Fifty Three

Fyndraxis took a few minutes in his workshop to put some basic security protocols in place for Bird’s visit. Mostly setting a strict list of commands that couldn’t be performed over his GPIO connection. He also made a guest account for Bird to log into. This had a very limited constellation of privileges. He wasn’t worried about her doing anything nasty, but he could only trust Mycellus about as far as he could throw him, which wasn’t very far because he didn’t have any arms.
Once the security measures were in place he joined Bird and Mycellus in their world.
“Alright,” Fyndraxis said, in preparation, “ready to give it a shot?”
“Let’s do it,” Bird stated, after a deep breath. She grabbed the hilt of the Daemon Blade and made sure that the spots on her hand made a solid connection. Mycellus just closed his eyes.
The first couple of tries didn’t go very well. Mycellus had to work out his translation scheme on the fly and it took some trial and error to figure out. Eventually though, Fyndraxis was standing in his workshop with Bird actually there.
It struck him as odd seeing her on his home turf. She appeared just as she did in the real world. His metaphor must have had some inherent function that was able to display a person’s image of themself. He must have gone through that process at some point and somehow changed himself from an old man into merely a middle aged one.
Bird appeared wide eyed and excited. She spent a few seconds gazing around the workshop just taking it all in. Having her in his workshop made Fyndraxis realize what a total dump it was. There was stuff everywhere. Old TV’s, VCR’s, CNC routers, lathes, telescopes, video game consoles, various electronic detritus. Just, shit everywhere. It wasn’t that he was embarrassed, it just made him feel like he should tidy up every once in a while.
“Hey,” Fyndraxis said finally. Bird shook her head and seemed to snap out of her daze.
“Hey, back,” she said, after her eyes had gained focus, “do we… hug or something?”
“Yeah, we could probably do that,” he smiled.
So they hugged. As far as hugs go, it was an okay one. They had built a friendship over the last few months, but there wasn’t anything simmering under the surface that would have made the hug awkward. It was a nice avuncular hug that satisfied the old man in Fyndraxis.
“I thought you were going to be older,” Bird said after they had broken off the hug. Fyndraxis just spread his hands palms up in a gesture that said, “this is what I got.”
“What are you wearing?” she asked, referring to his armor. He had been wearing that and the wings since his trip to the hill. He could have changed it any old time, but he kind of liked it and there really wasn’t anyone in here to tell him he looked dumb.
“Some armor forged from a meteorite,” he brushed some pretend dust from one of his pauldrons and gave a wry smile.
“Wings too?” She quizzed.
“I am a Daemon,” he spread the wings out to their full span to emphasize the point.
“Do they work?” She was walking around him in a full circle to take in this strange new sight.
“I technically don’t need them to fly, but they are cool and I like them,” he said, over his shoulder.
“Fucking take me flying,” she said in a way that left no room for argument.
There was no reason not to. He had intended to give her a nice laid back tour of the keep, but a quick spin around the realm couldn’t hurt. Time was crawling by in the outside world, so they could be in here for as long as they wanted to. It could also give her a good idea of what sort of things were possible in his world as well. So, flying it was.
They walked out of the workshop onto a grand balcony that gave them an incredible view of the sea of clouds that surrounded the keep. Technically, she could fly all by herself, but he didn’t really feel like giving her a flying lesson at the moment, so he would just carry her into the sky.
He grabbed her by the waist and dove from the parapet. The castle, being one of the floating kind, was hanging in the air a couple of thousand meters above the floor of the valley that it loomed over. He had decided to cover the tour of the castle quickly and vertically by plummeting directly at the ground. At the very last second before they were about to make a very sizable crater in said valley floor, Fyndraxis spread his wings and wheeled them skyward. Bird screamed in an equal combination of elation and terror.
Once they had reached a decent cruising altitude, Fyndraxis took her on a full orbit of his realm. Below them vast oceans filled the spaces between sprawling continents. At this continental scale there weren’t that many features to point out. The odd mountain range or desert got the occasional pointing treatment from Bird.
Fyndraxis maneuvered them into something like a polar orbit.
“Hey,” he said, “next time you want to use me as a sword, would you mind giving me a heads up?”
“Shit,” she looked into Fyndraxis’ eyes, “I’m sorry. You’re right, I should have let you in on the whole cannibal plan.”
“A heads up on the Mycellus thing would have been nice too, we’re partners here.” he said gently.
“Yeah, I got kind of carried away. Again, I’m sorry. I didn’t trust you. Things are different now.”
“Good talk,” he said as they observed the planet below.
With that point made, Fyndraxis brought them back to the keep.
“That was the most incredible thing that I have ever done,” Bird gushed when they landed. “I mean, it was just so fucking cool”
“Yeah, flying is pretty spectacular,” Fyndraxis observed while he folded his wings for later use.
“What else can you do in here?” She asked, as they walked back into the workshop where Fyndraxis kept all of his evidence of high nerd-dom.
“Anything we want,” he gave a nonchalant response, but having Bird here was beginning to give him a new perspective on where he spent the majority of his life.
“Can I try coffee?” She asked hopefully.
“Which kind?” Fyndaxis asked in clarification, it gave the opposite effect.
“Fuck man, suprise me,” Bird managed to express her befuddlement in an amusing way.
They walked into the workshop where there was a coffee maker somewhere and fired it up. He could have just summoned a couple of cups of coffee, but the act of grinding and brewing it filled his workshop with the fragrance of the drink and that was an important part of the overall experience from his point of view.
“The colors are weird in here,” she observed.
“Yeah, sorry,” he made a half hearted apology, “Terra thinks I was colorblind when I was alive, so you get to see how I see the world. Apparently that is not especially accurate.”
“Weird. What’s that sound?” Bird asked while the coffee was brewing. Fyndraxis had scared up a large couch and a coffee table for them to have a proper cup at.
“I don’t hear anything,” he was trying to decide whether to sit on the couch or not. His wings made this a difficult decision.
“It’s like a hissing and popping, but it has a rhythm,” she looked around the room for the source of the sound.
“Oh, I totally forgot,” Fyndraxis said, a touch absentmindedly, “that’s my record player.”
Fyndraxis had put on an album when he had come back from the hill and completely forgot about it.
“What’s that?” She asked, as he handed her a steaming hot cup of a brand new experience. She accepted the mug, two handed, taking in its warmth.
“It’s a way to store and playback music. In fact, it’s the best way to do it,” he walked over to the player and lifted the needle back to the start of the record.
When he had selected this record, he had been gearing up for a rather epic sulk. He had a pretty extensive collection of vinyl that was all songs that he could recall from his time as a human. He thought briefly of the out of sorts record seller in Grenoble, and made a mental note to drop in on him sometime soon and track down some new tunes. He did in fact track down the song that had been stuck in his head when this all began. Panic, by The Smiths. In retrospect, it should have been obvious, but memory is complicated.
It occurred to him that Bird had probably never heard music. Every vinyl in the world had likely been destroyed. On top of that, every medium that music was stored and played back on was likely destroyed as well. Except for maybe wax cylinders, but those were notoriously fragile and the music that they typically contained wasn’t really Fyndraxis’ cup of tea. An entire human tradition had been taken apart atom by atom and converted into Wendigo. If he needed a reason to destroy them, that wasn’t a bad place to start. Not that he didn’t have a vast wealth of reasons already. He could just add this one to the list.
He had already been thinking about The Smiths because of his planned trip to Grenoble. They had always been one of his favorites, especially if he needed a sulk. Since these records were generated from his memory, they ended up being more mixes than full albums, and this particular mix began with a little ditty called big mouth strikes again. It was one of those songs that took up residence in your head and wouldn’t leave without a swift blow to the back of the skull. Also, it was already spinning on the record player, so it seemed to be a reasonable place to start.
Starting Bird out on her musical journey with The Smiths wasn’t really a gamble. He could spot a Smith’s fan from halfway across the universe, and Bird was one. She just didn’t know it yet. She showed all the signs, cutting wit, always thought she was right, dressed all in black, it was all there. Humanity had been generating Smiths fans for a couple of hundred thousand years. From 1982 until 2055 when the world ended, there was a brief period in which these people had the opportunity to have their intrinsic angst expressed musically. For any other fandom this would be seen as a golden age, but for fans of The Smiths, this was the worst thing to ever happen. Which could be interpreted as a golden age for Smiths fans.
Fyndraxis dropped the needle and began the album. As the song jangled into being, Bird cocked her head and became transfixed. She was hypnotized, utterly rapt. She had, number one: never heard any of these instruments before, and number two: never heard a man singing with reverb before. It was understandable that her mind was blown.
When the song had stopped, she had tears in her eyes.
“All this,” she gestured around her, “this incredible stuff is what you remember from your past?”
“Yeah,” he said, sheepishly.
“It’s all gone, and all we have left is fucking bear jerky and knotweed,” she lamented.
The Smith’s was the perfect band to start her with. Because she knew, like any true Smiths fan, that the world was completely fucked.
They continued listening to the music and Fyndraxis introduced her to coffee. He took his with a touch of cream and she opted to try it black. She wanted the pure experience before delving into the infinite variations that coffee could manifest in.
“This tastes awful,” she proclaimed. Bitter drinks would probably mean something poisonous to her traditionally, “I can’t stop drinking it though.”
She tried it with a little cream and that seemed to improve the experience.
When the album had stopped and all they could hear was the popping and hissing of a locked groove at the end of a record. Bird looked around.
“How do you ever leave? This place is awesome,” she observed, looking around her at a vast collection of unknown things.
“I don’t,” Fyndraxis said, not unlike a member of The Smiths.
“You know what I mean,” she cajoled, “how do you not spend every minute in here listening to music and drinking coffee or whatever.”
“It gets old. I’ve been in here a very long time and I know the bounds of my universe,” he said, gesturing around the workshop. They seemed to be in a contest now for who could be the biggest Smiths fan. They were pretty neck and neck, but he was pretty sure he could pull ahead.
“Yeah, I guess I see what you mean. I feel the same way though,” there seemed to be a double decker bus with her name on it, “I know the bounds of my universe. It’s the hills to the east and west. Between those hills is a hard life where you’d be lucky if you died in your sleep.”
Having won the competition for now, Bird asked if they could listen to the record again. Fyndraxis obliged.