Last night at Benaroya Hall, author Richard Powers read from a new short story called "Modulation." It was classic Powers; a dense, far-reaching, and meticulously vivid tale of a computer virus that infects music player devices via filesharing sites. He weaves the story around four different individuals: a Japanese hacker recently released from prison and now employed by the RIAA to huntdown filesharers, a Brazilian journalist researching soldiers in Iraq who blast ear-crunching music from their vehicles when they go out on missions, a forlorn music scholar on the eve of his retirement from a mid-western University, and a young laptop battler who agonizes over keeping track of the ever-multiplying sub-genres of electronic music and enthralls with his live performances of entirely computerized music that rely heavily on audio samples from early-80s video games.

The hacker detective eventually discovers that the virus has a time-bomb aspect, whereby after it infects potentially millions of music players, it will "detonate" on the solstice eve of December 2st. It is an elegant plot device that ties together all his characters' diverse experiences, but what really sung in this story was how he used the virus to explore music and it's role in the modern human experience: from portraying Mozart as the original bootlegger and musing on how music has always been a form of sampling, re-interpretation and mashups; to skewering the computerization of the discovery and listening aspects of musical appreciation ("People who bought Radiohead also liked Slipknot!"); to comparing the extremely complex virus to a form of artwork that has it's own inherent beauty, structure, and volition. Sprinkled throughout were the genius details we've come to love from Powers: the professor, upon being given an iPod for a retirement gift laments that "Music, like the most robust of weeds, would eventually come in pods." Yukawa, the hacker turned hunter, confers with "digital epidemiologist" colleagues when researching the virus, and ponders who would want to create something that would punish music traffickers (to much sniggering from the audience)? Never actually mentioning his employer by name, he blithely wonders if perhaps it was terrorists, because "Once you hated freedom, it wasn't long until you hated two-part harmony, too."

The story built beautifully, the kind of unraveling you are blissfully unaware of until you realize too late that you've gone down the rabbit hole. Early on, we struggled to see how we was going to tie his four diverse characters together, but nearing the end we realized we'd been sucked in fully, dreamily awash in the increasingly complex language and descriptions he piled on as the time-bomb tune played across the pods and zunes and zens of the world. It has been some time since we loved sci-fi this much, and so few Arts & Lectures readings leave us transfixed like a child during story-time. In fact, we really want to hear (or read) it again--during the Q&A Powers indicated that it should be published sometime later this year, likely in Conjunctions.

Speaking of the Q&A, we were going to comment on that but Paul Constant over at the Slog said everything we were going to say anyhow, so we'll just send you over there. (Though we have two points of commentary for Paul: first is the Bill Gates comparison just a softer way of saying you think he's autistic? Because he screams Asperger's to us. Secondly we must disagree on your last point--Power's final explanation of his "both" answer was compelling to us in that shit like that just comes out off the top of his head in such a beautifully crafted manner. But the way the audience cooed and ahhed repeatedly? Yes, that was honestly quite weird.)