I've always wondered why my friends can't be counted on to answer their phones but wrong numbers will always pick up after the first ring."
That was the response Andrew gave when prompted by a voice in the monitor room to prove it was really him.
There was a terse, "Yeah, okay," in reply, and the metal doors parted, revealing the blinking lights and superb air-conditioning within.
The monitor room was circular in shape, kind of like the Oval Office except the guy running the monitor room was actually well-liked. This man's name was Coz, and he looked like he was trying to kill his keyboard using Chinese finger jabs.
He was answering the abysmally numerable questions submitted by Tally Hall fans. These questions covered every computer screen in the room, questions like, "When will their next tour be" and "Is Zubin married".
In answering the fans' questions, Coz was slamming his fingers so hard on the keyboard encircling him that the hoverpads supporting it would buckle from the force. Every time he went from "A" to "L" too fast, all his keys did the wave like a bunch of football fans.
The Tallies all stepped down into the room, except Joe, who felt the need to jump over the three steps instead of walk down them. The loud clunk of his boots hitting the floor caught Coz's attention, and he swiveled around in his chair to face them all.
Coz didn't look much different since the last time they'd seen him: same height, same weight, same gender. His eyes still held a cold, calculating gaze, even when he glanced at the Diet Pepsi in his free hand, and he still had his office-boss beard - the type of facial hair that says, "I'm in charge, so get me a biscotti."
At the moment, though, a biscotti was as far from Coz's mind as the idea of becoming a ballerina. The normal sharpness of his eyes was diluted with worry, so Italian biscuits and dancing in tights was obviously out of the question for now.
"Heya," said Coz, getting up from his chair, and the Tallies returned the greeting with happy faces.
"Sorry I wouldn't let you in here at first," Coz went on. "Jillian found a voice modifier in the junk room, and I was afraid it was just her trying to get me to open the doors."
"But you usually leave them open," said Andrew. "Why wouldn't you want them in here?"
Coz placed his fizzing drink on an open part of the keyboard, next to his models of the four kinds of Deafcaps. "Have you seen what those two have been doing in there? I'm surprised you let them handle your instruments."
Joe shrugged slightly, his shoulder being weighed down with his guitar now strapped on. "You know they weren't actually handling our equipment. We didn't even send our stuff over 'til we had our fingerprints encoded on the spacepac," he lifted the tuna can in his hand, "so they couldn't have touched our stuff even if they wanted to."
"And I'm sure they wanted to," Coz said with a smirk.
The Tallies all smiled politely at his joke (however true it was), and Joe checked his guitar for scratches one more time before taking out his phone. His guitar dematerialized as his finger jabbed one of the empty blocks shown on his spacesaver app.
"Of course, these were just downloads," Rob said to fill the silence. "We wouldn't have even considered Jennie's offer if our instruments needed tuning or something and had to be physically held. I'd be afraid of the girls dropping something."
He took the spacepac as Joe handed it to him, and he repeated Joe's action of taking out his jPhone and scrolling across the screen to find his spacesaver. "Can you imagine having to lug all this stuff around?" Rob said once he found the right icon.
