Somebody finally reported the missing cadence. Sector 5-12 was thumping out of sync with the Mandelbrot Septuplets and the audience was growing annoyed.

We’d been playing the waltz, a lilting waltz, for far too many years. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not to us.

Of course, there were those who liked the rhythm unpredictable. Leather-jackets and slick-hairs, running rampant in circles around the jukebox. They didn’t owe nobody nothing, and smirked until the sun went down.

Mandelbrot Seven was the first to make known his disappointment. “Harmonize if you wish to live,” he belted in graceless puffery. “A heartbeat without function is blood wasted on the undeserving.”

He didn’t win himself any new friends that day. A rumbling revolution was snaking out from the souls of the orchestra. Just who did Mandelbrot Seven think he was? Certainly a ventricle of very poor taste, if not worse. The tables were turning. His brothers would not be able to save him.

Oblivious to it all, John Macallister died today.