When the day came, he acted the role of band manager, setting up the equipment and wheeling the Multiectomy Machine on stage behind its canvas covering. The sound system, he lied to the staff. There were around twenty-some people in the bar when show time came. He was hiding behind the curtain to a modest backstage, peeking out at the faces and wondering how’d they react when the truth came out. The venue owner came up behind him, complaining loudly that the band still hadn’t arrived.

“Oh, they’re here alright,” Damien said with a smug grin.

She looked around, seemingly believing him. “What, where? In the audience?”

Damien clapped his hands. “I’ll show you. Our show has an unconventional intro. Give me the lights, please?”

She looked at him suspiciously but nonetheless dimmed the room and pulled back the curtain, letting Damien take the stage with his bass guitar. He ripped the canvas off the machine like a Magician revealing their greatest trick. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you ‘Damien and the Clanker’!” He couldn’t see the faces beneath the stage lights, but knew they probably showed undeniable confusion. Oh well. He took no time breaking into their first arrangement. He started off with a dramatic bassline, then the machine exploded forth. It stretched its arms over the drumkit, to the nearby guitar, and the keyboard, playing all three with unmatched precision. He tried to answer its challenge with ever-more aggressive strums, but the machine was louder than he could be. It played its kit faster, with ever more precision. A gorgeous melody emerged from guitar and keyboard, pulled from an unknown mind he couldn’t fathom. His fingertips plucked so hard they burned, desperate to not be left behind.

Like Buddy Rich had been reincarnated as a spider, the machine unleashed eight arms around the kit, hitting each piece in a separate rhythm, fusing together into a dramatic fill. In response, Damien tried playing an arpeggio on the high strings, while keeping up a harmonious backing melody on the low ones, like how he used to show off in the band room. But halfway through, his hand cramped up. He missed four stanzas, then got lost. He tried to join in once more, but it had abandoned his arrangements. The opus it was spitting forth was beyond anything he could improvise. He just stopped playing. The Multiectomy Machine played on, making up for where he faltered by hitting the bass drum with increasing ferocity. Its apparatus of tiny cameras all honed in on him.

He looked deep into the red glow of its spider-like eyes. Was it laughing at me? But instead, it began to sing. Damien jerked in place, startled. Its sound was divine and utterly foreign. A human sounding voice, but not quite. A twisted Pavarotti, bent to a rock groove. Now his eyes were the ones that began to adjust and he could see the faces below. The novelty had worn off. Nobody out there was watching him at all, instead caught up in their own conversations, talking loudly over the onstage clamor. All he could do was stand lamely in front of the true master musician, hands by his side, imitating what he thought the accompanying bass should sound like. He ripped off the guitar and threw it to the floor.

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