last note faded like a banshee at dawn and silence descended on the room. Ben wondered briefly whether it was really that fulfilling to be able to play a guitar like that: he almost wanted to believe Riff was deeply unhappy with being the guitarist, that he could play the harmonica or sing instead. Perhaps, Ben reassured himself, the jealously was mutual.
These uplifting thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door.
‘Are you coming out?’ Vid’s voice came through from the other side.
Ben shook his head to wake himself up. ‘Just a minute,’ he said as he gathered up the various pieces of paper from the floor next to him and got to his feet.
Ben found the robots gathered around Vid, who was showing them a new idea for his song. Nutter tapped his leg in time with the rhythm. It clanged, Ben noted unkindly, remarkably like a dustbin lid.
‘W-what if you try p-playing f-faster for the middle b-bit?’ suggested the drummer.
‘What, like this?’ Vid played the same notes at twice the speed.
Nutter shook his head. There was a brief gap in the conversation as he grabbed his head with his hands to stop it twitching and then he paused to make sure that it was back under control. ‘Try p-playing each note t-twice,’ he suggested.
Vid tried it and shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘It does sound more energetic,’ said Keys. ‘Then if Ben sang the bridge in a higher register it would give the song more drive.’
Ben perked up at the mention of his name. ‘Higher register?’ he queried.
‘Can you scream in tune?’ said Riff.
‘I don’t know. I’ve never had reason to find out.’
‘I’m sure you’ll be fine. We’ll give it a go later. First, I think we ought to talk about gigs.’
‘Gigs?’ Vid queried.
‘I think we’re almost ready to go out and play to real people.’
‘Real people as in…?’ Ben let the question hang.
‘As in someone other than ourselves and anyone within earshot outside. Any ideas where we could play?’
‘Why not at the Turret?’
‘Not yet,’ said Keys. ‘I think we want to start somewhere a little more low key.’
Ben thought about this. ‘I’ve got an aunt who runs a café,’ he suggested. ‘She has bands in there some evenings. What about playing there?’
Riff looked at Keys, his yellow eyes glowing expressively. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.
Keys shrugged. ‘Sounds like it could work,’ he said. ‘When could you get us in?’
‘I can try for Friday,’ said Ben. ‘If you think we’re up to it?’
‘We’ll be fine,’ said Riff. ‘We just have to decide on what’s in our set.’
‘Listening to Nothing, obviously,’ said Vid.
‘We’ll do the instrumentals, they’re fairly straightforward,’ said Keys.
Riff nodded along with the suggestions. ‘Good, good. And I think we’re fine with I’m Online, Oh Bugger and People are Daft. What about She Was Standing Over There? Are we happy with that one yet?’
‘I’d like to have a bit more time on the bass,’ said Vid.
‘And I haven’t had much chance to sing it yet,’ Ben added.
‘That one’s out for now, then,’ said Riff. ‘We’ll do Ten Miles Up and Station at Dusk and that’ll probably be plenty.’
‘What time do you think we should start?’ Keys asked, absently playing patterns on his keyboard with two of his hands, whilst the others busied themselves at tidying up around him.
‘The gigs normally start at about eight,’ said Ben.
‘Eight’s going to be a problem on Friday,’ said Vid, standing his bass against the wall. ‘The store’s open until seven and the boss doesn’t leave until half past.’
‘Half an hour should be plenty, shouldn’t it?’
‘We have to make sure he’s well clear of the place,’ said Keys. ‘If he got caught in traffic and saw us, we’d be in trouble.’
‘I’ll see if I can book the gig for nine,’ said Ben. ‘My aunt’s quite flexible on these things – she’s never that busy on a Friday anyway. That’s why she gets the bands in – they bring in a bit of extra trade.’
‘Then that’s that,’ said Keys.
There was a silence. It was Vid who broke it. ‘What about a name?’ he said.
‘Name?’ said Keys.
‘For the band. We’ve got to have a name.’
Ben shrugged. ‘Ben and the Droids?’ he suggested.
‘Sounds like a dance band,’ said Riff, shaking his head. ‘We need something a little more enigmatic than that.’
‘How about Enigma?
‘Too enigmatic,’ said Keys. He switched off his keyboard and continued to finger the keys. ‘What about Octave? That’s pretty musical.’
‘I think you’d need eight of us for that to work,’ said Riff.
‘Any thoughts, Nutter,’ Keys asked the drummer. Nutter somehow conveyed the impression of furrowing his brow, even though he didn’t have one. ‘I th-think it has to say s-something about us b-being robots and a h-human,’ he said eventually. ‘N-nobody else h-has done that.’
Keys nodded his agreement. ‘Good thought,’ he said. ‘Is your stammer getting worse?’ he added.
‘It c-comes and g-goes.’
‘How about Steely Ben?’ said Riff.
‘What does that mean? Is it a robot joke of some kind?
‘Not that I’m aware of. But it sounds good, doesn’t it?’
‘Blood and Oil,’ said Keys.
Riff nodded. ‘Sounds cool.’
‘I like it,’ said Vid.
Nutter nodded vigorously, then all heads turned to Ben.
Ben shrugged. ‘Sounds alright, I suppose,’ he said.
‘Good,’ said Keys. ‘That’s agreed then – and our first gig is at nine on Friday.’
Classical physics holds that, barring the incidence of black holes, faster than light transport or weird alien space rays, time is a constant, a steady universal metronome that marks our lives with a fixed number of beats per minute.
Modern philosophy, however, has challenged this view. It says that time is not so much relative as a schizophrenic neighbour. Some days it moves like a slow and eternal waltz, whiling away the evening and wondering when the band will be going home; other days it is a tango, fast and exciting with every thought focused on the next step and the adventure it may bring. Time changes all the time, as they say.
Physicists, not unnaturally dismiss this view as glib, but that doesn’t explain why so many people claim to experience it.
For Ben, the time before their first gig passed like a funeral march for a head of state – days at work seemed to stretch endlessly over the horizon like traffic cones heralding approaching roadworks and he found himself compensating by making an increasing number of trips to the bathroom, where he would practice his singing. After two days it got to the point that his colleagues were beginning to make suggestions about reducing his intake of fluids or seeing a good doctor.
For the robots, the passage of time was less pronounced: Nutter had two fights to prepare for on the Thursday, whilst Keys and Vid were kept relatively busy by the arrival of a new televisor which made the Nostram look like the screen on a mobile phone.
Riff, for whom live performance was not a new experience, was almost entirely unaffected by the anticipation. He simply got on with the day-to-day running of the museum. He even found time to write a short treatise on the history and probable origins of wind instruments6.
Although the time passed at different speeds for the band members, Friday evening arrived simultaneously for the group as a whole and they arrived at Café Igneous in reasonable order. Riff arrived first in a van marked with the museum’s logo and carrying the instruments without which the concert would have been considerably lower key than intended.
Ben, who came straight from work, found the robot positioning microphones on the café’s stage, periodical
ly stepping back to look at the overall effect from the audience’s perspective. One microphone was to the right of the stage, positioned over the keyboards, one to the left, next to where bass and lead guitars were resting on stands and one stood in the centre with no obvious musical equipment in tow. Nutter’s drums were at the back, as if to hide the battered boxer from the audience, and no microphone was provided for these.
Riff noticed Ben’s arrival and nodded in greeting. ‘Ready for the off?’ he said, his eyes flashing with something which may have been enthusiasm or could simply have been a side-effect of standing on one of the microphone cables.
‘Probably,’ said Ben. He climbed up onto the stage and looked out across the café – somehow it had felt less threatening when he’d been sitting at a table having a meal. Now, even the empty chairs seemed to be staring at him. He stood behind the centre microphone to see if this lent him any confidence, but it didn’t even offer him a credit check. Riff headed off of the back of the stage with a reel of cable, leaving Ben alone with his audience of four legged friends.
He approached the microphone and mumbled nervously into it. ‘Testing, testing.’
‘Working, working,’ came an answering call from the back of the room. Ben looked up to see Nutter entering, a pair of drumsticks in his hand. ‘H-Hello,’ he said. ‘W-Where are the others?’
Ben shrugged. ‘Riff’s around somewhere,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen the others yet.’
‘They’ll be along as soon as they can get away,’ said Riff, reappearing on the stage with an amplifier in each hand. ‘I’m just setting the stage before the café opens.’
‘We’re not going for a run through, then?’ said Ben.
Riff