Electrowave

Computerklang

So, this was probably not a good time to go to a concert, but we had already planned this months in advance, and so, we set off. Maybe it'd help to take everyone's minds off the current affairs of this new era, anyway. But, as always, with a new era, comes new problems. In the past, we would have just taken the car to the stadium, but these days, everything was so much harder.

"Hey, car," Alf said, as we walked over to the vehicle, "We've got a concert nearby in the Electric Stadium, can you take us there?"

And then, silence, for a few moments.

"No," the car finally answered in monotone, "I can't be bothered. Good day."

"Can't be bothered?!" I yelled, "You're not even doing anything!"

Alf tried to unlock the doors but the car kept them shut.

"No I won't let you in," the car said, "Go away."

What happens when you introduce the so-called 'human element' to machinery? This does. The AI was ridiculous, everyone knew that. Overly rude for no reason at all, insanely bureaucratic, and extremely lazy, refusing to do even the simplest tasks. Not to mention arrogant. The car wouldn't reply to anything else we said, it completely ignored us. And so we had to walk all the way to the Electric Stadium. And I had to carry the Commodore 64! Which, by the way, yelled at us the entire time we were walking. Alf carried the Atari 500, which stayed silent.

Luckily for us, the stadium wasn't far away, but still. It would've been a lot easier and we would've gotten there a lot faster if that stupid car had just-

"Honey!" I was snapped out of my thoughts by Alf yelling my name, "Pay attention! We're here already!"

I had been so far in my own thoughts that I hadn't noticed. And yet there it was, in front of us. The Electric Stadium.

---

But when we finally got inside the Electric Stadium, things didn't go much better. C64 was again refusing to work with us for some reason or another, and it was only a short time before we had to get on stage and perform.

"What's wrong Honey?" Venus asked, as I argued with the Commodore computer, "Don't tell me that C64 is playing up again!"

"Yes, it is," I sighed. I wasn't surprised. It always went like this these days.

"Ha ha ha," the computer laughed in a monotone voice. I never figured out whether the AI being so rude was a glitch in the system or whether the government purposely designed it that way to exert yet more power over us. Either way, it was ruining everything we had worked so hard to build. How could we make music with the Commodore 64 if it now refused to work with us? Things had been so much easier back in the day. Now, things were different. So much different. All Commodore 64s have been made illegal by the government, except for those that have been tampered with so heavily that they barely resemble the original anymore... and now there was this new superweapon ready to destroy the world... the Electrowave. It seemed that things couldn't get any worse. But they would. And what does this mean for Welle: Erdball? It made things a whole lot harder for us, that's for sure. I was still trying to reason with the computer, but as usual it was no use. It just laughed again. "Honey, can we not use the Atari 500?" Venus suggested, pointing to the other computer that we had brought with us.

"No!" I said, "We need the C64 for all of these songs!"

"Come on, choose me," the Atari 500 was being unusually co-operative today, "I'll be your Commodore!"

"But you can't be our Commodore!" I said, "We need C64!"

"C64!" Alf said, "Come on buddy, we need you out there!"

"Please C64," I pleaded with the stubborn computer, "You're an integral part of the show, we can't do it without you!"

"Fine," the computer would have rolled it's eyes if it had any, "I'll do the damn thing. If only to stop you bugging me."

"Thanks C64," I patted the modified Commodore's monitor. Phew. At least that was one less problem we had to deal with. But there would be many more to come.