I’d told Madeline and Kai briefly about how the morphic bracelets came from the Orpheus Guild, and that it was an interdimensional thing, but honestly, they both accepted the idea pretty quick after one trip to the rehearsal room, the White Room, and the million questions kind of disappeared. All they wanted to do was get down there and play. Madeline asked me a lot at first about the how of it, where’d the colors come from and so on, but I honestly don’t know much myself. I know it has to do with the atomic and molecular structure of the room, energy fields going through it and how our minds get set to the same wavelengths as the room’s while we’re traveling through the tunnel and the big domed place, but I couldn’t explain it like a physicist might. If a physicist could.
We went back to my basement rehearsal room, and I sat everybody down.
“Ok,” I said. “I think we all can agree this is one good band we got here.”
“Word,” Kai said.
“Never in my dreams,” Juli grinned.
Madeline looked at me, coolly. “And…?”
“Well, it’s probably time you knew what it was for,” I said, squirming a little in my seat, trying to think of how to explain all of it.
“It’s for playing music like nobody ever has!” Juli crowed.
“True,” I said to her. “True. And we’ll be playing for people. Not just for ourselves. And not just people.”
“A gig!” Juli said. “Awesome! Where?”
“It’ll be in the Colosseum.”
“I haven’t heard of a theater called that around her,” Madeline said.
“Because it’s the one in Greece. Only not really that one.”
“I think I need some weed to go along with this,” Kai said. He went to his saxophone case, opened it and took out a joint. He lit, inhaled, blew it out, came back, sat down and offered it to Madeline. She waved her hands, but Juli took it and drew in a big hit.
“We’re playing in a Colosseum, only it’s not the one in Greece, but it looks like it. Is that right so far, Estes? You might have talked about that before this.”
“I wasn’t sure we really had a band up until now.”
“Fair enough,” Madeline said. “So where’s this Colosseum? Vegas?”
“No. It’s kind of not here, not there, not anywhere. Kind of like the White Room.”
Everybody was quiet. Juli whispered Wow and passed the joint back to Kai.
“I’ve never seen it,” I said. “Only heard about it.”
“From who?” Madeline said.
“My mom, for one. She was there, around twenty years ago. In the audience. Just before she had me.”
“Not quite twenty?” Madeline said, pouncing on it like a cat on a mouse.
“Yeah, a little less than,” I said. “She was pregnant with me at the time, so I guess I’ve been there.”
“You’re seventeen, Estes, right?” Madeline said. “It was seventeen years ago.
“Yeah.”
“What are you not getting at here?” Kai said. “What was this gig about? This place where you experienced all this music, which must have been amazing, coming in vibrations, into your mom’s womb. Man, that’s a trip and half,” Kai said, taking another deep draw. “So we got a gig there, a giant gig, when nobody’s heard us yet?”
“Yeah. And, ah… we’re not getting paid for it. The band doesn’t exist for money, or fame or anything.”
“This keeps getting better,” Madeline said.
“Just true musical creation,” Kai nodded. “Is that it? Music for music’s sake?”
“Umm, no. Yes, but no.”
Madeline kicked my leg. “Get on with it, Estes!”
“We… we bring balance,” I said. “It’s a very serious, special thing.”
“Like Jedis! Jedi musicians!” Juli shouted. “All right!”
“No, we aren’t Jedis. But we are going be in a battle of the bands that sets the way the world is, the balance, for the next while. Maybe twenty years or so. For better or worse. More positive, natural, versus the forge, metal and steel, building things everywhere. We’re playing for the natural side.”
Madeline had her eyes in those thoughtful, piercing slits, when she’s thinking hard about something, then stretched her mouth into a grim smile.
“Just how dangerous is this, Estes? It sounds a bit dangerous to me.”
“No. No danger. Except losing.”
“What is this whole thing about, then, Estes? It’s time we knew the story.” Madeline said. “I mean, up until now you’ve been saying how it’s another dimension and and you were given the bracelets by some secret people you couldn’t name and you showed us, ‘Here’s how it works,’ but every time I asked you more, you changed the subject and said we’d talk about it later. So, Estes, now is definitely later.”
“Yeah,” Kai said.
Juli shrugged. “If we don’t where we’re going, we’ll end up someplace else.”
Madeline laughed.
“Exactly, Estes. You heard the woman.”
“We’re a band now, then, right?” I said. “We all just agreed to be in the band?”
Everybody nodded.
“In that case, you are… we are,” I said, “the next Orpheist band.”
Thanks, Dave! Feel free to say something about The Orpheists!