In the east, the wind was blowing the shadows across the city. The sun glowed in the rich orange hue of day's end as it crept through the western skies. The cirrus clouds along the horizon glowed too, but in their own distinctive shades of red and gray and purple.
Across all of Stewartland, the soothing strains of 'End Of The Day' wafted from every audioport.
Then the sun split in two! Two identical flaming orange balls, one continuing its slow descent to the mountains, the other reversing its course and rising in the sky!
"Oooh, I've never seen that before!" said Slingsby as the tour group watched from the backyard deck at Stewart Manor. "Those kids in the Special Effects Lab are really sharp."
The cirrus clouds, now a smooth and constant indigo, rearranged themselves to form the Great Master's signature Cat logo. They crept off slowly towards the sweeping northern plains like a curtain opening on the star of a great Broadway play. Which, in effect, they were. For behind the mountains where one of the suns had departed only seconds before in a final, farewell burst of light, a new performer arrived on the stage.
The moon.
'End Of The Day' segued into 'Timeless Skies' as Luna rose to catch the eye of the remaining sun. They danced high in the sky, awkwardly at first, then with the grace of ballerinas, spinning and twirling, leaping and reaching, each together, each alone, collecting the days, putting the moments away.....
Unaware to them, a storm cloud came stealing in from the south. Then another, and another. Lightning flashed and thunder roared as the trespassers encircled the dancing orbs. 'Electric Los Angeles Sunset' screamed loud and angrily as the clouds moved in, closer and closer, pushing the sun and the moon into a cold, ecliptic embrace.
From the east again came the wind, stronger this time, riding in to the sound of bells and guitars. A lone figure appeared at the crest of a faraway hill. First with "Roads To Moscow" in the background, and then "The Dark And The Rolling Sea", the wind blew the clouds out and away, across the ocean, leaving the sun and moon to finish their quiet promenade in the sky.
Ah, but it could not last long. The sun was becoming dimmer and dimmer with each passing moment. There amid the failing light, it took its leave. With a 'see you again' and a smile, it left the moon alone in the sky and it made its way down towards the mountains. To the mountains. Behind the mountains. Back-back-back-back-back-back-back-back.....
Gone.
Darkness embraced Stewartland as 'Night Rolls In' echoed out. All across the city, the lights were coming on. The evening chill caught us by surprise. The stars deserted the sky, and old-style gas torches flared from every street corner. As the last chord faded, the moon took its position over the city -- a lone sentinel keeping watch until, with the gray morning light, it too would be gone.
"Beautiful." whispered one woman.
"Breathtaking," offered another.
"Not bad," said Slingsby with a shrug. "Of course, that was only the matinee. Stick around for the 8 o'clock show -- that's when they really let loose!"
Even as he spoke, the heavens brightened over Greater Los Angeles. The sun reappeared high in the western sky....which, I suppose, is right where it belongs at 2:30 in the afternoon.
"More than anything else, every visitor to Stewartland wants to see the sunset. So many of the Great Master's songs allude to the twilight hours, after all. But because the real sun only deigns to cooperate once a day, our engineers had to take matters into their own hands. Thanks to the latest advances in holography and applied VR technology, the sun goes down four times a day during the week, six on weekends and holidays."
"Doesn't that annoy the local residents?" asked one man.
"Not at all. The shows are only visible on the Stewartland grounds. No ticket, no sunset."
Someone asked another question, but I wasn't listening. I was stretched out comfortably in a soft deck chair admiring the view beyond the Great Master's back yard. There was no sense in searching the deck for poll results. Slingsby told us it had been rebuilt from scratch in 2021, a generation after the black shirts visited.
Which was fine by me! I needed a break. It had already been a long day, and there were still a half-dozen rooms to go. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the myriad sounds of Stewartland. The kids shrieking with joy on the rides at Alistair's Kingdom, especially Admirals of the North Atlantic and the Wine Country Jamboree. The hum of the monorail. The music of three dozen Great Master impersonators performing at the Peter White Memorial Amphitheater across the harbor. The voices that rang out in the rolling Californian hills, echoing in Catalan. The VR lawyers screaming in pain at the EACOY Medieval Torture Pavilion where...
Wait a minute! Voices? Catalan? I sat bolt upright in the chair and listened. The voices were very old and very faint, and they were calling out...requests.
1995 ASML BOAP: Most Requested Live Song
# Song Album Votes ----------------------------------------------- 1 Modern Times MT 8.83 2 Trains FLW 6.00 3t Love Chronicles LC 5.00 3t Old Admirals PPF 5.00 5t Apple Cider Reconstitution MT 4.00 5t The Dark And The Rolling Sea MT 4.00 7 Carol MT 3.50 8t Accident On 3rd Street RAA 3.00 8t Post World War II Blues PPF 3.00 10t On The Border YOTC 2.50 10t One Stage Before YOTC 2.50
"What do you know," I mumbled to no one in particular. "I guess all the world's a stage."
"Yes it is," said Slingsby, who was standing nearby. "Not too many people notice it."
"Notice what?" I asked.
"That it's really a stage."
"The world?"
"No, the deck."
"Huh? That's not what I...."
"Hey, you're right!" called one man. "The deck is shaped like a theater stage!"
"It *is* a stage," said Slingsby. "It was reconstructed from the former Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. The Great Master enjoyed many a fine evening there. When he heard the Hall would close its doors in 2020 to make room for a NetScape factory, he purchased the stage and had it moved here to Stewart Manor. Note the original footlights installed along the perimeter to provide low-level lighting. Halfway across the lawn you can see a topiary shaped like a mixing board."
"What's this inscription say?" said someone, pointing to an Old English brass plaque on the railing.
"It says, 'Give me a little more volume, Robin. All I hear is Laurence's guitar.' "
Several members of the tour group looked out silently across the yard. "It does feel like you're standing on a real stage," said one of the VR women softly. "I can almost see those half-familiar faces in the second row. Near the tomato plants."
"Tell us about his contemporary disciples, Slingsby," suggested the elderly woman. "Were they really 'grubby little hyperfan syncophants', like I've heard?"
"What's a syncophant?" asked her granddaughter.
"It's an Old English word," answered the middle-aged man in the RIR t-shirt. "It means 'dancing elephant' "
"No, no, too literal," interjected another. "I believe it means any large mammal with a sense of rhythm."
"Like Elvis Presley?" asked the little girl.
"Actually, I believe Barry White is the canonical example."
"Folks, folks," I yelled. Gotta put that Ancient Languages degree to work. "You've got the wrong word. It's 'sycophant'."
"The Great Master's fans were psychos?" gasped the t-shirted man.
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. "No. A 'sycophant' is a...a groupie, a hanger-on. Someone who fawns over a celebrity obsequiously but adds nothing of value"
"Oh, I get it!" said one woman. "Like Kato Ka..."
FZZZZZZWWWP!! Slingsby vaporized her with his phaser.
"Ahem. There will be no further gratuitous O.J. references in this narrative," he said with a stern look all around. "Is that clear?"
We all nodded. Actually, a couple people applauded too.
"Good. She'll rematerialize in ten minutes. Are there any other questions?"
Everyone shuffled their feet. I for one wasn't about to ask anything as long as he had that phaser out. Being disintegrated makes me very angry. Absentmindedly, I sat down to rest on one of the deck lights.
To my surprise, it switched on.
"Oh, don't worry about that," called Slingsby when he saw me jump. "It's triggered by a photoelectric eye. See?" He placed his hand over a glass sensor on top of another footlight, which also lit up. "They add a sense of atmosphere to the deck. Plus they're a nice safety feature during the sunsets."
When he removed his hand, the light switched off again. I ran across the deck and put my own hand over the sensor.
"It's primitive technology, sir, but it will always work," Slingsby assured me with a slight edge in his voice.
Yes, I'm sure it does. And I'm equally sure that the footlights normally shine together when the darkness falls, blending their beams into a bright, consistent glow. But right now, only one light was on, and it shone into a dark corner of the deck shaded by an olive tree where the following words appeared:
1995 ASML BOAP: Best Modern Al Song (post-1983)
# Song Album Votes -------------------------------------------- 1 Antarctica LDOTC 6.58 2 Fields Of France LDOTC 6.48 3 A League Of Notions BTW 6.47 4 Trains FLW 6.39 5 Laughing Into 1939 BTW 6.35 6 Last Days Of The Century LDOTC 6.26 7 Night Train To Munich BTW 6.21 8 Feel Like FLW 5.83 9 Genie On A Tabletop FLW 5.66 10 Joe The Georgian BTW 5.63
I kneeled down and checked the light lens. Sure enough, it was smudged inside by what appeared to be silver metallic ink. But how could that be? The deck wasn't here on the Great Master's birthday in 1995 -- it was in San Francisco!
I found two other footlights with smudged lenses. One produced this message:
1995 ASML BOAP: Best Modern Al Album (post-1983)
# Album Votes ---------------------------------------- 1 A-Between The Wars 5.969 2 A-Famous Last Words 5.425 3 A-Last Days Of The Century 5.291
...and the other produced these words: "Happy 50th Birthday, Al! Enjoy the 'On The Bordeaux' -- Your friends on the ASML."
I shook my head. I guess some things just weren't meant to be explained.
Slingsby, meanwhile, was still fielding questions. The elderly woman raised her hand. "I understand that 20th-century society produced a lot of disturbed individuals who tended to gravitate towards pop intellectuals. It's said that a woman at a Bob Dylan concert once called out, 'Bob, tell us who you want us to kill and we'll kill them for you!'. Were the Great Master's fans like that, too?"
"No, not at all," replied Slingsby. "Though I understand that at one show, a woman called out 'Al, tell us what you want us to read and we'll read it for you!' " He rubbed the back of his neck. "Um, actually his fans were something of an offbeat lot. Of course, that's to be expected for any artistic pioneer."
"Yes," nodded one man sagely. "He was the inventor of the historical folk song, right?"
"Oh, no. Historical ballads had been sung by troubadours for centuries. The Great Master merely perfected the genre. But he begat an entirely different category of music: rap."
A few people winced.
"It's quite true," said Slingsby with a twinkle in his eye. "But it didn't become widely known until 1996 when the Hip Hop Hall of Fame opened in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island and...."
"Why in the world did they build it there?" someone interrupted.
"Who knows?" shrugged Slingsby. "The people of the era took some sort of perverse pleasure in building museums in the most inappropriate places. The Rock and Roll Hall was built in Cleveland instead of Philadelphia or New York City, the other two finalists. Later, the Country and Western Hall of Fame was built in Sao Paulo. The Reggae Hall of Fame is in Spokane. The Jazz Hall of Fame is in Liverpool. Go figure.
"Anyway, when the Hip Hop Hall opened, the founders commissioned a study to determine the first true rap song. Most believed it would be either 'Rappers Delight' by the Sugarhill Gang, or 'The Message' by Grandmaster Flash. Imagine their surprise when they learned that the Great Master had beaten them all by almost half a decade with a song about a district in his adopted home town of London.
"Several musicologists challenged the findings, calling them iconoclastic. But there was no mistaking it. The hundreds of words, the clever interior rhymes, the rhythmic delivery, even the explicit sexual imagery. Rap was born in England in 1973.
"Many of the hip-hop artists of the day, in tribute, began composing historical songs on topics as diverse as the civil rights movement and the Underground Railroad. These became extremely popular among suburban and rural audiences. Simultaneously, historical folk rockers such as the Great Master gained a large following in urban areas and inner cities. In many ways, the discovery opened the door to a true cross-pollination of American subcultures and helped begin the long, slow process of healing the legion of festering racial, ethnic and social wounds that plagued the people of the day.
"God knows they needed it," finished Slingsby softly.
Again, we all nodded. I walked over to the railing quietly and stared across the back lawn. I knew what song Slingsby spoke of. It was so different from all of his other works. While he embraced a multitude of musical styles, his vocal performances tended to be consistent to the point of immutability.
Ah, but that was only on the surface. There was really a great variety in his singing, noticeable only upon careful examination. Much like the fractal geometry that produced the subtle differences among mountains, I reflected, or the row of seemingly identical petunias in the flower box in front of me. Superficially, each leaf seemed identical. But a closer look revealed idiosyncrasies among the veins in the form of....
....words!
1995 ASML BOAP: Best Vocal Performance
# Song Album Votes -------------------------------------------- 1 Soho (Needless To Say) PPF 11.00 2 Year Of The Cat YOTC 5.00 3t Fields Of France LDOTC 4.00 3t Modern Times MT 4.00 3t Mondo Sinistro 24C 4.00 3t Roads To Moscow PPF 4.00 3t Trains FLW 4.00 8t A League Of Notions BTW 3.00 8t Accident On 3rd Street RAA 3.00
I couldn't explain it. Perhaps one of the black shirts had been a molecular botanist? But then, I couldn't explain the voices from the mountain or the footlights, either. Something about the deck -- the stage, I mean -- was mystical, almost magical.
In fact, the paranormal properties of the Great Master's deck was an even more astounding discovery than the poll results. I would document it in the world's finest scientific journals! I began mentally composing my Nobel Prize acceptance speech. "Come to Stewartland and see the most amazing structure in world history! Come one, come all, come on, come on...."
Come on. Come on! Sir? Come on!
I shook my head and opened my eyes. There I was, lying in the lounge chair by the back door. The deck was deserted save for myself and one fellow tourist who was shaking me on the shoulder.
"Come on!" she repeated. "You must have fallen asleep during the Sunset Show. The rest of the group is heading for the garage."
I got up slowly. So it had all been a dream. What a disappointment, though I had an uncanny feeling that the poll results were somehow accurate.
"Um, ma'am," I said as I followed her down the deck stairs, rubbing my eyes. "Excuse me for asking, but I can't help but notice your accent. Where are you from?"
"Dallas."
Yes, now it all made sense. On to the garage.