Kolfmann was a famous name to those who loved music. He was perhaps eighty now, maybe ninety, if he had a good gerontologist, and he had been a great concert pianist many years ago. Those of us who knew something about pre-synthesizer musical history knew his name as we would that of Paganini or Horowitz or any other virtuoso of the past, and regarded him almost with awe.
Only all I saw now was a tall, terribly gaunt old man in ragged clothes who burst through my doors and headed straight for the synthesizer, which covered the whole north wall with its gleaming complicated bulk. He had a club in his hand thicker than his arm, and he was about to bash it down on a million credits’ worth of cybernetics when Macauley effortlessly walked over and took it away from him. I was still too flabbergasted to do much more than stand behind my desk in shock.
Macauley brought him over to me and I looked at him as if he were Judas.
“You old reactionary,” I said. “What’s the idea? You can get fined a fortune for wrecking a cyber—or didn’t you know that?”
“My life is ended anyway,” he said in a thick, deep, guttural voice. “It ended when your machines took over music.”
He took off his battered cap and revealed a full head of white hair. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and his face was speckled with stiff-looking white stubble.
“My name is Gregor Kolfmann,” he said. “I’m sure you have heard of me.”
“Kolfmann, the pianist?”
He nodded, pleased despite everything. “Yes, Kolfmann, the former pianist. You and your machine have taken away my life.”
Suddenly all the hate that had been piling up in me since he burst in—the hate any normal man feels for a cyberwrecker—melted, and I felt guilty and very humble before this old man. As he continued to speak, I realized that I—as a musical artist—had a responsibility to old Kolfmann. I still think that what I did was the right thing, whatever you say.