Black Glass by Meg; Mundell Page A

called that, never met him, doesn’t sound like a proper name to me. And he was calling Diggy a griffin or something, griffin … grifter? Frick is that? Dunno, just some funny-looking dude with a fancy watch and all that hairgel crap in his hair. All combed back like it won’t move in the wind, not even a tornado, ha.
    Alright. I know how to stick ’em on, all level and on the clean bits, I’ll do the other side and meet you up there on that corner. Where? Oh right, didn’t see … Is that always on? Well, round the corner then. Yeah, I’m remembering everything. Don’t worry. I’m making a map in my head.

CHAPTER 5:
VENTRILOQUISM
    [SoniCorp Stadium, Green Belt, city south: Milk | estimated crowd: 12,840]
    By dusk the crowd is swelling. From up here the concert-goers are one substance, a swirling mass of slow-mo dots. They trickle through the stadium gates and eddy around the bar, the food tents and toilet trucks, the merch stand.
    Only when you zoom in do these motes emerge as individuals — and even then, thinks Milk, the unofficial dress code suggests otherwise. Rich kids or not, a sea of black clothing and new tattoos never means an easy ride.
    As usual he’s working with substandard gear: one visual monitor is tinted a sickly green, and the rifle mic outside the female toilets is transmitting nothing but white noise — one invaluable source of audio info ruled out.
    His booth is set up in a sky-pod, an old model that creaked somewhat ominously on ascent; he’d wasted five minutes explaining to the pushy manager why his goggle-eyed son could not just quietly check it all out from the passenger seat. Milk reminds himself: there will always be variables outside your control. All you can do is try to minimise them.
    The sun is sinking behind the casinos when the support band bangs out its first chords, all mock-desultory and aggro; the sound ripples through the crowd below, drawing a howl of response. A huddle of heavy-set boys sends their minion back to the bar. Down on the grass couples touch briefly — a hand on a neck, the small of a back — a reflex action, like checking your footing before diving into deep water. Then the first few bars of music slam out, and plastic cups are obediently raised to approximately fifteen hundred mouths.
    Rock concerts are not the best jobs — the money middling, the ego factor irritating — but they keep Milk on his toes. The weekly casino gig is lucrative, but surprisingly draining: too much emotional drag, the stakes too high. The youth demographic varies wildly, and a test ground this big is hard to refuse. Concert managers just want a healthy profit and minimal trouble, and as long as they understand he can’t be held accountable for every glitch, things usually go smoothly.
    Milk ups the colour saturation in the booze tent, adds a shot of Thirst that spreads like a yawn, watches nearby drinkers drain their cups and reach for their wallets. This first singer isn’t pretty so he illuminates her kindly. He’s researched their stuff: heavy on the drums, light on subtlety, well-worn lyrics. The headline act is a UK group, older and angrier, who’ve been courting tabloid scandal for months. Milk doesn’t mind their sound, and the singer is easy on the eye. Not that he’s a perve: when aesthetics is your calling, everything deserves a second glance.
    Tuning is always an imprecise art, a seat-of-your-pants prospect. You have to read the algebra and poetry of the crowd, its stray notes and key shifts, its undertones and descant; to navigate that line between vigilance and reverie. Below him people’s movements write complex diagrams on the grass, a code for which he is both translator and author.
    A movement in his peripheral vision: a blink of red–blue–red. Hovering a metre from his face is an AirDrone. Distracted by the cockroach-shaped craft, Milk scowls into the void of its