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Sunday, February 16th, 2014 5:09 PM His shift had wrapped a while ago, but Eric LaCroix was staying on at the Black Petal, playing amateur electrician. This was far from his usual purview, but it had officially gotten to the point where something had to be done. Most of the work day had been pretty good - regular flow of customers, good sales on coffee and pastries, and a musical sampler of some of the local acts playing over the speakers. Then, in the last hour, the audio had started going weird. It started small at first - the bass would drop out on one track for about thirty seconds, or the high notes of the octave would get a bit pitchy. But by the end of his shift, everything that came out of the speaker sounded more like noise rock being produced by rabid garbage disposals. The speakers had been shut off entirely, but attempts to play the music using just the computer had been just as disastrous. With few options, Eric was left to apply the magic touch. And, cursing as the browser window on the computer clicked shut, it was getting to the point where that would have to be literal. He worked the utterance to the tip of his tongue - syllables learned at the throne of Hecate herself - and soon, he was speaking the language of the computer, sublime as radio waves. "So," he asked, "what's wrong?" "Wrong?" the computer replied in booming bass. "Nothing's wrong! I'm playing everything that's there!" "The files aren't corrupted?" "Hmm... nope. They're right as rain." That was weird. So, if the files weren't weird... Eric pulled out his iPhone on a whim, picked out Music, and played something by Tiger Army. What came out sounded like a tiger being fed into a woodchipper tail first. "Great. Something's wrong with the music."