tempered as to be heedless even at his advanced age of, what was it, 30? Also fiercely connected or disconnected to people, depending. In his case, disconnected. Gino hated him. This job was getting even less enjoyable. If there wasn't a fist fight within the next hour, he'd be lucky.

There was another technician, Rosalee, winding up cordage from a pile that reached past her ankles, a real rat's nest of fiber optic cable. She was nodding along, eyes closed, pig tails bobbing madly. Tears were streaming down her face. Next to her, feeding her cord and watching with worried eyes, was a slightly younger and beefier man, Nguyn, a switch hitter from the soldiers they'd crammed onto the Whale, not exactly up to snuff technically but fast and strong and useful to have around. At least he wasn't singing or nodding, but his foot was tapping.

Vandham sighed. He really was not happy to be there. Not that anywhere was right, not today. He was dressed in his ridiculous dress whites, in uncomfortable shoes, and he was not a happy man. Sent on a ridiculous errand, by a ridiculous source, he'd at least hoped to blow off some steam. He'd do that, sure, but he was going to end up feeling guilty about dumping on such a pathetic crew. And that didn't even take into account the inevitable conflict with their fearless leader.

"Brown!" he bellowed. She was nowhere in sight, and the switching station wasn't big enough to hide in.

"I told you and told you, you ain't coming here and …" Gino yelled at him, even before turning. It was a smooth movement, worthy of admiration, as he twisted and grabbed up a heavy tool (claw hammer, what the hell did they need a claw hammer for?) and swung it towards the interloper. It was a smooth move, too, when he spun it to one side and stepped back enough that it cleanly missed Vandham. "What the hell YOU want?"

"Turn that racket off. And where's Brown?"

"Go to hell. It stays." The hammer was down, but not out of his hands, and not forgotten.

"Where's Brown?" Vandham wasn't going to bother arguing with this nutjob.

Gino looked straight up at the ceiling panel and shouted, "LILA!" Loud enough to be heard over the noise. Loud enough to make Vandham flinch even more. From somewhere unidentified and distant came the muffled response, "I can't hear you!" Brown's voice, but the speaker was still nowhere to be seen.

Then Gino smacked a panel control over his head with the hammer. Vandham flinched again, because that was NOT how you treated the infrastructure on the Whale. He would have taken this up, and physically, with Gino, hammer or no hammer, except for the next instant distraction. Above them, a circular grate opened up, and from that same distance of Brown's first response came a confused yelp, rising in volume as someone approached.

Lila shot straight down out of the duct work, head first, like she'd been dropped from some height. Which she had, Vandham realized. She must have been doing some maintenance, resetting the power levels as was so often needed, while using the unauthorized but popular method of turning off the gravity in that section so she could move more easily. Gino had turned it back on, and down she dropped. Unfortunately, she'd been positioned the worst way, and would have had a nasty crash except that Vandham was there to break her fall.

Or maybe not. She'd curled into a tight tuck even as she exited, and probably would have landed on her back and not her face, maybe even on her feet. Instead, she landed in his grip. Once she felt human arms around her, she stopped flailing, and twisted round to orient herself. "Gino, just when I think you can't get more annoying, honestly, and who is… oh." For a moment, she was still, then deftly removed herself from his grasp. She took a formal stance, a polite distance from him. "Chief. What can we do you for?" she said with only the shadow of an embarrassed smile.

Vandham gave himself a quick mental shake. This section, they were a disaster area, and nothing short of a miracle kept them on task and effective. He tried not to think about them, except to dump every loser he got this way, and Lila whipped them into some kind of effectiveness and sent them back, except for the few she kept as her hand-picked crew. He'd ignored the graffiti on the walls of the corridor, "Welcome to the Bug House." Nice. It worked as a warning to whoever wandered down there, unless it worked as a challenge.

"The racket. Turn it off."

"No way! I told you…" Gino was pushing up against her, but she had already placed herself neatly as a barricade between the two men, one that was not going to be moved. She waved Gino back, a blind series of gentle pats or hard smacks, depending on how well they connected with the tech practically dancing with fury.

"Sir, we have a plan. We just need to keep it on until the end of this shift, and we're good." She looked calmly at him, a face made blank and respectful, with just the tiniest coaxing plea in her eyes.

"Off. Now."

Her eyes were wide, brown with sparkles like precious metal, silver or platinum or something unknown. Almost imperceptibly, she twitched her chin out towards the corridor, glanced towards some privacy where they could continue their argument without Gino breathing down her neck. No go. This music had to go off, no question, decided even before the hint of insubordination (in Gino's case, the clear and violent hint). Vandham had stared down Miss Koo at her most winsome, when she was doing her best to coax one favor or another from him. If he could (sometimes) withstand her puppy dog looks, he could withstand Lila. Make that Technician Brown, even easier. He crossed his arms and glowered, ignoring the warning strain across the back of his official uniform.

Lila's gaze wavered, refocused. The complaints of Gino, the snuffles of Rosalee, the whole pounding mess of music, those became unimportant. He hadn't noticed he'd been holding his breath until he saw her expression shift, practically imperceptibly. Not to one of compliance, even further from submission, heaven forbid she should manifest that, but into one of agreement. She gave a small nod, and turned away.

Her arm was around Gino's shoulder, and she was drawing him along with her, towards the control panel. "It's going off. Today. Because it's today. We have to." Her voice was gentle, almost chatty.

Gino was still loud, but he wasn't stopping her. "The hell it is. You promised!"

Her finger had already swiped the screen, and the silence was as real as a bucket of water to the face. A silence filled with a wailing shriek from Rosalee. "You promised! You promised! Ahhhhh!" She flung herself at the control panel, cables trailing behind her like so many tentacles. She was pounding at the controls, but getting nowhere. Lila had lodged her hip firmly but casually against the section that Rosalee should have aimed for, if she could see anything through those tears.

Vandham watched, somewhat aghast, as the three technicians plus one soldier (Nguyn had finally bounced after Rosalee) seemed to form a bundle of grabbing, swiping, and misery. It ended with Gino, now strangely on block-the-sound-control-panel duty, shifting angrily from foot to foot before the panel, and Nguyn standing with hands full of cable, while the two women knelt on the deck. The older woman was rubbing the back of the younger one, who had collapsed with misery, her head in her hands, sobbing piteously.

"Rosalee. I can't keep my promise, you know that. We can't hurt anyone else, right? And someone would misunderstand, and get hurt, and we can't risk that, not today. You gotta see."

"You promised. We're gonna lose him."

"No. Nothing is lost. Everything we did, it's still there. That music, they can't unplay it. It's good, safe." She patted the floor in between them, then returned to rubbing the other's back in slow circles. She lowered her voice. "You know me. I will make this right. When have I ever let you down? Name it. I ask you. When have I EVER not made good in the end?"

"But you promised…"

"So this didn't work out. So what. We're going to have to try something else. There's gotta be a lot of other things we can do, better things. We'll make good on it. His voice will touch every centimeter of this ship, if I have to walk around with a portable speaker and a battery pack. I WILL make good. Do you believe me?"

Rosalee was mumbling incoherently, but she had nodded and her sobbing had returned to earlier milder levels.

Lila rose to her feet, and offered her a hand. Vandham was surprised that the wet-faced tech accepted it, but she stumbled back towards the cables, plucking a ruined coil from Nguyn's hands along the way, and resumed looping it meticulously. Already, Gino and Nguyn were offering ideas on mobile sound productions, bootleg discos, automated rovers with speakers that could roll through duct works.

It was Vandham's turn to give a silent nod towards the corridor. Lila followed him, trotting behind as he stomped towards the elevator. As he waited for its arrival, he growled down at her, "I'm sending someone to make sure it stays off."

Lila looked surprised, and a little insulted. Still, her voice was a model of propriety. "We'll keep it off, all day, as per your orders, sir." She twisted her lips into a slight but wry grin. "Of course we will."

"I do not need somebody coming and claiming that you didn't. You want to defend yourself?"

She sighed and shrugged. "No, sir, you're right. Of course."

"Of course," he mocked. "Expect him within an hour." He had just the fellow in mind, too. He allowed himself his own grin.

Lila's eyes narrowed in suspicion. Clever girl, she knew she was in for trouble. "Please, not Hec…"

He cut her off, sharply. "No." God forbid she should find out that that boy was the one to lodge the first complaint. She'd probably kill the green-eyed man herself, no witnesses, no proof. A quick hiss of an airlock and they'd be down a crewmate. Worse yet, Gino would try, loudly and messily, and fail, and the problem would end up in his lap. "Not H.B. Don't worry, I'll send someone nice. You'll like him. Lara's a friendly guy." He grinned wider.

Her smile quirked a little in response, even if her eyes stayed wary. "I'm almost looking forward to it."

What the hell was taking this elevator so long? He swore he did not build them so damn slow back on Earth. He didn't have anything more to say, and he wasn't exactly comfortable with having her staring at him.

"You look nice, sir."

He raised one eyebrow at her.

"Very, er, distinguished. I'm glad you're representing us, at the memorial today." Her tone was gentle and sad.

"Us?"

"The crew, sir, the engineering staff anyway. I'm glad you'll be there."

"I have to be there."

"It matters." She lowered her head, took a shaggy breath. "Somebody has to remember." When she raised her eyes to him, he could see that tears were not far off, but ones she did not want to shed. Then she said, in a rush, "That's Rosalee's brother. His name was Diego. Is. That's his voice. It's his demo tape, Pride of Bakersfield. We promised her his voice would fill the Whale. Gino thought of it and I did the calculations. If we pump enough sound into this corridor, the vibrations will push enough energy out to touch all of the Whale."

Vandham took only a second to respond. "The numbers are way off."

"Math isn't Rosalee's strong point. At least not for this equation. She's been careful not to double check me, and I didn't suggest it either. The numbers work for our purpose, sir."

"She needs professional help. She's broken." He used the word carefully.

"Not quite. We've been specialing her, sir, don't worry. When she started crying and wouldn't stop, we started watching her. We don't leave her alone, been taking it in shifts. We'll take her in to the center soon, but after the anniversary. The center's just too busy right know, you know that, sir. She'll just get lost."

"They're going to stay busy. There'll be a long tail." He remembered what happened at the 6-month mark, all the names from his team that went down with delayed sorrow at the loss of just about everything.

"Yes, sir. But we can keep it up for another week or so. The music idea was helping, but I know it was only temporary, sir."

"You don't need anything yourself, Brown?" Shoot, wrong thing to ask. Her pride would be the death of her, he knew that already.

Only she didn't snap at him. Worse, the tears that she'd been holding back started to spill out. She raised a hand to wipe them quickly away. "No, sir, just … thank you for representing us, sir, even the ones not here. The things not here." They stood, both of their faces rigid and blank with unexpressed sorrow. Dammit, there wasn't time for sorrow, still, after a full year, 12 months, 365 days of it. Too much to get done, too many more pressing problems to fix.

The elevator arrived finally. Vandham cleared his throat to say goodbye. Instead, he said, "Pride of Bakersfield. Ugh. Where'd they get such a dumb name for such a punk band?"

She gave a watery snort. "They weren't even from there, just some other dinky farm town. Dust and lettuce, and this band. Rosalee said they were going places, but honestly…"

He stepped onto the elevator and turned. "Well, they've gone farther than a lot of other bands, in a way. Keep an eye on your team. I'll warn Lara to help out."

He heard her response before the doors cut off the sound. "Thank you, sir."

He checked his watch. There was about 90 minutes before he'd have to stand by Captain Nagi, listening to the memorial speeches, looking deeply concerned and supportive. Enough time to run yet another unexpected errand, wouldn't take more than a few minutes once he opened up the environmental systems of the habitat unit. Change up that generic elevator music that currently pumped out of the speakers on every lamppost and corner. He'd pick something more peppy, bouncy. Time for a change.

"Pride of Bakersfield. What a dumb name. But that last bit was kind of catchy…"


A/N: The real name of the song is, of course, N周L辺A, by the inestimable Hiroyuki Sawano, track 8 on the swanky flashdrive or track 2, disc 3 of the soundtrack. But I have this head canon of the Whale being built on the California-Nevada border (where that groovy solar plant has gone up, all towers and mirrors), so I'm throwing all of the lower Central Valley at it as well. Three stories in this arc, finally, I'm putting up the Lila material. Then I'll put up a set about Rosalee and Diego.