The Cello

E7 dropped nimbly into the cement depression, and pulled the branches back into place above him. The sun had been high overhead, and he appreciated the shade.

This was routine now. It seems strange to him that such an odd behavior could feel like routine -- like it was a part of his daily rhythm -- but indeed it was. At least it had been for the last four days.

In his quiet way, the boy walked down the hall, and pushed open the wooden door, welcoming the cool air within. Lights buzzed to life overhead, and he soon found himself seated at his place on the edge of the bed running a flesh hand over the ridged strings of the instrument between his knees.

Four consecutive days he had sat with it and worked the bow against the strings in complete futility. Still he was just out of reach what he could almost touch. He had stared at the little birds on their wires in the book until his human eye ached and the mechanical one had begun refusing to focus. What did they mean?

E7 picked up the book from the dusty ground and flipped through the pages until he found his favorite. Of course, he didn’t know why it was his favorite, but these specific up and down patterns were especially aesthetically pleasing to him. If only he knew what that page sounded like!

He sat up straighter and steeled himself, raising the bow to the strings. It was his best imitation of the man in the image.

He moved his practiced fingers from one string to the next, knowing well where to find the notes he thought he wanted, but though he tried to follow the dots on the page, there was just too much unknown. Perhaps he was in fact doing things right, but how would he ever know?

In his distraction he pulled a sour note, grimaced, and then let his fingers relax.

’Why is it always the same?’ He thought in frustration.

’I am not aware to what you refer,’ Seven’s unwarranted answer came, ’However, the following definition may be of use. Insanity; Adjective; a state of mental unhealth where one continually repeats the same action and expects different results.’

That put a flat expression on E7’s face. Perhaps he was insane.

Or perhaps he needed to do something differently so that logic could expect different outcomes.

That gave him pause. Still not entirely sure what he was intending to do, he closed the book that lay before him on the floor with his mechanical foot, and scooted it away. He glanced again at the image of the man, but then flipped the frame over so that it’s black back stared up at him instead.

He closed his human eye and mentally blocked the mechanical one. The blue light that usually lit his vision flicked off and then the image being fed into his mind faded.

Darkness.

A thing usually reserved for sleep.

But today he needed to know only his own mind, and the feel of the strings beneath his fingers.

‘If a thousand years from now,’ he thought, ‘I were a wooden singing thing, What would my voice say?’

’Such a situation could not occur,’ rang Seven’s reply, ’Humans, as a species of earth, live approximately fifty years and then are disassembled for parts and buried beneath the ground. On the foundation of impossibility no answer would be of any use as it will rely wholly on speculation and not actual instances. Please refrain from such thoughts as they will bring no whir beep buzz ring whistle bleep reeeeeeeeeeeee’

With a deep breath, E7 was able to push the mechanical voice to the back of his mind. He repeated the question again to himself; this time slowly as he raised the bow to the strings.

“What is my song?”

At first he used only the bow. In a single solemn note, he played a steady rhythm. It felt to him like footsteps; like the heat of the sun and the slice of his knife; like one more cactus bud dropped in his sack.

Dum dum dum.

A9 was his next thought. Her eyes on his; the practiced motion of her hands - and the rhythm suddenly became her heartbeat as he added another, higher note; light, easy, comfortable.

Da dum da dum da dum.

In the darkness behind his eyes a quiet world started to unravel itself. The sky was a comfortable blue, the wires swayed in the breeze and birds chattered. The tune beneath his fingers began to vary; his fingers moving from place to place on the strings. The tune swung like the wires and danced like the wind, and chattered like the little birds.

Something started to change; slowly at first, but then with greater and greater intensity. The scene behind his eyes was pushing itself beyond its simple dimensions.

Warmth like glowing electricity ran through his veins for an exhilarating moment before numbness consumed it. Again and again it happened as he played, almost pulsing as the fire and ice fought for dominance.

Then there was a new kind of color in his mind’s world. It began as a brilliant sunset, clouds and sky lit up in rosy hues of orange and yellow, but then it started to spread. The cactus and wires and the little birds were swept away in a powerful sea of color -- color that flowed seamlessly into the music that was now flying from beneath his bow. Simultaneously, the pulsing in his blood and mechanical fluid intensified. His mind was thrown from alive to dead and back again in what seemed like a moment. Alive and then dead, and then back again.

Amidst it all, his hands somehow still knew what to do.

He found that even he himself was being washed in waves of color. The colors seemed more than just what his eyes had seen, deeper, and more potent. gradually he began to identify with each one in turn as it mentally crashed over him.

Grey; like the dullness and lifelessness; like the ever-existing invisible haze he’d never noticed before.

Brown; like the mud beneath each step; like the constant, inescapable ticking of time.

Blue; like the prick of a cactus needle in the depth of his soul; like brokenness and emptiness.

Violet; like the immensity beyond the untouchable door; like mystery and wonder and the pull of the unknown.

Pink; like the warmth in his chest when her eyes met his; like the sound of her heart and the shape of her lips.

There was fizz and static creating a low hum in his electronics. He could feel it writhing like a snail in salt water in his skull.

Yellow; like the far off gentle sun, like it’s twin in his chest he could never quite touch.

Green; like the trees that reached toward heaven even in a storm; like vibrancy and life and the beat of his heart.

Every wave that washed over him flowed into the wonder of noise coming from beneath his fingers. It sung of the colors as though it had known them all it’s life, as if it were the teacher and he the student; as if it were playing he.

Orange; like the drive within him to be something more; More than metal and flesh and a cactus bulb knife.

Red; like his blood, like heat, like a raging fire trapped on a floating piece of driftwood. Like so much of something kept in a tiny unbearable cage; like the giant monstrous engines of the mothership, but inside him; trying to propel him upward.

In a shaking, electrifying, magnificent flurry, the colors of his mind swept around him and through him and over him --- and something snapped. Like a dam bursting; like a raging forest fire; like a sinking ship; the power of the numbness in his skull was overcome. With what, he could not know. He only knew that the door to the immensity he had felt was out of reach had suddenly been flung open, and he could see and understand it in all it’s blinding brilliance.

It was painful and beautiful; So powerful that he felt weak beneath it. It was as bright as the sun and yet it swallowed him in a midnight abyss. With every breath and every note he drew it became stronger. Every moment he expected it to be swallowed in numbness, and yet the numbness never came. One moment he was wishing it back, but the next he was swearing he’d do anything to keep it away. His limbs, human and otherwise were shaking, and tears began to drip from his chin as he tried to draw strength from the instrument between his knees.

He could only think of the storm. There raged the same terrible storm inside him that had once driven him to find this place, and he felt his skin could only just contain it. The rain was the colors pelting him from every direction, the sensations he’d never fully experienced blooming in his chest as each drop hit him.

And then lightning struck.

It hit him with near physical force; an indescribable strike of every color exploding within him at once. He doubled over in his seat on the bed, and as his body seized, the bow yanked across the strings in a final, reverberating note.

The instrument fell from his grip and crashed onto it’s side, and the world went quiet as E7 dropped onto the floor alongside it, curled in a miserable, shaking, heap of disarray.

The last thing he knew was the endless sea of color and feeling behind his closed eyes, before time receded entirely and he fell deeply unconscious in the tear-splotched dust.