To be fair, Grids doesn’t seem to miss the Internet much himself. From what he says to Mary he tried to stay away from it as much as possible, like it was toxic, bad for you and who you are. And at this time, while Melody was away in that military prison, it was getting even worse. There was talk of all-out war between Anon and a ’clave of patriotic Chinese hackers, both sides allegedly fighting proxy battles for corporate interests, the CIA, Google, or space aliens—take your pick. New viruses and DDoS strategies, bot armies a billion zombie web-cam units strong. Half of Chicago drowned in sewage when something disrupted the water systems there, reports of rolling blackouts across Beijing and Rio. The White House threatening to throw the kill switch.
Then that footage was leaked, the clearing of the homeless camp near Google’s HQ in California. Next thing, their campus in Mountain View was swamped by thousands of protestors. The leaked video had brought them down, but it felt like most of them had some other reason to be there: that unshakable feeling that they’d been fucked over, that they’d been denied something, that they’d had too much control taken away from them and put into the hands of unseen algorithms. They cut some data lines, blocked the driverless staff buses from getting in. Called it a “real-life DDoS.” It was peaceful enough, looked almost fun at first, like some kind of music festival. Until someone started messing around with homemade EMP grenades, and Google’s security team of PTSD-shaken ex-vets got trigger happy. For twelve hours it was nothing but screaming and chaos, footage of hipster kids bleeding out into the streets while Google hemorrhaged money on the markets, until the police finally rolled in with armored cars and drones and shut it all down. Thirty-six dead, 68 percent burned off Google’s share value.
But still they, somebody, managed to keep Melody trending.
It was easier in Bristol, Grids says, she would always have her followers here. He remembers—it must have been six months at least after she’d been sentenced—watching a flock of microdrones sweeping across the surface of one of the Barton Hill towers, spiraling and twisting like a cloud of starlings, spraying paint in their path, guided by some unseen graffiti artist, each pass of the artificial cliff face completing another section of the mural, until she was there, fifteen stories high, looking out across all of south Bristol as if daring the city to forget about her.
Of course, the main problem she had when she eventually got out, eighteen months into that two-year sentence, was that she’d won. Five months earlier, Bristol City Council had announced “an indefinite hiatus pending further feasibility reviews” for the Barton Hill demolition plans, citing financial concerns, but it was hard to imagine Melody hadn’t been a factor in the decision, which was met with cheers and celebration, raves and righteousness from her followers. Grids just wondered what she’d do next.
Grids says he tried to avoid the news on the day Melody was released, but Mary doesn’t believe him. Even if he had really wanted to, it must have been impossible. Drone-footage snippets on the timelines and punctuating the rolling news, her leaving the school, cars winding down damp Welsh A-roads, awaiting crowds in Bristol. Her emerging on a seventh-story balcony at Barton Hill, waving to fans, that mural surrounding her, looking tired but more militant in her baggy, oversized government-issue khaki stormsuit. The hoop earrings back. An endless collage of imagery, speculation.
Grids tried to get to see her, once. But she was impossible to get near. She had handlers now—hovering around her as she was lit by flashbulbs and shadowed by camera drones—corporate handlers that looked conspicuous by their lack of corporate suits, awkward and anxious panic etched across their you’re-not-on-my-agenda faces as they carpet-bombed you with press releases and hashtagged announcements. Album plans. Tour plans. Sponsorship deals. Remixes. A free homecoming party, open to all.
It was going to be at Cabot Circus, obviously, but this time it was official, organized. Security and police, health and safety. The rumor was that she would trigger something during her set and it would activate her new album, the now redundantly titled Flight Path Estate, which everyone had been downloading on preorder for weeks, and was sitting patiently on everybody’s spex or in their cloud, a dumb bundle of data waiting to be given a voice.
Grids got there early, to try to beat the worst of the crowds. The vibe couldn’t have been any different from the first time, mystery and surprise substituted with manufactured expectation and entitled excitement. The crowd was guided through entrances, faces scanned by drones, as Cabot hummed to the warm-up DJ’s bass tones—they were using the building’s sound system again, but also a professional rig. It sounded better, louder, but safer.
Of course, the whole thing was a gimmick. Like the original party, it was a stunt, but this time authenticity and desperation had been exchanged for marketing and product placement. Grids took his spex off as soon as he got there, the advertisements too much, the timeline buzz too intense. He didn’t even care if it meant he missed the visual aspect of the show, somehow he needed to separate himself from this charade, to stay unconnected, to be tuned out for once. He didn’t know how prophetic that was, at that moment. He didn’t even start to suspect how significant tucking those cheap LG spex away in his jacket pocket would be. How could he?
And then the crowd roared, jostled for a better view, and she was there. Among it all. Melody, onstage, on the mic.
She was working through material that was unfamiliar, the highlights of Flight Path Estate, the slightly unsure crowd cautiously moving with her, holding out for something they recognized. It sounded okay, the new material, echoing sonar blips and drizzly ambiences, cut-up vocals and antique drum machine hits. Grids could sense a nostalgia there, a yearning for parties she’d never seen, friends she’d never have, an era of masked fame and anonymous celebrity that if it had ever existed was long gone now. The 1990s. The failed revolutions, the brewery-sponsored social upheaval, mythological summers of love.
But something was wrong, something spoiled. The minimalism was gone, the starkness. The empty spaces had been filled. It wasn’t the beats that mattered, she had told him, but the spaces in between. They’d taken it from her, the A&R men and the superstar producers, taken what had made her unique, unable to bear that starkness, that inky blackness, that essence of Melody—that disconcerting sense of desertion and loneliness, jarring simplicity—they’d been unable to take it, unable to sell it, the fucking cowards, and they’d filled it with insignificant sound and faux fury. This wasn’t the Melody of industrial estate raves and squat parties, of Barton Hill protests and media control—it was fake Melody, a simulation, the Melody of billboards and TV interviews, sanitized drums and washed-out timeline retweet echoes.
Grids’s heart sank when it hit him, and he turned to leave.
And then it all changed. Melody changed.
It was that rhythm again. The one from the first time. That final rhythm.
Of course, it was obvious where this was going to go, or so he assumed, but still he stood transfixed, needing to see it play out again. So fast.
The music ended.
All eyes turned on Melody.
Her vocals stopped.
She said something about how she would die for her people, her community, her ends.
The crowd cheered.
She raised her right hand above her head. In it was something short and stubby, a tube with a switch on one end. A trigger.
Her other hand unzipped her jacket.
The crowd roared, people mimicking her, hands in the air.
Under the jacket she wore a waistcoat, sewn into it were thick cylinders, wires.
Melody closed her eyes.
Melody’s thumb pressed down on the switch.
All the lights went off, everything plunged into darkness.
A single sub-bass tone enveloped the building, rattling glass and bone.
The crowd screaming, whooping in joy as one.
A flash lit the stage, blue flame lighting Melody for the briefest of moments, before she disintegrated into a fountain of crimson and cloth, blood and flesh arching high into the dark, still air.
Darkness again.
People screaming, running, pushing.
Grids fell to the ground, the air pushed from his lungs by the stampeding crowd, his skin damp and cold from shock.