What He Had to Share

He stood on the street corner. The device slung around his shoulders was not a guitar. He pushed a button, and it began to hum. He spun a finger around one of the discs, and his fifth birthday party flickered into view. A button brought up the last thing his wife had said to him before she shut the door behind her. A slider modulated the loop of the way he would one day die. His life cycled, chattered, and sang in harmonic layers, ghosts of the past and future, his life remixed.

Around him, the pedestrians strode briskly past.

New Wave

“What are you guys doing?”

Zini was lying on the floor with a book across her face. Syd rested her chin on the coffee table, staring fixedly at an immobile snowglobe. Kev had his face pressed into the corner and his hands cupped at his ears.

“Oh, hi, Sam,” said Logan. He was kneeling by the couch, one ear against the upholstered arm. “What’s up?”

“Not much,” said Sam warily. “You?”

“Just listening, man.”

Sam looked around. “Uh-huh.”

“Aren’t you listening to anything?”

“My iPod, when I jog.”

Logan actually sneered. “Man, get with the times. There’s music in everything.”