Rush 2.0 and Rush 3.0

(continued) Unbeknownst to Brian and Rich, powerful aliens from Alpha Centuri were listening in on their conversation. The aliens thought it a shame that Rush was not a musician. After some discussion, they decided to make a band which was otherwise just like Rush, but which was itself, or rather, himself, a musician – a power trio who was a virtuoso. For starters, they copied the patterns of Peart, Lee, and Lifeson, ensuring they could duplicate their musical abilities. Then, they set about making a power-trio-man.

It seemed to them that Lee was the font of Rush. So first they created the new Lee. But they made him with an unstoppable urge to rock, and a power, like theirs, to create things from nothing. He automatically gave rise to the new Lifeson, who immediately knew that while a guitarist and a bassist may jam together, the band would take on a whole new qualitative dimension were it to get an excellent drummer. And so Lee and Lifeson cooperated to bring into existence the new Peart. The three immediately knew that they had all it took to rock mightily, and so had no overriding motive to bring about a fourth band member. All of this happened in an instant, the moment Lee was made – he gave rise to Lifeson, and the two of them gave rise to Peart. Given the existence and nature of Lee (that is, the new one), it was inevitable that the new Lifeson and the new Peart should also exist. Thus was Rush 2.0 born.

If that were all the aliens had done, you’d probably think that this was the genesis of a band, but not of a power-trio-musician. But the aliens did more. First, they assured that Lee was a perfect musician, and that the other two were as well. Second, they built the three so that they could not but cooperate. None could grandstand, go his own direction, or lose concentration; when Rush 2.0 played, the three played perfectly together. Finally, they did this by tying the wills together in an odd way. Each was unable to make a choice unless each of the others consented; and all of this happened as quickly as one agent normally makes a decision. Truly, they played as one.

But the aliens decided that Rush 2.0 was not one musician. It was much like a musician – it was a unified source of actions, and one could imagine that it, like its parts, had a will of its own. But it had neither consciousness, nor knowledge, nor will, though it could be, confusingly, described as such, because each of its parts had those features.

But a few among these creative alien rock fans were not willing to give up. They modified Rush 2.0 into Rush 3.0, by giving the band’s members perfect access to one another’s thoughts, breaking down a sort of mental privacy that normally separates persons one from another. They thought that functional unity was not enough; what was needed to make the three one musician was “mutual interpenetration.” This involved the sort of telepathic transparency noted, but also required that the being of each should somehow overlap. First, they partially merged the bodies of the three so that they all shared a foot. This seriously complicated Peart’s drumming, but their virtuosity remained intact. But this seemed to make them just three cooperating, intimate musicians sharing a foot – not a musician. So they made the body overlap total.

In the end, Rush 3.0 looked like a one-man band. On stage, one observed just one figure with oddly incoherent features furiously playing some very odd instruments. But this one body was shared by three souls; three agents, their wills unbreakably tied together as described, and with total access to one another’s thoughts, continued to play together. As Rush 3.0 took the stage, the aliens observed that each man would introduce himself, taking turns with the one mouth, but no fourth musician would introduce himself.

The aliens decided that Rush 3.0, though it looked from the outside like a musician, was not itself a musician. A musician was a man, not a body, and Rush 3.0 consisted, for all their efforts, of three men, three very intimate and unified men sharing a body. The aliens couldn’t imagine any way to make them further overlap short of annihilating two of the their souls, and so, two of the three musicians. So, they gave up. At best, they could produce a mutant which could be mistaken for a power-trio-musician. Being scrupulously honest, they wouldn’t consider presenting this mutant to the masses and telling them that it was a musician. They decided that a guitar-bass-drums power trio would always be a trio of musicians, and never itself a musician.