The Beatriffics/in progress

Tigger's story:

The weather that day on the 'Pond was abysmal. The rain came down in sheets, then turned to coming down in blankets of snow, and finally mutated into a sort of slushy-sleet kind of thing which came down in slightly mucky bedspreads, don't ask me how. I was taking refuge down at the Tangerine Records studio, warming me hands over the tubes in the guitar amps. The session had been going poorly, in large part because nobody else was there. In a fit of despondency, I started to get up when suddenly, with a crash of cymbals, a light split across the room -- I'd just knocked over me high-hat and broken the lamp again. Not a bright move.

Fully expecting to be drummed out of the band, once they all got back from wherever they'd gone off to, I stumbled about the room in the dark, feeling quite rattled. Not having much else to do, I kept stumbling for awhile; that grew a bit tedious, so I tried shambling for a bit instead, interspersed with occasional bouts of limping as I bashed me foot into this or that in the dark. Occasionally I bashed the other foot, too, just to keep them even.

By the time I finally switched to sauntering, I realized I'd somehow ended up in the old record vault, where centuries of recorded audio are carefully preserved on everything from vinyl to wax cylinders to piano scrolls to clay tablets, in catacombs stretching for miles beneath the city streets. ...well, to tell the truth, they didn't really have to stretch them much; they were quite long to begin with. As I ambled along, mile after mile, in the phrygian darkness, I began to think I should stop off and ask directions, maybe top off with petrol and grab a sandwich, when I noticed there was a dim light coming from somewhere.

"Now there's a thing", I thought to myself -- "it's dim, but also light. How do they do that, then?" Science just amazes me sometimes.

I found myself moving towards it. I mean, to be honest, if I moved away from it, I couldn't see where I was going, now could I? So it was a bit of Hobson's choice. I wondered briefly how it had gotten down there, and if Hobson was coming back for it.

Anyway, it turned out the light was coming from a room up ahead, which -- as it turned out -- was illuminated.... and also cavernous, and mostly filled with what appeared to be some sort of giant metal structure.

Notes

There should be a band called The Outliers. Albums:

• Statistically Insignificant
• Margin of Error
• Goldilocks and the Three Sigmas
  • first hit signal, er single: "You're Exceptional" (ft. Norm and the Standard Deviations)