Disclaimer: That '70s Show copyright The Carsey-Werner Company, LLC and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC. Degenerate Matter, their albums Vagabondage, Ultrarelativistic, WIMPs and MACHOs, Frozen Stars, the song "Because I'm a Girl," and the lyrics contained therein copyright to the author of this story (username: MistyMountainHop, maker of Those '70s Comics).

CHAPTER 3
SINGULARITY

May 30, 1994

Chicago, Illinois

O'Hare Airport
 ...

Jackie had hoped to find a Sam Goody in the airport, but Grooves was the music store of choice at O'Hare. The chain had expanded the last fifteen years, under whose management she didn't know: Steven's father, his sister Angie, or maybe Steven himself.

This particular Grooves was well-lit and decorated with music posters. Jackie stared through the store's window, gripping the handle of her suitcase. It was an upright, wheeled travel bag, small enough to fit in an airplane's overhead compartment. She preferred to travel light, but she'd left Wisconsin with more than she'd brought.

Two hours remained until her connecting flight to San Francisco. Terminal 2 had plenty of other stores, but what she wanted was inside this one. She didn't expect to run into Steven here, but the idea of stepping into any Grooves made her uneasy. If the chain had been sold, Donna never mentioned it, just as she never mentioned Steven.

Until two days ago, after Kimberly Kelso's funeral.

"He's staying with Eric's parents," she'd said during the drive to Oshkosh, where she and Eric lived. "He's flying out tomorrow to—"

Jackie stopped her. She refused to hear Steven's itinerary or anything about him. Her father's copy of Asimov's Foundation was in her hands. The pages were earmarked from all the times he'd read it, and reading it herself would help her decompress from the funeral.

Donna didn't push, probably because Izzy was napping in her car seat. She didn't bring Steven up during dinner, either, and left Jackie alone that night. Saturday was over. It would fade like other Saturdays, taking Jackie's encounter with Steven with it.

On Sunday, Jackie had joined Donna, Eric, and Izzy at the zoo. Izzy's delight at the animals gave Jackie some distraction, and during the night Jackie pointed out constellations and spring stars to her. The clouds from the previous day were gone, giving Donna and Eric's backyard a clear expanse of sky.

Izzy easily spotted the Big Dipper, which technically wasn't a constellation but an asterism, a small grouping of stars. Donna smiled at Jackie afterward, as if she were impressed. "Have you ever considered teaching this to kids? Like professionally?"

Jackie hadn't, and she wouldn't. But stargazing seemed to put Eric in a good mood, and he said, "Can we see Tatooine from our backyard?"

"Tatooine?" Jackie said.

Donna's lips flattened into a thin line. "Star Wars."

"Sorry, Eric, wrong universe. But I can show you a bear." Jackie helped him find a few complex constellations, like Ursa Major and the Lion. That didn't wipe the disappointment from his face, but at least he and Donna weren't talking about Steven.

Jackie went to bed that night feeling safe, but the next morning—this morning—at breakfast, Donna said to her, "Why'd you tell Hyde you didn't know him?"

"What are you talking about?" Jackie bit into her toast and chewed noisily. "I never said that."

"At the cemetery." Donna cleaned Izzy's chin with a napkin. Jam had dribbled from her mouth "Hyde told us you said you didn't know him."

"I don't know him."

Eric twirled a finger around his temple. "Are you suffering from the same memory problems as Kelso?"

Donna glared at him, but Jackie said, "What do you want from me? It's been fifteen years. We're strangers to each other."

"Well, we're giving you fair warning," Eric said and shoveled a forkful of scrambled eggs into his mouth. He swallowed before speaking again. "Izzy loves her uncle Hyde as much as she loves her aunt Jackie, and we're through keeping this air of secrecy whenever either of you visit. So there's a new policy in this house." He pointed his fork at her. "You both exist in the same dimension."

Jackie pushed her plate away and clutched her knees beneath the table. "I don't want to exist to him. I want him to forget I ever existed, okay?"

"If I could forget you exist," Eric muttered, "I would. Trust me."

"Eric," Donna said, in a tone that meant he'd get yelled at later. Jackie was glad. Even after all this time, Eric held a special resentment toward her. She wasn't sure where it came from—when they were teenagers, or because she couldn't go to his and Donna's wedding, or a host of other offenses she wasn't aware she'd committed—but he usually kept his hostility in check.

"Fine." Jackie's shoulders hunched. The dining area was an extension of the living room. It had a lot of space, but it seemed too cramped for all of them. "Talk about him around me if you have to, but—"

"It's not like we're purposely gonna talk about Hyde in front of you," Donna said, "or tell him anything about your life. But we're going to stop hiding his photos while your here." She gestured to the bookshelves and the walls. "And the art he's made with Izzy. But we'll do the same when he's here, too. Stop hiding your pictures and crafts and things."

The more Donna spoke, the more Jackie shrank into herself. Seeing Steven's photos, having Steven see hers, was a nightmare. Not that she allowed many pictures to be taken of her. At the first shutter click, at the first glimpse of a lens, she fled. Pointing a camera at her was the same as pointing a loaded gun.

"That kind of sneaky stuff isn't good for her," Donna went on, and she brushed Izzy's long, red hair behind her ears. "Kids pick up on it, and I don't want her becoming..."

"Twitchy," Eric said.

Izzy giggled. "Daddy, do the twitchy dance."

"The twitchy dance?" He stood from the table and jerked his body from side to side, singing, "Twitch, twitch, twitch! Twitch, twitch, twitch!" to the tune of KC and the Sunshine Band's "Shake Your Booty". Izzy laughed loudly. Donna covered her mouth, but the bounce of her shoulders and the crinkle of her eyes betrayed her.

Jackie, though, felt like an invader. This wasn't a moment she should see. It was for family.

Eric left for work shortly afterward. He was a senior designer at Blinkhorn Toys. Michael worked there, too, as a junior designer. Visiting Donna and Izzy sometimes meant visiting Michael, which Jackie avoided as much as possible. They were on good terms, considering their history, but she preferred him at a distance.

"I hope our next visit is under happier circumstances," Donna said later. She'd driven Jackie to the airport in Appleton, a half-hour from Oshkosh. Being a freelance rock journalist meant Donna set her own hours, although her most common lament as of late was a lack of work. Even so, being her own boss allowed her time with Izzy, to spend time with her dad, to drop Jackie off at the airport.

To be part of Steven Hyde's life.

But she said nothing more about him. Jackie waved goodbye to her at the gate, boarded the plane for Chicago—and here she was now at the O'Hare airport, standing outside of Grooves.

She loosened her grip on her suitcase. Her knuckles ached, and she entered the store. Customers wandered in and out of the aisles, some led by employees in yellow Grooves T-shirts. Jackie needed an employee herself, but the checkout line was five-people deep. She glanced down the aisles and found a white guy with sandy-blond hair. He wore a Grooves T-shirt and was busy reorganizing CDs in the Jazz section.

She went up to him and said, "Excuse me, do you have any Degenerate Matter albums?"

The guy looked at her as if she were crazy. "Do we have any Degenerate Matter albums?" he repeated incredulously. His hands left the CD racks, and he stood on his toes, making himself tall enough to see over the aisles. "Hey, Dwele," he shouted toward the cashier line, "do we have any Degenerate Matter albums?"

"Who wants to know?" someone—presumably Dwele—shouted back.

"My hot but living-under-a-rock customer!"

"Hot? Send her over!"

"You wish!" the guy said and winked at Jackie. A shudder passed through her. He might as well have chased her out of the store. She checked his name tag to report him to management. His name was Keith, and he jerked his thumb at the wall behind her. "Degenerate Matter."

She turned around. A giant poster was plastered to the wall, taking up three feet of space. It depicted, in back and white, a spiky-haired white woman on a concert stage. She was screaming into a microphone, and a guitar was strapped to her front At the bottom, the poster said, "DEGENERATE MATTER." The woman had to be Ro Skirving, the band's singer.

"Alternative section," Keith said, "under D ..." For dumbass, he probably thought, but she thanked him anyway and went to the Alternative Rock aisle.

In the bin marked D, she numbly flipped through albums of artists she didn't know—Daisy Chainsaw, Dead Can Dance—but her pulse tightened when she spotted Degenerate Matter. For once, anxiety had nothing to do with it. Her heart was driven by excitement, pure and simple.

WIMPs and MACHOs was the first album she found. The band's other two albums were hidden behind a bunch of singles and an EP. She took only the full albums to the checkout line. The cashier, a young black man with dreadlocks, was busy ringing up another customer, a pale woman with a stack of Frank Sinatra records. Behind him on the wall was a poster, one she'd seen before in Betsy's room. It, too, was a shot of Degenerate Matter in concert.

This poster was in color and captured the whole band. The bassist, a black woman with lush and curly natural hair, faced the drummer. The drummer was white, sweaty, and had his eyes closed. He and the bassist seemed connected, despite his shut eyes.

Ro Skirving's eyes were shut, too. She was leaning against a shirtless guitarist. Tattoos covered much of his olive skin, and his long, black hair obscured his face. Ro's cheek was pressed into his shoulder. She wore no guitar in this image, but the microphone was clenched in her hand.

Her voice wove through Jackie's memory. Ro Skirving sang with an intensity and freedom Jackie couldn't afford. Safety pins held together the rips in Ro's T-shirt. The holes in her jeans were partially stitched with what looked like kitchen twine. The state of her clothes resembled Jackie's life, a fragile and illusory image of stability.

"Did you find everything all right?" the cashier said, and Jackie passed him the CDs. His name tag listed his name as Andwele, and he treated her respectfully. Apparently, his banter with Keith hadn't poisoned his interactions with her. "Will that be all?"

An array of Walkmans, portable CD players, and headphones were on display behind the counter. "I'll take the orange Discman," she said, "the one with the headphones."

May 30, 1994

Zurich, Switzerland

Hallenstadion
…

The crowd in Switzerland was a good one. It sang along to most of Degenerate Matter's songs, laughed at Ro's stage banter, and didn't chuck anything at her or the rest of the band. Hyde was watching the gig from his usual spot, a sidestage bunker with two of the band's guitar techs. Mainly, he stayed out of the way, but he was ready with a drink or towel for Ro when she needed it.

The band was deep into the last song of its main set. "Because I'm a Girl," off the first album, had an extended jam. Sherry Chambers, the bassist, and Nate Stack, the drummer, grooved off each other as Lee Turnbull, the lead guitarist shredded the hell out of his solo.

Ro had ditched her guitar. She always performed a wild stunt during this song, one that supercharged Hyde's blood. This time, she tossed the microphone over the lighting truss roof, that horizontal stretch of scaffolding supported by the truss towers. Took her a two tries, but the microphone got up there, a hundred feet above the stage. Then she began her ascent.

She climbed the steel tower as if she weighed nothing. Her hands gripped the bottom beam of the roof truss, and she swung across it like a spider monkey on a tree. Hyde stuck a piece of gum into his mouth when she reached the microphone. She pulled her body to the top of the beam, wrapped her legs around the steel for support, and maneuvered the microphone so it hung upside-down over the beam about two feet.

Lee's solo built in intensity, and the crowd cheered and screamed, but Ro never seemed to lose her concentration. She held onto the steel beam with both hands and let her body dangle over the stage. The microphone was directly in front of her lips, and she began to sing again.

Hyde swallowed his gum. Ro was the hottest of stars in the cosmos, especially when she sang. All inside her was emotional violence, feelings crashing into one another like hydrogen atoms, releasing energy that radiated from her to the crowd. It warmed people up, helped them grow. Could even bring them back to life.

Had brought Hyde back to life, even though that energy could be blinding. Burning and destructive.

"Because I'm a girl," she sang now, "I can't count … one, two … what comes after fuckin' two? Because I'm a girl, I'm just a cunt to you. A cavernous hole. Because I'm a girl, I don't count, I'm a cunt, I don't count!"

The instrumental jam reasserted its primacy, and Ro quit singing. She pulled her body onto the steel beam again and lay on her stomach. Her feet wedged themselves between the front-most tube and the beam's diagonal wire webbing. One hand held onto a bottom tube while the other lowered the microphone to the stage.

That was Hyde's signal. He darted from the bunker to the stage. Ro had looped the microphone cord over the roof truss. He grabbed both halves of the cord, squatted, and kept it stable. She slid down the

de facto rope to the stage, and when she landed safely, the crowd's cheers burst into the white noise of approval. Lee nodded at her. Sherry patted her back, and Nate had a shit-eating grin his face.

Hyde dashed back to the sidestage bunker, where the guitar techs appeared equally astonished. "Man," said Scotty—Lee's guitar tech— "she's insane."

"You don't know a fourth of it," Hyde said and peered up at the roof truss. Ro had been a hundred feet in the air. One wrong move, and she would've become splatter. But he'd taught her how to climb up there safely, and Degenerate Matter had a good road crew. He'd made sure of that.

He was the president of Burnout Records, the label the band was signed to. He was also Degenerate Matter's main A&R guy, but sitting behind a desk all day wasn't his nature. He'd earned his place among the steel dogs, the roadies who built the lighting trusses. They respected him because he worked his ass off, especially when he didn't have to. They appreciated him because he paid them better than most road crews and kept them on retainer between tours.

They also gave him shit because he didn't break down the stage after gigs. Once a show was over, he became part of Ro's security detail. Her dictate.

The road crew didn't understand why he would, or could, do so many seemingly disparate jobs. Or do any of them, really. But it all made inherent sense to him. He'd never conformed to society's ideas of how a life should go, which made him incomprehensible to some people.

He'd grown up in an abusive, impoverished family. Ended up in a loving, middle-class home. Eventually met his rich, biological father, who happened to be black. That meant he was biracial, a fact no one—least of all himself—would have ever guessed by looking at him. For all the order in the cosmos, humans were full of chaos, but his chaos had become order.

The last note of music blasted through the arena, and the main set was over. Ro thanked the audience then exited backstage with the rest of the band. The instrument techs rushed on stage with various other members of the road crew before the first encore.

Hyde, though, went to the green room. It was empty, but the band would take its break there after taking a necessary piss. The place was comfortable enough. It had two couches, a table full of magazines and other amenities on the band's rider, and a mini fridge. Same as most green rooms in large stadiums.

Nate and Sherry entered after a few minutes, and they flopped onto the couches. Hyde opened two bottles of Heineken for them but held his breath. The smell alcohol tended to send him to unpleasant places inside his head.

"Good fuckin' set," he said, passing them the beers. "Swiss crowd loves you."

"Thanks," Nate said. "New record seems to be hitting well 'round here." He was a little guy, barely 5'5, but his arms and legs had power. He did some of the best drum work Hyde had heard since John Bonham and Keith Moon. "Did you see how they were all pogoing? Swear I felt the stage bouncing under my kit."

"It was," Sherry said. "I like how Europeans handle themselves in the pit. In the U.S., it's all fistfights and breast-groping." She sipped on her beer and gestured for a magazine. Hyde tossed her an issue of Schweizer Interior Design. "Can't stand that macho garbage. Someone's gonna get killed in there one of these days."

Hyde agreed. Next U.S. tour they did, stricter security measures were going to be taken. Female fans had no chance up front unless they were like Donna, almost six-feet tall and able to take down a drunk the size of an NFL linebacker.

A boot squeaked on the floor outside the green room, and Lee sauntered in with his usual sneer. He probably wasn't angry about anything specific. Pissed-off was his natural state, but for a guy who hated conformity even more than Hyde did, he resembled most rockers on MTV: long, dead-straight hair, the occasional flannel shirt to combat Minnesota weather, and Doc Martens on his feet.

What separated him from the rest of the rock pack, though, was his punk edge. Tattoos covered every inch of his arms, spread across his chest, and inched up his neck. He liked safety pins as much as Ro did, and they kept his shirts from falling apart. Safety pins even served as earrings and were stuck through his earlobes.

"Ro wants you in the crapper," he said and shoved sweaty, dark strands of hair off his forehead. "You got seven minutes. See if you can last that long."

Hyde dragged a breath through his nose. He and Lee chafed each other on several levels, but they had a truce for the band's sake and Ro's. Still, Lee's attitude right now was a big fuck-you. It had been that way since yesterday, when Hyde rejoined the band on tour.

"Seven minutes? Good to know," Hyde said and left the green room. No matter how hard Lee tried to get Hyde to break, Hyde wouldn't throw the first punch. He'd been down that road already, and he wasn't going back.

The backstage bathrooms were at the end of a short corridor. He entered the one labeled Damen and choked on the stink of cigarettes. Ro was smoking like a burning building, as she always did between sets. She'd ensconced herself in a stall. Easy to tell which one, despite that the bathroom lights were bright and made him squint. Smoke was rising from the right-most stall.

"Spark?" he said, and the stall door opened.

He joined her inside. The stall was cramped, and she sat on the closed toilet lid. Her short jet-black hair was matted by sweat. Cigarette buts littered the floor, and she offered him her half-smoked stick.

He accepted, and she eased herself against him as he smoked the cigarette down to ash. They'd had no chance to screw when he first got to Switzerland. He'd arrived a day ahead of the band and slept. The next day, he went to the venue to set up for the gig. Their only real opportunity to see each other was after the soundcheck, but they'd spoken in code and barely touched each other.

Few people outside the band knew he and Ro were engaged. Not the tour manager, not the road crew—and, most importantly, not Degenerate Matter's fans. He and Ro intended to keep it that way. Their private business had to stay private. None of Hyde's friends, save Brooke, knew he even had a girlfriend, let alone that he was engaged to her.

"I've been holding onto this fuck for so long," Ro said. She hooked her fingers over his hand like a claw and dragged it to her hip.

He ached to lose himself inside her. After walking among graves and the dead, he needed her light, but now wasn't the time. His lips grazed over her damp jawline. He pressed kisses into her neck and whispered, "Couple more hours. Put it into the mic. The crowd'll appreciate it."

"You want me to use the microphone as a dildo?"

He laughed, and warmth spread from his stomach to the rest of him. "Bring it close to the amp so it'll give you some buzzy feedback—"

She shoved him into the locked stall door and rubbed her denim-clad hips against him. "How did the funeral go?"

A mangled cough left his throat. She was dry humping him, and he was growing harder by the second. "You're asking me about that while you're doing this?"

"Some pleasure to go with the pain, love."

His fingers raked through her hair. "Tell you later." He cradled the sides of her face, pushed his mouth hard against hers, and his kiss went deep enough to make her groan. He wanted Ro like nothing else, but Degenerate Matter's encore would start in a few minutes. He had to give her back to the crowd.

"Later … later," he said and unlocked the stall. They left together, but she scooted in front of him. She dug her hands into his scalp. Her nails scraped against his skin, causing pain, but they slid gently to his sideburns afterward. She was looking up at him wistfully, as she so often did. The bathroom's lights glinted in her hazel eyes.

He didn't shy away from her gaze. Her eyes were the place where the world seemed most vivid, where he felt the most settled.

"That's only for me." She meant the way he looked at her, all the emotion it implied. This was a ritual between them, one that had developed over the last few years, one they did after spending long distances or time apart.

"Only yours," he said and laid the back of his hand against her chest. "And this?"

"Buin mo chridhe dhuit," she said in Scottish Gaelic and grasped his hand. My heart belongs to you.