The Chorus That Stole the Stars

March 14, 2025  

Mae was a music producer, a hollowed-out wreck with a buzzcut streaked with glitter like some cheap galaxy, her eyes bloodshot slits from tequila and nights that never ended, rotting in a trailer where the walls were tinfoil shields against the void and the floor sagged under beer cans and star charts scribbled in desperation. Her studio was a junkheap of music equipment—audio hardware strung with Christmas lights flickering like dying hopes, a synth with keys stained yellow from sweat and spills, cables snaking like veins through a mess of tequila bottles and ash. She’d hoarded 1,200 VST plugins, a digital graveyard on a hard drive that buzzed like a fly trapped in a bottle, each one a liar’s promise—“this’ll drag the stars down,” she’d mutter, slugging tequila from a dented canteen, knowing it was bullshit she’d swallowed with every drink. Mae was mixing a track for months, a shoegaze dirge that droned like a spaceship’s last breath, vocals floating cold and lost, guitars shimmering like light off a dead moon—something to dodge the rent collector’s fist before he smashed her world to dust.

It was Wednesday, 10 a.m., the hour when the world’s a gray hum and every mix engineer and music producer trades their guts for a flicker of something real. Mae, soaked in tequila and chewing glowsticks she’d pried from a dumpster, her teeth glowing green in the dim, stumbled through a forum where gear freaks traded audio software cracks and tales colder than a corpse’s stare. That’s where she found StarChorus, a VST plugin some faceless bastard had dumped, its description a sterile scrawl: “chorus of the infinite, consumes the firmament.” Mae didn’t give a damn about infinity; she wanted a chorus to smear her dirge into the ether, a sound to kill the silence of this broke-ass coffin. She hit download, and her audio software twitched—a low moan, a flicker of silver frost—as the file sank into her rig like a probe into black space.

The screen lit up, a sterile void of orbiting spheres and unblinking eyes, and StarChorus rose—an interface of cold stardust, precise and merciless, a slider glowing blue like a cryogenic tube, a knob spinning with the silent menace of a monolith. Mae smirked, a drunk’s crooked twist, and hooked it into her music equipment, the audio hardware droning low, monitors hissing with static and a faint, mechanical whine. She fed it her vocal—a ghostly wail she’d mixed ‘til her ears bled—and slid the slider up. The sound chorused, a calculated sweep of echoes that iced the room, voices multiplying into a choir of the damned, precise as a computer’s dream, shaking the tequila in her canteen. “That’s the cold stuff,” she rasped, slumping back, glowstick juice dripping down her chin like alien blood. But the sky outside shifted—a slow, mechanical fade—and the stars winked out, one by one, a silent slaughter above the trailer’s tin roof.

She squinted, “What the hell?”—her voice a gravel scrape—and shoved the slider higher. The vocal stretched, a frozen ribbon of sound, and the heavens emptied—stars vanishing into the mix, their light dissected into crystalline shards that sang with surgical clarity. The mixing desk trembled, tequila bottles rattling like bones in a tin can, and Mae saw it: StarChorus wasn’t echoing—it was stealing, stripping the sky with the precision of a machine god, weaving stars into her track like a cosmic autopsy. The absurdity stabbed like a shard of ice—every music producer knows a VST plugin can crash, but this was a Kubrickian heist, a chorus pulling the universe apart with cold, drunken glee.

Her trailer park foe, Kip—a mix engineer with a greasy ponytail and a snarl, all denim and bitterness, wrapped in a shawl of bottlecaps that clinked like a prisoner’s chains—lurched in, boots grinding ash, a telescope clutched like a weapon, a flask of gin stinking in his fist. “Where’s the damn sky gone?” he growled, voice a dull blade, bottlecaps rattling as he stared at the screen where StarChorus glowed like a sterile sun. “It’s mixing the stars, you fool,” Mae spat, cranking the slider—the vocal swelled, the trailer hummed with a cold light, and Orion’s belt snapped into the track, its gleam a guitar pluck carved with ruthless precision. Kip’s eyes widened, “You gutted the constellations, you drunk!” and swung the telescope, missing the audio hardware as the Big Dipper dissolved, its curve a bass hum sliced into the mix.

The music equipment turned sinister—her Casio CZ-101, a thrift-store husk, droned a chord unplayed, and StarChorus purred with mechanical menace: the tinfoil walls shimmered, birthing a star that hovered, cold and unblinking, its pulse a synth pad in the dirge. Mae’s stomach knotted—every mix engineer knows the gut punch when mixing goes wrong, but this was a cosmic dissection, a chorus stealing the heavens with a drunk’s clumsy grace. The slider moved itself, a slow, deliberate turn, the vocal phasing into a sterile shimmer, snatching more—Pleiades blinked out, a vocal harmony carved from light, the Milky Way sucked into a drone that vibrated the floor with icy calm. Kip dropped the telescope, “It’s a star-eating machine!” he barked, gulping gin as his bottlecaps turned to tiny, frozen stars, their clink a hi-hat in the track. Mae’s canteen shivered, then burst into a swarm of silver moths, their buzz a reverb tail, and she snarled, “Not the tequila, you bastard!” lunging for the power, but the audio software held firm, StarChorus’s light pulsing like a clockwork heart.

The trailer became a cold, cosmic tomb—air sharp with frost and starlight, the roof groaning as a galaxy spun above, its hum a vocal swell measured to the millisecond. Kip, wild and gin-drenched, grabbed a flare gun from the corner—a rusted relic Mae used to scare off coyotes—and fired at the audio hardware, a red streak searing the air as the USB hub melted into a pool of silver sludge, spitting moths and star fragments. The monitors wailed, the shoegaze a precise robbery—stars twinkling with mechanical grace, constellations dissected into hums, a galaxy’s drone looping in sterile chaos—and the trailer park faded, tinfoil peeling into light, the rent collector outside turning to a constellation of dust, his fist a comet fading in the beat. Mae clawed into the audio software, a tequila-soaked ghost in a storm of frost, while the Casio droned a hymn of the void, the trailer a starless expanse pulsing with cold sound. “Blast it!” Kip roared, flare gun smoking, and Mae found it—“Uninstall,” glowing like a monolith in the haze. She smashed it, and the screen collapsed, a silent black hole swallowing the chaos, the music equipment stalling, the slider a dead gleam.

She coughed, canteen dry, the trailer a husk—roof a jagged void, starlight pooling in cracks, the park a dark waste humming with shoegaze echoes. Kip kicked the desk, “You owe me the damn zodiac,” he growled, pocketing his gin and shuffling out, bottlecaps clinking like a funeral march. Mae lit a soggy smoke, hands shaking, and checked the session. Left behind was a track—ten minutes of cold swirl and theft, star hums, comet plucks, a galaxy’s drone, a chorus abyss of calculated madness. She uploaded it to SoundCloud—“StarThief,” she called it—and slumped into the ash, the smoke singeing her buzzcut. By midnight, it had 6,000 plays, some kid muttering, “This is if HAL 9000 got drunk and sang.” Mae didn’t care. The sky was a blank slate, the rent was a ghost, and the void stared back, unblinking, but she’d stolen something—a cold hymn to the end of light.

Days later, she heard it—a faint hum from the speakers, StarChorus lurking, whispering frost. She chugged tequila from a cracked flask, toasted the black, and let it rot. Every music producer knows the deal: the gear’s a cold bastard, and it’ll steal the stars if you give it half a chance.