The Icarus Remix

“We want the world and we want it now!” When the Music’s Over by the Doors

On the night DJ abn-Qayamat died, his manager and sometime friend Jared Lazaruk, chose to not betray him after all. Rock journalist Shirley Middleton flew into New York the morning after bent on vengeance only to hear a pale, pathetic story of a poor Iraqi refugee who only wanted to be loved. Jared kept DJ abn-Qayamat’s secret tightly along with a plane ticket to Busan, Korea in his left breast pocket. He had a personal appointment with Dr. Sun-Soon at LIVED Ltd.

One hundred and twenty days ago.

Jared’s silk shirt clung relentlessly to his chest under the September Glasgow sun. He surveyed the orchestrated ant hustle of crew across the green Kelvingrove field laying down wires and cables. Jared paced. Some amateur had installed the wrong light filters upstage. He sent a veteran roadie up the twenty feet climb to change them. DJ abn-Qayamat was headlining Orgefest, gates opened in eight hours and Jared was vexed.

In his left peripheral, a translucent iBerry Spex data-pane floated. With a forced double-blink, Jared maximized the calendar. The pyrotechnic team was late and Jared was not sure how long it would take to install whatever it was they installed. He wanted to kick their teeth in when they arrived. He wanted to tear off his iBerry Spex and snap the lens apart. But mostly, Jared wished he could walk away from the looming creep of DJ abn-Qayamat’s celebrity.

He clicked aimlessly in the iBerry GUI, opening and closing files and felt the dull burn of little panic attacks tensing in his gut. Ishaq al-Mosul, stage name: DJ abn-Qayamat, had eschewed anonymity as easily as unbuttoning a shirt in the last few months. Jared dreaded their premature reunion. He pictured it: Ishaq would ask if he was still spinning, Jared would mutter some sorry-ass excuse then Ishaq would put on a stupid sympathetic face and change the subject, like reminiscences of Club Chiba back in Montréal.

Jared scanned subject headers on a second data-pane. EverCrest Springs had yet to counter his Orgefest beverage-sponsorship. Jared was reluctant to accept a lower bid, but their competitor practically had trucks loaded with skids of water bottles a few miles away. It would only take seconds to upload their ad-spots on to the giant wall screens. And this is my life now, Jared thought bitterly. Remixing corporate deals and beat-matching double-booked events.

Jared fiddled with his palm mouse as he walked towards the center-stage –a raised revolving platter, six meters in diameter, pinpointed in perfect radius to five equidistant entrance gates. Tall perimeter taser-fencing completed the circumference of the venue. From up above looking down, Jared imagined the set-up resembling a wide-open eye staring into the heavens. He ducked his head below the stage and crept three steps hunchbacked towards the basement “backstage” door. The subterranean backstage was cramped, with just enough room for a loveseat, a low coffee table, a minibar and a vanity, but it was well lit with decent ventilation. At most, two DJs would briefly share this space between sets. It’ll do. Jared examined the makeshift trapdoor elevator. He pushed the buttons, up, stop, down, stop.

“DJ Munchalot,” a voice announced grandiosely.

Jared turned his head. Ishaq? It was him but his face was gaunt, emaciated, barely held up by his fiery eyes and bushy brow. An old Nine-H0735’ concert t-shirt draped over his toothpick frame and his silver slacks wore more like a sari. Ishaq looked as if he’d been on a third world country diet. Jared gaped.

“You gonna give a brother some love or wha’?” Ishaq asked with open arms.

“I’m afraid I’ll break you. What the hell happen to you?” Jared said.

“S’nothing. Insomnia,” he sniffled. His right hand brushed air dismissively. “All night spinning and then some. Wassup wit you? You’re all corporate now, look at you.”

“It pays the bills.”

“Bet it does. Saw your show at Sore Samurai, Nagasaki. You threw a mean party, man, but I didn’t catch you spinning none.”

“I haven’t for a while. People keep writing me checks to organize events.”

“Sucks major.”

“Yeah…” Jared said. A prolonged silence. Ishaq changed the subject.

“So, you cool with my game plan for the show tonight?”

“Looks pretty straight forward to me.” Another cold front. Jared’s eyes stared through Ishaq, the iBerry Spex’s version of turning away from an unwanted cubicle visitor. He clicked his palm mouse distractedly.

“Hey listen, I want to talk to you later ‘bout sumpthin’ else too. I’ll catch you again post-show, aight?” Ishaq extended his bony right hand casually.

Jared slapped it. “Sure, Ishaq. Sure.”

When Ishaq left the backstage, Jared sat down hard on the loveseat with fingers combed through his puttied hair. He sighed deeply in spite of his allegretto heartbeat.

Jared watched the sexed-up, drunken cattle throng squeeze through the five gates then flood on to the cordoned green. The gates scanned each event-code holder via CODIS as they passed, then temp-tatted the inside of every left wrist with the Orgefest logo – a triskelion of sixes circling “Orgefest, Glasgow” in small block letters.

A soft sheen of glimmering blue and orange blanketed the field accentuated by the glow of wall screen ad-spots. A mirror ball revolved and white squares sprinted across faces, limbs and torsos. The opening local acts spun dull, droning trance for their half-hour sets, lulling the Dionysian crowd. Inside the sound booth, Jared yawned. He preferred breaks over trance, and he’d been up since five.
At the eleventh hour, Jared killed the lights and wall screens. The speakers blared the Introitus of Mozart’s Requiem, dry ice carpeted the field and crimson lasers from the five gates connected to form a pentagram above the sea of heads. Jared flipped a switch. Over the P.A., the voice of James Earl Jones boomed through a compressor, “and there will be weeping and gnashing of the teeth.” Cranberry juice gushed out of a hidden network of piping into the dark confusion. The drenched mass shrieked, exuding a stench of sharp, tart fear. Jared shoved sudden spotlights toward center-stage.

DJ abn-Qayamat rose through the trapdoor in a sleeping vampire stance to the frenzied screaming of the wet teeming throng. Jared flipped Mozart off. In the hush, DJ abn-Qayamat stood uncomfortably, perfectly still. Murmurs wavered. Suddenly, like a resurrected messiah, his eyes flashed open and ignited deafening white noise. Jared smirked admonishingly at DJ abn-Qayamat’s entrance. Always the show-off, all style and no substance.

DJ abn-Qayamat turned to his onstage set-up, a trinity of Technics T1210M5G turntables, two flanking the mixing board with a third in the unusual front. Off to the side, a micro-laptop flared. He wrapped his oversized monitor-phones around his neck. He plugged the quarter-inch jack in. DJ abn-Qayamat then swiveled on his right heel to his crates of vinyl. He made small legs of his index and middle fingers then ran through the Rolodex of records like sprinting ninjas. Fingers on both hands halted in tandem, straddled vinyl and kicked them up. He caught the airborne records, slammed them on the turntables and flicked the tone arms up. The needles dropped precisely without skate. Jared cocked his head, brow furrowed. Did that just happened? The needles fell perfectly! With uncanny instinct, the DJ adjusted the pitch shifts with Zen-like abandon.

“Clash City Rockers” guitars stabbed sharply, contrasted oddly with beat-matched Philly Joe Jones drumming, a hard-hitting rawness. Both loops perfectly synchronized, neither an electronic nor a dance beat. Jared’s thin lips parted astounded. How did he pitch-shift the two tracks so fast? How does he keep them together?! DJ abn-Qayamat reset both vinyl records every sixteen bars, scratching and cross fading between the two with uncanny flair.

Sixty-four measures in, skulking into the track unawares, DJ abn-Qayamat eased in the throaty moaning and grunting of a young Chastity Moore on the third platter. The pop track grinded against the punk rock and the jazz drums, and genres blurred.

DJ abn-Qayamat monitored the gyrating mass acutely. When a hint of lull surfaced, he refueled her body rhythms with the chaotically unexpected. He spun antique records with trendsetting underground break beats, looped and sampled across the panorama of genre. A flattering of the jazz snare, a lewd slap of the soul bass, a cooing of R&B “ooh babies”, a flickering tongue of the wah-wah funk guitar. It was all fair game in his sonic intercourse.

Jared observed this uxorious chameleon titillate his hundred-thousand-eared wife and was stunned. The sheer immensity of his prowess. The indecipherable refinement. This is not the Ishaq Jared knew nor the rising talent dubbed the ‘Beat Terrorist’ in the magazines. This is the second coming. This is nirvana. This is impossible.

Jared’s head buzzed. He fought through the hazy veils. There must be something behind the emerald curtain. DJ abn-Qayamat’s trinity of turntables fed into his micro-laptop, where at an inhuman scale he transposed keys and soldered seemingly incompatible rhythms together, sampled from song after song after song, all mere colors on his rough palette. All the while scratching his vinyl canvass at delightfully surprising moments. Maybe he modded his turntables? Or has secret beta-software? Something is wrong here. He can’t be moving this fast. The Ishaq I knew couldn’t even beat-match two house beats if they were both 120 bpm. Something is very wrong here. At half past midnight, DJ abn-Qayamat boldly mixed Ella Fitzerald’s “Fly Me to the Moon” with Nine-H0735’s cover of Nirvana’s “Rape Me”. He cross-faded between the ideal romance and the primal violence, Ella F. soaring and Shelley Song screaming. A monstrous contrast. Beneath both tracks, DJ abn-Qayamat added a pounding B&D loop.

Immediately after DJ abn-Qayamat’s first set, Jared began to receive the calls. He hurried backstage. Inside, Jared paced the small space with a finger on his iBerry Spex earpiece. The deafening white noise stampeding for an encore crept through the cracks of backstage. It roared when Ishaq made his descent through the elevator.

Jared hit mute. “Ishaq, eRoto Records wants exclusive distribution rights to tonight’s show. Nightclubs from Ibiza to Las Vegas are demanding a copy already. We can put your first set online right now but I need your e-consent…”

Ishaq’s face had blanched as much as a dark Arab man could. He slogged past Jared. Jared followed. “…or I can talk to your manager instead. What’s his IP?”

Ishaq slumped into the chair by the vanity then clamped his temples with thumb and middle finger. Ishaq blinked wearily at Jared. “Don’t got none.”

“Are you alright?”

“Canned his ass las’ week. Asked too many questions.”

“No man, are you alright?”

“Wha? Yea… jus’ got this headache. Feels like sumpthin’ tryin’ to claw its way outta my skull, know what I’m sayin’?” Ishaq reached into his day bag. He jabbed an iBupro-Shot into his right carotid artery beneath the jaw line. It hissed. Ishaq’s head recoiled. “Much betta. Much betta.”

Jared retrieved a bottle of water from the minibar. Old resentments rose in his chest. You’re a fucking Iraqi, not a gangsta rapper. Stop talking like one. He shoved the water in Ishaq’s face. “Here. Drink this.”

Ishaq drank greedily. He pulled two pills out of his pants pocket and chased them with a gulp. “So what didja think?”

“I think you made a lot of people a lot of money tonight.”

“Awww… c’mon Jared. What’d joo think of the show?”

Jared conceded. “It was fucking amazing.”

“I know.”

Asshole. You’re up to something.

“So what I wanna talk to ya ‘bout earlier? ‘Member? I’ll just lay it out. I need a new manager. Someone I can trust. Know what I’m sayin’? Someone I’ve known for a long while and who can take care of bizness. What do you think?”

I think you’re an idiot. I’m going to find out what you’re up to and expose you for the scam you are. Jared nudged his Spex down his nose to look at the DJ eye to eye. And smiled. “I’m flattered. I’d be thrilled to work for you.”

“Sa-weet. Aight, aight. First thing ya gotta do is keep me real at the Vinyl Spiral interview tomorrow mornin’. Then I gotta tell ya ‘bout my crazy-ass New Year’s plan. Five cities around the globe.”

“Sure, Ishaq. Sure.”

Early next morning, Jared’s head rattled interminably. He fumbled with the iBerry Spex for connection. He had gone to bed staring at data-panes and woke up watching them bloom. These past few weeks Jared had rarely disengaged from his iBerry. It was a skipped hassle that now ranked close with brushing and flossing. He blinked twice at the alert pop-up. Ishaq.

“Yo, heading over soon.”

“Gotcha. Give me five.” Jared replied. He closed the chat-pane and peeled away the stiff hotel sheets. Inside the preprogrammed shower stall, he scalded his skin for ninety seconds at 115 degrees Fahrenheit. The accumulated sweat film of old toil melted away; along with it, last night’s surrealism. In Montréal, Jared spun night and day. He spent hours and savings at Eggbeater Records. He digested the hottest samples. He breathed in polyrhythm. He dreamt in counterpoint. Ishaq, on the other hand, was a stuttering kid who flirted with easy girls and harassed the local DJs prying them for trade secrets. But Ishaq had taste and Jared was a sucker for enthusiasm. Jared befriended him, mentored him and vouched for him. Ishaq never seemed to ‘get it’ though. All talk, no walk. The one time Jared was dumb enough to give Ishaq a gig, he was late.

Then he flopped.

And choked.

The thought of this little shithead spinning so well flickered between disbelief and astonishment. It reluctantly sunk in. Emerging from the opaque steam Jared gargled generic mouthwash, tousled his hair with putty and dressed.

Downstairs, Jared slipped into Ishaq’s limousine and found himself facing two hulking Asian men in black suits. Northern Chinese, Mongolian or Korean, Jared presumed. Both had a scruffy, gangling frame that denoted overcompensated brawn. They wore sleeker, newer iBerry models available only on the Asian market. Jared saw their eyes dart frantically behind the lens, as if monitoring multiple data-panes.

“Jared, Ricky Hong and Lawrence Park,” Ishaq said. “They work for me.”

Their Atari Pong eyes kept bouncing. Ricky nodded subtly.

“You have bodyguards?” Jared asked.

Ishaq looked at Jared and hopped his brow. “Listen, I sent over my inbox pass-codes. Your job is to make sure I show up where I gotta show, know what I’m sayin’?”

“Sure, Ishaq.”

“Aight.” Ishaq stuck out an open palm.

Jared slammed down on it. “Aight.”

Ninety stories above in a rooftop café, Shirley Middleton from the Vinyl Spiral held her cup of espresso with elegant fingers, always smiling flirtatiously at DJ abn-Qayamat. London traffic washed their conversation with an eerie, familiar hum from below. Jared sat quietly, considering Shirley’s gestures and her perky red suit.

“abn-Qa-ya-mat,” she enunciated carefully. “May I call you that? Or would you prefer me to include the ‘DJ’?

“You call me whateva you want, sugah,” he smiled.

“OK,” she giggled shrilly. “I’m very excited about this interview. I’m a huge fan of yours.”

DJ abn-Qayamat grinned ear-to-ear boyishly. Jared found her voice grating. Why do you sound like a drunk toddler?

“I just want to say, I saw you play last week in Amsterdam. It was so awesome!” Shirley squeaked. She then leaned in hushing. “I got so wet when you remixed Darling Nikki’s ‘Sideways’.”

Jared’s right eyebrow arched above his iBerry Spex. She’s insane. DJ abn-Qayamat leaned in begging for more flattery. You dog, Ishaq. You’d screw anything with a hole between her legs, like Muriel the heifer.

Shirley smirked victoriously, having disarmed both men at the table. “abn-Qayamat, so I have to ask, three months ago, no one had even heard of you. And then bam!, out of nowhere, you’re the Mix Messiah of Mesopotamia come to save the club scene.” DJ abn-Qayamat chuckled. “All these nicknames, I tell ya. Ridiculous.”

Shirley smiled, baring her gleaming white teeth. “awww, I like ‘em. I think they’re cute.”

Jared kept a groan down. He sifted through DJ abn-Qayamat’s inbox. There was a flood of messages from studio producers, record executives and product marketers, brimming in bold without rules or subfolders. Jared triaged the mail.

“Well, abn-Qayamat,” Shirley asked. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I say you an’ I go back to my hotel room, know what I’m sayin’ yo?”

Shirley gasped. “Mr. DJ abn-Qayamat!”

“Y’know you want it.”

She giggled. “I have an interview to do first.”

“Aight, aight. Ask away.”

“I still want to know how no one has heard of you until now.”

“Well Shirley, it’s like this. I was laying low, polishing my chops in South Korea. Seoul, Busan, know what I’m sayin’? And I did this for a good two years spinnin’ small gigs before I went to Europe.”

“Why South Korea, of all places?”

“I got in on this program where I was supposed to be teaching kids English? But I ended up skippin’ more classes than the kids did.” DJ abn-Qayamat chuckled unabashedly.

Yeah, that sounds like the Ishaq I know. Jared thought. Irresponsible and proud of it.

“So you called in sick a lot?”

DJ abn-Qayamat coughed violently.

“I was sick all the time, know what I’m sayin’?” He said in a sickly voice, then composed himself and grinned.

Shirley squealed. She was utterly beside herself. When the two had stopped heaving, Shirley flippantly poked her stylus randomly at her palmtop.

“So, let ask you this, abn-Qayamat. Your talent, it’s unheard of. You’re one of the very few in the business that can spin old vinyl without skipping a beat. Literally. Most DJs can’t deal with music that wasn’t recorded to a drum machine. How do you do what you do?”

“That’s a secret, sugah.”

“Awww.. you can let lil’ Shirley in on it, can’t you?”

The DJ chuckled. “’lil Shirley and all her ‘lil Vinyl Spiral readers!”

“Oh, can’t you let me in on even a teensy, weensy bit of it?”

“’Fraid not,” DJ abn-Qayamat said firmly. He then paused and sucked in his breath hesitantly, his face wincing. “Well… mebbe I can tell you one ‘lil thing. Only for my ‘lil Shirley off da record. Aight?” He checked behind him to see if anyone was watching and then motioned Shirley to lean in. She leaned in.

“I’m actually an android,” DJ abn-Qayamat whispered.

Shirley paused in disbelief, then started to chortle. “You almost had me! You’re a meanie!”

DJ abn-Qayamat did a little robot dance and Shirley laughed harder.

“Well, fine then, you rascal,” Shirley said. “But tell me, how are you feeling these days?”

“Feelin’ goooood. I’m super jazzed ‘bout my ‘round the world New Year’s tour, ya hear all ‘bout that? We gonna be flyin’ the new Boeing X39s from Shanghai to Mumbai to London, and then NYC and LA all in one night. Fi’ shows. Fi’ cities. Five midnights. It gonna be a helluva party.”

“I got my event-codes right here!” Shirley flashed a string of numbers on her palmtop. “I begged my boss on hands and knees to send me to all five shows!”

“And ya won’t be sorry ‘bout it, I swear. Good times.”

“I know I won’t be! But abn-Qayamat,” Shirley began hesitantly. “If I may, when I asked how you were back there, what I meant was, how are you doing, yourself, personally? Is everything OK with you?” DJ abn-Qayamat stiffened a little. “What you tryin’ to get it?”

“Well, there are rumours on the news-net. Rumours that you’re getting terrible migraines, that you will only see this one doctor. Is it true that you don’t see anyone but him?”

Jared stopped sorting Ishaq’s messages. His ears perked.

The DJ sat still with a dead poker face. He leaned back. An audio vacuum coiled their table, choking the diminished triad. Shirley squirmed.

“abn-Qayamat?” Shirley quivered.

He stared at her. Silently. An overwhelming, assuming presence. When Shirley’s mousy brown eyes looked away, DJ abn-Qayamat spoke.

“This interview is over.”

“I… I don’t understand. Did I say something wrong?”

DJ abn-Qayamat’s silence amplified. He glanced briefly at Jared, and Jared knew.

“I think it’s time for you to leave,” Jared stepped in.

Her pleading eyes darted between DJ abn-Qayamat and Jared, a lost, betrayed child. She slid her stylus away, nearly dropping her palmtop and got up from her chair, flustered. When she had left, DJ abn-Qayamat turned to Jared.

“Call Kirsten Hurley. She’s the Editor-in-Chief at Vinyl Spiral,” DJ abn-Qayamat said. “Tell her to not send me idiots ever again. Also. Tell her that I don’t want to see this interview in print.”

“Sure, Ishaq.”

“Is that a ‘sure’ or a ‘yes’?”

“Yes, I will call Kirsten at Vinyl Spiral.”

“OK then. Let’s go.”

Jared chose not to ask questions. He had never seen Ishaq react so forcefully. Shirley may have just found him an in.

In the months to follow, Jared was Vishnu on cocaine shuffling data-panes. DJ abn-Qayamat’s New Years schedule teetered on tightrope longitudes. The one night global tour would carry several hundred thousands from the eve of a new decade to a glorious and pounding midnight reverie in Shanghai, Mumbai, London, New York and Los Angeles hosted by the one and only Soul Attack from Iraq, DJ abn-Qayamat. In each city, DJ abn-Qayamat and Jared will rush across the dark tarmac from their private Boeing X39 to a venue-bound Blackhawk. At each venue, DJ abn-Qayamat will entrance a sea of ears for ninety minutes from eleven to half-past New Year and he will do this again and again until the West Coast uncorked their champagne bottles.

Jared initiated voracious bidding wars from every angle of the event: wall-screens, speakers, beverages, backstage passes, exclusive seats, anything that could display brand names, did. He hired event teams in each of the five cities. He paid Weigel & Associates to campaign targeted media globally: web-spots, guerilla podcast teasers, four-page-foldout spreads, a high-end website with unlimited bandwidth in six major languages.

Jared released event codes on the weekend before post-Thanksgiving Black Friday. Event code holders were automatically registered as members on DJ abn-Qayamat’s website; each account a cornucopia of discounts with event partners from electronics to fashion to media subscriptions. Jared irrigated the hell out of every stream of revenue. And then some.

Jared drowned in the deluge of dealing and booking. His ulterior plot waned. Ishaq was cheating somehow, Jared was sure of that. But at the end of the day, Jared undertook what paid the bills and abandoned whatever did not. Like his deejaying however, it ate at him like a desperate starving monkey rattling in a cage.

In early November, DJ abn-Qayamat was booked into several late night holotube appearances. Jared found the schedule unbearable. From Tokyo to Toronto, DJ abn-Qayamat and Jared waited hours in hotels for minutes on stage. Green room after green room, host after host. In New York, DJ abn-Qayamat retreated to his low-rise studio suite hours before his appearance on Late Night with Pete Teller. He asked Jared for a wake-up call then injected several iBuPro-Shots to nap.

Jared jogged lightly up the narrow staircase to Ishaq’s apartment. Ishaq was completely offline, which annoyed Jared greatly. Who disables their entire home telecomm system to sleep? Jared saw that Ishaq’s Print‘n’Retscan lock was also offline. He knocked gingerly on the door and it creaked ajar. There was an ungodly, overwhelming silence from inside the apartment. Jared’s irritability morphed into intrusiveness.

“Ishaq?” Jared whisper shouted.

Jared sidled through the gap between the door and jamb, then in a tip-toe fashion, he let himself in. He peeked into the galley kitchen. The tiled counter was a battleground wasteland of pill bottles, some lay emptied on their side, some stood without caps, others were in fresh formation in dim corners. Jared lifted one to his lens. The label was in Korean. He took a whiff of the open bottle as if that would tell him something about the contents. It smelled of nothing. He held it in front of his Spex-covered face again and photographed the Korean.

Jared left the kitchen and walked into the large space of the studio. Stacked crates of records were shoved against every wall. The DJ’s equipment sat on a cheap fold-up table by the floor-to-ceiling windows. On the coffee table were towers of music magazines, personal notes and spent casings of iBuPro-Shots. The DJ was in an awkward sleeping position on a shocking red leather sectional; his limbs slung here and hung there.

“Ishaq.” Jared said.

The DJ did not reply. He groaned and shifted instead.

The wall-screen and holotube were both on. A reengineered rerun of an old sitcom was on. A man flapped his arms and yelled at a slight girl about “a break” in front of Jared’s face. It was distracting. Jared turned it off. He glanced at the wall-screen. It was pregnant with hundreds of unread messages; it was offline and did not like it. The wall-screen flashed its menu bar in disgust. Curiosity chewed. Jared found Ishaq’s remote and clicked open the inbox. He saw a large smattering of messages from a Dr. Sun-Soon. Ishaq stirred. Jared quickly minimized the inbox and turned to him.

“Ishaq, we’re going to be late if we don’t leave now.” Jared said.

Ishaq groused, rubbing his eyes. “Yea, yeah.”

Ishaq rolled, nearly slipping off his garish leather sectional. His groping, myopic fingers gripped the table for balance. Leveraged up, he moped towards the washroom. Jared’s brain spun, heart crackling. Now or never. He picked at the remote again. He exposed the headers of an older, less conspicuous message from Dr. Sun-Soon. He stopped suddenly. Jared, you idiot. Don’t forward the damned message. In his panic, he realized taking a screen-shot and forwarding that was just as stupid. Instead, he flashed his iBerry Spex camera. Nothing left Ishaq’s personal wall screen. He then attached the pill bottle photographs along with his external “screen-shot” to a newborn message-pane. Walter Chung would know.

The toilet flushed.

Jared then heard the hiss of iBuPro-Shots. Ishaq emerged. “Aight, aight. Lezgo.”

Jared grinned. “Sure, Ishaq. Sure.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Our next guest is an old friend of ours. He’s been on the Late Show a couple of times now. He’s here to promote his around-the-globe New Year’s Tour. Event-codes are now available online. Please give a warm welcome to… DJ abn-Qayamat!” Pete Teller shouted and gestured towards the dark stage. It drowned in applause.

A single spotlight stabbed down at DJ abn-Qayamat hunched over his custom Roland synthesizer. He fiddled on the Roland, as if it were a sound check, but very slowly, creeping like spilt milk, the discordance evolved into a riff of strange harmony. A squadron of float-cams slipped into DJ abn-Qayamat‘s orbit.

He fingered through his crate of records, pinched at one, and threw it up in the air, separating sleeve from record. The sleeve fell like spent bullet casing. With his left hand, he tore off a piece of scotch tape from his dispenser. He then caught the un-sleeved record behind his back, deftly taped the section he wanted looped, swiveled and let it slip through the turntable nub. With an expert flick of the finger, the needle fell in place. The vinyl looped four bars of Keith Moon that instantly fell in line with the riff the DJ had just composed.

Jared watched the monitors absently in the green room. He waited on Walter Chung’s reply. Jared’s iBerry pinged.

“Jared man. Ca va bien, mon ami?”

“Comme ci comme ca. You got my message?”

“Yeah man, what’s this about? You taking Korean brain drugs?”

“Sorry?”

“The pill labels you sent me, they’re nootropics. Neural-enhancement drugs. This is some heavy stuff, usually prescribed for brain surgery post-op.”

“Really?”

Onstage, sixteen measures in, DJ abn-Qayamat turned back to the Roland and contemplated briefly. He placed his hand tentatively on the keyboard, bobbed his head to his riff and loop, and wrote a counterpoint bass line from scratch.

Back in the green room, Jared leaned forward, as if Walter were sitting in front of him.

“The question is, why is it in Korean?”

“What’s this about anyway, Jared?”

“Remember Ishaq? That kid that followed us around back in Montréal? I’m managing him.”

“No shit? He sucked ass.”

“Not anymore. He’s got a huge following in Europe.”

“Europe. Everybody’s big in Europe.” Walter spat sarcastically. “I’m big in Europe. Everyone Walt Chung tonight.”

“Shut up, Walter. He’s actually good, but I don’t get it. Did you look at the other attachment?”

“The screenshot? Yeah. You wanted me to look into this Dr. Sun-Soon, right? There’s not much on him, even on the mednets. At least not on name alone. It looks like he works at this private, underground neural-research facility, LIVED Limited… holy shit, you think your boy went Bionic Man on you?”

“my god!” Jared hushed. “Maybe. Is it even possible? What else did you find out?”

“Hold on… I’m filtering the Korean newsnet archives.”

DJ abn-Qayamat hit the sixty-four-measure mark and a second spotlight stabbed down his right to reveal Ginger Wasabi, lead singer of Darling Nikki. Her unkempt hair and fashionably torn silver-sequined dress accessorized her signature candy red apple Stratocaster. Her banshee cry tide over the audience’s bursting cheers. She broke into the opening verse of Sideways, strumming frantically on her guitar like a mad woman. The soundstage rose to a palpable, bothering heat.

Jared stood raptly. “So…?”

“Get this,” Walter summarized. “Three years ago, Dr. Sun-Soon was embroiled in a malpractice lawsuit. He settled out of court, and no one ever proved anything. The victim was a commodities trader who died on the table of a brain aneurysm. That’s the official story. But… linked rumours on the APNIC mednets claim that the guy was attempting to install a direct neural interface chip so he could analyze and trade the markets at the speed of thought.”

“A direct what now?”

“It’s science fiction, that’s what it is. A direct neural interface is a chip you stick in your head so you can talk to computers. No one has ever managed to make one work.”

“Until now.”

Suddenly, a few fluttering float-cams loitering by Ginger Wasabi turned. In the corner of Jared’s eye, he saw a sweeping blur on the green room monitors. The soundstage silenced, gasped and pitched a lonely shriek. DJ abn-Qayamat had staggered and knocked over a crate of stacked vinyl and laid on the stage convulsing. A prone microphone lying beside him announced each and every shaking wrinkling of the DJ’s velour shirt and silver slacks. Float-cams gathered like passersby at the scene of a car wreck. DJ abn-Qayamat’s two hulking Korean bodyguards raced to the stage, beating a stunned Pete Teller and a paralyzed Ginger Wasabi. While one moved the DJ’s body on to his right side, the other kicked the microphone offstage and made calls on his earpiece.

Jared cursed. “Walter, I gotta go. Something’s happening here. Call me if you find anything else out.”

He clicked off.

Jared shook himself out of shock and snaked through the backstage hallways towards DJ abn-Qayamat. Beyond the curtains in the blur of crisis, a trembling DJ abn-Qayamat eventually rose propped up by his bodyguard, Ricky. He waved to reassure the masses. Ginger Wasabi and Pete Teller, reanimated from stone, petered towards him. Jared followed.

“Ishaq, are you…?” He began.

“I’m alright.” DJ abn-Qayamat interrupted. He met Jared’s beseeching eyes hidden beneath his iBerry lens and nodded. Shortly thereafter, they ambled off the soundstage and out of the studio towards their limousine. Ishaq crawled in and plopped insignificantly onto the backseat. Jared and the two Koreans sat three abreast on the rear-facing end. Jared found himself stuck in the middle; Ricky on the right, Lawrence on his left.

On their silent trip out, Jared realized that they were not going to a hospital when they sped up the onramp out of New York’s city walls. The awkward tension burnt. Not a single word had been uttered by any of the four men since leaving Pete Teller’s studio.

“Where are we going?” Jared asked Ricky seconds after the last city-state border checkpoint.

Ricky stared forward, steeled eyes and carpal tunnel fist clicking arrhythmically on his palm mouse. Ishaq stirred and Ricky’s eyes darted askance briefly. Jared was being ignored.

“Ricky, where are we going?” Jared asked again.

Lawrence tapped Jared’s shoulder. “We are both very busy at this moment, Mr. Lazaruk, if you please.”

“What’s going on? Was it an attack tonight? Bio-weapons? Snipe-shock?”

“Mr. Lazaruk. Please. We are to be working now.”

A fragile voice strained through the addled heat. “They’re nurses, Jared. Not bodyguards.”

Both Koreans perked. Jared turned.

“Sorry?”

“They came wit the package. Here to watch over me. Their lil’ guinea pig, y’know what I’m sayin’?” Ishaq said.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Y’know what I’m talking ‘bout. Made it wicked easy for ya.”

“You wanted me to find out?”

“Sure, Jared. Who else butchu?”

Jared stared at a sloppy, slouching Ishaq. A meat-bag of jagged bones. “Was it the operation that turned you into a toothpick?”

Ishaq’s eyes drooped as he sighed with immense exhaust.

“Forget it. I want to know why you did it,” Jared said.

Ishaq’s head bowed, “I ever tell you ‘bout my father? When I was five, he asked my mom, right, to buy a lott’ry ticket at the market? Some Wahhabi fuck went to the same market the same day and blew himself up there, murderin’ my mom and sixty othas.

“When my father went to I.D. her body and collect her stuff, lo and behold, the lott’ry ticket was in one piece and it was a winner. So with our ‘lil dinar jackpot we went on a trip to New York city, snuck up to Montréal and declared ‘fugee status.”

“My God,” Jared said.

“No. He wunnit nowhere to be found, yo. Allahu Akbar my ass, lost both my parents that day.”

“I don’t understand. Are you telling me you risked brain damage for fame and fortune because you were not loved as a child? That’s fucked up.”

“Don’t you dare judge me, Jared. ‘Specially notchu or yo Montréal homies.”

“Why did you want me to know? Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell the world?”

“You?!” Ishaq exclaimed. “You’re a coward. You chose a warm bed and food on the table over what I have. You wish you have what I have.”

“You CHEATED, you asshole.”

“What do you think this chip does?” Ishaq sneered. “It ain’t no FedEx same-day delivery, y’know what I’m sayin’? My brain’s hardwired with quick-flex and near-instantaneous file recall, but that don’t make me the greatest DJ alive, yo. I have something you don’t, Jared. Vision. You never thought big. You were and will always be stuck on the details. That’s why I hired you.”

Ishaq’s words struck deep and Jared felt the excruciating collapse of his thorax. Ishaq was right. Everything he said; his soapbox sermon. But despite the truth, his attack disgusted Jared. He was the last person he wanted to hear the truth from.

Jared bored into Ishaq’s eyes. “So why did you want me to know? And why didn’t you just tell me when you hired me? Why the smoke and mirrors?”

Ricky interrupted, “Mr. al-Mosul, we are here.”

“Where are we?” Jared asked, once again. The two Koreans did not answer.

“Sing Sing Correctional Facility,” Ishaq replied begrudgingly. “Lived Limited leases a few ole cell blocks here to op’rate in New York.” “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No, Jared. I ain’t.” Ishaq sighed with heavy exasperation. “Goddamnit, Jared. It wunnit s’posed to be this way.”

The limousine pulled up to an obscured entrance, away from the museum and the inmates. The limousine braked and the two Koreans exited.

Left alone, Ishaq considered Jared wearily for a dilated moment. “Come in. I still need you.”

“Sure, Ishaq. Sure.” Jared replied, confused.

They turned and twisted through a moonlit, damp and dingy abandoned wing of Sing Sing; the Koreans leading Jared and Ishaq through the winding passageways with determined momentum, their iBerries guiding them via a LIVED Ltd. intranet read-only blueprint. Four or so hallways in, the party stopped to face a dual Print’n’Retscan med-access elevator. Ricky and Lawrence lifted their iBerries and stepped forward, chin and palm out, exposed irises. The shaft rumbled and the doors slid open. They descended interminably, or so it seemed to Jared. The cabin eventually ceased and yawned. Blinding white surgical florescent flooded in, revealing shiny gurneys and beeping machinery. But what struck Jared most was the contrast between the dilapidated overground and its pristine bowels. A lone late-middle aged Korean man stood in the middle of it all, silver wire-frame spectacles and evenly combed grey hair propped up by a lab coat. Ricky and Lawrence promptly huddled with him, Dr. Sun-Soon, and chattered in hushed Korean.

Jared is informed that Dr. Sun-Soon had flew via a Boeing X39 to their Ossining, New York branch immediately upon hearing of the situation. Ricky wheeled a gurney forward and half-lifted Ishaq onto it. Dr. Sun-Soon approached.

“Mr. al-Mosul, it’s good to see you again,” Dr. Sun-Soon said. “Ricky just filled me in on everything. It sounds like your biochip DNI had a brief overload, nothing too serious. We’re going to do a bit of MRI and some CAT scans just to be sure, OK?”

Ishaq nodded weakly. “Sure, doc.”

They moved while Dr. Sun-Soon spoke. His gentle tone was calming, but Jared sensed the tense urgency of their speeding procession. During testing while the Koreans crowded over charts, Jared stood away and alone, astounded by it all – the solemn hum and pulse of an electronically monitored life.

“Mr. al-Mosul,” Dr. Sun-Soon said. “It appears this hiccup is worse than I had first thought. Tonight’s DNI biochip malfunction would appear to be a prelude to a potential full shutdown. Your biometric scans indicate gradually increasing antagonistic reactions towards any DNI activity. This was not anticipated at all during initial post-op tests. You were, the model patient.”

Ishaq gazed blithely at Dr. Sun-Soon –a faint sparkle even– that Jared may have misinterpreted.

“How long?” Ishaq asked.

“Next week. I’d like to bring you home to our surgical staff in Busan. We will excise the biochip immediately.” Dr. Sun-Soon replied.

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“How long I got if I keep going? Will it kill me?”

Dr. Sun-Soon knitted his brows. “Most certainly it will. We must remove it.”

“I ain’t removin’ no chip, doc.”

Ishaq jackknifed to a right angle, swung his legs over and stood. “Sorry doc, but I gotta do what I gotta do and I ain’t removin’ no chip, y’know what I’m sayin’?”

Dr. Sun-Soon flustered. “I must advise against that, Mr. Al-Mosul! I… cannot in my good conscience… allow this to happen!” “Yea, but you can’t really stop me, can you? At the end of the day, you ain’t nothing but a hack unlicensed quack working for the man. You crapped on your Hippocratic oath ages ago, why relapse now?”

“How dare you!?” Dr. Sun-Soon roared.

“I gotta go,” Ishaq shrugged and began to leave. “Jared?”

Jared followed Ishaq out. They abandoned the stunned and speechless Korean trio. When they were aboveground again, Jared asked, “What are you up to, Ishaq?”

“S’nothing. We signed ourselves up for one bigass show in thirty days. I’m seeing it through. Are you with me or are you not with me?”

“I’m with you, Ishaq. I am. But what the hell are you playing at? The doctor back there said you were going to die if you kept using the chip.”

Ishaq reacted forcefully. “Lissen Jared, I ain’t leavin’ at the height of my game. It’s burn out or fade out, y’know what I’m sayin’?”

Ishaq was a megalomaniac. Jared knew this. But now, Jared also knew that Ishaq was a suicidal megalomaniac, but he felt no compulsion to derail him. And then, the horrific epiphany sunk in. Ishaq’s death wish was as cowardly as the stuttering flake he was years ago in Montréal. He was the gamer who had found the ultimate cheat code – invincibility, unlimited ammo, wallhack – who in spite of thundering yawns would not, could not turn in, enslaved by the dullness of absolute power. He needed someone else, an external force, a nagging mother or death in this case, to stop him. Ishaq’s visionary did not matter; at the end of the day, his burden of success was built on a false foundation, but as long as he could get away with it, the illusion of greatness and all its underpinnings, he would. And despite Ishaq’s cool posturing earlier in the limousine backseat, Jared would like to believe that he had found Ishaq’s confidence because Ishaq had wanted him to be the backup plan. The man who would pull the trigger, the Houdini to his séance scam, the finger-pointer who would call him out.

It was then that Ishaq had won Jared’s sympathy whether he cared for it or not.

“Jared!” Ishaq shouted. “Where you at, man? Get in the car!”

Jared’s swollen revelation was pricked. “Sure Ishaq, sure.”

Jared sat next to Ishaq’s bedside. He thrust his septum against the steeple of his palms, his chin buttressed by thumbs. He watched Ishaq sleep fitfully, ravaged by headaches, his silver jumpsuit thrashing like whitewater. He mumbled and muttered and struggled against invisible binds despite the Nootropics, the Nap-drops and the iBupro-Shots. Jared fretted with overwhelming guilt, his consensual silence in counterpoint with Ishaq’s near-death throes.

The two were in a Boeing X-39 private jet flying from London to New York, unimaginable miles above land. Jared rose from his suppliant position, away from the tan leather altar and paced the capacious cabin. He struggled. In his outgoing message data-pane, Jared had a prewritten invitation to Shirley Middleton. What was worse? When John Lennon said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus or when Mark David Chapman shot him dead? If Jared told Shirley Middleton everything he knew, would DJ abn-Qayamat’s sea of fans break against Ishaq’s craggy hubris? What was the alternative? To keep mum, conceding to DJ abn-Qayamat’s fatal voyage to eternal celebrity?

Shanghai and Mumbai were both tremendous successes. In the last ten minutes of Shanghai, DJ abn-Qayamat spun a strain of Roman Tam, roiling above a dynastic military beat, then scratched and cross-faded Leslie Cheung and Alan Tam against each other, resurrecting dead men’s rivalry. It revolved and evolved, accumulating in the fierce sampling of all Four Heavenly Kings. In Mumbai, Aishwarya Rai’s innocent lilt and Shah Rukh Khan’s seductive yearning wove through the trendiest Bollywood beats, punctuated by Amitabh Bachchan’s patriarchal presence.

They were late for New York. London and New York were a generous ocean and five hours apart, the second longest stretch between two cities on this tour. And yet, they were late, as the English had received an unwarranted encore. DJ abn-Qayamat fed into their eager demands for Tiesto and Oakenfold classics. Jared was surprised with the immeasurable pleasure the Europeans found in “Adagio for Strings”.

They zoomed into New York city-state airspace, Mach 6, sluiced by winter clouds. On a JFK airstrip, Jared lifted and dragged a drowsy Ishaq down the jet’s steps then carried him up into the helicopter. They commanded a breathtaking view flying into the sparkling Manhattan core, but Ishaq napped while Jared ruminated. The skyscraper stalagmites pulsated like the frequency bars of a stereo equalizer, mid-end heavy. Jared’s newfound sympathy for Ishaq aggravated him. He hit “send” abruptly on the Shirley Middleton message. It felt neither good nor bad. It was relief.

At twenty-three fifteen, they touched down on the Marriott Marquis Hotel rooftop helipad. An event-jacket wearing teenager tapped his earpiece and mouthed words coolly as he ducked beneath the decelerating propellers to open the door. He led them to an express glass elevator. On the long descent Ishaq stood utterly still, watching Times Square swell beneath his feet towards the stage and a vast sea of revelers, hungry limbs reaching ever upwards in ebb and flow.

Near the end of their mechanical fall, Jared espied a production director prowling the basement, his BlackBerry Spex handling heat from one too many moving parts and bosses, Jared one of them. Upon eye contact, he scurried briskly towards them right hand extended. The greeting was amicable, flustered and hurried. He escorted them through the underground anti-terrorist tunnel-lattice towards the Renaissance Hotel basement, veered into the backstage, then vanished. Ishaq popped open a bottle of water from the vanity, inhaled it with two caffeine pills, then headed up the narrow staircase towards the white noise and bright lights of Broadway and Seventh Avenue. Jared left the backstage too; he had reserved a balcony spot in the adjacent Doubletree Guest Suites where he would oversee the event and all its comings and goings. On his way there, he dialed the event sound engineer. The opening DJ on stage B faded out. Spotlights slammed against DJ abn-Qayamat. The gigantic canvass of wall-screens draping Times Square flipped, each to one of the many float-cam channels, all angled towards his infallible celebrity. Tens of thousands of feet swiveled.

DJ abn-Qayamat cocked his head and cradled his left monitor-phone. He hovered his right palm over a rotating platter, shifting the maze of grooves beneath the needle. The track cued. Jared was bewildered by DJ abn-Qayamat’s mundane, routine action of cuing up a vinyl. He had not seen him do anything so regular and unadorned since Montréal. No tossing and catching, no flicking nor sleight-of-hand.

The steady bass-line of “Billy Jean” blared through a battalion of small speakers; there were a wall front of them onstage, but the rest were stationed deviously like urban guerillas throughout Times Square. DJ abn-Qayamat slipped on a second vinyl and cued it. With both hands on his sixteen-track board, he transposed, cross-faded and wove Chastity Moore’s cover of Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration” into the mix.

He killed all the tracks. The sudden silence lingered breathlessly. A thick, bottom-heavy jungle bass line crept in, a gradual gnawing at the quiet. DJ abn-Qayamat fingered a fader, the track responding louder and louder. He dropped the fader to negative infinity. He urged a second fader up, a loop of an angry Beethoven string quartet, then a third fader, the machine gun guitars of Johnny Ramone. Ludwig and Johnny fought with livid passion, fueling their indignations, ungrateful Austrian patrons and unjust American politics. DJ abn-Qayamat resurrected the drum-loop.

The string quartet and the power chords gradually faded out and the melancholic hammer-on and pull-offs of “Cross Road Blues” slipped through. DJ abn-Qayamat added a heavy ambient house beat, subtly audible, a thin drape behind the scene. He then injected a select sampling of Paganini’s twenty-fourth caprice between the blues licks. That too, eventually faded away.

An exceptionally happy techno loop dragged the mass back up on its feet after the out-of-place ambience. In the aural spectrum however, with sober and discriminating ears, one could distinctly hear Billie Holiday’s suicidal “Gloomy Sunday” and Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nail’s “Hurt”. Jared found the opening four tracks unusual. DJ abn-Qayamat had an all access genre passport and he usually flaunted the fact. This opening however, was not flaunting. It felt forced to Jared. Something was wrong. Was the inevitability rushing up? So early, so soon?

The heat of the night carried on, from one measure to another. DJ abn-Qayamat mixed tirelessly, adjusted levels and overlaid segues like a skillful lover rotating through the Kama Sutra index. He pulsated on the rhythm and the over-the-counter drugs, his head throbbing towards Nirvana. He dry humped his set-up, clapped his hands above his head and shook like a beached fish. Jared, perched four stories above in Doubletree Guest Suite’s room 404 right of stage, found New York especially uneasy and intense. Or was it only DJ abn-Qayamat? Shanghai went without a hitch. Mumbai too. But during the London encore, Jared swore he heard Depeche Mode spinning slightly off kilter next to Shirley Bassey. It was such an anomaly that Jared had dismissed it, but as he watched DJ abn-Qayamat perform, he saw distinct instances where his shoulders would jerk, or his head would twitch.

At around five to midnight, the New Year and the new decade, DJ abn-Qayamat began to layer and embed excised tracks into the mix, one clip after another in strange succession, an odd music history: The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, Joy Division, INXS, Nirvana. DJ abn-Qayamat stopped at Shelley Song, her mournful wailing for her deceased young lover on Nine-H0735’s Japanese single, “Ketchup Love”. Through his BlackBerry Spex on zoom, Jared saw the DJ’s hands visibly shaking. Something was terribly wrong. He hurried downstairs towards the stage as the Times Square wall-screens cut to thirty-thousand-millisecond timers. Jared worked through the frontlines where security kept a distance between the audience and the stage. He stood a few short yards from the stage steps, watching, unsure. Millions of New Yorkers and even more tourists shouted together. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one!

DJ abn-Qayamat’s underlying drum loop kept pounding despite the shattered Waterford crystal ball. Auld Lang Syne doesn’t cue up, but the deliriously cold and happy multitude did not seem to have noticed; they were lost in their midnight kisses and well wishes. Jared marked his tipping point. He rushed the stage while repeatedly slitting his throat with his right index finger at the sound engineer. Auld Lang Syne faded in, fourty-four seconds late into the new decade. Jared reached DJ abn-Qayamat and put his hand on his back and as he leaned in to talk, Jared realized that DJ abn-Qayamat had not reacted at all to his presence. DJ abn-Qayamat was a statue, frozen in his hunched over pose, his right hand pinching an equalizer knob, the left fingers spread over a spinning platter. DJ abn-Qayamat’s chest rose and fell faintly, nearly imperceptible. Jared panicked. He radioed the event medical staff. DJ abn-Qayamat‘s set-up was muted on the P.A. system, but his records still spun and his samples still looped. A small curious crowd began to gather in the stage pit and stared. Two paramedics clambered up towards Jared and DJ abn-Qayamat with a gurney. More people watched in hushed whispers. DJ abn-Qayamat was stiff as a mannequin, so the two paramedics carried him as such, and placed him gently on the gurney bed like an expensive movie prop. They attached their monitoring equipment as best as they could to DJ abn-Qayamat in his awkward, uncompromising position. The electrocardiogram beeped, albeit at a largo tempo. The media flashed and filmed. As the gurney wheeled DJ abn-Qayamat away from his onstage set-up, his hard body suddenly collapsed into a puddle and the EKG flat-lined along with it.

The rhythm of the defibrillator pounded meaninglessly in the soft blur of tumult. Jared knew a flat-line meant dead brain-signals, the heart was no longer pumping blood upwards and the brain was no longer sending instructions to do so downward. Jared surmises that DJ abn-Qayamat died the moment he was outside the range of his onstage set-up. Had he short-circuited? Had his biochip gave in? Or had it kept the music going, kept its host alive by sending signals to the software and the heart? It didn’t matter. The music was over now, and all Jared could do was turn off the lights.

END