The Test Pattern Dance

Those girls at Latigo Flint's local nightclub establishment were completely unprepared for the raw passion and unbridled sexuality that is the Test Pattern Dance.

The rich, jaded beauties in this wretched, glorious City of Spanish Angels think they've seen every dance four limbs and a torso are capable of.

They don't know shit.

The digital children have never known the night-ending finality of a TV Test Pattern. They've never stood spread-eagle-naked in the color bar glare of a knob switched television as a steady droning tone screams out that any further entertainment must come wholly from them.

The digital children are accustomed to dancing with sampled, musical accompaniment - you're on your own when attempting the Test Pattern Dance. The digital children have only ever danced for fun - never to repel the demons of terminal boredom and Cribbage.

Latigo Flint locked eyes with that ancient DJ, Tunesmith Slappdyfunk. At 29 years of age, Tunesmith Slappdyfunk is a relic, a dinosaur, an analog ghost.

Latigo Flint spoke in his normal voice, low and cold. Tunesmith Slappdyfunk heard him perfectly, even from across a crowded, screaming floor.

(A true DJ always comprehends if you're saying something worth hearing. It's only the feebleminded, simpering nonsense that elicits a dismissive shrug.)

"Howdy there Slappdyfunk."

The pinky finger of Tunesmith's volume knob hand lifted and pointed directly at me. Tunesmith Slappdyfunk had never met Latigo Flint but he somehow knew me, and knew me well. Anything I said next would be heard.

"How's 'bout a little Test Pattern Dance there Tunesmith? A TPD one more time for me... I'm an analog ghost too you know."

There was a slight upward twitch in Tunesmith's cheeks (the DJ equivalent of uncontrollable laughter and joy). His left hand flashed and forty speakers fell silent. His right hand slid and a dozen giant monitors went black.

Hundreds of indignant, whiny cries were drowned out by the piercing, monotone of the TV Test Pattern. Seven basic colors blasted from the club's plasma screens, casting strange shadows on pretty, unwrinkled faces.

And in the sectioned half-light on a nightclub floor in a nation on the verge of forgetting its history, Latigo Flint began to dance.



(Of course I'd had a few or twenty too many beers, and fell flat on my face seven seconds in. The little hipster bastards threw me in the alley and went back to gyrating to the sounds of robots fucking, but that's neither here nor there and in no way devalues the story above.)