I start heading towards the smoke, as inconspicuous as I can be. It’s late afternoon as I move quickly towards the smoke, searing turned up to 11. I have to watch not only for the people who might be in front of me, but for monsters.

It takes me thirty minutes to cover ten miles, which put me about halfway to the smoke. How am I going to figure out if these folks are safe? I’m still scared of Scarlett O’Heater. I suppose that I’ll have to drum for peace again. Of course, drumming without sharing my location is probably better.

On the other hand, it’s 4:09 in the afternoon. I don’t have that much time to decide before darkness falls. On the other other hand, unless they have vision magic, they won’t find me in the dark as well as I’ll find them. Also, I have to check for monsters if I don't want any nasty surprises while talking ot them.

I get five miles out, stop drumming, and decide to circle the camp. I’ll cover a full perimeter. That’s thirty miles at this distance, and it’s hard to keep hidden, so it’s probably going to take an hour. Heading around the circle, the first critters I run across are a pair of dead wyverns, charred. Someone’s got fire. That reminds me to stay even more nervous than I already am.

The second dead monster is a horse-sized ant-looking beast with a big hole directly through the middle. Fire isn’t their only weapon. Someone is wielding a telephone pole as a spear, or something like that. Beef coulda done that, but no one else in town. Someone’s really strong, or has spear-magic.

The last critters I find on my circuit are a trio of spider-people. They’re scary as fuck, or they would be if they were less perforated and fried. They have spider heads, humanoid bodies, and sabers for front arms. There’s webs laying around, indicating serious spider-ness. I think I want nothing to do with those critters. Never seeing one again would be too soon.

I make it back to my starting position in only a bit more than an hour. I didn't even get lost, mostly because I could see the smoke the whole way. What do I know about these people? They appear to have been killing monsters. That’s a positive. No promises that they’re not killing everything. That's a question. There’s almost certainly at least two of them. I only saw two different kinds of injuries: holes and burns. No one from town fought both of those ways, though Lee had lightning and a sword.

Okay. How am I going to do this? I can manage directed sound to a mile away with my saserface. I can hit the whole campfire area. I’ll have to build a sound wall around myself to be not noticed. I can even do it indirectly, so it sounds like it’s coming from a different direction. That would work, I think.

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I could record first, and then just replay it from a location where I am not. That’s probably even better. Record and replay. What song? At Imaginetown, it was Imagine. That was an easy call. But the town name told me that someone remembered the oldies. Should I play Dylan's Blowin’ in the Wind? I think that’s too old. Young heathens don’t even keep up with nobel-prize-winning songwriters. What else? We Are The World? That’s still pretty old.

I like old music. Stuff that was written before I was born, mostly. I have to find something that I know, but which will share the “we come in peace” vibe. Joe Cocker? Too old. Christmas music? Not clear enough of a message, and not enough drums. Soko? Not recognizable enough, and I have trouble with her voice.

Okay. I guess it’s the Black Eyed Peas peace song: Where Is The Love?

I play separate tracks for drums, guitar, and the different vocal tracks. I can't sing Fergie's part, but I can sing it low then alter the frequency. That takes five tries. Then I have to do some sound transformation to make up for the synthesizers. Weaving all the sounds together for a cohesive song takes longer than I was expecting, and when I’m done, I’ve got a pretty decent cover with Snake on drums, Kevin on vocals, and Earl Snakenbridge on guitar. At the same time, it’s dusk at 7:28. I may have gone a little overboard on making it good. It's music though; it's worth it.

The audiomancy to make this work is pretty hardcore too. First I find an area a mile or so away from their pretty obvious campfire. I scratch a giant peace symbol in the ground, for when they come to investigate it. I throw a sound bubble around my peace symbol. Then I create a megaphone effect heading away from my sound bubble, and pointing to the campfire. If I weren't maintiaining the sound of silence, it would be a lot louder in the campfire’s direction. Having done that, I confirm that I can replay my song inside the sound bubble.

Then I move a mile away from that, clockwise around the circle, and make sure I can see the sound bubble, to throw the music there. Turns out that finding it visually is hard, but it's pretty easy to sear. Then I build a sound-funnel, bringing sounds from both the general direction of the campfire and my peace bubble towards me. Then I pop the other sound bubble, and turn on the music.

They notice in seconds. Walls pop up around the camp, completely obscuring it from view. Now they have a domed camp. Good defenses. They’re a mile out, though, so it may be only front-facing. So I don’t have a great picture. I keep playing my music, hidden in a different direction than the sound is coming from, watching for what might be going on.

Six minutes later, one side of the dome opens up, all Star Trek like, sliding into the ground, and I’m treated to a beautiful response.

There’s three of them, and they’re playing back a response. There’s a piano, a guitar, and a bass. Lead vocal is female. They’re all singing. The song is Somebody to Love by Jefferson Airplane. They’re obviously not professional, but they’re three actual musicians. Bass is having to keep rhythm. They clearly need a drummer. I know a guy.

I turn off my music as soon as I hear them playing. While they play for the first minute, I pull out my kit, and get set up. On the second minute, I join in with appropriate volume from being a mile away, and solve their rhythm issue.