RE: The Big Damn Fight- Multiverse's Got Talent!
07-28-2016, 07:36 AM
(This post was last modified: 08-02-2016, 05:33 AM by Hellfish.)
A glissando poured its way down Nova's piano keys like liquid gold, her fingers striking each note fluidly down the scale; at the same time the superstar leaned into her microphone and crooned: "Ohhhhhhh..."
“Baby can’t you see,” the multiverse heard, “I’m calling…”
On the opposite side of the stage, Noise picked up an electric guitar, momentarily missing the strings with a hand made of sound. Ears cocked, she listened to Nova's performance, and just as fluidly began to pick out a countermelody.
“Hands in the air”
An infinity of hands flew up into the air.
“Presidents, prime ministers”
A rather smaller portion of those hands came down.
“They said that we didn’t care”
The people turned on their rulers, tearing their flesh apart with their teeth.
“We’re the circle in the square”
And the noise played on.
Nova narrowed her eyes and bit her lip, a motion repeated on the massive screen above her. Her voice scooted up against the scale, reaching notes not formally encoded into musical tradition: “Too high, can’t come down -”, power chords, “losing my head, spinnin’ round and round,” out of the corner of her eye, she saw Raime smily wryly - “Do you feel me now?”
They did.
...and underneath them both, underneath them all, the bass rumbled on: “The time is now, our time has come;” Noise screamed into the empty black sky, “we show them how, what can’t be done…”
(“Actually,” said a spectator halfway across the universe, “that interpretation of possible states is fallacious…”)
“No matter what they say or they don’t say,” the riffs crawled bodily up and down musical conception, rejecting the masses, undertaking the bodies unto oblivion, “we make a way out of no way…”
(“What does that even mean?” Whole communities on the strange network that wired the multiverse together began to buzz, speculating, drawing battle lines and voting strategies. “Who do we vote for?”)
Nova’s hands crossed, uncrossed, traced patterns onto her piano keys. The force of her playing began to shift the entire Steinway on its base, and no one noticed when one leg slipped off entirely and began to float on thin air of its own accord. “With a taste of your lips, I’m on a ride; you’re toxic, I’m slipping under…”
She slid under the now clearly-levitating piano, which against all odds kept playing, the keys clearly moving on their own. “With a taste of a poison paradise,” she crooned into a mike, “I’m addicted to you, don’t you know that you’re toxic?”
Half-lidded blue eyes met the camera and winked, and the multiverse swooned.
(On the other hand, a universe made entirely out of off-cast toxic sludge from other universes deeply objected to Alex Albright’s choice, and complained loudly about it on the network for anyone to listen. Votes swung one way, then the other. “Who do we vote for?”)
’Salacious’ wasn’t really in Noise’s stage vocabulary, but anger sure as hell was. “...planted seeds in silence” mingled in the air, followed by “granted meek compliance,” and along the line somewhere the spring rain exploded. Into a riot.
(Deep analytical analyses fluttered about the network, screaming to be heard, each seeming more in-depth and shocking than before. At this point the multiverse was at once inundated with and immunized against clickbait, but it kept replicating anyway. “What does it mean? Who do we vote for?”)
“It’s getting late,” and you can’t give her up. Nova’s eyes glittered on screen, singing to the watching world, don’t you know that I’m toxic?
“Party at the protest, rally like a rock star,” the strings sang, Noise phasing in and out of sound herself for maximum harmonic.
Nova dropped the piano down its crashing, lowest notes, repeating a motif over and over as she vocalized wordlessly in time.
“Hands in the air,” she screamed,
“With a taste of your lips I’m on a ride,” she sang,
“Presidents, prime ministers,” she shouted,
“You’re toxic, I’m slipping under,” she crooned,
“They said that we didn’t care” the two of them rising into a
“With a taste of a poison paradise,” cacaphonous
“We’re the” simultaneous
“I’m addicted to you,” contemporaneous
“circle and the square-” climax
“don’t you know that you’re toxic?” which echoed out into the multiverse, rippling across the worlds uncounted. Beings of every imaginable existence scrambled for their phones or communicators or organic flesh-network interfaces, casting their vote.
(“Who do we vote for?”)
(“Who do we vote for?”)
***
Raime tapped idly at her laptop-corpse, the other three judges peering over her shoulder at the wildly flashing shapes and colors on her williamy screen.
“Just off the top of my head,” her hand idly brushed her floating hair, which was now in a slightly warmer bucket in front of the monitor, “I think we’re ready to declare a winner!”
The Simon Cowells nodded. “Brilliant. I’m very happy to announce a winner for 20ei-BROADCAST-5151 “Multiverse’s Got Talent”,” he repeated the title again in several languages, some of which made everyone’s ears itch, “but first of all, let’s talk about the performances themselves.”
Howie Mandel readjusted a floating notepad before continuing. “I found both performances to be very engaging - Noise, I felt your entrance really summed up your personality and your play style, and it was a very good opener for the mood of your piece.” He turned a page. “Nova, your performance was absolutely stunning, with your remote piano skills and the levitation and the coming forward to really engage with the audience - that was an excellent choice of choreographic style.”
The princess thought for only a moment before speaking up. “Noise, you did kinda save me from a space monster, but don’t think that’ll affect my judging!” She pouted momentarily. “I felt… I thought your thing was a little over the top? I liked your act and everything, but I don’t think the music was the best choice. Like Howie said though, it did a pretty good job of establishing you, sorta?”
“Now the first thing I want everyone to get into their heads here,” Raime began, “is that none of this is personal. It’s just business.” Her body tapped away at a few ex-william keys, and brought up an extensive page of charts. “Speaking from a purely modal sense, the form of each performance was close to flawless. Not very efficient, but that’s show business for you. Still, Noise, I found your… oop, hold on,” her floating head slipped under the melting ice water, and she scrambled to prop it back up, bubbling all the while, “...all in all, I felt the two to be essentially on par.” Her body sat back in the chair, noncommittally, and her neck did a thing that might have been a chin thrust, had her chin not been in a bucket in front of her. Incidentally, the head did a somersault. “But, if you were to press me... my heart says Noise, but my head says Nova. Tehehe.”
The Simon Cowells took a deep breath. “I believe we have gathered enough judgement to make a decision!”
A drumroll began, rose in intensity, reached into the ultrasonics and smashed through the auditory ceiling, entering into a realm of vibratory nonsense enjoyed only by certain highly-moderated neutron lifeforms living only in certain nuclear reactors, and even then only for half-seconds at a time. It closed off with a cymbal clap that murdered entire civilizations.
“Noise, Nova, you both created stellar performances tonight.” He gestured up into the sky, where two stars winked into existence. “No, literally. The multiverse will remember you, winner or loser, as the brightest of these stars. They represent the very heart and soul of your participation here today.”
“In fact,” Howie Mandel interjected, “the winner of this contest will be awarded their star, in a nice little carrying case, as a trophy for winning the greatest and most needlessly complex talent show in the entire multiverse! The loser will be ejected from this platform, by means of an incredibly sproingy spring, directly into the heart of their star,” he added as a quick afterthought.
Tensions hushed as the Simon Cowells pulled open an envelope containing all the votes from all the sentient beings in all the universes all around them, summarized into one word on a piece of ordinary paper.
“Ladies, gentlemen, neuters, alien beings of mysterious and indeterminate gender, nucleons of incomprehensible concept thereof…” he continued on in this vein for a bit, during which Raime entertained the crowds by playing one-handed catch with her own head.
“The winner of Multiverse’s. Got. Talent. Is…………”
The multiverse held its breath.
“NOVA!”
sproing
The crowd went absolutely bonkers. Admittedly, that was what they were paid to do. They kept going on even after two judges, the winner, and several other backstage folks vanished into thin air in the middle of the awards ceremony.
***
The flashing lights and deafening sounds of the stadium flickered, and then faded into the gloom of endless, echoing caverns.
“Hrrruurggh okay I feel better,” the Abhorrent said, wobbling a little. Its mane had been messily braided and tied with ribbons. “You know I made bets on you. And lost. And now I don’t have fifty dollars.” It scratched its neck with a hind leg, surveying its captives blearily. It snuffled at them for a few moments while it thought.
“And good job,” it decided. “It’s time for a vacation. Not a very good vacation. You still have to pay for it. Fuck you.” It dragged its great mass forward with its many hands, crushing some of its slugs. In its claws appeared bright pamphlets which it threw out at no one in particular.
“Genesis Labs,” it burbled. “The hors d’oeuvres I’ve had there bring tearrrrs to my eye. But don’t eat too much. You’re looking a little husky.” It cast out a critical eye. “Don’t think I didn’t notice. I can always almost tell.”
The void rushed up once more-
“Baby can’t you see,” the multiverse heard, “I’m calling…”
On the opposite side of the stage, Noise picked up an electric guitar, momentarily missing the strings with a hand made of sound. Ears cocked, she listened to Nova's performance, and just as fluidly began to pick out a countermelody.
“Hands in the air”
An infinity of hands flew up into the air.
“Presidents, prime ministers”
A rather smaller portion of those hands came down.
“They said that we didn’t care”
The people turned on their rulers, tearing their flesh apart with their teeth.
“We’re the circle in the square”
And the noise played on.
Nova narrowed her eyes and bit her lip, a motion repeated on the massive screen above her. Her voice scooted up against the scale, reaching notes not formally encoded into musical tradition: “Too high, can’t come down -”, power chords, “losing my head, spinnin’ round and round,” out of the corner of her eye, she saw Raime smily wryly - “Do you feel me now?”
They did.
...and underneath them both, underneath them all, the bass rumbled on: “The time is now, our time has come;” Noise screamed into the empty black sky, “we show them how, what can’t be done…”
(“Actually,” said a spectator halfway across the universe, “that interpretation of possible states is fallacious…”)
“No matter what they say or they don’t say,” the riffs crawled bodily up and down musical conception, rejecting the masses, undertaking the bodies unto oblivion, “we make a way out of no way…”
(“What does that even mean?” Whole communities on the strange network that wired the multiverse together began to buzz, speculating, drawing battle lines and voting strategies. “Who do we vote for?”)
Nova’s hands crossed, uncrossed, traced patterns onto her piano keys. The force of her playing began to shift the entire Steinway on its base, and no one noticed when one leg slipped off entirely and began to float on thin air of its own accord. “With a taste of your lips, I’m on a ride; you’re toxic, I’m slipping under…”
She slid under the now clearly-levitating piano, which against all odds kept playing, the keys clearly moving on their own. “With a taste of a poison paradise,” she crooned into a mike, “I’m addicted to you, don’t you know that you’re toxic?”
Half-lidded blue eyes met the camera and winked, and the multiverse swooned.
(On the other hand, a universe made entirely out of off-cast toxic sludge from other universes deeply objected to Alex Albright’s choice, and complained loudly about it on the network for anyone to listen. Votes swung one way, then the other. “Who do we vote for?”)
’Salacious’ wasn’t really in Noise’s stage vocabulary, but anger sure as hell was. “...planted seeds in silence” mingled in the air, followed by “granted meek compliance,” and along the line somewhere the spring rain exploded. Into a riot.
(Deep analytical analyses fluttered about the network, screaming to be heard, each seeming more in-depth and shocking than before. At this point the multiverse was at once inundated with and immunized against clickbait, but it kept replicating anyway. “What does it mean? Who do we vote for?”)
“It’s getting late,” and you can’t give her up. Nova’s eyes glittered on screen, singing to the watching world, don’t you know that I’m toxic?
“Party at the protest, rally like a rock star,” the strings sang, Noise phasing in and out of sound herself for maximum harmonic.
Nova dropped the piano down its crashing, lowest notes, repeating a motif over and over as she vocalized wordlessly in time.
“Hands in the air,” she screamed,
“With a taste of your lips I’m on a ride,” she sang,
“Presidents, prime ministers,” she shouted,
“You’re toxic, I’m slipping under,” she crooned,
“They said that we didn’t care” the two of them rising into a
“With a taste of a poison paradise,” cacaphonous
“We’re the” simultaneous
“I’m addicted to you,” contemporaneous
“circle and the square-” climax
“don’t you know that you’re toxic?” which echoed out into the multiverse, rippling across the worlds uncounted. Beings of every imaginable existence scrambled for their phones or communicators or organic flesh-network interfaces, casting their vote.
(“Who do we vote for?”)
(“Who do we vote for?”)
***
Raime tapped idly at her laptop-corpse, the other three judges peering over her shoulder at the wildly flashing shapes and colors on her williamy screen.
“Just off the top of my head,” her hand idly brushed her floating hair, which was now in a slightly warmer bucket in front of the monitor, “I think we’re ready to declare a winner!”
The Simon Cowells nodded. “Brilliant. I’m very happy to announce a winner for 20ei-BROADCAST-5151 “Multiverse’s Got Talent”,” he repeated the title again in several languages, some of which made everyone’s ears itch, “but first of all, let’s talk about the performances themselves.”
Howie Mandel readjusted a floating notepad before continuing. “I found both performances to be very engaging - Noise, I felt your entrance really summed up your personality and your play style, and it was a very good opener for the mood of your piece.” He turned a page. “Nova, your performance was absolutely stunning, with your remote piano skills and the levitation and the coming forward to really engage with the audience - that was an excellent choice of choreographic style.”
The princess thought for only a moment before speaking up. “Noise, you did kinda save me from a space monster, but don’t think that’ll affect my judging!” She pouted momentarily. “I felt… I thought your thing was a little over the top? I liked your act and everything, but I don’t think the music was the best choice. Like Howie said though, it did a pretty good job of establishing you, sorta?”
“Now the first thing I want everyone to get into their heads here,” Raime began, “is that none of this is personal. It’s just business.” Her body tapped away at a few ex-william keys, and brought up an extensive page of charts. “Speaking from a purely modal sense, the form of each performance was close to flawless. Not very efficient, but that’s show business for you. Still, Noise, I found your… oop, hold on,” her floating head slipped under the melting ice water, and she scrambled to prop it back up, bubbling all the while, “...all in all, I felt the two to be essentially on par.” Her body sat back in the chair, noncommittally, and her neck did a thing that might have been a chin thrust, had her chin not been in a bucket in front of her. Incidentally, the head did a somersault. “But, if you were to press me... my heart says Noise, but my head says Nova. Tehehe.”
The Simon Cowells took a deep breath. “I believe we have gathered enough judgement to make a decision!”
A drumroll began, rose in intensity, reached into the ultrasonics and smashed through the auditory ceiling, entering into a realm of vibratory nonsense enjoyed only by certain highly-moderated neutron lifeforms living only in certain nuclear reactors, and even then only for half-seconds at a time. It closed off with a cymbal clap that murdered entire civilizations.
“Noise, Nova, you both created stellar performances tonight.” He gestured up into the sky, where two stars winked into existence. “No, literally. The multiverse will remember you, winner or loser, as the brightest of these stars. They represent the very heart and soul of your participation here today.”
“In fact,” Howie Mandel interjected, “the winner of this contest will be awarded their star, in a nice little carrying case, as a trophy for winning the greatest and most needlessly complex talent show in the entire multiverse! The loser will be ejected from this platform, by means of an incredibly sproingy spring, directly into the heart of their star,” he added as a quick afterthought.
Tensions hushed as the Simon Cowells pulled open an envelope containing all the votes from all the sentient beings in all the universes all around them, summarized into one word on a piece of ordinary paper.
“Ladies, gentlemen, neuters, alien beings of mysterious and indeterminate gender, nucleons of incomprehensible concept thereof…” he continued on in this vein for a bit, during which Raime entertained the crowds by playing one-handed catch with her own head.
“The winner of Multiverse’s. Got. Talent. Is…………”
The multiverse held its breath.
“NOVA!”
sproing
The crowd went absolutely bonkers. Admittedly, that was what they were paid to do. They kept going on even after two judges, the winner, and several other backstage folks vanished into thin air in the middle of the awards ceremony.
***
The flashing lights and deafening sounds of the stadium flickered, and then faded into the gloom of endless, echoing caverns.
“Hrrruurggh okay I feel better,” the Abhorrent said, wobbling a little. Its mane had been messily braided and tied with ribbons. “You know I made bets on you. And lost. And now I don’t have fifty dollars.” It scratched its neck with a hind leg, surveying its captives blearily. It snuffled at them for a few moments while it thought.
“And good job,” it decided. “It’s time for a vacation. Not a very good vacation. You still have to pay for it. Fuck you.” It dragged its great mass forward with its many hands, crushing some of its slugs. In its claws appeared bright pamphlets which it threw out at no one in particular.
“Genesis Labs,” it burbled. “The hors d’oeuvres I’ve had there bring tearrrrs to my eye. But don’t eat too much. You’re looking a little husky.” It cast out a critical eye. “Don’t think I didn’t notice. I can always almost tell.”
The void rushed up once more-