Microrecorder Fiction -- Collaborative

[Ted]

Henwrench's Word Association thread and Gu Djin's Wilderness Years inspired this mental image, which is the beginning of a story.

If you've got a few minutes, add a paragraph or two.

In the story, a private conversation is inadvertently captured on a Micro BR. Something in the conversation leads to a whole lot of trouble for the boy.

Slumped in an overstuffed chair is a young man, 17 years old and wearing a gray t-shirt. He's playing his guitar in the lobby of a Holiday Inn, passing the time until his parents come down to check out. They're taking forever.

He didn't want to come on this vacation to Washington, DC. His parents certainly weren't going to leave him home alone for a week. They struck a bargain. He could bring his electric guitar as long as he would stay in the hotel room while they went to museums and tourist attractions. The bargain paid off. He'd been practicing, composing, and recording with his Micro BR all week, hardly knowing or caring that he was staying three blocks from the White House, and other points of interest.

Except history and politics didn't interest him. Not in the least. This was a disappointment to his parents, but they were satisfied that his obsession with music could be used to their advantage, for once, and keep him out of trouble.

For the moment he's lost in a chord progression he created this morning, playing it over and over on his cheap ass Les Paul copy guitar with the "Regal" insignia covered over with electrical tape. He listens on headphones, lost in the sound of the chords, delay and reverb. His microrecorder is flat on the coffee table in front of him. He decides to record what he's created so he won't forget it during the five or six hours it'll take to get home.

Out of habit, he selects the GTR+MIC setting, and begins recording. On the couch behind him two men in suits are speaking quietly, unaware that they are part of the ambient backdrop to the young man's new composition.

Who will pick up the story from here?