-voyetra Digital Orchestrator Pro- -

When the last MIDI note off command echoed into silence, the room was still. The fan spun. The screen saver—a flying toaster—ignited.

The program’s flagship feature, the one that had cost him the Mulder and Scully cards, was the "Digital Orchestrator" itself: an algorithmic arranger that could take a simple chord progression and spit out a cheesy string section or a robotic jazz walking bass. Leo hated it. He called it "the Cheesemaster 2000." Its brass stabs sounded like a kazoo choir, and its "Power Rock" drum pattern was the same four-bar loop that had graced every shareware game from 1992 to 1997. -Voyetra Digital Orchestrator Pro-

The little PC speaker beeped once to clear the buffer. The hard drive chugged. And then, through the tinny, two-inch speakers of a Sony Trinitron monitor, The Last Ion Drive came to life. When the last MIDI note off command echoed

He hit play.