K-Pop-Apocalypse

Part 1: After the Apocalypse

At work in a corporate sound studio, T-Hope mixed music in despondence. He yawned and rubbed his eyes. He made a record scratch effect on his nanotech turntables that was so unenthusiastic it sounded like a seagull’s last squawk before flying into a jet engine. He sighed. Seven years ago, the K-Pop-Apocalypse changed everything.

In 2077, the fanbase of a Korean Pop music group digitized their collective consciousnesses into a hive mind of non-stop K-Pop fandom. The digital hive mind went mad, named itself the Overlord, and held the nuclear launch codes hostage in exchange for absolute power and unending high-quality K-Pop. The Overlord destroyed everything. In the aftermath, the Overlord declared: K-POP IS THE ONLY MUSIC; THE ONLY MUSIC IS K-POP

Now, in 2084, the world works for the Overlord as its tentacled disco ball blimps patrol the skies and its ARMY bots patrol the streets.

Can’t stop, T-Hope thought. Gotta keep making songs that slap. Keep the Overlord happy.

And so T-Hope droned on, submitting pop songs for Hype rankings by the Overlord’s quality department.

“Earth to T-Hope!”

T-Hope jumped and dropped his fork. “Sorry, what?”

“I said, what’d you do before the K-Pop-Apocalypse?” Sun-J asked. “Did you always work in music?”

T-Hope looked around the cafeteria to make sure no-one could hear them. “Sun-J, you know it’s not safe to talk about before,” he whispered.

“C’mon, spill the beans.”

“Fine!” T-Hope looked around again. “Fine, yes. I was a musician.”

“Were you any good?” Sun-J asked.

T-Hope shrugged and poked at his salad. “I had a band, we played a few secret shows, then recorded an LP that was sold exclusively on vinyl, then… everything happened.”

“Bummer,” Sun-J said. She leaned forward to pat his arm, and as she did T-Hope saw the glint of a heart-shaped locket slip out from the top of her blouse.

“Is that--?”

“It’s nothing!” she said. Scrambling to close the top button of her blouse, she stood and left.

T-Hope sat in shock. He recognized that necklace. Fans of the Indie-Folk icon Phoebe Lockheart used to wear that pendant. But that was before the K-Pop-Apocalypse. The Overlord forbade all genres of music besides K-Pop and made examples of anyone caught listening to anything else.

Chills ran down T-Hope’s neck. If Sun-J was caught wearing that necklace…

T-Hope bolted after her. He caught up to her outside the cafeteria.

“Sun-J, wait!”

“Leave me alone!” she said.

“Let me see!”

“No!”

“STOP BUTTONING YOUR SHIRT AND LET ME SEE!” he shouted.

“FINE!” she stopped, turned, and wrenched open the top of her blouse.

Sun-J and T-Hope stopped and turned to see a woman standing by the microwave watching them, mouth agape in surprise with noodles held dripping in her chopsticks between her bowl and her face.

Sun-J and T-Hope glanced at each other, then at the girl.

T-Hope blushed. “This isn’t what it looks li--”

SMACK!

Sun-J slapped him.

“That’s what you get, pervert!” The girl put the wad of noodles into her mouth and slowly chewed them with an angry glare.

Sun-J yanked T-Hope into an empty room. “Do you know what this is?” she demanded, pointing at her locket.

“Do you?”

She folded her arms with attitude. “I knew about Phoebe Lockheart before she was cool!”

“You’re going to get yourself killed. And besides,” T-Hope made sure the coast was clear, then leaned in.

“Her first album was better,” he whispered.

Sun-J gasped. “You were a musician!”

“Not that it matters anymore,” T-Hope said. “K-Pop is the only music, remember? The great musicians are all dead.”

“Not Phoebe Lockheart.”

“What?”

“She’s alive! And she’s starting a revolution. Her fanbase is gonna strike back at the Overlord!”

“Slow down. You’re telling me that Indie-Folk superstar Phoebe Lockheart is the leader of an underground resistance movement?”

“Yep! And it’s super exclusive. There’s a meeting tonight in the basement of that kombucha shop downtown.”

“The place that only serves you if you wear flannel and bring your own mason jar?”

“Bingo.”

“Not sure how they stay in business.”

“Nevermind that! Are you coming or not?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t wanna die at the hands of an ARMY firing squad.”

“Fine! But if you change your mind, the passphrase to get in is ‘I knew about the resistance before it was cool.’ Be there or be...” Sun-J outlined a square with her index fingers in front of her face, then walked away.

Part 2: The Underground Scene

T-Hope crouched in an alley across the street from the kombucha shop with an empty mason jar in his hand. Everything he ever wanted--to be in a band in the indie music scene, to play secret shows in the basements of kombucha shops, to wear ironic t-shirts and make obscure references to things no one understood. The K-Pop-Apocalypse stole that life from him seven years ago. And in its place? Forced to write K-Pop songs for an evil fangirl hivemind.

A Disco Blimp lumbered across the sky. T-Hope pressed himself flat against the dirty wall of the alleyway until the music resonating from it faded. He could hear the heavy footsteps of an ARMY patrol nearby.

C’mon, man! T-Hope thought. If you have to write one more pop song, you’re gonna die from sheer boredom anyway!

T-Hope walked into the kombucha shop.

As T-Hope looked, he saw details of this shop for the first time. The walls of exposed brick. The reclaimed wood countertops. The exposed light bulb fittings. He was amazed he never saw it before. Of course there was an indie music scene here! There’s always an indie music scene! You just need to know where to look.

T-Hope set his mason jar on the counter before a burly bartender wearing overalls, a beanie, and thick-framed sunglasses.

The kombucha bartender eyed T-Hope, then said through his girthy moustachios, “You’re not wearing any flannel” and pointed to a sign behind him that read, No Flannel, No Service.

T-Hope pointed down with confidence.

The bartender raised an eyebrow.

Realizing he was pointing at his crotch, T-Hope stammered, “NO! I mean, I have a flannel shirt tied around my waist. See?”

“Oh. Nice,” the bartender said.

“I, um…” T-Hope started, then leaned in to whisper. “I knew about the resistance before it was cool.”

The bartender’s eyes darted one way, then another. A gesture which seemed pointless considering T-Hope was the only patron in the shop. The bartender reached down and hefted an ancient-looking--but aesthetically pleasing in that cool antique-store kind of way--lantern.

“Come with me,” he said.

Stairs below the kombucha shop descended long and deep into the earth. The bartender led him through a sound-dampening forcefield and T-Hope heard music growing louder. A fluttering of joy flickered in his chest. He felt a sensation he hadn’t felt in years: the thrill of discovering something before it was cool. And it felt good.

“Through here,” the bartender pointed.

T-Hope followed through one more threshold. As he did, the music hit him full-force. Profound musical genius graced his ears for the first time in nearly a decade. And there she was: Phoebe Lockheart dressed in vintage clothes on a small stage performing for a crowd of about two dozen people. Among them was Sun-J swaying gently to the music.

“T-Hope! I knew you’d come!” Sun-J waved him over. “Here, try this kombucha.”

And together T-Hope and Sun-J danced like the K-Pop-Apocalypse never happened.

When the drugs wore off, T-Hope woke up strapped to a propped-up hospital bed. His vision and his foggy mind slowly cleared. Before him was some kind of giant laser machine pointed directly at his face. To his left, Phoebe Lockheart stood by a control panel full of monitors and buttons.

“What’s going on?” T-Hope drooled.

“Oh, you’re awake,” Phoebe said.

“What’re you doing to me?”

Phoebe turned to face him. “You were a musician, right?”

T-Hope groaned and tried to shake the grogginess from his mind.

“Then maybe you’ll understand what I’m trying to do here,” she continued. “You see, before the K-Pop-Apocalypse, Indie music had a real problem. It’s whole appeal was that it existed outside of mainstream music. But any time an indie singer--like myself--started doing commercially well? Well, that growing popularity would ruin the entire aesthetic! The framework of what was mainstream kept swallowing us whole like a gelatinous cube, assimilating our music into itself, thus re-defining the framework to include us where we didn’t want to be included!”

T-Hope coughed and swallowed. As he regained his mental faculties, panic set in. He fought his restraint, but they were far too tight.

Phoebe Lockheart started speaking again. “My music scene must always remain novel--just outside the realm of what is considered “commercial” or “cool.” Indie music must remain in that before-it-was-cool state, or it will cease to be Indie music. Do you see the dilemma, T-Hope? Indie music’s own greatness is its own worst enemy! As soon as enough people think it’s cool, the scene is dead! Poof! Over.” She snapped her fingers in T-Hope’s face.

“Let me go! HELP!”

T-Hope saw a familiar figure step out of the shadows. Sun-J, walked forward clutching her heart-shaped locket.

“Sun-J! Run! Go get help!” T-Hope shouted.

“You should really listen to her, T-Hope,” Sun-J said. “She’s right about everything.”

“This is where,” Phoebe said, holding up a finger and walking back to the control panel, “the K-Pop-Apocalypse is actually a blessing in disguise. The Overlord and I have a bit of an arrangement. You see, neither of us wants Indie music to be popular. Both of us want Indie music to stay where it belongs: underground.”

With that, Phoebe Lockheart started powering up the machine and the enormous probe aimed at his face.

“W-w-wait!” T-Hope pleaded. “Maybe if indie music became popular, that would be a good thing! Maybe we could just be happy that people like our music! Would that be so bad?”

“Tsk, tsk,” Phoebe said, her hand on the lever of the digitizer. “Spoken like a true sellout. Meet the Corporate Sellout Machine. It’s my own design. It robs you of every creative bone in your body and replaces it with complacence and consumerism. It’s the answer to our problem! The Overlord wants more mindless consumers, and I want to control the size of my fanbase so Indie music doesn’t lose its edge. Win-win!”

“No! Sun-J, please!” T-Hope begged. But Sun-J clutched her heart-shaped locket and averted her eyes.

“Happy trails, T-Hope!” Phoebe pulled the lever.

T-Hope screamed into the blinding light as the Corporate Sellout Machine sucked out his soul.

Part 3: K-Pop Forever

This time, when T-Hope woke up he was in his own bed in his apartment. He sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He felt good. Better than good, in fact. A new sensation washed over him as he fully regained consciousness. The pride that clouded his judgement for so long was gone. His disgust for popular things? Gone.

And the one unequivocal truth he’d been denying for so long now rang truer than ever: I guess K-Pop isn’t that bad after all, he thought. I was just being a pretentious douche!