The hallway contracted towards the end like the tip of a duck’s tail.

Something was familiar about the plopping sounds from the boy’s wet boots as he walked across this hard linoleum floor. Yet, this hallway was not familiar.  This building was not familiar.  The grey, nondescript office complex looked like any other building in this part of the City. Its tenants, a mix of professional services, small business contractors, and the occasional sales office, had very little interest in their neighbors’ dealings.  The soundproof walls all but ensured complete isolation from each of the other suites.

The boy at last reached the last door of the hallway before the fire exit, a stark grey metal door with nothing on it but a chrome handle and a numeric keypad.

So, this was where he worked.

The boy punched in the 8-digit code as instructed in the letter from the man he had never known. He rotated the handle downwards, counter-clockwise, until it clicked in place.  The clicking briefly startled the boy, but no one else was around to hear it, and certainly not at this hour.  The door gave way with a gentle shove, revealing a dark reception area containing a metal desk paired with a wooden coat rack.  There was no chair behind the reception desk, indicating that this room had never been used for that purpose.  The boy reached for the light switch, turning on the overhead florescent lighting.  A security camera lurked in the far corner of the ceiling behind one of those black plastic globes that you might find in a department store.

The boy kept his coat on.

The room’s opposite side connected to a passage to an inner room.  Inside, green points of light flickered.  A router.  Network traffic was still flowing from somewhere.

He must not have turned off everything before they got to him.

The boy dried his boots off on the mat and entered the vast inner room. The room smelled like the inside of a dusty library, lit by floor lamps with task lighting on the desk surfaces that gave everything a greenish tinge.  A large carved mahogany desk stood in its center with papers strewn about on top.  The boy could now see the blinking router stacked on top of a rack of black server machines, humming along.  Flanking the massive desk on one side, a drafter’s workbench with overlaid sketches on several sheets of plotter paper.  On the other side, a computer terminal with a tube monitor glowed.  As the boy wandered in, he was careful not to trip over the black cable that connected the terminal on the desk to the router.

The only other sound in the room was a faint dripping from a faucet in the back, where there was a kitchenette with a sink. A pot of stale black coffee sat in a coffee machine.  Along the side of the room were two long aisles of filing cabinets that reached up to the ceiling.

The boy stood on his tiptoes to see the front of the first aisle—and saw that it was simply labeled with the boy’s own name: Mason.

So, I started hacking my own plugin, and I’m releasing it here for free download in case it could be useful for others. (Hi, Google!)

Vocals Remover is an Audio DSP plugin for Windows Media Player that cancels out the voice track in real-time so that you can sing along. It supports all major file formats (including video) and lets you adjust the amount of voice removal and gain compensation. While the plugin works pretty reliably, it can get confused on songs where the foreground singer and instrumentals are hard to tell apart.  So, don’t expect it to work well on your experimental house mix or just about anything by T-Pain.

Download
Vocals Remover for  Windows Media Player.msi (44 KB)
Requirements: WMP 11 or greater

To install, simply run the downloaded package and uninstall works in the usual way via Windows control panel.

To enable or disable, just see whether the plugin is selected in WMP.  In WMP12, this is found by right-click -> Tools -> Plugins.  There is also a properties panel in Tools > Options >Plug-ins > Audio DSP -> Properties button, where you can customize the amount of the effect to apply.  A 0.0 means the effect is effectively off and a 1.0 means the maximum amount of voice cancellation is applied.

A short demo:

The above video also features the highly recommended lyrics plugin, which in combination with the Vocals Remover, turns your PC into a hacktastic DIY karaoke box!

THE NATURE OF FISH

Swirling and falling down from the glimmering surface

A school of fish spiral down in synchronized dance,

Tunneling into a dark, watery abyss. White fish,

Black fish, their souls darken as they approach

The nadir, each midlessly following his

Leader, continuing the structure of

Fish rules and Fish society.

They never recognize

The Truth. There is

No control,

No will.

ICARUS

You may think me foolish, or rash,
As youth are prone to disregard the advice of elders.
You say, my wings have not hardened, that I am not ready to alight.
You warn me to hold a steady course, to keep to the middle.

But, I value adventure over safety.
I long for the exhiliration of the whistling winds beneath me and the freedom of unrestrained motion.
For the chance to soar among the eagles,
I would spit in the face of danger because I realize that many never attain such an opportunity.

No, Daedalus, old man, I prefer not to choose the middle path.
I long for this chance to steal divine insight.
You see, this is much more than a flight from this wretched place, it is an emancipation.

Look, Daedalus, watch how high I can soar!
Higher, and higher, and higher, as far as my breath can sustain me.
I will reach the sun. I will go beyond the sun, into the heavens, and escape from the pull of the Earth, which is humanity’s bane.

But, what? Oh, no. It’s seems my wings have deteriorated.
Cursed Apollo. They’re playing a cruel prank on me.
Because they can’t stand mortal intruders or boys with wings.

So, I fall.
Down into the violent, freezing waters below.

I will die soon.
However, you never even knew what life was.
Life is not measured in years, but in split-seconds.

It was worth it.