The Normandy squad sit around the dinner table of the crew deck. Shepard is shaking a small plastic container with small balls of paper in it. She stops shaking, then pulls one of the paper balls out and unravels it.
"Yes!" she says with a fist pump. "Our first music night theme is... Earth!"
"Ooh!" Liara says. "I like Earth music."
"Can't wait to hear what everyone comes up with for this." Ashley says.
"Tsk, music night." Wrex gripes. "Can't we do combat styles from around the galaxy instead?"
"Wrex." Shepard sternly says, her tone enough.
"Okay, okay. It's just music was never really my thing. Or anyone's on Tachunka for that matter. Too busy fighting to survive. We used to have a musical culture in the past, but all that's been lost over time."
"And now you can bring it back!" Liara enthuses.
"Hehe, nice idea, Liara, but we'll see how that goes."
"Okay then." Shepard says. "For tomorrow night, everyone finds a piece they like and want to share. Nothing too recent that we'd all know already."
Ashley stands eagerly over the console in the crew deck canteen.
"Host planet goes first I believe, so who then? Me? Shepard?"
"Go on, Ash, you're obviously more desperate than me." Verity says.
"Great. Here we go then."
Ashley presses play on the console then stands back. A soft piano drifts across the canteen.
"Really Ash?" Verity says.
"Hey! This is a stone cold classic."
Why do birds, suddenly appear
"It sounds quite nice." Tali says.
Every time, you are near?
"Wake me up in a minute." Wrex moans.
Just like me, they want to be
"Philistines the lot of you. Except Tali. Thank you, Tali." Ashley says.
Close to you.
Liara sits with a smirk on her face.
"Yes, Liara? Something to say?" Ashley confronts.
Unable to contain it any more, Liara bursts out laughing.
"Oh Ashley, you big softy. I would never have thought the gung-ho Gunnery Chief Williams would be so..."
"Yes?"
"Sentimental." Liara tempers her ridicule.
"It's just a good song."
"Oh, Ash. You are the mushy one in secret aren't you?"
"Hey! What's this? I thought we agreed: no mocking our choices."
"Come on, Ash." Verity says. "You have to admit, it is a surprise."
They listen to the rest of the song and Garrus steps up.
"Shall I go next?"
"Sure, let's hear what you've got." Shepard says.
"I like experimental sounds."
After pressing play, Garrus sits in an almost meditative state. Machinery bangs and clangs over the system, then bangs and clangs some more. What sounds like a hammer hitting metal joins the melee of sounds.
"It's German 'avant garde' apparently." he says, listening intently.
"This is quite interesting." Tali says.
"Hardly a surprise from a machinist, Tali." Ashley says.
"So I like machines and technology. It comes with being Quarian, we've always been close to our technology, almost symbiotic. I have a theory that that was part of the problem with the geth, we were worried we'd start to lose where we ended and the technology began. Afraid we might take that final step to full assimilation and lose our humanity. It must have been considered back then with the advances at the time."
"That's quite insightful, Tali." Liara says, appreciative of Tali's interest in history and culture compared to her prothean studies.
"Part of the reason I was so interested in salvaging that geth that got the data on Saren. I wanted to see if there were any remnants of our past."
"Hmm, if compared to organics, emotionally primitive forms of life lash out if afraid or feeling threatened. I wonder if it was like that for the geth. Like newborns but with powerful bodies, their parents trying to kill them."
"Stop it."
"What? Oh, I..."
"The geth are not organics, they are AIs. Machines built to perform a task. Have no sympathy for them, they have none for you. The only reason they started pondering their existence is because they only had us to compare themselves to. But there is no comparison, they have no other purpose than that which we give them."
"I did not realise that you were so... I did not mean to offend you, Tali."
"That's okay, Liara. The subject of the geth is quite contentious for a quarian. This music reminds me of the geth, relentless and ominous."
The banging and clanging music stops as abruptly as its starts, and Garrus sighs.
"Brilliant. Glad you appreciated it, Tali." he says.
"How do you find this stuff? Must be a nightmare sifting through all the data banks." Wrex says.
"I'm patient."
"Ha! Well I've gone for easy."
Wrex walks over to the console, hits his track, then back to his seating position. Lively violins dance around the speakers.
"Go straight for the classics, I say. Can't be disappointed then, surely. This represents the Earth season of 'Spring' apparently. I thought it sounded nice enough."
Most of the table look at Wrex in a bored manner and some disbelief.
"Wrex..." Verity says, "you never have to contact banking establishments do you?"
"Uh, not often. Why?"
"Because every time they put you on hold to speak with a manger to authorize a perfectly simple transaction after patronising you for the previous half hour, they play this damn music! God only knows how it circulated the galaxy so quickly."
"Alright, fine, I'll do my research better in future. Go on, Shepard, you next."
"You sure, Wrex?" Ashley says. "The Commander's taste in music is awful."
"Ashley! Well this is the first track off an album that changed the face of rock."
"Oh no..." Ashley says as she realises what is coming, having heard that statement before.
A cacophony of electric guitars blast, joined by the singer's long falsetto note than descends into a full guttural scream. Fast paced intense drums set a heady pace for the dissonant chugging guitars. Shepard air-guitars to the music and Ashley holds her head in one hand, shaking her head.
"There she goes..."
"Eer... what's this song about?" Liara is almost afraid to ask, but curious about the unintelligible screaming and shouting purporting to be singing.
"It's about a concentration camp on Earth during one of the great conflicts of the twentieth century. They did terrible experiments on the prisoners."
"Why would someone write a song about that?"
"It's dark, horrible, disturbing. Exciting. Listen to those riffs."
Yes, she was right to be afraid to ask.
"Hm. It is very loud and distorted."
"It's supposed to be!"
"I do not think I could listen to that for too long."
"It's a bit 'in your face', I have to agree." Tali says.
"But pots and pans being thrown around from Garrus wasn't? Sheesh, you're a tough crowd."
"Hey, that industrial track was poignant." Garrus says.
Verity is a little disappointed that no-one has taken to her music.
"Go on, Tali, you go next."
"Okay."
After a short introduction of banjo and guitar Ashley and Verity look at each other with disbelief, the singer begins.
Hotdogs
Shepard laughs immediately followed by Ashley.
Armor hotdogs
"Tali..." Verity can't get her words out for laughing.
What kinds of kids eat armor hotdogs?
"It's an old commercial, Tali." Ashley eventually manages to say.
Fat kids, skinny kids, kids who climb on rocks
"What do you mean? I thought we agreed we wouldn't mock each other's choices... but knowing that now does take the shine off it a little. I thought it sounded fun, that's all. A silly song about children eating armoured animals."
Tough kids, sissy kids, even kids with chicken pox!
Verity places her hand on Tali's shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Tali. I didn't mean to upset you. And by the way, hotdogs aren't an animal, they're like a sausage. That's what the commercial was for, 'Armor' branded 'hotdogs'."
"Oh I feel really stupid now."
"You weren't to know." Liara supports. "And it did sound like a fun song."
"There's only you left now, Liara."
"Ahem." comes over the comm.
"Joker?"
"Yea, I've been listening to your poor choices. I can go with Slayer, but only for the guitaring. I can feed my choice in from here when you give the nod."
"Sure, the more the merrier. Go ahead, Liara."
After a minimalist intro of voices, a subtly thudding dance track twists and turns around the speakers. Liara cannot help but start to sway her hips, tapping her hand on her thigh to the beat.
"It's funny." Shepard says. "This track could be played in any bar across the galaxy, and no-one would bat an eyelid."
"Yes. And it is nearly two hundred years old. I like the way it just twists and turns, meandering along softly. Ooh, wait, my favourite part..."
Little fluffy clouds, little fluffy clouds
"Aah, I love the way she says that."
"Yup. The Blue Angel's head is firmly in the clouds." Joker pipes in.
"Go on, Joker." the Commander reluctantly says.
A phasing rock outfit subtly beat out a rhythm, until the singer joins.
I couldn't say where she's coming from,
But I just met a lady named Dinah-moe Humm
The music twists and turns in a lively jazz style, rising and descending in curious tones between phrases.
She strolled on over, said "Look here, bum,
I got a forty dollar bill says you cant make me cum.
You just can't do it."
"Joker?" Verity says in exasperation.
She made a bet with her sister, who's a little dumb,
She could prove it any time all men was scum.
"Joker!"
I don't mind that she called me a bum,
But I knew right away she was really gonna cum.
So I got down to it.
"Joker, stop this damn track."
I whipped off her bloomers and stiffened my thumb
Applied rotation on her sugar plum...
The music stops.
"But it's Zappa!" he cries over the comm.
"Do I have to screen your choices?"
"Aw that's tame, man."
"I was interested to see where that was going." Garrus says.
"Yea, it wasn't so bad. We're all grown ups here." Ashley agrees.
"Well anyway." Verity says, covering up her prudish stance. "I think we can call this evening a success?"
"I enjoyed the little window into you all through music." Tali says.
"Yup!" Ashley says. "It just confirms what I already knew: you're a bunch of loons. Especially Shepard."
"I don't think we needed musical representation to know that, Ash." Verity agrees.
"Well, boys and girls, I'm going to hit the hay. See you all tomorrow."
"'night, Ash."
Ashley walks toward the elevator whistling the Armor Hotdogs tune for Tali's benefit.
Author's notes:
For thems whats interested, the tracks were:
Ashley – 'Close To You' by The Carpenters
Garrus – no particular track or band in mind, just general German industrial
Wrex – 'Spring' from Vivaldi's Four Seasons
Shepard – 'Angel of Death' by Slayer
Tali – 'Armor Hotdogs' jingle
Liara – 'Little Fluffy Clouds' by The Orb
Joker – 'Dinah-Moe Hum' by Frank Zappa
