Then he was struck by an idea. This was always his main instrument, so why not let it play? He ripped the cover off, revealing a second layer underneath, this one a blanket of dust. Stepping forward, he rubbed enough off the console until he could actually read the screen. His grasping fingers latched onto the knobs, as if steering an imaginary operation. The muscle memory was so ingrained that he was certain he could do these operations from beyond the grave. And despite that, they wanted nothing to do with him anymore, instead preferring that Clippy be the one to hold a scalpel millimeters away from someone’s carotid artery.

He snapped loose all the surgical equipment and swapped it out with everything he needed for a one-stop-shop backing band. Scalpels became drumsticks, forceps were replaced by guitar picks. He lined it up with the necessary instruments and jostled some of the control sticks. The machine’s limbs thrashed chaotically. From its left side came a discordant cacophony of drum smacking, from the right, blindly strummed nonsense. For as freeing as music could be, it was twice as delicate, and these hands had been trained to open the human face, not the human ear. It needed a more deliberate touch.

The team at Surge might have led double lives as secret police with how fast they pulled up to Damien’s house after he invited them in with a phone call. The older bot wasn’t fully compatible with their software, they complained, and the venue, not exactly their NIH fast-tracked clinics, but with Damien willing to pay, they nonetheless installed it with the same set of frozen smiles on their face. After their entourage retreated, he opened a chat in the AIs context window and let it know it’d be playing drums in the style of Bonham. The flexible software responded with a loud drum fill, and he heard something within. A spark of human creativity, the plundered graves of Moon, Starr, and Grohl all fusing their specters into some kind of grotesque mosaic.

It would have to make do until he had the fame to recruit his own bandmates. With the machine sitting behind the drumkit, he revived his bassline that had been so unceremoniously derailed. It hit the cymbal with a dramatic crash, moving on its hydraulic joints to play a few hits on the snare, before moving to a more relaxed backtrack. He followed along with plucking fingernails. For a moment, their sounds entwined into a smooth rock ballad. Nodding along as the Multiectomy Machine eked a soul from the otherwise sterile drumkit, Damien played his notes as he imagined them. But he had to admit, it was a chore to keep up with this thing. When he asked it to play like Bonham, he hadn’t realized that meant he would also have to match the talent from the Physical Graffiti sessions. By the time he got to the end of the impromptu jam, he was covered in sweat. He set his guitar down, but the machine was tireless. More arms emerged as it picked up a guitar, blending the sounds into a two-piece that sounded as pure and raw as Hendrix. He backed away in sudden surprise.

He was on the phone with a local townie dive later that evening. “Yeah, they’re an up and coming group,” he lied, holding the speaker so the venue owner could hear it play. The woman on the other end mumbled something about how good it sounded. He nodded along, buying into his own fib. “I know. I’m lucky to have discovered them. Anyway, when can they get a gig?” She rattled off some dates. “Next Saturday it is then,” he said.

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