His music swirled on the bright air, gleaming and golden. It was both shapely and insubstantial; lively, light and bubbly. It flounced, cantered and teased her music, which was much more sophisticated and elegant. When the two met in the air his melody matured and was graceful.

The two splintered ribbons rippled in the wind, hung immobile for a short moment and then were whisked away in a million glittering particles toward the south.

The pair watched the last echoes fade away into nothingness.

He broke the silence first, his voice rust colored and rough as it broke from his lips. He was shocked, and immediately cut short, whereupon the rusty ribbon froze and disintegrated.

Her laugh was silvery blue before it faded softly away. Her hand groped in the empty air and found something hidden in the space between them. Twitching her fingers in a flicking motion, she smiled at his expression.

The bright sheen of the air dimmed and seemed to collapse into her palm, which now held a fragile and complicated-looking cube, shimmering and solid.

“Sasha, you built this?” he breathed, seeing the echoes of his voice rippling on the wind. The ribbons and colors had gone with the collapsing air, but the tones and timbres of his voice were still visible.

“Sure did.” she winked. Again her hand grouped blindly, latched something near her temple and before a second had passed the thick goggles flickered into view.

Kale mimicked her motions and relieved the bulk of the contraction from his head. He accepted the cube from Sasha and handed over his goggles in return.

The cube was an interesting object, full of stars, lights and dust. He had seen things like this before, but usually larger and lacking the lively dancing movements that shone from within.

“And you came across this by accident?” he gestured to the goggles in her hand.

The woman smiled at her companion and turned to face him.

“Nope. Remember, last time we talked, I was trying to improve the range and accuracy of my radiation goggles? Well, I mistakenly tuned into the wrong frequency. It was confusing until I realized the waves I was seeing were sound waves. Then it was extraordinarily interesting."

“And… this?” Kale held forth the cube. She took it from his outstretched hands and turned it thoughtfully in her own.

“This took longer, but essentially it’s just sound-sensitive particles – each color is directed by the pitch and tone of the sound. Oh, and I threw in a handful of un-programmed personality particles.”

Astonishment and awe dawned on his features.

“Like in the children’s toys?”

"Exactly like in the toys. This particular version came from what used to be a kitten. Cute little thing it was, I'm thinking about buying another one."

Kale shook his head at the thought of this grown woman romping about with a holographic kitten. What had happened to the days of remote control cars and simplistic dolls, Kale couldn't say. Now everything walked, talked and thought for itself. More so, the poor children were being forced to mature faster and faster, so their augmented brains would produce enough bang for the thousands of bucks. They was no more carefully tending to sick dolls, instead the children were immersed in basic physics and teaching their robotic pets to change their own litter boxes. It was a dreary, fast-paced world.

"… This is amazing, but you had mentioned something was wrong with it?"

Sasha's eyes clouded over, and she stared darkly at the cube, sitting docile in her hand. A flicker of uncertainty dashed across her face, and she seemed to be deciding something.

"You can't let anyone know. This could have a very bad outcome if it got out, okay?"

Instantly intrigued, Kale mimed zipping shut his mouth. Sasha studied his expectant face a moment, and then related the events of the previous week.

Leaning over to turn off the speakers, Sasha smiled quietly to herself. The jazz music that was being pumped from the mounted wall speakers cut out, and the beautiful, smoky purple shape that had been swirling about dissolved. She fingered the next contestant, meditating on the dying notes of a particularly soulful piece. Her smile faded as she stared at the soundcard in her hand. It was solid black, and etched with silver and red markings. Distastefully, she swiped it into the system, leaned back as it loaded, and then winced as the death metal blared to life.

Instantly, a huge, writhing shape leapt from the speakers, and landed squarely in the middle of the room. It paused, with boiling skin, flaming limbs and sharp sproutings of temporary tentacles, and then it crouched. Sasha took it in with wide eyes and a calm voice as she dictated into her Voicebook. She watched when the shape-shifting dragon rose vertically, as the lyrics of the song kicked in. She noted that it stalked around the room to the same beat as the throbbing bass. Then the song reached a fevered crescendo, and the Voicebook bleeped an error message, unable to translate her scream into words.

The huge cloud of angry color and hateful shapes charged for Sasha.

First, it split into two and seemed to swallow the frenzied silver ribbon of her scream. The molten ribbon twisted with what Sasha considered incredible pain as the hulking beast tore it to shreds with its groping claws. Briefly, the echoes of the scream increased in pitch, and then were lost within the belly of the music. The creature moved slightly, suggesting motion, like licking its foaming lips. Then it made straight for the petite woman who stood frozen in fear.

"Wait, it attacked you? But it's just music, how could it attack you!?"

Sasha stared at the cube in her hand, her brow furrowed with bewilderment. In truth, she didn't know how noise could attack someone, but she did know that she had barely survived the experience. The metal-beast had swarmed over her, filling her with fear and pain. It was only out of desperation that she had pressed the stop button on the wall… she had barely made it out alive.

"I think, this is only my guess, but I think that the fury and passion within the song might have triggered something in the personality particles. Perhaps there was still some lines of ghosted code within them; overriding even the neutralizing elements I introduced."

Kale stared blankly, but Sasha wasn't looking at him. She was no longer even talking to him, choosing instead to speak directly to her invention. Again, that flicker of uncertainty crossed her features, and her expression became muddied with doubt.

"I have to destroy this. It's too dangerous."

Startled, Kale snapped his head up and mouthed his disbelief, but again, Sasha didn't acknowledge his presence.

"Too dangerous. Too dangerous. This could kill." Shasa's eyes shot upward, met his own staring, disbelieving gaze.

"Do you see? This... could... kill. Too dangerous… Kill… the beast music can... kill... dangerously. It-it… this is bad…"

Her face no longer hid a smile, no longer hid laughter or interest. Her features were contorted into a stiff mask of paranoia, pale as death and wide eyed. Her fingers twisted around each other, her head jerked in agitation. She rocked on her feet.

Kale blinked away his surprise, instantly adopted a calm voice, and reached out a comforting arm. He murmured reassuring nothings in her ear, and the ceaseless twitchings and fumblings came slowly to a halt. The woman still moved slightly, seemingly unbalanced in the wind, but her eyes finally cleared.

Kale withdrew his arm, and Sasha blinked gratefully up at him. Although Sasha was considered overall stable, she could sometimes crack under stress – perhaps a side effect of the extensive mental re-wiring she had undergone as a child. At the time it was a relatively new procedure, so she had gotten a few quirks sewn in alongside the astonishing increase of mental capability. She was a walking miracle of science. Or, at the very least, living proof of infinite scientific possibilities.

"Honey, we'll get rid of it as soon as we get back into the city. The country's nice and all, but I was born a city boy."

Sasha managed a weak smile at this, and then bent toward the blowing grass to retrieve the case for her equipment. Fondly, she packed away the cube and the goggles, muttering a somber goodbye.

Kale's mind hummed with possibilities. His own friendship and debt to Sasha very much compromised any of the half-formed plans that lurked in his head, and he fought silently against himself. He was a human, first, and THEN a member of the government. No matter what his peers thought. The war effort introduced enough new weapons on a weekly basis for the tide to turn in their favor; they didn't need personified music too. No, he even doubted that the heads would like the idea of musical weapons. Kale shook his head forcefully.

Sasha was too caught up in her own thoughts to pick up on Kale's, and when the arrived at her living quarters, she barely spoke as she dismantled the three prototypes of her invention. She broke apart the goggles too, even though they weren't essential for the viewing of the soundshapes.

Kale, in the end, was the one who destroyed them. The woman felt a tiny twinge of uncertainty as she saw an odd look in his eyes, but the relief at having the dangerous object destroyed outweighed this tweak. Kale would never do something harmful like that; Besides, she told herself as he slid into her laboratory to incinerate the pieces, No one but me could put the pieces back together again.

Kale tossed the bits of shell and stardust into the incinerator, without a second thought. He didn't even glance up at the loud cracklings that sounded from the exploding technology; he was too absorbed in the papers that were spread across Sasha's workstation.

------

The stillness of fear hung on the air. Inhabitants of the large weapons facility fidgeted and paced fretfully. Naturally, as soon as the Intelligence had gotten wind of an impending attack, all personnel had been evacuated to the lower levels of the base. However, Intelligence had hinted that the attack would also involve a new weapon, one so foreign and strange that they couldn't possibly prepare a defense, even though they held partial blueprints in their hands.

All the soldiers could do was wait.

It was when dawn broke that it happened. The crisp morning air seemed to shimmer in the angled light of the rising sun, and the alert sirens blared across the abandoned terrain. From within the unfathomable cover of the surrounding wilderness, a deep bass throbbing was pumped. It beat out across the world with restless energy, and it engulfed the entire building. The noise grew and grew until the very air shook with its volume. Finally, from over the hills and plains surrounding the impenetrable base, there swarmed countless beasts of unfixed shape and unrelenting fury. The heavy music snarled and scrabbled at the barricaded doors, and streamed through the electric fences. Reinforced concrete, lasers, bullets from auto-aiming turrets, not even missiles of every possible kind could impact the creatures in any way. Soon, the noise of the blaring sirens was lost, as the beasts devoured the very sound itself, and then grew on the nourishment.

One by one, the huge, unfixed creatures dove into the ground, intent on human prey.

One by one, the screams died and were then ingested, on that terrible, noise-some day.