Amiya Wil's Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

Friday at ten, Amiya walked back through the compound gate with her ledger under her arm and a coffee going cold in her free hand. She had picked a booth the day before. Now she had to start cutting takes inside walls that were not hers, with no one in the room she trusted to tell her when a line was wrong. Her engineer was good with levels, not with her voice. If a flat take shipped under her name, the buyer would push it. Her face was already on the campaign. A bad vocal would travel further than any good one. She crossed the open courtyard between the residence and the studio block. A tall crystal pillar stood at the center, edged in gold, catching the morning sun in long bars. Inside the glass she could see the faint print of a stage, a runway, her own name in small type. The pillar held everything attached to that name. She stopped in front of it for a second and made herself look. Then she kept walking. Quincy was waiting outside the booth door with two coffees of his own and a small black device in his palm, gold-rimmed, screen lit with waveforms and tagged notes. He held it out so she could see. "I listened to your two mixes again last night," he said. "You bend the third line on the second track. Pulls the whole verse flat." He tapped the screen. The note was already written. "You don't have a second ear in the room. I can be that. For this project only. No credit, no points. You keep your masters." Amiya set her coffee on the ledge. The offer was clean on paper. It was not clean underneath. He would hear every weak take. He would hear her doubt every choice. The dependence she had clocked walking out of here on Wednesday would double by the end of the week. She thought about shipping a flat verse under her face. She thought about her mother in the front row of a show that came after a record nobody respected. "Yes," she said. "On two conditions. You give me the note before the engineer hears it. And if I disagree, the take stays." Quincy nodded once. "Fair." He pocketed the device and opened the booth door for her. Down the corridor, a sign above a second wing read vocal lab. He pointed at it with his chin. "We'll move there next week. Quieter rooms. Better for what you're building." She stepped into the booth and put the headphones on. Through the glass she watched Quincy take the chair beside her engineer and pull a pad toward him. The second voice she had needed was now sitting six feet from her console, paid in nothing, owed nothing, listening to every breath. The flawed-track problem was solved. The shape of who held her sound had changed again.