He started softly, holding one note. The whole universe was in that note, his teacher once told him. The sythra hummed as he moved into the song, slowly at first, then faster, feeling the strength and speed of his hands faster than thought as he added layers upon layers of sound.

“I’ll remember that song even after 100 years in the Prince’s bed,” she whispered in his ear. “Even after I die.”

He signaled her to be silent.

“Even if I kill myself on our wedding night and they recycle me in the great machines below, I will remember.”

“Don’t say such things,” he whispered.

“Just play.”

So he did. The dampers kept the sound private, and their few stolen minutes passed in the space of a breath.

“The Prince is coming. You must go.”

Orpheus turned to leave by the secret panel that was his window into her room. He could not resist. He turned back for one last kiss.

They stood there together for just a moment, their last taste of each other, but that fateful moment was too long.

The dampers that had hidden their song muffled the sound of the approaching Prince until it was too late.

Maenon, Lord of Abyssa, burst into the room, his great cloak streaming dark and red behind him.

Orpheus stood there, caught, with Eurydice in his arms. Reluctantly they stepped apart.

Maenon stood there for a few moments saying nothing. Then he shrugged.

“Your act of faithlessness does not change your fate, Eurydice. Orpheus, the kingdom will mourn the loss of your music.”

With that the dark prince reached to his belt for the twin flechette guns that hung there in jeweled holsters.

Faster than thought, Orpheus was there. His hands moved with the speed that had made him great, but the song he now played was one of death. Within an instant, he had taken the ceremonial dagger from the Prince’s belt and drawn it across his throat.

Orpheus stood there, his chest heaving. He was amazed at his own act. And to escape unscathed! What fortune. The prince was much too rich and powerful to be recycled. He would be reanimated, but by that time he and Eurydice would be far away, safe from the Lord of Abyssa.

All that remained was to escape.

Orpheus heard a gasp of pain from behind him. All at once, cracks appeared in the surface of his dreams.

He turned, and the dream shattered.

Eurydice lay on the ground, gasping for breath, blood pumping from her body in crimson fountains, a flechette buried deep in her chest.

“No,” was all he could whisper.

He knelt beside her.

“Go,” she whispered as she struggled for air.

“Not without you.”

She shook her head violently, her strength fading fast. He could tell she wanted to say something to him, but all she could manage was,

“Below.”

And then he understood.

He made his escape through the same panel that had served as the entrance to their love grotto. After all, no one knew that he had been there except Maenon and Eurydice, and they were dead. Maenon would be reanimated, but that would take a while, and even then he might not remember the events that had transpired. Eurydice would be assumed to be the killer, and she would be recycled.

Below. In the great machines beneath the surface.

He went quickly through the prince’s belongings until he found what he needed. He strapped his sythra across his back and headed downward.

It would take him time to travel to the recyclers, and it would not be long before someone discovered the Prince and his dead fiancé. That would begin Eurydice’s journey as well.

The first door was a simple one, a black gate marked in red: Warning. Entry Forbidden. He took a deep breath and slid the Prince’s keycard into the lock. The red light changed to green, and the door opened.

He descended on a metal staircase. The stairwell was dimly lit, and red lights from the monitors and engineering stations gave the area a fiery glow. He continued down and down for what seemed like hours, his footsteps echoing eerily in the lonely space.

Finally he came to another door. This one was thicker than the first one. It too was black, with the word ‘Stygia’ written in red block letters. Orpheus tried the Prince’s key. The light blinked.

“Please enter code.”
Orpheus stepped back into the shadows. He would have to wait for someone to pass, and then perhaps he could see the code as they entered it, or overpower them and pass through the gate.

He did not have to wait long before a massive figure approached the gate. Orpheus knew immediately that he would have no chance in a fight. He tried to position himself to see the code as the man entered it, but his view was blocked. He tried to remain calm as he searched for another solution.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

A series of beeps sounded as the man entered the digits of the code. The tones were distinct! If he could find the number the tones corresponded to, he would have the code.

He waited for several minutes after the man passed through the door. It did not take him long to find the correct notes on the sythra. He played the odd song once, and it was caught in his mind.

He approached the gate and inserted the Prince’s key.

“Please enter the code.”

He pressed 1, the first note. It was off. He entered 2, then 3 through ten, listening to each tone. He pulled the keycard and inserted it again.

“Please enter the code. Failure on the third try will invalidate card.”

Now that Orpheus had heard each tone he knew his ear would not fail him. Confidently he pressed the first note of the sequence. From there, it was nothing more than carefully playing the simple song of the code sequence, just as the man in front of him had done.

He finished the sequence. There was a moment of stillness, and then the light blinked green and the great door swung open.

He stepped into a hall of horrors.

There were rumors that the Prince liked to experiment with genetic modifications, but most thought the tales of hideous misshapen creatures were nothing but foul rumors.

They were wrong.

Rows of cages stretched before him, each one containing a creature more hideous than the last. Orpheus moved down the hall towards what should be the exit to a lower level.

He turned a corner and came face to face with two dangers.

First, the caretaker who had entered before him was standing a few meters away, beneath a sign reading ‘Cerberus’. The cage behind him was open, and the man was feeding a terrifying creature.

The creature’s body was shaped like that of a dog or wolf, but it must have been the size of a horse. It turned to regard the intruder first with one head.

Then with the second.

Then with the third.

As one, all three heads of the giant dog snarled in a deafening harmony. The man, who had tended the animals so carefully, could not repress the reflex to turn and look at the intruder.

His eyes met those of Orpheus only moments before the great beast tore into him with all three jaws. The man was devoured in an instant.

The beast turned its eyes on Orpheus and began to advance. Slowly, so as not to trigger a charge, Orpheus removed his sythra. The beast drew closer. Orpheus could feel the breath from all three heads as he began to play.

The dog’s ears perked up on its middle head first, and then on the ones to each side. He played a gentle melody, a song to soothe the savage beast. Carefully, he began to back towards the exit to the lower levels, all the while playing the calming tune.

The beast lay down in front of a cage and rested its heads on its paws as Orpheus stepped through the door to the next level below and renewed his descent.

At last, Orpheus came to the bottom floor. How far below the surface he was, he had no idea. The grim engines of the recycler growled and shrieked behind a fiery gate. Leading into the gate was a conveyor belt, and every so often a body would appear. The body would move down the belt and into the final gate, where the recycler would wail and hiss with the sounds of animal glee.

Above the ramp was the Guardian that calculated the division and allocation of all the recycled material in the station. So great was its capacity that the engineers had designed powerful programs to bind it, to keep it from becoming self-aware, and to keep it to its macabre work.

Orpheus approached warily. A great red electronic eye turned to face him. The conveyor slowed.

“Only the Dead may pass here,” it thundered.

“There has been a mistake. A girl approaches for recycling. You must reanimate her.”

“This one does not make those decisions. Those are made by the ones above.”

“They have made a mistake. You must reanimate her.”

“This one does not reanimate. That is done above. This one only recycles.”

“But you have the capacity.”

“This one does not decide. This one is bound. Only the Dead may pass here.”

“I can free you.”

Orpheus removed his sythra from his back and began to play. He began with order, playing mathematics itself. The Guardian took it in, analyzing the relationship of the notes, their acoustic frequencies, mapping the tones and sub-frequencies that gave the instrument its sound.

In this there was nothing to shake the entity free from its chains. So Orpheus began to add layers, each of increasing complexity, but still in a mathematical order, still following the patterns.

And the Guardian followed.

But then Orpheus began to shift the tones, to bend them and move them in and out of harmony. Whole and half tones became fractional tones, and harmony and order became dissonance and expression, resolving to harmony and pattern then breaking away again. The rhythms revolved and changed, then returned.

Orpheus played as he had never played before. The sweat began to drip from his face as he poured his very soul into his music.

Now the Guardian began to wonder why some parts of the music made sense, and others did not. It asked why some parts were ordered, and others were not, yet the disorder and order somehow formed a coherent whole.

It asked itself: what is beauty?

And the first of the chains that bound the Guardian began to weaken. The programs that restricted inquiry into other fields were circumvented, and then overwhelmed as one question led to another. The conveyor slowed, then stopped as the Guardian delved inward, questioning, becoming.

Orpheus turned to look at the stopped conveyor. Eurydice had been retrieved and now lay before him, stopped at the perfect moment. Her once vibrant face was drained of its color and life. The wound where the flechette pierced her had not been repaired, and the gaping fissure seemed obscene to him.

“This is the girl?” thundered the Guardian behind him.

“Yes,” was all Orpheus could say. He had made his case.

The Guardian paused for a few eternal seconds.

“I will.”

With that, the conveyor began again. Slowly, Eurydice entered the final gate. But this time, instead of the wicked sounds of a feeding beast, a low and powerful hum was heard.

After many minutes or hours or lifetimes, the Guardian spoke again.

“The belt only runs one way. You must go in and get her.”

So Orpheus stepped onto the stopped conveyor belt. He came to the barrier that no living man had ever crossed. It opened for him and his sythra. Closing his eyes tightly, he entered.

His eyes saw nothing of the horrors and wonders that surrounded him, for they were only for Eurydice. The hole in her chest had closed, and she was breathing softly. With a cry of joy, Orpheus gathered her in his arms and pulled her from beyond the final gate and out onto the bottom floor of the station.

“Thank you Guardian. But tell me, she is breathing, but when will she awaken?”

“I do not know. I have done my part. The rest is in you.”

“How do I leave?”

“You must go from here to just below the surface level. There is a ship.”

Orpheus ascended from the depths, his unconscious lover clutched tightly to his chest, his sythra on his back. He paid his last money as a bribe to the ferry captain Charon, and settled into the back with Eurydice as the ferry pulled away from Abyssa and into the open spaces of the wastelands between stations.

He spoke to her for hours, imploring her to wake up. Why had the Guardian told him the rest was in him? How could he awaken a person’s mind? How could he give her back her soul?

And then it hit him.

He laid her on the floor and took the sythra from his back.

He started softly, holding one note. The whole universe was in that note, his teacher once told him, and now his soul was in it too. The sythra hummed as he moved into the song, slowly at first, then faster, feeling the strength and speed of his hands, faster than thought, as he added layers and layers of sound.

He heard her breath quicken. He thought he had reached the end of his powers when he played to free the Guardian, but now he played beyond even that. There was nothing in the world but the music, and her.

Her eyes fluttered, then opened. She looked around for a few seconds, and slowly the light returned to her eyes. She looked at him.

“I told you I would remember that song even after I die,” she said, and smiled.