Bab 116: Chapter 32: Wavestriker
'So you interested in these kinds too?' Torelamri can't pretend that he isn't at least a little surprised by the occupation of Vindy, however, she has a certain aura about her that seemed to draw him in. Is this the aura of someone who constantly puts herself in the spotlight? He wondered.
'Partially, since I tend to get my hands on different sort of production technology before.....' Vindy said, following Torelamri's gaze onto the exhibition right in front of them of a moving mechanical statue that's constantly morphing from one shape into another, 'right now, my creative process follows a different sort of....inspiration.'
'Is that why you here?' Torelamri asked curiously with his usual quirky talk, as he became unusually open in the presence of another just like him.
'Oh, no. I was invited.' Vindy gave him a smile and declined to speak further. Torelamri nodded understandingly as he quickly thought through what business Infinity could have with Vindy, perhaps they are simply inviting her here as a company for some sort of a occasion and giving her a ticket to the exhibitions as a gesture, rather than the shady branch of Absolute Being doing something with her.
Besides, what could a musician do for Absolute Being, Torelamri thought, regardless of all of the positive benefits that music may offer, an engineer is surely a more valuable being in any group, especially one like Absolute Being.
'I see.' Torelamri nodded and moved along, 'it was nice to meet you, Vindy. I hope you have a good time.'
Vindy looked on at the shorter and older Rockie in front of him as he walked away, and thought to herself that there is a certain feeling emanating out of this Torelamri, though she, very much like him, couldn't quite tell what exactly is going on. She was indeed invited here to be one of the performers for a dinner occasion in the evenings in a few days, and she simply got here a day early to get used of the environment according to her invite.
She was quite surprised that Infinity actually reached out to her, and she always planned to pop by to the Galactic Celebrations, and right before she has entered for a music competition that was streamed all across the galaxy as well as performing in an arena in a dug out asteroid to tens of thousands of live audience too. Vindy actually struggled in that occasion, as her usual performance is centered around forming an intimate relationship with a small crowd of people rather than trying to dominate over thousands at the same time. That wasn't exactly her strength on display, but perhaps Infinity saw something in her, and her commission was cheap enough.
'I just need free accommodation and food and tickets in and out. And a few hundred credits are fine.' As the event manager got in contact and asked about Vindy's pricing, that's her answer.
'Deal.' The manager agreed without saying another word.
And a few days later, she is on Olympus Zero.
Vindy's personal interface vibrated from a new notification regarding time, and it turned out that a unplanned meeting has been arranged for her with the 'manager of the event manager'. Sounded like a big deal, but Vindy figured she had some time to kill before she had to go up.
'Mrs Vindy, please follow me.' A pair of officers dressed in human suits said gently behind her. They stood a respectful meter behind her, and guided her towards the elevator positioned in the center of the entire floor, running through the building like the artery. As the capsule of speed rises up into the sky and Vindy held onto the rail to fight against the feeling of the blood rush. They stopped at the top floor not long after, and Vindy is thankful that she did not have to hear the repetitive elevator music for the third time when she finally stepped out.
The hallway is appropriately lit with white lights, and a giant open conference room at the end of the walkway with the views of the endless cityscape below is what caught her eye immediately. The officers guided her towards the entrance before excusing themselves and stepping away, leaving herself and a beautiful human women in the room.
The women carried a long black hair and dressed in a slim-fit red dress with patterns of dragon and fire sewed onto it. She has her legs crossed and seemed to be working on some documents on the hologram before Vindy arrived. She looked up at her and smiled.
'I am sorry for the sudden meeting,' the women said, 'I did not give Joey the longest time in the world to sort this out, but I just really needed someone who can play some music for the event tomorrow night.'
Vindy isn't sure what to make of that comment, and simply nodded. Humans use nod as a sign of acknowledgement, she thought.
'Now, please take a seat, Vindy.' She gestured, and Vindy sat on the seat, her short legs dangling back and forth by the edge of the chair. The glass surface on the table reflects the lights on the ceiling.
'I understood that one of your key strengths is being able to connect with different crowds of people with your touch,' Lady Lily said, 'I particularly liked it when your fingers lit up in parts of the performances.'
'You have seen me play?' Vindy asked, and she almost asked if the women in front is a fan, but quickly realizing how absurd that would be. She maybe somewhat famous on the internet, but she is not nearly as prideful as some of the others.
'A few of the recordings and streams, yes.' the women said before putting her pale white hand on her chest, 'I apologize, I haven't introduced myself yet. I am Lady Lily, and I am overseeing the entire event tomorrow evening. You will simply be playing some background music for a variety of guests, if that suits you particular skills?'
'I can do that.' Vindy nodded.
'How about this?' Lady Lily said nonchalantly, 'I know all about the performer's code, but if you tell me how you did the lighting up your finger's trick, I will double your pay?'
Vindy looked up at her, a sense of tension travelling up and down her body like a string that was pulled tight.
'Seriously?'
'Yes! I promise not to tell anyone else too!' Lady Lily said, 'please?'
Crunching her fingers together underneath the table into a fist and relaxing immediately after, Vindy shook her head and puts on a smile, 'sorry, it's a performer's secret!'
'Oh.' Lady Lily didn't seem too bothered by the answer. She nodded her head and confirmed a few other details before letting Vindy go. And she did give her a few hundred credits for her meals and general expenses, telling her to go check out some of the exhibitions if she can and do whatever needs to prepare for the performance.
After Vindy disappeared behind the elevator doors, a hidden side door is opened, and a giant human male walked through the door. He wears nothing but a black tank top, and he is covered in sweat.
'That was one hot room.' Sir Deva said, as he took the towel that Lady Lily is handing him, 'but why do you want me hidden when all you wanted to talk about is music and organization things?'
'Well, I am afraid you will get bored.' Lady Lily replied with a innocent shrug.'
'You know me better than that. Is there anything special about her?'
'Check this out.' With the swipe of her finger, she pulled up a recording of Vindy performing at one of the restaurants on a space station somewhere just outside the Olympus system. The crowd is a mix of humans and Aquarians. Within the video, Vindy's the one performing on a type of electrical music producer, and the video started after a few acts, and the crowd is still just getting started.
Then, everything changed, as Vindy's fingers lights up, the crowds of humans immediately responded to the music, and Lady Lily and Sir Deva can't help but also bob their heads to the catchy melody, still, there is nothing special about this, as it's really as many others have said, just music.
'What's so special?' Sir Deva said, and Lady Lily pulled up a holographic screen and positioned it right next to the live feed of the video.
'I ran through a simplified audio analysis, and look what I have found with a simple analysis.' Lady Lily said as she pointed her fingers towards the waveform on screen, 'this is what you hear, the peaks around this frequency. But all of this is also there.'
'Those look like noise signals.' Sir Deva said.
'That's my initial thought too,' Lady Lily pulled up a third hologram with waves positioned at the noise frequency, except the amplitudes are much smaller, 'this is what noise should look like.'
'Right.'
'All of this really stemmed from the strange feeling that I get from hearing her music, it just doesn't feel the same compared to others. There is a sense of connection from this Rockie, to me, so I was a little curious.' Lady Lily said, 'you won't believe what I found next.'
Vindy spent the rest of the day away from the Infinity's base in this district, as the queue's of people that are trying to get down into the basement have reduced significantly, she could finally go down and get some spicy Rocky cuisine that she hasn't had in a long time. That was partially because she, like many humans, never accepted printed Rocky foods as proper food, due to the inability of food printers to handle true flavor.
She ordered a usual Rock Hard Noodles with mixed spices and a smooth fatty nut sauce with some picked vegetables, and as she held the bowl of food and sat down onto the table, she couldn't help but draw her attention to a holographic performance going on at the center of the food court. It was a human hologram piano player playing a generic tone.
There is only sounds, but no connections. Vindy can't say she respected that style of music, apart from the mechnical skills.
See, her style of music is unique to her, and her alone, and that's because the way she plays is different to everyone else in the galaxy. She is sure of it, and that's because of how her glowing fingers work. This does not come from thousands of hours of practice alone, but rather, the hours of practice came after she found the thing that made her fingers glow.
She was an audio and acoustic engineer and a musician, though Rockies music really never moves past rhythmic chants about their endless battle and grind against the nature. The greater landscape of music outside the Rockian culture is what Vindy longed for. She listened to the classical music of the humans, the strike pop of Auqrians in which instruments were living sea shells, and many more. She always loved all of the sounds from the different worlds, and in the Rockies world, the only way she could explore such interests is through the pathway of an acoustic engineering degree at the academy.
In one of the exhibitions into one of the most violent planets Rockies have found so far, a planet riddled with mountain crushing and continent splitting noise, the team Vindy was in marched in further than any has ever before, collecting all manner of audio samples in both audible and non-audible frequencies. Vindy was able to trace back to the origin point of the sound, but the team decided to move in a different direction with the project and proceeded to exacerbate the mechanical waves in order to discover more mining opportunities.
That's when Vindy realized that she is in fact a scientist, not an engineer. She is driven by curiousity, not application, and in Rockies culture, that's puts her one tier beneath the engineers. However, upon seeing the fantastical wave forms on her instrument, she knew this is what she wanted to do.
So she charted across the shaking lands in ways not too dissimilar to Sadie Allen when he crossed the chaotic seas, and she found the origin of the sounds of this world.
It was a pillar located at the epicentre, or rather what sat atop that pillar, an incomprehensibly thin string.
She named it the Wavestriker as in wherever she strikes with her finger, waves and music form. That became a part of her after she heard a voice commanding her to fight using the artifact, and she did.
Vindy looked up, and the bowl of noddles has already been devoured by her.
Returning the bowl to a cleaning droid, Vindy sets out to visit the other high technology exhibitions. She is looking for particular music producers, perhaps ones that could handle a higher capacity of outputs that what she used back at the competition. She tried to connect with thousands, and yet the instrument itself struggled to match its output with the Wavestriker's output. She didn't know why exactly, but we all know the outputs of artifacts far surpasses any technology at the time.
After an entire afternoon of browsing, she still didn't find any boxes that is of her liking. Perhaps she should go to the musical district tomorrow instead. There is still plenty of time before the performance, and she is confident enough in her ability that it won't matter to her how much she actually prepared.
That's what the thousands of hours practicing with both her instrument and the artifacts does.
Vindy took a left turn and walked through an alleyway back towards her hotel, a short cut as suggested by the navigation software in her personal interface. Up in the distance, she could already see the floating hotel that she has dropped her luggage off by.
She heard sounds of footsteps behind her, and she turned on the camera facing her on her personal interface to check what is behind her without turning around. Three humans in brown jackets followed her into the alleyway. And thirty meters in front of Vindy, three other humans also appeared.
They blocked off the pathway from in front and behind her, and Vindy stopped in her steps.
'What do you want?' Vindy asked nonchalantly, 'I am a musician, I have no money. And what is the point of robbing in this day and age anyway...'
The man in front nodded towards the other two, and they started accelerating towards Vindy all at the same time. Vindy immediately noticed that those humans are moving quite a bit faster than a normal human on their feet. However, those in front are not the immediate threat that she has to face. Those behind her has already closed in from behind her.
She turned around, and the hands of one of the humans has already wrapped around her. At that instant, Vindy immediately activated Wavestriker, as the string that is capable of vibrating at any frequency lights up her fingers. She tapped on the hands of the human that's giving her an unfriendly hug, and he went flying backwards as the hand flung out to the side and bashed into the wall besides them.
The followup attack was there from the second man, and he swung a punch that landed right in Vindy's stomach. She bent over gasping for air and dropped to the floor, however, that's exactly her plan. With both hands on the floor, she lit it up and sends a shockwave through the ground like a mini-earth quake, throwing off the balance all all those around her. The two in front of her dropped to the floor, and she approached them before giving them a gentle tap on their forehead, knocking them out.
She spun around once again, and saw a bat swinging towards the side of her body. Vindy instinctively blocked it with her hand, and she barely just caught it, though something popped inside her hand. She maybe proficient in using the artifact Wavestriker to manage mechanical waves in objects around her, but she is no fighter. She screamed out in pain and connected her fingers with the bat with an outburst of vibrations that immediately turned it all to dust.
The man that hit her jumped back, as his hand was also turned to a mush of blood and bones after Vindy's attack. He held the hand by his side as blood drips down from it before packets of meat also dropped to the floor.
'You know...' Vindy said, touching the bruised side of her body and winsing, though nothing is broken in her body, her left hand may be out of commission for a while, 'out of all of the people here, you have picked the wrong person to mug off.'
Then, she turned and ran towards the downed men behind her, stepping over their bodies and disappearing into the crowd.
Vindy had no more troubles before returning back to the hotel, but she swore that she will never take any shortcuts in life, and wrote a horrible review for the navigational app before uninstalling it.
'What a piece of shit.' Vindy said as she shaved off the hair on her left hand before dipping it in an ice bucket. It has already begun to swell, and Vindy could tell the immense pain is about to arrive. Perhaps the cold can help numb it for a little while, at least.
With the other hand, she sent the event manager an email, explaining all that had happened with the attack, though she of course omitted the details of her self-defense.
'Dear Vindy,
I am sorry that attack has happened to you. If you don't mind, we have the highest grade of medical technology in the region. If you would pop by the building any time today, we can fix it right up for you.
Best
Lady Lily.'
'What do you think?' Lady Lily said, looking through the hologram in front of her towards the man standing on the other side of the desk, 'master?'
'It is perfect, Lily.' Zero said, resting a hand on Lady Lily's shoulder, 'the universe does work in wondrous ways, and to think we have so many artifact users here on this tiny planet....'
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone