ORIGINAL BURN — EP02 "Empty Glass (Burned Strings)"

ORIGINAL BURN — EP02

"Empty Glass (Burned Strings)"

The ghost never left. It just flickered.

A song for the ones who kept singing long after the stage was gone.

The dust never settles in Tube Haven — it just circles slower when the music stops.

Jake Barron sits in the old sound pit, his back to the shattered mural. The paint’s peeled so deep the past can’t quite hold its shape anymore — but the silhouettes are still there. Lee the V. Zepman. 9-Toed Joe. And Jake himself — larger than life, arms raised mid-solo, forever frozen in their prime.

He doesn’t look at them. Not yet.

His boot’s off. His bottle’s warm. And the amp crate he's using as a throne buzzes faintly, like it remembers the days when this room rang out with something electric, something loud enough to hold back the Wasted silence.

He raises the glass — not to drink, not really. Just to watch it swirl. There’s his eye in the reflection, caught in the ripple, broken into fragments like a face left on pause for too long. The light bends around it, glitchy and sour. The drink sees him clearer than he sees himself.

Behind him, a glitch-ripple flickers — Manny’s outline, pulled from half-dead feedlines or Jake’s broken memory. Not real. Not alive. But defiant as ever.

Jake flinches. He smashes the bottle, and in that split second before it hits the mural, the splash blooms into a warped music note. Beautiful. Then gone.

He storms the corridor. Lee the V follows at a distance, as always — expression unreadable, one hand tucked inside his coat like a promise not yet broken.

In the lounge, Jake stares at old screens. On them, a younger version of himself struts and snarls, cable-wrapped and wired into the crowd’s roar. That Jake still exists. Somewhere. But he’s buried deep.

Now the pit is empty. The spotlight flickers like a dying firefly. Jake steps under it — not to perform, just to see if it still works. He lifts his hand and the beam fractures into glitchdust, falling like artificial snow.

Memories collide in fragments. A laugh from the old crew. A mic check. A strum. A stage dive. Then silence.

Jake screams into the void and the pit answers with a glitchwave burst — like it’s been waiting. Lee flinches. Somewhere in that sound, something ancient stirs. Something watching.

Later, Jake tunes a rusted guitar in a backroom full of ghosts. He sees a figure in the mirror — not his reflection. Something taller. Cloaked. Glitch-wrapped. Watching.

He turns away, ashamed.

But the storm’s already started. Outside, the sky fractures in digital lightning. Inside, the lights buzz awake.

One more time.

Jake steps into the pit. The mic stand’s still there, upright now, waiting. He doesn’t touch it — not yet. But the crowd ghosts are gathering. The wires are humming.

On a monitor in the corner, Manny’s face flickers into view. He doesn’t say anything.

Neither does Jake.

But the fist clenches. And the screen goes dark.

FRAME 01: The Hollow Glow

— Jake Barron — not yet The Barron — sits in collapse at the heart of Tube Haven. One boot off, bottle gripped, face locked in that defeated calm only the deeply broken know. The mag-amp behind him flickers magenta, casting a sickly glow across the wreckage of what was once his sanctuary of sound. The Eye of Providence — still faint, still human — lingers on his scalp like an unanswered question. This is the quiet before surrender. The moment the blues aren’t played — they’re lived.

FRAME 02: Spiral Reflection

— A close-up on the glass — swirling liquid, a hypnotic spiral. Reflected in its surface: Jake’s eye, weary and wide, caught in a quiet analog glitch. There’s beauty in this moment. But also decay. The drink spins like time slipping, and within it we glimpse the fear he never speaks — that he’s just circling the drain. The world doesn’t scream here. It hums.

FRAME 03: The Ones Who Stayed Paintede

—There was a time Jake Barron stood on stages and raised fists — not bottles. In this frame, he’s caught in that in-between. Squatting before a half-dead mural, painted legends fade into cracked concrete, a heroic tableau of the old crew. They stare outward with static smiles, frozen mid-performance, while Jake stares back with hollow weight in his hands. The mural's light shaft doesn’t honor him. It illuminates what he no longer is. Because sometimes, it’s not the mural that’s peeling. It’s the man who can’t walk away from it.

FRAME 04: Echoes in the Spotlight

— Jake’s crouched under the weight of a light that once meant presence — now it just carves out his shadow. That skeletal mic stand? It’s not waiting. It’s watching. Like it knows the song died long before Jake stopped playing. But behind him… something lingers. A silhouette. A memory. Maybe Manny. Maybe just guilt. Maybe just the echo of someone who kept going. This frame holds the quiet tension between collapse and choice. Between who Jake was and what he might become. Because sometimes the biggest noise is the one you choke back — when the pit’s too empty to hold it.

██ SIGNAL PATCH 002
“If you'd worn his shoes, you'd still be singing him the blues.”
Track: Empty Glass [Burned Strings Mix]
Episode: 02 | Log ID: TC-02_EGLASS
FEED STABILITY: 81% | ZONE: The Wasted Rim
— TRANSMISSION END —

📱 UNSTABLE SIGNAL RECEIVED

FEED ID: CYOA_JB01

LOCATION: Wasted Lands / Tube Region / Static Zone

“Even silence glitches when the strings break.”

They said the Piper's frequency wasn’t real. That it only called the mad, the marked, the nearly lost.

But now the wrong voice is hearing it. Jonny Bingo. Scrappy node-runner. Scanner-addict. The kind who picks up broken songs like they're clues to a riddle nobody asked.

You can tune it out. Let it fade back into static.
Or... follow it.

But don’t say we didn’t warn you.

ENTER THE SIGNAL

██ SIGNAL PATCH 002
“He followed the noise and found the thread.”
Track: Unknown Transmission [CYOA_Bingo Path]
Episode: — | Log ID: TC-ALT-CYOA-JB01
FEED STABILITY: 42% | ZONE: Wasted Lands / Tube Rift
— TRANSMISSION CONTINUES —

On With The Show (Original Burn) — EP01

ORIGINAL BURN — EP01

"On With The Show (Original Burn)"

Somewhere between static and signal,
the song remains...

The glitch didn't start with a scream.
It started with silence.

The chord was clean. Too clean. Manny knew it. So did the dust. The saloon was packed — MusicMakerz, Echo Sector W-7. Moby working the crowd. Skip tuning. Disco pouring. Even Jonny Bingo had his shades off. Manny played. Unplugged. Honest. They weren’t ready. Then Jake Barron walked in. Tattoo inked, not lit. Biker leathers, silence sharp as a blade. One step. Two. Up the stage. Guitar raised. Crack. Strings screamed. Manny hit the floor. Blood in his teeth. Hat lost. Third chord broken. The Piper was already watching. She came not with sound, but with static. Reality shimmered. The room flickered. Manny blinked — and he wasn’t in the bar anymore. Brass light. Fog. A moving lab. Instruments like relics. The Piper stood over him — her eyes hidden beneath dread-cabled robes. She didn’t ask. She began. Needle lines. Neon thread. Subdermal circuits. Arm cabling. A jack in the chest. Last — the chrome plate at his jaw. When he woke — the world hummed differently. Sideshow Manny had been born. He didn’t return through the door. He ripped through the wall. Skip flinched. Moby whispered, “No way.” Disco grinned, “Told you he’d get back up.” Manny stepped onto the same stage. Trilby on. Lines glowing. Strings humming with power not from wood — but from wire. He strummed. And the saloon shook. A glitchwave pulsed out. Chairs flipped. Glass burst. Voices bent sideways in pitch. Jake Barron staggered. His tattoo flickered — trying to respond. It failed. He turned. Ran. His crew followed, synth-bikes stuttering against the neon sand. Manny stood in the dust. One man. One Show. He walked past the bar, past the wreck, past Moby’s stunned grin. Skip nodded. Jonny lit a smoke. Disco raised his glass. The sign above flickered. Then held: ON WITH THE SHOW And into the static night, Sideshow Manny walked. Glitch burning behind him. Guitar humming like prophecy. The Piper watched. And the desert waited.

FRAME 01: Crack the Chord

— One final performance. No cybernetics. Just hands and chords. He’s unaware, but the glitch has already noticed.

FRAME 02: Smashcut Reality

— Wood breaks. Blood flicks. Jake Barron doesn’t speak. He just acts. The camera catches the moment the story collapses.

FRAME 03: Piper’s Deal

— This isn’t science. It’s ritual. The Piper doesn’t speak. She rebuilds. And in the shadows, the guitar begins to hum.

FRAME 04: Return of the Sound

— No more doors. He re-enters reality like a glitchwave. Skip blinks. Moby swears. And the neon begins to pulse.

██ SIGNAL PATCH 001
“The jack wasn't just metal. It was myth.”
Track: On With The Show [Original Burn]
Episode: 01 | Log ID: TC-01_OWTS
FEED STABILITY: 93% | ZONE: Echo Sector W-7
— TRANSMISSION CONTINUES —

EPISODE 00 — PRELUDE (DUST FADE)

Every silence remembers the first chord…

Before the burn. Before the glitch. There was just dust. And a song humming through it.

The Wasted Lands weren’t quiet. They just weren’t amplified yet. Manny walked slow — not because he was tired, but because he was listening. Each step tuned into something different: static hum off a derailed rail rig, wind harmonics across broken string fences, echo clicks from signal rats in the drain hubs.

His guitar was still wood then. Still analog. Still honest. He didn’t play for power — not yet. He played because the silence asked for it.

This is where it begins — before The Piper, before The Barron, before upgrades and surveillance sigils. This is the last moment of something real. And it’s fading fast.

You can’t rewind a signal. But you can remember its first transmission.

---

🎞️ Frame 1: Dust Horizon

Manny alone on a dirt ridge. The guitar slung like an oath. Sunset filters through pollution haze. This is the moment before the music starts — before everything fractures. The color palette leans into oranges, brass, and desaturated shadows.

📻 Frame 2: MusicMakerz Saloon

Inside the scrap-bar of legends, acoustic ghosts echo. The bar glows with faded neon and whiskey circuitry. Locals say the first signal was born here — between bottle clinks and analog chords.

🪛 Frame 3: The Piper Watches

She does not speak. She observes. She calibrates. The Piper's silhouette seen only in reflections — never directly. Frame glitched by presence alone. This is where prophecy hums in corrupted frequencies.

---

██ SIGNAL PATCH 000
“Every silence remembers the first chord.”
Track: Prelude [Dust Fade Mix]
Episode: 00 | Log ID: TC-00_PRELUDE
FEED STABILITY: 97% | ZONE: Wasted Lands
— TRANSMISSION END —