Music Piracy
"Wake up."
Powering back on from a shut down wasn't as instantaneous as coming out of sleep mode, but apparently Dr. Wily was feeling impatient. "What?" Bass asked, countering with his own annoyance, only to realize Wily had paused software updates before they'd finished. "Something's wrong?"
"Have you been checking your diagnostics? I see you're running them, but do you actually review them."
"Of course I do," he lied. "What do you think I am, stupid?"
"I don't have to think it, I know it." Wily pinched the bridge of his nose. "You're running one-eighteenth of a second slow."
"Wait, what?" That kind of delay was practically meaningless for humans, but could be a matter of life or death for a combat machine. "How—?" How long had this been going on? Just when was the last time he'd checked any of his own diagnostic reports?
Oh.
It'd been… a while. Long enough that he couldn't review them quickly, and the look on Wily's face told him it wouldn't make any difference: he already knew how long it'd been, what the problem was, and why.
Flustered, Bass gave him a sullen look, unable to come up with a defense when he didn't know what he was defending against. (Aside from the sheer laziness of the diagnostics. Sloppy. There was no excuse.)
"Well? Are you going to tell me, or are you just going to stand there like a jerk?"
"How am I the bad guy, when you're the idiot who—" He paused to inhale slowly, count to five, and exhale. "You have an extremely strange way of 'listening' to music." Wily made a point to curl his fingers in air quotes. "I'd understand instantly viewing the whole file, like a computer does. Or playing it through your helmet's speakers and listening, the way a human would."
He gave Bass a curious look.
"But no… running the file in real time, but not through a speaker? That I can't wrap my head around."
The robot scowled, then relented— because if they were talking about this, then they weren't talking about the little delay that it caused. It bought him some time, even if it was only postponing the inevitable. "The speaker creates a degree of noise distortion. It's not perfect. You wouldn't notice, but I do. And just looking at the whole file at once is no fun."
"'No fun'," Wily repeated. "'No fun'. Hmmm." He mulled it over, rubbing his chin.
Then rage flashed across his face, and he pounded both fists on the workbench.
"I TOLD YOU NEVER TO DOWNLOAD ANY EXTERNAL FILES ONTO YOUR DRIVES! You imbecile! You blithering moron! Incompetent bucket of bolts!"
Bass was quick to return fire. "Shut up, Wily! I scan everything before downloading, and I've never had trouble with viruses or malware—"
"That's not the problem! The one-eighteenth of a second is the problem! Because you've bogged down your own blasted brain with an unbelievably massive library of— of garbage. You know there's a reason certain functions run off their own— the way I set up data storage— the RAID system— I— you—" He stopped and began pulling at his hair. "This may be the most enormously stupid thing you've ever done. There's a peripheral data drive for com logs and network data and— external downloads! You incredible buffoon!"
Which Bass knew. He knew, and hadn't used it, just like he hadn't bothered to look at the diagnostic reports. He said nothing, because what was there to say? It was one of the few occasions where Wily was right, but it wasn't like he would ever admit it.
"What exactly are you listening to?" Wily asked finally, sounding exhausted.
After a hesitant pause, Bass shrugged. "It's not a private directory."
A way of saying that Wily was welcome to look, but he was far too agitated for that. "Get it off of your personal drives and onto the peripheral one. Now. Then power down, so I can finish this accursed software update."
Wily purposefully ignored Bass for the next couple days, in a rare attempt to avoid further confrontation. Then it was a few more days after that before he started asking questions.
"Just how much music do you have downloaded? It looked as if you managed to hoard every last song that's ever been recorded."
"It's a lot." 'A lot' was a massive understatement. Wily was exaggerating about 'every song', but he hadn't been far off.
"No preferences— or standards either, from what I could tell."
"I don't play favorites."
"I was a little surprised there was only music. No shows, no movies. No digital books."
Bass was unsure how to respond.
Realizing his AI picked up human behaviors faster (and with better consistency) through repeated observation, he'd taken a hands-off approach to Break Man's 'people watching' hobby. He stuck to hacked public security cams, or rewatching his own memory files of eavesdropping and rooftop surveillance. But all of that was spontaneous, candid, unscripted. Real. The opposite of streaming entertainment.
So he avoided that.
"Yeah, when was the last time you watched a netshow or movies?" Bass made a quick, dismissive gesture, hoping Wily would drop it. "And I tried books. Didn't like them."
That was an oversimplification of what actually happened.
He'd found non-fiction to be dolled up versions of reports, documented history, and data that was easily found on the net. Non-fiction was written to make boring topics palatable for consumption, but to Bass it was just a lot of wind up he didn't need.
Fiction had been frustrating. Bass started with books, before music, or people-watching, or more importantly, turning to Break Man for a better understanding of himself. Fiction was full of emotions he didn't understand at the time, feelings he'd never experienced, and a lot of fantastical, whimsical nonsense that had grated his nerves. He should revisit them now, with a larger emotional repertoire and more experience and less stress about why he felt the things he did.
…Only the bitter taste had lingered, so he'd avoided that too.
"Hmm." There were a few moments of silence before Wily continued. "Why don't you stream from the net?"
The truth was that he couldn't stand when a slow or unsteady connection resulted in buffering, or worse, a song being cut off midway. He knew that wouldn't go over well, and scrambled for a better answer.
"Streaming is more hassle than it's worth."
Wily seemed to accept that, and started talking about his own tastes in music. As if Bass didn't already know. While planning or working he listened to a range of classical music, but also blues, jazz, gospel, soul, many related subgenres, and nothing that had been released in the last twenty years.
Talking about it now, he got a far away look in his eyes. "That bumbling idiot Xavier is a fan of blues, as well. We used to get into terrible arguments, you know." It was clear from his tone that they'd actually been friendly discussions, late night conversations that he remembered fondly even with all the bad blood between them. "I can't tell you how many times we retread the endless debate over whether Gilbert King or Stevie Raven was better."
"Raven's more talented," Bass replied.
"Oh, not you too. He's faster, there's a difference." He snorted. "Even if he was more talented, he never would've amounted to anything if he hadn't built upon the backs of those who came before him. Besides, blues is about pain and suffering! There's beauty in the imperfection—"
The conversation quickly spiraled into their own heated, if satisfying, debate.
"—and all I'm saying is in 'So Fake', he's straight up caterwauling—"
"How dare you!" There was a clatter of metal as Wily flung a wrench at him. It missed, the instrument striking the edge of a nearby shelving unit. "How dare you besmirch Jeff Truckley's name in this fortress! Out! Get out!"
Bass blew a raspberry before leaving. "You're just mad because I'm RIGHT."
When 'So Fake' played for the fourth time in a row, Bass went to investigate, only to find Wily with his head in his hands.
"It is caterwauling," he said miserably.
The rousing, thunderous sound of Gagner indicated something intense and grand was afoot, and Bass was disgusted to find that Wily was hard at work on none other than his replacement.
"Hey, have you ever checked out Nittschke? If you're into this stuff, you'll probably like him too."
"I've heard the name," Wily replied, "but not his work." He nodded appreciatively. "I'll look into it."
"Terrible. Wretched. You did that on purpose, you heartless machine."
Bass didn't even try to hide his smug look. "What?" he asked, feigning innocence.
"That Nittschke. Awful. It's all— it's noise. Cacophony."
"It's challenging!" Bass punched his fist into his other hand. "Music is a tug of war between order and chaos. If you only play pleasant 'safe' notes it's boring, if you only play obnoxious notes, there's no melody. Nittschke lulls you into safety and then hits you with chaos. He makes you question what your understanding of music is."
"Ugh." Wily groaned, rolling his eyes. "It sounds like the orchestra gave up and threw their instruments down the stairs."
Not to be discouraged, Bass's smug grin broadened. "What happened to 'beauty in the imperfection', huh Wily?"
The lab was a mess, papers flung to the floor, delicate instruments toppled over, tools pitched clear across the room in a rage.
"Things are going well, I see."
Wily turned just enough to glare at Bass with one baleful eye, before raising his head from the computer terminal. "Swimmingly," he said, voice dripping with sarcasm, and then he sagged in defeat. A few moments later he cautiously brightened. "You've never seen a movie before?"
"…Once."
The question was on the tip of his tongue, but he decided against it. "But you've never seen a classic." Now beaming, he rubbed his hands together. "It's been a while for me, but it's high time I introduced you to true cinema." With that, Wily slid off his chair, headed out the room and down the hall. "There's a holographic projector screen in one of these rooms," he muttered to himself, before glancing back at Bass, who cautiously followed along.
Once there, he quickly brought up a stolen streaming account over VPN.
"Ah-ha! Here we are. My favorite movie, 'Atlas Sneezed'…"
- A/N: I'm really tempted to leave this as the last chapter, but "Thicker Than Water" needs to be the final one because of the title drop at the end. So I'll leave this here for now and in a few weeks (months) move it before the last or second to last chapter.
- As much as I've enjoyed coming up with fake holidays, knock-off restaurant names, "I Can't Believe It's Not The Eagles vs. Cowboys" sports teams… my favorite by far is the play on Schnittke/Nitschke. (Alfred Schnittke was a Russian composer, Ray Nitschke was a football linebacker notorious for being violent.)