Copyright free music isn't as bad as I thought (Tessa POV)

Tessa Lewis

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It was a half-hour after Wyatt left before I popped in the CD to my external disc reader.

I wasn’t sure I could legitimately write that I participated in Wyatt's garage study on some hypothetical future college application, but 40 bucks is 40 bucks, plus I was doing Wyatt a favor.

Light, vaguely boring music began to play over my laptop speakers. It was public domain stuff - flavorless, inoffensive, and uninteresting.

My first impulse was to stop or mute it. If I'd stumbled upon to the track on YouTube, I'd have already clicked on to the next video - Lofi Girl this was not. However, I'd already taken Wyatt's money, so there was no backing out without being a total cheat.

I sprawled out on my bed, laptop beside me, and resigned myself to public-domain music hell for the next hour (or however long the CD was) while I continued browsing Reddit. While I clicked around, and read stuff, I mostly thought about Wyatt in the back of my mind.

Wyatt looked kinda crazy when he showed up out of the blue. His light brown hair had been a mess. He obviously hadn’t been sleeping much, with big raccoon circles under his eyes. I hadn’t heard from the guy who used to be my closest friend for months, but it was obvious university life hadn’t been kind to him, whatever wild party stories he shared with me.

Obviously, Wyatt was struggling. But with what? School? Life? Unrealistic expectations? He had a way of getting obsessed with the most random of projects - becoming an indie game developer, Bitcoin speculation, learning how to fly planes. Though, Wyatt did seem way more invested in this CD thing than his usual flavor of the month. Maybe it was a **** attempt to make his psych major seem more special than it was. I heard gifted kids could burn out like that when they went off on their own away from their homes, families, and friends.

I suppressed a shiver. Leaving home. It was coming up whether I liked it or not. One more year, and I’d be in Wyatt's shoes, studying at some big technical institution instead of my homey little community college. I wanted to be an engineer, to fix the world, to make things better, but leaving home to do so was like this big black void. And here I was, racing right toward it.

I subdued my fears with more Reddit Am I the Asshole? threads, but it wasn't easy. Wyatt’s experiment music never quite got off my nerves, always bothering or distracting me from my train of thought.

40 bucks, I reminded myself.

But, after a while longer listening to the CD (I'd forgotten I'd left it playing, honestly), the music playing sort of finished merging into the background. I could ignore it perfectly as I moved on to studying AMA’s from firefighters, technicians, and other sorts of engineering stuff.

After an hour, I decided to stop trawling the net and really listen to the soundtrack. The music was still dull and boring, yes, but… there was a pleasantness to its dullness. Maybe dull wasn’t the right word? It was more like the CD music was plain normal. So normal it had this comforting aura to it. Like vanilla ice cream or chicken noodle soup.

I hated it at first, but now that I was getting into the further tracks, all in the same public-domain generic style genre, I found I didn’t mind listening to Wyatt’s CD that much. In fact, I was low-key digging the current track.

Dancing slightly to the generic techno beat of the next track, I kept reading more threads. Some were good, some were lame, but there was always another one, and I didn’t have anywhere to be tomorrow. I stayed up later and later, the music helping to keep me up.

After another hour, I was bobbing my head to the beat of an everyman sort of rock song, which was sort of like Bon Jovi, except the serial numbers had been filed off so it was blander and less interesting. Er. More accessible, maybe.

Okay, I don’t know what it was, but I really loved something about that generic rock track. Which wasn’t like me. I didn't like rock, especially not old-school stuff. But with how much I was getting into it… maybe it was because it was late, maybe it was because I wasn’t really paying attention to it, I don't know what it was, it was weird.

I looked up from my laptop screen and frowned. Did how much I was enjoying the, to put it mildly, cardboard music, have anything to do with the experiment? Allegedly, this CD was laced with subliminal messages. Sure, Wyatt told me I was supposed to pick up on a key phrase - I am Primed…? - I shook my head free of the errant thought. Wyatt told me I was picking up on keyphrases, but what if there were other subliminal messages on the CD? Ones he hadn’t told me about?

I frowned deeper and listened more carefully to the music playing over my speakers to see if I could detect anything off about it.

I didn’t mind listening to Wyatt’s CD, though. Like I said. At least I was sure about that. I actually really enjoyed the tracks. They made a really bad first impression, but the next time I was hanging out, I knew I’d listen to Wyatt's CD over again from the start, so I could hear the whole thing.

Wait.

I shook my head and adjusted my glasses, feeling weirdly distracted. That’s right, I was trying to figure out if the music was somehow affecting me, beyond the scope of Wyatt's experiment.

Not that I was worried.

Because... well... even if Wyatt did put something in there besides the key phrase, it was likely just something else for the experiment - like a blind study. A study I volunteered for, didn't I? At the end of the day, it was just a CD. It was just music. And it was perfectly safe to listen to music, wasn’t it? Really, why was I worrying over the subliminal contents of the CDs all the sudden?

I laughed at myself and shook my head. I’d read too many creepypastas lately. But when I finally went back to my Reddit binge, the thoughts kept moving in the back of my mind.

What would it be like to experience subliminals more powerful than the ones I was listening to now...?