Psst.

What now?

Over here?

What is with you people, anyway? Why do you keep popping up in dark corridors and whispering at me?

Come this way, my friend. I think you'll find this interesting.

I'm way beyond any possibility of interest. I'm saturated. I'm glutted.

In here, man. Park yourself.

Who are you?

Never mind that. Listen to this.

Ow! Turn that off! It's hurting my ears!

Sorry, shit, let me turn the sound down. I apologize for that. Now.

What is that? A tape of pigs being slaughtered? A bootlet AC/DC tape?

Close. Very good! You're gonna love this.

But--

It's an mp3 of an interrogation session.

Torture, you mean.

Yeah, sure. Interrogation.

Where'd you get that, off the Internet?

No. Here. In-house.

Oh. Of course. The detainees.

Yes. This one is, uh--let's see--David Hicks. One of the Australians.

What are they doing to him?

Never mind that. It isn't important. What's imp--

Not important? Inflicting pain like that isn't important?

Well. Only to the detainee. But it's perfectly legal. It's all on the up and up. We've got Alberto Gonzales's memo up on the wall. We had to laminate it, finally, so we could wipe the blood off. I'm tellin you, man. There was a shitload of blood. Spatter like you wouldn't believe.

So--why are you playing this for me? Does the sound of screaming turn you on, or something? Because if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not--

No, no. Nothing like that. That's just the "before." Now listen to the "after."

What--some sort of techno hit?

Techno is right! Hit is right! Blammo! We're hitting that fucker with all the techology we've got!

Hitting what fucker? Hicks?

Well, him too, of course. But he's only the material sound box. What I've done is edited the raw output of that box into a collection of repeatable riffs and stored it on the Internet. For a small licensing fee, composers can access the riffs and mix and match them into commercially viable pop songs, rock songs, country, rap, reggae, classical, anything.

So this is--

Oh, I just wanted to put a sample together, you know, the kind of thing a person could do with this material, were he so inclined.

That's all very interesting, I'm sure, to a composer. But I'm not--

Oh, I know, I know. Sorry, I've been boring you. This is all leading up to something.

Yes?

Word around the detention center is you're headed out into the Ding-an-sich to talk Jesus and Mohammed into playing a gig here at Gitmo.

Yes, well, maybe so. If I can get the metaphysical bugs ironed out.

You see, the thing is, these mp3s may be just the thing.

The thing?

Sure. The ticket.

Which ticket was that, exactly?

Your ticket out into the Ding-an-sich, of course.

Sorry, you lost me.

This is the music of salvation, man.

Is it really.

It is. I see you don't believe me. But this is straight-up, man. I ain't shitting you. You ever hear Jesus and Mohammed play? This is the stuff they do.

I see.

No shit, man. This is the music the angel was listening to on his Walkman when he ran Adam and Eve out of the Garden. This is the music they were blasting from huge speakers at the top of the Tower of Babel. This is the music God had playing on his stereo when he made the bet with Satan that Job would crack if they killed his kids and stole his money and his health. And this--this very music, my friend--is what Mel Gibson mixed into the baseline of his soundtrack on The Passion of the Christ. Straight-up.

These exact mp3s.

No, no, of course not. Digitally remastered pain, man. That's it. That's the Bush party line: the more pain, the more salvation. But of course you gotta mix it. Not just raw pain: electronically doctored pain.

Hm.

You still don't believe me, do you.

So I just play this music and walk out into the Ding-an-sich. I don't need monadic insurance or anything.

You got it. Load maybe twenty hours of it into your mp3-player and play it over your headset. Then start walking.

Why are you telling me this?

Cuz, man!

What do you hope to get out of this?

Nothing! I'm just--a lover of freedom like the next guy!

# posted by Doug Robinson @ 4:24 PM