“Why doesn’t it sound like that for me?” the young melodian asked after trying to play a small metal flute.

  She had been waiting in line for a few hours to get up to me so I felt a little bad for giving her such an unhelpful response.

  “It takes practice. I don’t think there’s anything I can do aside from telling you to keep trying. The more you play it, the more the music will come to you. You remember those scales I showed you, right?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Okay, so I think you should work on that before you try to play proper songs. It’ll get you used to how you switch between different notes and how to keep the right amount of air for each note to give them the same volume. I think you can do it but you have to just keep trying” I said as I handed the flute back to her.

  She turned and ran out of the room to join her friends who had collectively formed a wind instrument group.

  I looked up to see the entire room filled with melodians waiting in line to see me, each asking questions about whichever instrument they were holding. There weren’t nearly enough to go around but the young melodians had formed a system in which they would share them between each other for designated amounts of time while the others would listen along and try to get new ideas for what they’d do the next time it was their turn.

  As the next melodian was approaching, holding a banjo, a loud voice came from the doorway as Flint entered the room.

  “We got it!” he exclaimed as he wheeled a large battery and a few solar panels on top along with a few electronics on top of the rack.

  I’d sent him up to grab something that could charge my MP3 players so that we could start giving all the melodians music to listen to so they weren’t so dependent on me for new ideas.

  “Oh perfect! And the headphones?” I asked, looking over his haul.

  “Right here!” he exclaimed as he pulled a box out from the bottom which had about ten pairs of headphones in them. They were all fairly different in design with some being ear buds, some were on-ear and some were over-ear styles. None of them were quite like mine, which I’d only recently realized had been modified to fit my head. It was yet another thing that I took for granted.

  “Ah… Okay well, we’ll have a bit of a hard time using some of these I think, but it’s a good start. Were there any more up there?” I asked.

  Flint shook his head, “This was everything we could find but there’s a lot of stuff up there, there could be more.”

  I nodded “We’ll have to keep looking but this is a good start. Um…”

  I turned to see the line of melodians patiently waiting for me.

  “Sorry, this will take a few uh… Rotations… But I’ll get it done as soon as I can, okay?” I asked.

  There were a few groans from the melodians but otherwise they seemed fine.

  “Let’s take this out to the hallway, I’ll show you what you need to do” I said as I ushered Flint and the cart out into the hallway.

  It had been a while since I was able to leave the small auditorium, a few hours at least, and it seemed the melodians had gotten busy since I’d started giving instructions.

  The hallway was filled with the young melodians with large circles forming around each group of instruments. The groups seemed to pour into other rooms around the place. In the distance a few older melodians had gathered as they watched the younger ones making the sounds, singing along to various songs I’d shown them and listening to them cheer whenever any of them came up with a new melody. They weren’t trying to stop the young melodians and they weren’t trying to join in. Instead they seemed to just watch on in amusement, probably feeling a little confused about what was going on but I was hoping they were at least able to understand the music they were hearing.

  I turned my attention back to the cart as Flint pulled it up to a cleared out area of the hallway.

  “Alright so, we have this solar panel, which should work fine with the lights here. You found a USB bank, that’s good, we’ll need as many of these as we can get. Did you get the cables too?” I asked.

  “I… Did my best, but there were a lot and I didn’t know what I needed so…” Flint said as he opened another box that was filled to the brim with various cables. I could tell immediately that most of them were useless to us.

  I started digging through them, realizing that I should have been more clear about what a USB cable was.

  I dug through various power cables, laptop chargers, wireless phone chargers and other types of cables that were useless, all the while I’d pull out any USB cables and set them to the side, sorting them into different piles for mini, micro and type C cables.

  After getting a few cables into it I looked over to one of the melodians who’d been standing nearby, watching me as I sorted through them.

  “Hey, would you want to help with this?” I asked, gesturing for him to join us.

  After a minute of showing him which cables we needed and which ones we didn’t I set him on the task of continuing to sort through the box.

  “Alright” I said, turning my attention back to the cart.

  I cleared a space on one side of it, using it like a table as I pulled out my backpack and emptied out all my MP3 players onto it and quickly sorted them into different piles based on which USB type they used.

  “So these things you’ve been carrying around, they play music?” Flint asked as he watched me starting to hook them up to the USB bank that was getting its power from the solar panel.

  “Yeah but their batteries have been empty for a while. It’ll take some time to charge them up. Here, I’ll show you how these work and you can show the others” I said as I saw some of their screens coming to life.

  I showed him how to read the battery charge and told him they should unplug them when they get to around twenty percent charge so they could move on to the next player. I figured that should keep them going for a few hours and give the others a chance to get started in the meantime. Eventually we could get them all charged up but with the limited amount of USB plugs I figured we shouldn’t waste time charging them up to completion.

  “Okay so this one here” I said as I picked up the one labeled ‘classic rock’ “is at about two percent, which means… Uh…” converting numbers from base ten to base eight was still a mystery to me so I wasn’t sure how to convey what it meant exactly “It means… Well it means it won’t last very long yet, but we can get it started up for now” I said as I turned it on.

  It took about a minute for it to boot up, getting past the zune logo and presenting us with the main menu.

  I showed Flint how to navigate the menus, which buttons to click to get to the songs and how to scroll through them along with how to play, pause, skip or go back.

  “I don’t get it” he said, looking puzzled.

  “Don’t get what?” I asked.

  “It’s not doing anything” he said as he moved the selection up and down over the songs.

  “Oh, yeah you need the headphones for it. Here” I said as I pulled my headphones out of my bag and placed them on his head.

  I took the player from him, scrolling over to something I figured he might like.

  “Alright so” I said before continuing “Let this get up to about twenty percent. Which should look the same as this” I said while pointing to the little 2% on the top right of the screen “but it’ll have another number between the two and this symbol to the right. Once that’s done, plug another one of these players in and let that charge too. When they’re ready to go you can let the other melodians try them out. You can show them how to use it too. If you have any questions I’ll be in the same room as before. Does that make sense?”

  He nodded, looking a little impatient.

  I smiled as I scrolled to the AC/DC section and hit ‘shuffle all’.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  His eyes went wide as the player seemed to pick ‘thundestruck’ as its first option.

  “Alright, what was I doing… Right” I said as I made my way back to the room where the melodians were waiting in line.

  Hours passed as I continued answering questions, showing examples, explaining how to play together and how to harmonize. I answered a lot of individual questions while a small group of melodians stood by and just listened to what I was saying rather than running off to try everything out.

  “I think I figured it out” said a young melodian.

  I sighed “Andes, I told you, I can’t show you the piano if it’s not…” I started to say.

  “No I know, I think I figured it out though. Can I show you?” he asked.

  It was the third time he’d come to me asking about it, but the issue was that in order to play a note, you had to lift the key up and let it fall back on its own. Due to the high gravity, it wasn’t behaving correctly and I figured unless we brought it to a higher floor or change the springs inside it wouldn’t work, but he seemed pretty confident in himself so I followed him over to the far side of the room to find the keyboard propped up on a few small items, tilted backward about seventy degrees.

  “What the…” I started to ask, tilting my head a bit.

  “So, you said it needed less gravity, but I figured out you can just change its balance. Look” he said as he stood over it, looking down at it at a fairly awkward angle.

  To his credit, he started hitting the keys and the instrument played the way it should by automatically lifting each key back into position after each press.

  “Huh… That’s… Obvious now that I think about it” I said with a smile.

  He stepped back, gesturing to it to let me give it a try.

  The keys felt strange, being at the awkward angle, but the keyboard at least worked. It took a few minutes but after a few minutes of practice it wasn’t too hard to adapt my muscle memory to the strange angle.

  After playing a few chords and simple progressions I turned to him.

  “Well hey you were right, I guess… What’s up?” I asked as I noticed he was giving me a strange look.

  “I… Don’t think I could do anything like that…” he said.

  “Not at first, but like all these other instruments, it takes practice. Um… Here I have an idea. Do you see these three keys here?” I asked as I touched three of the keys.

  “Uh huh” he said.

  “Okay, I want you to watch what I do” I said as I started playing the simplest song I could think of: Merry had a little lamb.

  It only took a few seconds to get through the song, but I turned back to him after playing it to see a very unimpressed looking melodian.

  “That was nothing like what you did before” he said, his arms crossed.

  “That’s okay! We’ll build up to that. Could you give it a try for me?” I asked.

  He seemed a little skeptical but he reluctantly moved up to me and gave it a try.

  The notes were all wrong, but after he gave an attempt I moved one octave down and played the same tune again, then gestured for him to try again.

  His second attempt was better and by the fifth attempt he’d gotten it down.

  “Perfect!” I said as he gave a nervous smile “okay so, these three keys here” I said, pointing to three more keys lower on the piano “I want you to use your other hand and play the same song on these keys, but instead I want you to play every other note, like this” I said as I played the song again but only using every other note and holding it between each key.

  This time it only took him two attempts to get it right.

  “Good! Now, I want you to try both at the same time” I said, stepping back from the piano.

  He nodded, getting a few false starts and only getting a note or two into the song before getting confused, but after a few attempts he seemed to understand it well enough to get through the whole song. It took a few attempts to get through it without any mistakes, but after only a few tries he seemed to feel pretty comfortable with it.

  As he wrapped up his first attempt without hitting any mistakes a soft cheer of excitement rang out around us. We’d both been focused on the piano and didn’t notice the crowd of about fifteen melodians standing around us.

  “Perfect! That was great! How does that sound to you?” I asked.

  “It’s… Neat. But it still sounded different when you did it before. You were playing a lot more notes” he said.

  I nodded, leaning over and pressing a single key, holding it for a moment before letting it go. I then moved three fingers out, reaching across and playing the same note again, but as a chord. After going between the two a few times I asked.

  “Do you hear how they sound the same? This is a chord and it makes the note feel… Fuller. There are a lot of ways to get to the same note but we’ll just focus on one right now. Can you play this chord for me?” I asked as I pressed the three together again before pulling my hand back.

  He looked down at it, pressing the three notes together again as I saw a smile spreading across his face.

  “Okay, what comes next?” he asked.

  It took a few minutes and I felt a little bad not answering more questions from the other melodians, but they didn’t seem to mind, they looked interested in learning by watching along.

  We’d eventually made it through the whole song, replacing each note with a chord.

  “Okay so I think that should get you started. Do you mind?” I asked as I gestured toward the piano.

  He nodded, as I gestured to the front of the piano so he could watch.

  “Alright so, you can change the song a lot by focusing on certain chords. I can play the lower end of the song without chords and it’ll sound like this” I said as I played chords with my right hand and single notes with my left. The crowd of melodians we’d gathered seemed mesmerized by the sound.

  “But we can also do other things, like this” I said as I played through the song again, this time I highlighted certain chords by pressing the keys harder or softer while hitting the individual keys of the chords out of time with each other, making it sound like it was rolling down along the piano.

  “And now, using just those same notes, I can do something completely different” I said as I started playing a much more complex version of the song as I varied the weight of the key presses, the timing of the notes, shifting between playing individual notes and playing chords. It was all the things I’d taught him all playing together at once.

  After only a few seconds the song was over and the young melodians fell silent, their stunned faces staring at the piano as if I’d just performed a magic trick.

  “It’ll take practice, but I didn’t do anything there that you can’t do yourself” I said, gesturing for him to join me back on the playing side of the piano.

  I stepped back, letting the crowd gather around the piano as Andes started to play again.

  Thankfully with everyone distracted with the piano for a moment I had some time to look around at what everyone else was doing.

  It felt almost magical seeing all the melodians learning together, trying new things, sharing ideas with each other. It was what I’d originally hoped to find onboard the lifeboat. If anything, I was glad I hadn’t given up on the melodians, I needed to teach them, but there was hope for them.

  Hope.

  I thought to myself.

  It was a word that had stuck with me. Lampro’s last words. There was a part of me that thought he somehow knew the potential I’d brought with me to the lifeboat. He recognized me. One of the only things that Nori remembered about him before the disaster was that he believed that there was a lot more to the melodians than the mechara thought. He instilled that belief in his daughter and when he saw me, he said he hadn’t lost hope. It had to be connected. Somehow, me being on the lifeboat meant there was still hope for the melodians, but how did he know that? Who was I back on Lifeboat seven?

  I stepped out into the hallway to find a significantly larger number of melodians from before. They were all young, too young to have gotten into the assembler. I’d hoped at least a few older ones would have noticed, maybe even asked to participate, but from what I could tell they would only stop by for a few moments, looking from a distance, then continue about their day.

  Good luck.

  Another line now stuck in my head.

  When Artemis said it, he didn’t sound angry, he didn’t sound upset about what I was doing. He sounded… Sad. He sounded defeated. He sounded like…

  Like he’d lost hope.

  I thought.

  I sighed.

  “Oh Artemis…” I said quietly to myself, looking in the distance as I saw a few melodians in the far distance with their eyes glowing white “What do you want from me…”

  “Tess?” I heard a young melodian ask as he was looking around.

  “Oh, sorry, yes?” I asked as the boy recognized me and ran over.

  He had a pair of ear buds in his ears and he looked incredibly confused about what he was listening to.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him.

  He sighed, “This song. I don’t… I don’t get it. This doesn’t seem possible. We’ve been trying for kilorots and every time we listen to it… I don’t know” he said as he handed me the mp3 player in a frustrated gesture.

  It was an odd statement, but when I picked it up and read the screen I understood why he was confused.

  “Okay, do you know where the electric guitar is?” I asked him.

  I’d taken the time to teach them the names of the instruments, so thankfully he understood and brought me to the room adjacent to the one I had been in before. It was a similar auditorium style shape where the semblances of a rock band type setup had been put together at the center. The young melodians had grabbed several more solar panels to power the amp so thankfully I didn’t have to deal with any of that.

  The melodians were all arguing over each other but I could hear the words “impossible” and “fake” being thrown into the conversation. They all stopped talking as I approached.

  “Alright, I’ll give this a shot but it’s been a while since I’ve played this one” I said as I turned the amp on, placing one foot on it to prop up the guitar.

  I cleared my throat, “This is a song called ‘Free Bird.’”