fandomtownies | Groovy Tunes, Saturday

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Groovy Tunes, Saturday

Jono was butting heads with the stereo.

Again.

And for once, it wasn't about what the stereo was playing. It was more about how much the stereo was playing of whatever Jono wanted it to play. It would get through the opening riff of any song on any CD he put into it, and then, the second the song kicked into vocals, it would just jump to the next.

Jono tried to counter this by only playing instrumental tracks. The stereo countered this by only playing Gregorian chant versions of any and every CD he tried.

Somewhere around noon, Jono opened the front door and threw the stereo out into the street.

About five minutes later he relented and went to get it again, if only because it was still covered in the stickers that Alluka had decorated it with, and he didn't want to hurt her feelings.

Sigh.

[Open!]

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Tip was still riding high on "I have my own money and no one can tell me how to spend it." Also on "oh good bubblehuts."

"I think your stereo is broken."

//Broken or possessed,// Jono replied, wrinkling his nose at the bloody thing before looking Gratuity's way. //I still haven't entirely decided which it is. Broken stereos don't generally pull random music out of thin air, I mean.//

A beat.

//With the exception of the radio. Obviously.//

"Is it actually random, or 'haha I'm so random' random?" Tip wondered aloud. "It kind of sounds like it's connecting to iTunes' prepurchase sampler or something."

//It's that second one, the 'haha I'm so random' one, I think,// Jono groused. //This bloody thing is new, but not 'interface with a computer' or 'connect to the internet' capable. I made certain of that before pulling it out of the box.//

Because for as much as Jono liked to pretend he didn't know his way around the internet, he very much knew his way around his stereos.

//When the island was parked in Candyland, it decided that it was going to only play music about sweets,// he complained. //It has a mind of its own, barmy as I must sound to say so.//

"I have a pet robot billboard," Tip said. Bill buzzed up to circle over her head and spelled "hello" in bubbles. "It's not barmy."

Jono blinked at the... billboard. And the bubbles. And then tilted his head slightly.

//Ah,// he said, finally. //Well, ah, hi there, little...//

Um.

//Billboard.//

He'd never spoken to one before, okay? This was new, even for him.

//So you're not exactly unfamiliar with things that have a mind of their own, I take it?//

Bill made a smiley face.

"He's been practicing his English communication," Tip said proudly. "He's pretty into emojis. And -- yeah. I've always kind of anthropomorphized things anyway. Turns out, sometimes they anthropomorphize themselves."

//That shouldn't even surprise me,// Jono replied after another pause. //We've had a few training rooms back home develop sentience, too. They were far more, ah, homicidal than the stereo or your little friend here, though.//

Also alien technology. Funny, that.

Tip nodded. "My friend J.Lo -- not Jennifer Lopez --" Someday, she'd get to leave that part out. "-- he said that the reason they do that is that they get frustrated. They can't do what they're programmed to do, so in trying to get around it, they develop a glitch. The glitch of thinking." She still didn't entirely agree with that. But she couldn't argue with his logic for it. "Bill got frustrated because none of the Boov would pay attention to him. They'd learned how to habitually ignore him, look right through him." She shrugged. "I can see how being turned invisible can make you go violent. He might've, if I hadn't shown up and started talking to him."

Jono could only imagine. He existed a bit on the flipside. Invisibility would've suited him just fine, even if that particular power would've cost him a musical career, too.

//He's lucky to have you, then,// he surmised. //A glitch seems like an odd way of putting it, but I'm not going to pretend I know my way around what does and doesn't make an AI, either.//

He jerked a thumb toward the stereo.

//Or what makes that thing so bloody moody.//

Well, involuntary invisibility wasn't the same as the kind you could turn on and off.

"Maybe it just needs more positive attention," Tip suggested.

Hey, Jono couldn't turn his current power set off. Who's to say he'd be able to turn invisibility off, too? Just so long as it wasn't, like, invisible skin and nothing else. There was an unfortunate mutant power, right there.

//... What, are you suggesting I should read it bedtime stories and tell it what a good little stereo it is?//

Because he ran a music shop and had been thinking more along the lines of just gifting this one to one of his employees or something and opening a new one. There wasn't a shortage of stereos to choose from here, exactly.

"Well, it's a stereo, so it might respond better to lullabies," Tip said, smiling. "But -- well, have you tried? I'm guessing yelling at it hasn't worked yet."

//Well, of course not. Telepathy doesn't exactly work that way,// Jono replied, though he was giving the stereo a speculative once-over, now. //... I don't think.//

He'd needed a special phone in order to be able to actually place calls. His powers kind of worked with things that had brains. But then again, he'd also communicated with androids in the past...

He had no bloody clue.

"Does it have a radio?" Tip asked. "Because that would mean that it can at least receive signals. . . ." She had no idea how telepathy worked, no.

//It has a radio,// Jono replied, raising an eyebrow, //but I'm not a radio. It hearing me would be about as strange as it hearing you. It isn't like it was built with ears or anything.//

He hesitated for a moment, and then added, //... Can you do me a favour and try to talk to the stereo?//

Just so he could get a feel for just how far-fetched the idea of psionic communication with a piece of willful hardware was.

Tip pointed to Bill, who was still circling over her head.

"He doesn't have ears, either."

Not that she'd noticed, anyway. And there was no reason she knew of that the Boov would have given him any.

She went over to the stereo and gave it a soft rub on the top. "Hey there," she said, only feeling slightly ridiculous to be doing this in front of one of her teachers. "Having a little trouble picking a song today, huh? I've been there."

The stereo didn't give any obvious sort of reply, at least so far as Jono could tell. It was, after all, a stereo, kind of relegated to sitting there and playing music. Then, after a moment, it just kind of hit pause. And stayed that way, not moving on to the next song.

Jono raised an eyebrow. That part was new, anyway.

"Sometimes you're just not sure what you want to hear, are you?" Tip continued, deciding the pause was a good sign. "You know you're meant to play music, but each song you start just doesn't seem quite right for the moment, just yet. Do you have a shuffle function? Sometimes playing things from a couple different genres can help you figure it out."

The stereo made a little whirring sound, as though it was contemplating this, and then it clicked through to a random song. It only had the one CD slot, or else it would go searching for more.

In the end, it wound up playing a song that wasn't even on the CD that was in it, a song that Jono wasn't entirely certain had existed before now. But hey, that's what you got when you asked a Fandom device to shuffle.

How the Sesame Street theme song matched so well with Radioactive was anybody's best guess. Even Jono kind of found himself not hating it, anyway.

Tip laughed. "That's lovely," she told the stereo. "Very creative!"

See what positive attention got you, Jono? The internet would love this song.

//Oh god,// Jono was mumbling to himself, burying his face in his hand. //My stereo has developed a consciousness.//

This was not supposed to happen. What the hell was Panasonic doing, these days?

The stereo didn't seem to be paying attention to his reaction to all of this, blinking little lights on its display in glee. Probably glee. It was hard to be completely sure, considering the time display was still proudly announcing that it was 12:00, 12:00, 12:00 anyway.

Well, learning its emotional tics and habits would take time.

"Sorry I made friends with your stereo," Tip told Jono. Not looking particularly sorry at all. "But at least now you might be able to reason with it."

//Oh, lord, I hope so,// Jono muttered, and then shook his head and looked back at Tip. //Here I thought Fandom was being contrary. And maybe it was, I can't picture the stereo gaining a sense of reason back where I'm from. But--//

He blinked.

//Oh lord, do I have a stereo that hates Pearl Jam??//

TRAGEDY.

"Maybe?" Tip said. "There's no accounting for taste." And then, because she was so very young: "Which one's Pearl Jam again?"

Jono would have sighed, were he able.

//One of the loud grunge ones, from the 90s. If the stereo doesn't like it, I'm not going to make it pl--//

Actually, apparently now the stereo was ever so helpfully going to pick a song and start playing it. Thank you, helpful stereo!

"Oh, this!" Tip said. "Mom listens to this stuff sometimes. I always wondered why they couldn't get their amplifiers to work better."

Because that was the style at the time, Tip. The grit was deliberate.

Jono blinked. And if he had a heart, it would be hurting a little.

//That's... actually how they wanted it to sound.// His soul was dying. You could tell by the way he was kind of reaching for a Pearl Jam CD and clutching to it like it was a dying baby or something. //It's called grunge.//

Tip rather thought that sounded like the argument of a teenager who'd just learned that poetry didn't have to rhyme, but she knew better than to say it out loud.

"It's certainly a distinctive sound," she said instead. "You should thank the stereo for playing it for you."

Jono was squinting a little, now. Damn it, Gratuity. But he turned his attention to the stereo, stuffing his hands into his pockets, and tried not to feel too ridiculous as he said, //Thanks, mate. You picked one of th'good ones.//

The stereo turned the volume up slightly. Which... was not a bad response, unless you were picky about the quality of the amplifiers Tip.

Hey, how did you know those amplifiers didn't have feelings?

"Are you the one who put stickers on it?"

//Ah, no,// Jono replied, shaking his head and looking back at Tip. //My best guess is that it was Alluka who did that. I'm not really a sparkly sticker sort of person.//

At all. In the history of ever.

"You should see if it plays the music she likes," Tip suggested. "To find out if it likes them."

//I might have to ask her the next time she's in,// Jono replied, scratching at the back of his neck. //I suppose I can become a sparkly sticker sort of person if it means getting along with the equipment.//

... Was that rude to say? He didn't even know, anymore.

"Sometimes it's easier to stay friends with people you already know you're completely different from," Tip observed. "You already know you're going to disagree, so it doesn't hurt so much when you do. Maybe that's true even when one of you is a stereo."

//Actually being aware that the stereo is some...body... that I can disagree with, rather than a piece of tetchy hardware helps,// Jono sighed, shaking his head. //I'm usually at least slightly more inclined to compromise.//

He wasn't going to mention that he'd gotten fed up and sort of smashed the last stereo. That way only led to madness. And guilt. Guilt. Great.

See, this was why apologizing to inanimate objects was a good idea. If it wasn't secretly sentient, it calmed you down. If it was? It calmed you both down, and you were less likely to unwittingly kill it.

"Glad I could help, then."

And now Jono was just trying not to tell himself that he was a bad person who should feel bad. But that was basically the norm for him, so it would be okay.

//This place,// he muttered, and then glanced up at Tip again. //Thanks for the assist, luv. Now I suppose I should do my job and ask if there's anything I could help you with?//

Since most people didn't come into the music shop looking to see what they could do for the manager, and all.

Tip shrugged. "I'm not really looking for anything in particular. I buy most of my music online." You know, like a proper citizen of the 21st century. "The school has us living in bubblehuts, so I've been escaping into town. At least Boov houses have privacy screens."

//... I suppose the bubble huts are a step better than the bouncy castles they had one year.//

Seriously, Jono just wouldn't have been able to cope. If only because back in his student days, he didn't have enough control to not burn a hole in the bloody things.

//Well, you're welcome to kill all the time you like looking at the way we dinosaurs once listened to music. You can think of it as a museum. A museum with an entire section dedicated to vinyl.//

"Does the administration not understand what actual human houses look like?" Tip asked. Rhetorically. She was quickly learning not to expect actual reasons for things that happened on this island. "Just so long as you don't make me listen to the sound of space."

//Well, there were cabins, once, but they were abandoned after a mutagenic alien plague began infecting the island's inhabitants, starting at the campground,// Jono explained. Yes, he found this horrifying. No, he didn't seem to think it was terribly strange for this place, either. //The school has been looking for alternatives since. I... have no idea why they didn't just re-build, mind. It isn't as though they don't have the funding.//

A mystery for the ages.

"Is the person doing the looking someone who actually needs to live in a house?" Tip asked. "Have they even seen one before?"

Jono's shoulders were getting a major shrug workout today, apparently.

//For all I know, it could be the moose or the gremlin in the office that are doing the looking,// he pointed out. //So it's entirely possible that no, they don't. I'm not saying you should be grateful for the living arrangements by any means. Living in bubbles with no privacy is bloody ludicrous, but at least you aren't being rained on, too?//

...

//That is a very sad upside and I'm sorry I even said it.//

"Not being rained on," Tip agreed. "Or hunted by an assassin from the future, or -- whatever that plague thing you were talking about. I didn't mean there wasn't any upside. But we've got perfectly nice dorm rooms."

//Apparently, the camping is meant to be character building,// Jono offered. Then he shook his head. //I sympathize, I do. I always dreaded the 'camping' part of summer camp, myself. Adjusting to life with a handful of people I don't necessarily know from Adam. There was no shortage of self-consciousness involved. Are there at least campfires this time around?//

He hadn't gone out that way to investigate. Which was probably for the best, if there weren't even privacy screens to the outside. Eesh.

"Campfires are cool, I guess," Tip said. "And, you know, I spent several weeks living in a car with an alien, so the bubbles aren't too bad. Just giving me weird flashbacks to New Boovworld."

And becoming a public enemy at age 13, and having to take down a corrupt politician or two.

//Good flashbacks? Bad ones?// Jono looked at Tip thoughtfully. //Or, as you said, just weird? I know the school prefers students stay in the... camping arrangements... during the summer camp season, but I don't think anybody would call foul if you needed to take a break from them and spend a night or two in the dorms here and there. Even the bouncy castles had walls.//

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Groovy Tunes, Saturday

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