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Speed metal played through Zari’s computer speakers, a compromise after several complaints that her room wasn’t as sound proof as she thought it was, and blasting it from the ship’s sound system was a little much. But after the whole possessed serial killer puppet thing, she was slightly paranoid and didn’t want to risk headphones.
Zari had always liked working to metal, it was aggressive and loud, and there was nothing catchy about it, which made it easier to zone out and focus. Ray, always looking for a way to boost his productivity, tried it once and made it about ten minutes before he was in the med bay having Gideon ease a splitting headache. Zari could only offer him a shrug. It’s just what worked for her.But now, hours into a marathon coding session, it was starting to lose its magic and her concentration was fading. She was getting nowhere with her program, and everything she thought looked promising with her loophole algorithm was coming up as a dead end. The pile of energy drinks she had consumed just left her jittery, and her computer screen had started looking like the lines of code from The Matrix, which was mildly troubling. But she soldiered on, hoping for a breakthrough.A sharp knock at the door snapped Zari out of her haze, and it took a moment for her to come back to reality before she prompted Gideon to open it. Constantine stood in the threshold, flipping a cigarette between his fingers, clearly wanting to light up.“And you call punk terrible, yeah?” he said, pointing the cigarette towards the speakers. “That sounds like bloody cats and dogs fightin’ in the street. Rabid ones.”Zari huffed in exasperation and turned the music off. She wasn’t going to take the bait. “What do you want John?”“Heard the noise from next door. Haven’t been sleeping, so I figured I’d see what the Waverider’s other resident insomniac was up to. But now I just want to know how you can say punk is shit, but you’re up listening to this garbage.”“Easy. Punk is shit, metal is good and helps me work. The end.”Constantine cracked a grin and shook his head at her, clearly not up for much of an argument.“So you’ve figured it out then? Fixed time. Found your loophole?”They both knew the answer to that, even without Zari’s silence.“How much is that noise really helping then, eh?”“Don’t be an asshole. And I’ll figure it out. It just–it takes time.”John stayed in the doorway, clearly contemplating, with something approaching empathy on his face.“How about a break? I need a smoke and I think Gideon’s about ready to kill me if I light one on the ship again.”“You’re not wrong Mr. Constantine,” Gideon said in her chipper voice.“Thanks Gideon.” John tucked the cigarette behind his ear. “What do you say, Z? Lets go to a show.”“What?”“I need a smoke and a drink and you should appreciate punk more. You’re not getting anywhere with that,” he said, waving vaguely in the direction of Zari’s computer. “So why not?”Zari glanced back over at her code, at this point it basically looked like gibberish, and no matter how hard she tried to convince herself, she definitely was not going to figure out how to save her family tonight.“Yeah, why not.”“I can’t believe I agreed to this,” Zari said. The walls of the bar she and John had just entered looked like they were practically crawling with grime. Familiar grime. “Wait. Is this the same place we were at in the 70s?”“Didn’t shut down for good until 2006, I think. Somewhere around there. I was on a long bender that year, so can’t say for sure. But it’s fucking million dollar lofts now, like every fucking thing else in this shit city.” John finally lit his cigarette and used a deep inhale to calm himself.“As much as I hate apartments for rich people, this place is gross enough that I might be okay with saying good riddance.”“Listen, it may be a garbage heap, but punk as you and I know it wouldn’t exist without it.”“Like I said good-Ow!” An incredibly drunk kid walked straight into Zari and John, knocking the cigarette from John’s hand and sloshing a drink all over Zari’s coat. “Dude, what the fuck!”“Oi, get a load of this guy!” the kid yelled, drunk enough that all sense of volume control had been lost, and whacking John on the arm with an open palm, completely ignoring Zari. “You could be Johnno’s dad. Look just fuckin’ like ‘im!”“Don’t know what you’re talking about, mate.” John had quickly turned away, flipping up his coat collar, trying to avoid eye contact.The kid stared at him with the foggy gaze of the truly wasted, lolling back and forth. “You gotta be John’s dad. Chip off the old block then, yeah.” He moved to smack at John’s arm again, but Zari stepped in, catching the kid by the wrist.“Hey, asshole! Why don’t you lay off,” Zari said, taking the pint glass from the kid’s hand and setting it on the bar behind them.“Alright, alright,” he said, with a cocky teenage smile. He pulled his hand away and backed up, nearly staggering over his own feet. “Old man Johnno, keep an eye on your missus, yeah?”“I’ll show you a fucking missus.” Zari moved to smack the kid, but he scurried away towards his friends, laughing.“Cheers,” John said, tugging the collar of his jacket back down.
“No problem.” She grabbed a handful of cheap cocktail napkins from the bar and dabbed ineffectively at her damp coat. It wouldn’t take long for it to start smelling gross. “But also, are you fucking kidding me? We’re seeing
your
band?”
John shrugged. “Yeah. Who else?”“Well, I figured you’d take me to see someone important. Like, I dunno, The Clash or something. Or literally any band in all of time that wasn’t yours.”“You need to experience punk at its dirtiest, its most fucking primal. It’s not The Clash playing Madison Square bloody Garden, no offense Joe,” John said as an aside to the ceiling. “It’s a bunch of assholes in a shitty bar playing three chords to a bunch of other assholes smashing into each other like it's the last thing either of them are ever gonna do.”“How fun.”“And this was a great gig. You’ll see, love,” John said, bellying up to the alarmingly gross bar. “Pint then?”“Still don’t drink, John.”“Right. Well, a Mucous Membrane set might change your mind.”He signaled the bartender for a drink and threw a wad of crumpled bills down.“Are you shit talking your own band?” Zari asked, trying to avoid touching, well, anything.“No, but if you thought The Smell was bad, you’re in for a treat.”“Oh god.”A roar from the crowd drew their attention to the front of the room, where a group of what could generously be called scrappy kids ambled onto the stage. Zari immediately spotted Constantine’s younger self. Eighteen year old John was skinny and pale, even paler than the John standing next to her, his hair a shock of bleach blonde in a messy, grown out mohawk.“That’s quite a look,” she said.But it was the mischief in his eyes that told Zari it was really him. It was the look of someone who always thought they were ten steps ahead of everyone else, and sometimes they actually were.The drummer screamed out a count, launching the band into a cacophonous riot of noise and chaos. Young John was manic, careening across the stage wildly as he barked nonsense into the microphone that Zari could barely decipher. A pit broke out immediately, kids flinging themselves violently into one another, pressing up and piling as close to the stage as possible to shout along.There didn’t seem to be songs or structure, and everything sounded exactly the same to her, just a wall of distortion, crashing drums, and high pitched yelps. There were maybe a hundred people in the room, but the band played like it was thousands. After several relentless minutes, the guitarist started smacking at his instrument, which reverbed into echo-y feedback, and the band finally stopped. John swaggered to the lip of the stage, grinning like a wolf in a shepherd’s meadow, while the crowd jostled each other, a smattering of applause overwhelmed by screams of “Fuck you” and “Wanker.”“So you’ve just always been like this,” Zari said.“In my blood,” the John next to her said, downing the rest of his beer.Young John stood silent, grinning, microphone cable draped around his neck, the droning of feedback and static still echoing around the room. Maybe if she was an 18-year-old punk and had never ever met John Constantine before, she’d get the appeal. His energy was magnetic, even she could admit that.“Fuck off London,” John spit at the crowd, unamplified. They roared as he turned his back to them, pulling the microphone cable taut around his neck. “This is Venus of the Hardsell.”The song that came next was–different. Maybe even something approaching good. There was almost a melody, and young John, while he wasn’t singing well, per-se, he wasn’t shouting incomprehensibly either. And from what Zari could make out, the lyrics were a little eye roll worthy, as most songs written by 18-year-olds were, but a mostly earnest critique of capitalist consumerism. It was something that would have been right up her brother’s alley.Zari turned to John and caught him half-heartedly mouthing along to the words in between drinks of another beer. There was something in his eyes, a sadness that he normally did a good job of hiding, and in the dim light of the bar it would have been easy to miss.“This one isn’t actually terrible,” Zari shouted in his ear. “Almost listenable.”That got him to crack half a grin, as he chuckled into his pint glass.Onstage, young John was shoving people who had climbed up next to him back into the arms of the crowd. Only about half of them were getting caught, the rest tumbling down to the ground only to get picked right back up to get tossed around more.“Our big hit,” John shouted back with laugh, a bit of his trademark mirth returning to his face. “Lets see if I still got it, yeah?”He began shucking his coat and it took a second for Zari to register that he was about join the chaos unfolding in front of them.“John! That’s so fucking–” Zari couldn’t even finish her sentence before he had tossed his jacket at her and hopped over the railing seperating the bar from the mass of bodies on the floor. “–stupid.”Zari was only able to keep an eye on him because of his white dress shirt, easily spotted against a sea of black leather and denim, but he smashed against all the kids like he was a teenager again, shoving and pogoing like the rest of them. There was a joy on his face, in his movements, that Zari had never seen from him before. How she assumed he was before whatever horrible shit had happened to make him the mess he was now. He looked happy.The song ended abruptly, and there was barely a break before the next, another sloppy, high energy burst of mayhem. Almost immediately, John was shoved out of the pit and stumbled over his own feet back to where Zari stood.“Christ, I’m too old for that shit,” he yelled, holding the small of his back and trying to stretch.“You and me both,” Zari said, wincing as she watched another body get flung out of the pit, nearly crashing into John. He managed to dodge at the last second, and the kid flew into a nearby table. It only took a moment’s recovery before she ran back into the fray, fists swinging.As impressive as that was, the room was quickly becoming a sauna, and Zari could start to feel the sweat of dozens of gross teen punks on her skin. It was disgusting. Muscous Membrane played on, but Zari had had her fill.“If I told you I was convinced, punk is great, wonderful, best thing I’ve ever heard, could we leave?” Zari shouted at John.“I was hoping for a bit more conviction, but I’ll take what I can get.” John was still a little breathless, eyes wide from adrenaline. He struggled back over the railing and took his jacket from Zari to dig for his cigarettes. “Honestly better than a light right after fucking.”“Ew.”He laughed around the unlit cigarette in his mouth and motioned towards the door as he shrugged his coat back on.“So what do you actually think then?” he asked as they got towards the bar and the promise of escape. Zari swore she could see steam rising off all the bodies in front of the stage.She couldn’t give him the satisfaction of too much approval. “I will admit that it isn’t infinitely worse than metal. And you played, like, one semi-decent song. But it’s still not good.”John shrugged and lit his cigarette. “Fair enough.”A rickety looking card table covered in t-shirts and records and manned by a blue-haired girl sat near the door. The bright green Mucous Membrane logo scrawled across the front of an LP caught Zari’s attention, the picture on the front of the band playing to a feral looking crowd oddly familiar.“Holy shit, my brother had this.”“What?” John nearly dropped the cigarette out of his mouth.“My brother collected punk records,” she said, picking it up and flipping it over in her hands to examine the back cover. “I knew the name sounded familiar. Behrad had this in his collection. I never listened to it, though he always had shitty taste, so this all tracks.”
The girl behind the table’s eyes went wide and stared at John. “Jesus, you look just like–”
“I know. All us blonde fellas up north look alike.” John motioned to the record. ““How much, love?” “Ten quid.”John fished out a couple bills and tossed them on the table.“Keep the change. Tell John it’s a gift from his dad.”Just past the threshold of the bar’s door, the temperature dropped 20 degrees.“Oh thank god,” Zari said. The door slammed shut behind them, muffling the sound of the band, the quiet making the ringing in her ears noticeable. She didn’t mind as much as she probably should have.“Thanks,” she said, motioning with the record.“Easy to treat when you have a magic computer that just makes cash.”They walked in companionable silence towards the jump ship, cloaked and hidden in an alley a few blocks over. Zari kept examining the record cover, turning it over and back, like she was looking for something. Like maybe having it was like having a piece of Behrad back.“We made just the one,” John said, breaking the quiet. “Cost us about 50 pounds, sounded like it was recorded on tin cans in an empty basement. We spent more on beer that weekend then actually paying the idiot we got to make the thing.”Zari knew exactly what he was doing, and she was grateful for the distraction. “Why does that not surprise me.”“Got a couple of the local university stations to play some songs off it. Toured a bit around the UK. Did a week opening for Leftover Crack over in France and Germany.” He took a long drag off his cigarette. “Still think I’m banned from Stuggart.”“Banned. From the whole city.”“Yeah,” John said, flicking ash. “Can’t remember why though.”“That’s...unsettling.”“Eh, probably set something really old on fire or turned the mayor into a pig.”“Was that something that happened a lot or–?”“A couple times for the practice. Always turned them back, though.” John stopped suddenly, his face in deep concentration. “I think.”“Really hope I don’t get turned into a cat again then.”John mosied back into step with Zari, easing the record out her hands, which she had started holding in a white knuckle grip.“Your brother wasted his money,” he said.“Yeah, probably.” Zari said, shaking out her hands. “But he loved this shit. I always thought it was garbage, but then when he died, I guess it made me hate it more.”John nodded sympathetically in response, but didn’t find any words for her. They found the jump ship and Zari uncloaked it, still not trusting John to touch anything. Before they boarded, John took one last look at 2000 London.“Thanks for coming out to the gig then,” he said. “Hope you find a way to fix things. Maybe we can take your brother next time.” He took one last, long drag on his cigarette. “We played a show in Leeds once where we broke the floor of the club.”“He would have loved that. And he’d certainly be better company than me.”“I dunno about all that,” John said, turning to finally board the ship, flicking his cigarette out the door as it closed behind him.