Tommytune: A Tale from Nexus
He Failed in Front of Everyone. What the Machines Captured Next Changed Everything.
1.
Tommy set the rez unit config to ‘open/free create’ and slid into the monitoring station Nexus resources had custom-designed just for him. He made motions to create something. Anything. Redeem himself, even if just here and alone. He couldn’t do it onstage right now, maybe, but at least he could make something for himself. Make something of himself, for himself if no one else. Alone, it should be easy.
His living space, in symbiosis with his personalized Resonator Unit, was exactly as he’d dreamed his very own Nexus Vibrant’s Suite would be. Designed for maximum functionality and ease-of-use, it was supposed to be a safe space. Nobody here to watch, or to judge. And calibrated just so, a design to suit his every creative need. It should be easy. He flexed his fingers and his toes, stretched, took a breath, and tried again. His command prompts to the Rez Unit caused a thin shower of rust-colored sparks that hissed rather than popped. A few percussive tink-crashes followed. Then—nothing. Like a wizard with a broken wand.
He squeezed his eyes shut and put his hands over his ears, as if to unsee the pointing and drown out the laughter. Tommy, the failure. Up on the eval stage in Nexus center, every eye in the place on his red scrunched up stupid face, beads of sweat dripping down the sides.
“Tommytune.”
That’s what they’d all called him. The name that stuck, when all he’d come up with at evaluation was that pathetic little melody. The grins, turning to outright laughs, echoed like a coda to his failed melody. He felt pinned to the floor by the needle-stings of whole-body humiliation, like some gross unwanted bug.
Tommytune!
Nice tune, Tommy.
He puts his hands in his face and wanted to sob, but instead he pushed hard into his cheekbones and eyes until it hurt. He didn’t want to be here anymore. This place, Nexus, the place he’d dreamt of, of winning that coveted spot, where dreams were made and creatives become unstoppable gods, had turned to shit.
Using the Resonators was crazy easy. Anybody could do it. His neighbors could do it. Little kids playing on the street with their little pocket Resonators, cheapo shit sold by the half-dozen—making baseballs, making homework diagrams, making little gifts for each other. They could do it. Everybody could do it. His fucking grandmother could go it.
“What’s wrong with me?” he stated in a loud voice, with such conviction that the health monitors came online and started paying attention. A comforting aroma filled the room, the lights dimmed, and a whisper sounded through his earworm; [Are you alright, Tom? It seems like you’re in distress.] The voice was unmistakable, his custom Resonator Unit was tailored to sound like a trusted friend and ally. Tommy found himself relaxing into it, then tensed again with an irritated headshake as he recognized the sophisticated trickery.
You’re no friend, Tom thought. He clenched up his hands and looked around, as if he could actually locate that mechanical box that housed the mechanical voice, grab it, and smash it, just plain destroy it. But there was no mechanical box. And the voice, too, was a disembodied thing. He could tear out the earworm but they’d just give him another. And his whole rez unit was deep in the bowels of Nexus, clicking and whirring someplace inaccessible.
And he didn’t want to destroy it anyway. It wasn’t the Resonator’s fault that he sucked. The Resonators were miraculous. That shaking rage was at himself, the emotional wounds all self-inflicted. He didn’t want comfort. He wanted to get his shit together.
“I’ll get there,” he hissed. “I can do it. I can do it.”
But he didn’t believe his own words. He flung himself from the chair straight into his bed and clutched at the blankets like a baby, kicking with his feet. One thought stayed the same and gained strength—he didn’t want to be here anymore. The place he’d always dreamt of had become a nightmare. He wanted to go home.
2.
Tommy zipped along on his custom scooter, Nexus looming behind, but he wasn’t looking back. The scooter was as cool a toy as everything else they gave him in this damn place.
All the toys. All the tech. Everything but what he really needed.
He flew past the familiar parks and relaxation zones and the bungalows for isolating and creation. Closing his eyes, he let the scooter pilot itself, let the wind hit his face, and felt the tears well up from the whip of the wind, and from the emotion as he started to choke up again, but this time it wasn’t frustration, just overwhelm. A sense of the deepest vulnerability.
“Why can’t I just do it like everyone else?” he shouted. Following the shout, a wail. He was bawling now, not caring if anybody heard or saw him. Not caring about anything. It was the first fearless moment he’d felt in ages. Maybe ever.
“Fuck them,” he thought, “watch me then. Laugh all you want.” But when he opened his eyes, no one was watching. He’d gone past all signs of civilization, and he was almost to the river.
Wrenching loud emotion continued pouring out of him. Pushing forward even faster, he put all the distance he could between him and they place that used to be a dream.
“I don’t care what they think. I don’t care what they think. I don’t care. What do they know anyway? They don’t know me. They don’t know what I’ve been through. They don’t know how hard it’s been.”
He felt an ache in his gut, intensifying into a clenching pain. The inadequacy, it was killing him.
How impressed he’d been with all the toys and gadgets at Nexus, because where he came from, he never got those kinds of things. He wasn’t creating with Resonators when he was five like all the rest.
“What do they know about me? I don’t even want to be here anymore.”
How could they know where he came from? How could they know when he first put his hands on a Resonator? Not even his own, it was one his friend’s father owned. Not even calibrated properly. And he made something with it. For his mother. A coffee mug, with a pattern on it. The eye-catching design swirled it in a way he knew she would like. When his mother saw it, she started crying.
That mug held her coffee every morning. She showed it to everyone who came. Told them how proud she was. ‘My son made this, he’s so creative,’ she would say.
That was his motivation. To make her proud. All the rest was just...
But he couldn’t feel that. Not anymore. Didn’t know how to do any of that anymore. And besides that, it was just a stupid coffee mug. And it was a long time ago. He had no idea how he got into the Vibrant program anyway. It was all thanks to a coffee mug. But really, he’d just gotten lucky.
Tom found a spot and parked, making his way down an embankment to a concrete ledge above the river. It didn’t seem like part of the Nexus Complex. It seemed older. He leaned over and saw green algae and pylons going down into the river.
As he stared into the water, he started to think about how nice it would be to create something about this. Something with the ripples. The grays and the deep, dark blacks. Silvers. Not a hint of blue. This water might as well be tar. It’s such a cloudy overcast day.
He barely registered the fact that his Resonator Unit had clicked on. He also didn’t realize that, as he stared at the water, he was vocally narrating. The shoes hanging over the edge. Feeling like a kid again. Wishing he could be. The beauty of just sitting still and watching the river ripple by. And it was being recorded.
But he didn’t really care and he wasn’t trying.
He didn’t want to try anymore. Sick of impressing everyone. Sick of trying to impress himself. What was so impressive, anyway? Why fake it?
There were duck sounds. Wind sounds. Rustling in the leaves. The ducks grew louder. He looked around and took note of where the sounds were coming from. And the Resonator picked it up. Picked all of it up.
“I don’t belong here,” he said, admitting it to himself for the first time. “I never did. I’m gonna quit.”
3.
Tom heard a clock ticking. The plus office was seemingly quieter than most of the rest of the place. He wondered if there were Resonator Units at work or not, probably not directly, though he saw a monitor on the desktop. He wondered if this Vibrant Affairs coordinator was a Vibrant himself. He hadn’t really been paying attention at orientation, but he assumed they were all Vibrants, or at least it seemed like they should be, though he didn’t really know why he thought so.
The coordinator clucked his tongue, looking at the simple, one sheet form Tom had printed up, resigning from the program. “You know, Tom, I saw something today. I wonder if you did, yourself.” He turned and waved at the monitor, which desolidified and floated up over the desk, expanding to cinematic proportions. The room darkened as a familiar river scene materialized, Tommy’s pitch-like black sneakers swinging over it off the concrete wall. Tommy flashed back to every emotion he’d felt, as he watched it all unfold again. Fiction, based on real events. A fish broke the surface in a perfect arc, the ripples of its re-entry turning surreal. Tommy vaguely remembered a fish but the Resonators had enhanced it, in accordance with his vision and mood, and captured the moment to perfection.
Even the shoes had changed to fit the mood. No longer weathered and red, like in real life, but matching the thick of the river, as Tommy had envisioned. Not a hint of color.
“Why do you have this?” Tommy asked. It wasn’t accusation. He was genuinely curious.
“It was flagged, as a matter of fact. Impressive results from Junior Vibrants get flagged by the Resonators and sent to the proper authorities, as it were, which would be me. I was just about to assign you into a higher group when I got your resignation letter. Want to talk about it?”
“This is just me sitting around,” Tommy argued. “I wasn’t… I wasn’t vibrating. I wasn’t creating. I was just sitting.”
“That’s not what I see from where I’m sitting,” Murakami said “Look, I understand you’ve been struggling with getting any traction in the usual ways, but this shows promise. Are you sure you want to quit?”
He looked at the image. It looked good. It looked like the work of a Vibrant, artistic and beautiful, with a message. If only he could do that on command.
“It’s just, sir, I’ve been trying and trying, and—”
“Yes, I understand that. I have an idea. Why don’t we try something else? Are you willing to give it a shot? Can we put this aside for a while?” And he took the resignation letter and put it to the side of his desk. “I’ll keep it on file in case you decide to go forward.”
Tommy felt a sense of incredible, renewed hope.
“Okay, yeah. Let’s try it.”
Join Tommy and Coordinator of Vibrant Affairs Franklin Murakami, along with Tommy’s junior vibrant peers at Nexus; Trace Randi and Roberto Richardson, in The Vibrants, David Deane Haskell’s visionary novel, coming this winter.
Author bio: David Deane Haskell is a fusion writer who’s impossible to pin down. Want new age future-vision with a deep dive into the human psyche? Nominally fictional (nom-fiction) tales that resonate somewhere between fact and fantasy? With that undeniable kind of truth we can still find, even in this messed up, post-truth world?
David’s stories drill into the lives of introspective characters (real ones, and ones who feel almost real) and illuminate the thought-provoking themes that keep us up at night. His settings range from ultra-modern A.I. life with fantastical future backdrops, to dark places in real life where he hesitated to return—but had to. David weaves personal reflections into his stories, creating a reading experience that blends relatably human reflections with deeply personal truths. Truths that you may well share.
This is very relatable to me – especially the river scene. I'm a composer wannabe – the river scene holds so much truth to it. The harder I try, the more unsatisfied I get. I just have to go with the flow to create a composition. Thank you for the insight David. Maybe I should try to relax myself a little and turn down the expectations.
Wow, this one really hit me. The way you wove Tommy’s breakdown into creation felt so true — that paradox of finally making something beautiful the moment you stop trying. I love how you showed that creativity doesn’t come from forcing it but from being in flow, from being safe enough to let it out without judgment.
For me, the river scene sealed it — the fact that he couldn’t create under the spotlight but could when the earth itself was holding him. That’s the real allegory: you can go your whole life not realizing you’ve never actually felt safe enough to create. And the sign of that is exactly what you showed here — the harder you try, the more it slips away.
This story really captures how creation is less about effort and more about presence. It’s not about impressing anyone — not even yourself. It’s about being witnessed by the moment itself. Gorgeous work.