10 minutes in to my practice session, I’m cursing plant-boy. “Lose some amount” of fucking coordination. I’m a fucking musician. 7 hours of practice each day for the last decade. And now my arms don’t fucking work right. My finger flexibility is shit. Wrists are crazy stiff. Timing is a little slow, even with the gnome in my head. I can’t make my arms move on time. It’s gonna take fucking forever to make this body work together right.
Ta ta takata ta.
Ok. Gotta slow it down. Just 4/4 to begin with. Right, Left, R, L. Let’s see if the body works at all. Wonder if I can replace it. Return it for defects. Interdimensional lemon law. Can the green dude give me new elbows? My elbows have never been quite good, but these ones suuuuck.
Ta ta takata ta boom.
Adding in the base pedal. Still an easy beat for a decent toddler, but some days you gotta just get the body working I guess. Will it be like this as I get old? That would blow chunks. I wonder how the gnome works? Dude, I can get ticks every second. Or half. Or ⅜ of a second. This kinda rocks. What’s a good name for a gnome? Frodo? He was a gnome, right? Now if only my body remembered how to hold a fucking drumstick.
Ta ta crash takata ta crash boom.
The cymbals sound a bit weird. Maybe it’s the air here. Does sound propagate differently. Shit, that’s gonna have acoustic effects. I wonder what we’ve got for acoustic design. Are we gonna have to wait for the scientists to figure this shit out?
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Takata crash taka crash ding takatakatatat crash boom.
I gotta get around to testing out all my kit too. But I’m starting to be able to run for a couple minutes. Frodo isn’t half bad for timing, and my form is getting better. Hand-feel on the stick is getting normal. Wrists still stiff. I thought this was a body upgrade.
Sound difference is probably my ear. Last year, Doc Dershowitz said I had some damage from loud noises. Maybe it’s fixed. New body and shit.
Okay … enough goofing around. Let’s speed things up. I can dive in for real. I wonder how fast the body can move. Dragonforce at 50% speed. Let’s go. I fall into Operation Ground and Pound.
…
A short bit later, I stop drumming, finally awake, and I know how this body works. I’m even a bit faster. Beat my personal speed record on Fire ‘n Flames by 30%. Just took a bit to get the wrists and fingers right. I figure it’s time to get back to Professor Green.
“Hey professor, how long … never mind. WHAT!”
It’s kinda weird to have a perfect internal clock. Ya know, you just think about it and you know how long something took. Apparently I was drumming for a bit over 143 hours. On accident. The world record drum session was 134. I tried to beat it once, and fell asleep on hour 74. This place is crazy
“Is the gnome lying? Was that 6 days of drumming? How did that happen? I thought I needed sleep or thaums or something? And how am I still awake? Why am I not sore? Why didn’t I run out of juice?”
“Nice to have you back among the living, Kevin. Answering your questions. No, your internal clock doesn’t lie. It was indeed a few minutes shy of 6 days. You appear to have used the third method of thaum acquisition: meditation, flow, or fugue states. There was also a period of unusually high thaumic concentration around this house, which further intensified your thaumic regeneration. You just used as much energy as it takes to run about 1000 miles. 40 marathons back to back. Welcome to the internal strength dimension”