Body Music

Published in Issue 97 of Andromeda Spaceways. ●●●

The world is beset by apocalypse: a tree plague and a humanity-threatening disease loom over all. Against this backdrop comes an artist in a midsize city whose particular artform is creating beasts out of synthetic meat and animating them with jazz recordings. But strange things happen to him when he meets his rival and hears about her desperate plan for survival.

She kept speaking but I gave up listening. This absurd tree-instrument was sounding its music and I was fly-trapped in its spider web. The timbre was the thing, I realised. What the discovery of harmony had done for pitch, that was the magnitude of what was happening here with regard to timbre.

My fascination was so intoxicating that when Mitr paused for breath I said, “I accept.”

All my thanks to Joel Schanke for the acceptance and his spot-on editorial notes.

Illustration by the inimitable Lur Noise, whose outstanding work you can find here.