Doctars: Origins

Caspar stared at what’d once been a very respectable guitar. Currently it was less precision-tuned instrument and more collection of scattered pieces of what once was surely a singular object. He shrugged. Such was life. Eight shows so far this tour and eleven smashed guitars. He was actually a bit under pace, and considered himself something of a hero for the amount of self-control he’d exhibited. He didn’t enjoy smashing his guitar to smithereens at the end of every live show, it was just something that happened, something unavoidable by all accounts.

“I really thought he was gonna reign it in,” Nikki, the drummer, mused from behind her kit as she handed her sticks off to Dale. Mick was already gathering up the remnants of Caspar’s latest meltdown.

“Waste of mahogany, if you ask me,” Mick said quietly to himself, shaking his head in pity for the poor creature that his buddy from high school gym class had destroyed. If guitars really had spirits like some of the shamans of Abad said, then Caspar was a serial murderer of legend at this point. Fortunately for Caspar—and everyone else in the galaxy—the sages and shamans of Abad are all completely insane. Certifiably so. You really shouldn’t listen to them if you’re ever unfortunate enough to have them start babbling at you.

“I think that was exceptional. Maybe our best set of the tour, so far,” Caspar said, turning to the rest of the band, an oblivious smile plastered across his face.

“Exceptional?!” Ven shouted, his own guitar being gently carried away by Dale as he stormed across the stage at Caspar. “This was a charity gig! We gave the door to the children’s hospital!”

“Mighty generous of us,” Caspar replied, his smile somewhat shakier but still present.

“It was! But we talked about this, Caspar. Do you even have any idea how much your guitars cost anymore? Do you have any idea how bad you just screwed us all?!”

“Hey! Whoa, everything is gonna be just fine,” Leena, their manager said, making her way onto stage and interposing herself between Caspar and Ven. “Your job is to play guitar and sing, Venny. You can’t sing if you’re running around shouting at people. You can’t sing, we can’t sell tickets, you can’t make money, I can’t make money, we all starve. So just go backstage and sign some stuff for some terminal kids or something and let momma handle business.”

Venny just sighed and walked away. He knew from experience that once Leena started calling herself momma it was better to just do what she asked—because one way or another you were going to anyway in the end.

“He’s always so uptight,” Caspar said as Leena started to lead him away by the arm. This might get picked up on a hidden mic or cam anyway, but she didn’t have to make it easy for them. “And it was a really good show. He could’ve at least said so is all I’m saying, Leen.”

“I know, I know, you sweet, dumb, sweet, stupid, very talented boy,” Leena answered, as she drug him into a corridor leading back to one of the venue’s equipment lockers. “It was a great show, and it is very entertaining when you annihilate one of your guitars-”

“I swear we’ve been over this! It’s not like I mean to do it, I swear. Nobody ever complained about it before this tour.” That last part was completely untrue, but no one in the entire Bandoverse would be able to convince Caspar of that fact. “And it is entertaining. The fans love it.”

“I know they love it, sugar. They go crazy for it. People get tickets in the first three rows to get shards for you to sign. It’s great. But sometimes the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze and one of those times is when you’re playing a six-thousand credit guitar at a charity event where the band is donating the door to a local hospital. Another time might be taking an opener’s keyboard that got left on stage and hucking it fifteen rows deep into the audience.”

“I understand,” Caspar mumbled, and he really did, but he knew that would mean very little when the end of their next show came whether the juice was worth the squeeze or not. He promised to do his best and Leena promised to deduct the cost of the guitar and the damage to the stage and additional cleanup time from his pay from the tour. At least Mick and Dale might get a few extra credits out of it. It was only fair.

#

“I’ve done the math, Mick.”

“And?”

“And, between cleanup time and filling out order forms for new guitars, we lose out on approximately five beers per show.”

Mick whistled. “Hundred-and-thirty-five beers by the end of the tour.”

“I love him, but there’s gotta be another way.”

“That we haven’t already tried?”

They’d indeed tried several different things over the last three tours, but if anything the problem had grown progressively worse. First came substitutes. They’d tried everything they could think of from watermelons to cheap hoverboards to old acoustic guitars (some of which didn’t even have strings), but all that did was increase cleanup time. As soon as he was done with whatever substitute he’d been offered, Caspar was sure to make a mad dash back to his guitar and obliterate it. They’d tried restraints, but the second time they did that he broke a wrist and popped a shoulder out of socket and the hospital bills cost double what a new guitar would’ve. They’d tried hypnosis and relaxing teas and inhaled herbs and psychotherapy. They even discussed electro-shock, but they were worried that might fry his brain too badly for him to even play guitar—and also potentially vegetablizing their friend to get him to stop his annoying and costly habit didn’t seem reasonable or ethical to anyone.

“Probably be faster to just make his guitars ourselves,” Mick said after several moments of silence.

“I'm not sure about faster, but it'd sure as hell be cheaper.”

“That's for sure. No point in putting anything nice into it. You'd think Stinger would've started making a meant-to-break model for their golden boy.”

“And miss out on him paying their corporate headquarters’ light bill every month? Forget it.” Dale laughed and got up to fetch another beer. “We really could do it, ya know.”

“Listen, man, the guys at Stinger are definitely greedy dickheads. And they overvalue their guitars. Everyone knows that. But they're still great guitars. Caspar and Goose don't play them because they like dumping money for no reason. They make a really sweet instrument.”

“And you're saying we couldn't? Listen, I'm not saying day one we're gonna make a Stinger clone. But let's be honest. Casper has so many effects and pedals layered over that thing that nobody would know the difference if we got close. Even if they do, they can fix that at the soundboard. C'mon. Think of those hundred and fifty beers, man.”

Mick wanted to point out that they could miss out on even more beers in the development process and still not come up with a real solution. He could’ve said all that and an earful more but decided not to be a huge buzzkill because nobody asks huge buzzkills to do fun guitar making projects with them.

#

The first three replicas the dynamic roadie duo made were abject failures. The second one was somehow so bad that Caspar was forced—by powers far beyond mortal comprehension—to cast his real guitar into one of the stadium’s cleaning droids, which started a fire and caused an absolute panic. Fortunately, panic is good for ticket and album sales and the bump was just enough to offset what they lost on the gig.

“Leena, we need twenty-thousand credits,” Mick blurted out.

“You need to stop drinking,” Leena shot back.

“Okay … fifteen-thousand,” Dale countered.

“Are you drunk right now? Are you completely outside your shared brain cell?"

The amateur guitar smiths looked at each other and shrugged.

“A little buzzed, maybe,” Mick said. “But this isn’t for beer. It’s for equipment for a vitally important project.”

“Is that project making shitty knockoff Stingers that cause Caspar to almost burn a venue down? If so, you can fuck right off.”

“That’s just it! We figured out the problem. We can solve it. We can make him stop, but we need some tools to do the job right. Otherwise—” she cut Dale off with a high-pitched whistle.

“Otherwise what? He might depressurize the Pulaski Orbital next month when we play it? STOP messing with his guitars. You idiots are just gonna make it worse. Again.”

Mick pulled a datapad from his back pocket. “Listen, we can do this. Plus, the tools we need are a good investment, anyway. Even after he stops smashing his guitars … his real guitars to bits. You get us this stuff and none of the guys will ever have to send their gear off for work again. We’ll have a complete in-house shop.”

Leena was silent for a small eternity before she groaned and answered. “I’ll give you ten-thousand.”

“We need at least twelve, and that’s if we get cheap knockoffs.”

“Ten. You can steal whatever you can’t afford with that. I’m pretty sure part of your charm is that you’re lowlifes. Now get away from me before I change my mind and fire you both for being drunk on the job again.”

Dale managed to clap his hand over Mick’s mouth as he dragged him away before his partner could remind their boss that they were just a little buzzed.

#

“So, you’re telling me the first Doctar Explosionator was made with stolen tools? You do know I’m going to publish this, right?” the young music journalist asked, shifting a bit in her chair, hoping against hope that the self-made guitar manufacturing tycoons had just given her the scoop that could get her an editor’s desk and a little more time in the loft she was way overpaying for.

“No, we actually didn’t have to steal anything, but that’s a whole different article.” Mick winked playfully, drawing an eyeroll from Dale. “And you have to remember, it was Mick & Dale’s Guitars back then when we were starting out.”

“Which turned into MD Guitars and then Doctor guitars and then just Doctars,” Dale chimed in. “But I’m sure you already know that.”

“Most of it,” she admitted with a shaky smile. “I think that pretty much wraps it up, actually. I really appreciate the two of you taking the time to do this in person. It means a lot to the zine.”

“Don’t mention it,” Mick answered. “The zine scene has always been good to us and PR interviews are one of the few excuses the rest of the board will accept for us skipping meetings,” he laughed, pounding his hand on the desk with a loud smack.

“Before you go there’s one more thing we think you might be interested in for your article. A little something new we’ve been cooking up.” Dale got up from his seat behind the massive ebony double-desk and walked over to the wall, flipping a switch that produced a smoking cylindrical pod from the floor next to him. He waved her over to him.

Cassy got up and walked slowly to the pod, triple-checking her recording equipment to make sure everything was on. She still hadn’t forgiven herself for not having her vidcorder running when Slopas Gone’s wig fell off in their interview last fall.

“We’d like to introduce you to the Crystal Cloud.”

“CC for short,” Mick added, punching a quick sequence into a keypad on the cylinder before it scanned his and Dale’s retinas and opened with a quiet hiss. A billow of fog poured out and after it dissipated Cassy found her eyes fixed on the most beautiful guitar she’d ever seen. It was composed entirely of see-through, prismatic crystal, but the inside appeared to be filled with thousands of writhing, dancing rainbows.

“Watch this,” Dale said, snatching the guitar and swinging it over his head in a fluid arc, sending scattered refractions of light dancing through the room as he brought it down onto the floor with violent force. The Crystal Cloud exploded into what seemed like millions of dust-like particles that slowly swirled around in the air, giving off one of the most spectacular lightshows in the known galaxy as the debris drifted lazily to the floor.