Chương 224: Act 3, Chapter 73: What a body amplifies

Day in the story: 28th January (Wednesday), afternoon Alex Weatherlight This particular music shop was listed on the web as the best place to come and meet like-minded people with a passion for music and auditory artistic expression. Not only was it advertised as the go-to when it came to purchasing an instrument, but also as a mecca for discussing the technicalities of playing them—at least according to Catansi, who, due to the nature of how we used music, had become the Internet cat.

[It was you who imagined me as a cat in this form. I must admit, though, that the amount of cat memes and funny videos people post daily is staggering—it's like you worship those creatures.] They have their perks. I'd always been a— [Bunny girl, and a spider girl in the other world, I know. Now, however, in this particular body you are a man, so you might do me a courtesy and become an avid feline enjoyer.] I let those intrusive thoughts fall into the back of my mind as I entered the Stringed Man, which was marked by a particularly cleverly designed logo, with a man that was hanged on the strings of his own guitar. If that was not a metaphor for music being the life and death of the people that came in here—I didn't know what else it could have been.

It certainly was a busy place, because as soon as I came in, I had to move aside to make way for a group of people that discussed some old metal albums from before I was even born. They did it with the passion and energy of someone who'd been grossly engrossed in something, and the same passion filled the entirety of the place. However, besides the murmur of people talking in different places—both staff and customers—it was eerily devoid of the music that I expected.

At first glance, at the very least, because apparently it had been made into a very personal experience. There was a man in the corner trying out a guitar that only he heard due to the headphones on his head. The same thing occurred elsewhere, where a small group of three were listening to an album in the same manner.

My consternation did not go unnoticed, and a lady about Alexa's original height—I was made taller than that—approached me wearing punkish clothes, with black stockings, a miniskirt in a typical crisscross pattern, a black top, a jacket, and a few chains here and there. Since I opted for a similar style in this body, I must have been an easy target for her in particular. She had a round face and naturally black hair she had in a ponytail. She overused makeup, though.

"Hi," she started casually.

"You need any help? Looking for something in particular?" she added, focusing on the scar on the left side of my face—burn marks I was born with, due to my creator's vision.

"Yes. I need a guitar that looks like an axe—the more badass and artistic the better." I knew well enough that they housed items of that nature in here. I had seen the photos Catansi had found, and those guitars would be perfect for me, for the ability to turn them into a melee weapon or an instrument depending on what I'd need in the spur of a moment.

"And I am looking for someone who is the best guitarist you know of—need a few pointers." I added, thinking of the artificial artistic brain I carried inside my bag. I'd been self-teaching myself how to play for quite some time, and with so many additional brains it was coming pretty smoothly, but stealing muscle memory of a true virtuoso would be of tremendous help, as apparently that part could not be sped up very much with computational power alone.

There had to be a connection between body and mind that only thousands of practice hours created. And I would not be a proper thief if I would not plan on amending that requirement by stealing it away from someone who'd actually done the work. And by stealing I meant forcing them to share, by letting those memories flood the additional brain's motor cortex, cerebellum, basal ganglia, and supplemental motor area.

I'd learned about those parts of brain's anatomy not long ago, trying to allow my brains to focus on getting only the parts that really interested me, instead of all the long-term personal memories of people that I could not give a single damn about.

"Hubert is very good with strings, I'd ask him if I were you," she answered, with eyes still glued to my scar. It was a fantastic addition to my body, and I could not be more happy about it. It distracted people and naturally gathered their attention, creating a dissonance between my rather pleasant and handsome features by breaking them with this patch of burnt and long-scarred tissue.

"And about that axe?" I asked, measuring that woman. She was not a typical beauty, but had pretty pleasant curves here and there.

"I think it would suit you," she answered, placing hands on her hips and shifting from one leg to the other.

"There is something savage about you. You in a band?" I laughed at first, thinking of Alexa, Elle, and others that I shared the soul with. One hell of a band, indeed.

"No, not currently. I play for myself and my closest friends."

"Oh, I did not want to intrude or anything. Kind of digging the vibe I get from you."

"Thank you. Likewise," I answered, realizing that my body and mind behaved differently from what I'd been used to my whole life. I'd been very attracted to that woman, despite seeing her for the first time in my life, and my thoughts kept on wandering, suggesting myriad wild things I could do with her. [You are sexually aroused.] No shit! I replied with a thought. Is it normal for a man? Or have Alexa made some mistake in creating me? [No idea. I'd advise being cautious with it.]"So," I finally answered, scratching the back of my neck.

"Do you have any guitar like this?"

"We do," she said, following the line of my body with her own eyes. She measured me down to the feet, and if I was not mistaken, she'd been interested in me as well.

"I could show it to you," she added when her eyes landed back onto my face.

"That's why I came. Lead the way." I buried those sexual desires deep down, choosing not to act on them, which, to be honest, was harder than I thought it would be. Men's hormones had to be working differently than those of a woman, or at least those of my own original body. I had no time for casual hookups and the drama they might cause, however.

"I'm Stacy, by the way," the woman replied, turning around and taking steps toward the room farther ahead. There were a few stairs leading to a raised platform where instruments were on full display, hanging on the walls.

"Shop's policy is to be on a first-name basis with customers. I think it's good for building a strong community." She started unnecessarily explaining herself when I decided to answer with an awkward silence. I kept on watching her hips and ass move, which I was not particularly proud of. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"Alex. Name's Alex." I gave her what she wanted when we reached a display showing a beautiful piece of art. It was exactly what I was looking for—an electric guitar looking like a sleek battle axe. Different from what Anansi had shown me before, but even better. Its body was metallic and sharp and pointed, and imitated the head of an oversized axe with a serrated edge. The fretboard and neck looked like a carved handle made by Viking artisans from legends, with metallic runes inserted over its entire length.

The headstock and pegs were shaped to look like a metallic fragment of the jaw of a drake or a dragon. The entire thing was metal as fuck.

"Do you like what you see?" she asked, probably still trying to steer me toward less professional chat.

"Yes. I am taking it," I replied, realizing that an invisible shadowlight link was already established between me and the guitar, declaring it art.

"Would you like an amplifier to go along with it?"

"No. Just get it ready and point me toward this Hubert guy. I will come back for it when I am done talking to him." She wasn't happy hearing me say this. She visibly staggered at first, but nodded and reached for the guitar, standing on the tip of her toes to make it. My first instinct was to help her, but I stopped myself.

"He is by the main counter—a guy with a patchy blonde beard and braided hair. That's Hubert."

"Thank you," I replied and dropped down the stairs, taking them two at a time until I reached the main floor. I moved toward the man she'd pointed at, who, as I found out, was just leaving a group of people by the records shelf and heading back toward his station. I waved, and he turned, his eyes widening slightly. He walked toward me, and we met halfway. I extended my hand toward him in a gesture of greeting, leaning just slightly lower to meet him at his height.

He smiled and grabbed my hand, and right as he was about to introduce himself, I let the power of identity seep away from me into the artistic representation of a brain I held in the bag, asking it to become the additional parts of this man's organs responsible for his motor skills. He was stunned briefly as the magic changed him.

"Alex," I introduced myself to break him out of his stupor. He blinked twice quickly, paused, and resumed blinking, while raising his free hand to look at his fingers.

"Is everything okay?"

"Ooohm. Sorry. I am Hubert," he answered when I let go of his hand. He reached for his head, touching it and then moving to his face.

"Are you okay?" I repeated the question.

"Do you need help?"

"Yeah, I am fine. I just had a strange feeling, like something that is well known to me suddenly became very strange."

"That's jamais vu. It's the opposite of déjà vu," I replied, trying to keep him from paying too much attention to this new experience.

"Seriously? I didn't know."

"Yes. Stacy told me to come to you for guitar tips. Are you proficient?"

"Pro... ficient? Man, I am kind of a masterclass," he replied, suddenly lighting up again.

"What is it that you need?"

"I have problems holding a few keys and playing some chords. I hoped you could lend me your mind on that?"

"Sure," he replied, while I smiled to myself. Alexandra May as miserable Jess Hare I wasn't meant to be lying still in hospitals. Especially the weird kind, where those unusual devices, procedures, and even people were piquing my curiosity. Just a second ago, I'd seen a case of a shadow whose change made it sprout another two spines outside of its body, spiraling around the main one.

"Are you treating shadows in here as well, doctor?" I asked Tom, the physician that Thorne had scolded out of his room. He was very cautiously running some diagnostic tool over the left side of my ribcage.

"Me? Good God—no. Waste of time. Thorne does."

"Waste of time? Why?"

"Isn't it obvious? It's easier to kill them. They get back to their previous state—more or less. And if that's not what they want, they can go to their pretend-to-be doctors and be treated by them," he replied matter-of-factly. No brow raised, no change in the way his hand moved.

"Would you say the same to a patient who could regrow a leg in half a year? That it's not worth treating it because eventually you will have it back?"

"Yes. It's exactly what I'd say." He removed the device with a sapphire installed on one end from over my leg and began unscrewing the gem.

"What about comfort? If treatment would give the patient mobility back earlier, would that not be the reason to operate instead of amputating?"

"I understand that it's personal to you, given your condition, Miss Hare, but it is not the same. They die and are reborn the very next day, or soon after sometimes," he replied while screwing in a red gem.

"It's not the case, doctor. My leg will regrow in time, courtesy of magic. My point was about them—they lose life, but with it some memories and the changes they went through. Who is to say that it's not hurtful to them? They seem to me to be the same people we are, just with different biology and a different world, with strange rules, but in no way less real."

"Think what you want. Thorne will love your preaching," he replied, applying gel and repeating what he was doing before.

"What preaching?" the devil in question asked, entering the room.

"Miss Hare here was just saying that Shadows are basically humans, and we should treat them as such."

"It's a waste of time. Tom here is a small-minded person. Trying to teach him anything is like throwing pearls before swine."

"It seems to me that both of you doctors could use some fresh perspective," I responded, while Tom scowled upon hearing Thorne.

"Time is hardly wasted when you spend it trying to get to the truth. That concerns both the Shadows and fellow humans."

"Aren't you a smartass, with a good heart?"

"Smartass—yes. A good heart is, unfortunately, a condition I contracted upon gaining my Domain," I replied, watching both doctors observe the results of whatever they were doing on the screen. Thorne, however, made an abrupt turn of his head and focused his eyes on me the second I mentioned the Domain.

"What do you mean by that?"

"My Shadow led a very different life than I did, so when she became my soul core, I was infused with a different set of beliefs than my own."

"Oh, that." He waved his hand.

"That's normal. No Shadow leads the same kind of life we do," he replied and continued working with Tom. Maya, the seer"Are you sure you can do this on your own?"

"Yes," Anansi, in her spiderbunny body, replied, while Alex was already lying on the worktable. Her swarm of art crafters gathered around us.

"I will be here the whole time too, observing the process," I chimed in, hovering above her. I wanted to let him know that I had his back, always!

"You know that it's not what I fear. With Alexa in the hospital, Gertrude Reality-knows-where by now, and Elle otherwise occupied, there is no one besides me with an actual aura, so if this goes sideways I will stay… cold for longer than I'd like."

"Anything inside the Domain is in your aura, and as such, given the Authority Alexa granted me, is subject to my control," Anansi replied.

"Please, Alex, do not worry. I will wake you up as soon as we are done applying the tattoos."

"Yes. Wakey, wakey, as soon as we are done." I pretty much sang to him. My voice was amazing. He closed his eyes and fidgeted on the table, but steadied himself after a few seconds with one long inhale.

"Do it," he said, and released his own personality from within his body. In front of us was just a lifeless three-dimensional model of him. Spiderbunny said that it had to be done that way—painting tattoos when the body was just an artistic creation would make them real when he became alive again, while painting them when he was already in "the house" would just make them paint on his skin.

And so he needed to make the building vacant while those cute, itsy-bitsy paper spiders conducted a little renovation, adding a tattoo of an amplifier on his back and the new axe-guitar he'd purchased earlier that day. Both would go along nicely with the repertoire of various blades he already had painted on him. It was also very interesting to watch and feel those little spiders work with classical paints.

Some of them held little jars of that, others water, while different ones were using brushes to create in the style of Alexa herself. And our Anima was the director of the whole process. So cool!