Picture this: You’re alone in your home listening to that new favorite record, slowly easing out of the cares of the day and into the effortless weightless beauty that is the music experience.
Just as you begin to float free for the full one-with-music eyes closed moment—Crash! Smash! Boom! Glass shatters blowing across the room as SWAT-team-like goons rappel through the hole they just blew in your ceiling while others swing through the picture window and you’re bound, gagged, and hooded before you can hit pause.
The smell of smoke and sweat and violence fills the air while sirens wail and your mind begins to race—Did I pay my taxes? Is it that case of CBD oil I just ordered from Amazon? My hemp sheets? Was that tip from Scott about Apple share prices insider trading because he worked at the Genius Bar in college?
Chest pounding, furniture scraping across the floors, hushed clipped words shared between the men in black, you begin to think about all of the good things in your life that you’ll miss and all of the things you should have done and said differently, frantically re-writing the past to measure up to this—perhaps the last few moments of existence.
“Count backward from 100. Do not remove the hood until you reach 0. We will be watching.”
99, 98, 97…
I swear I’ll be a better person. No more throwing away the extra clean free napkins that come with happy meals, I’ll tip at least 15% maybe more if the service is really exceptional, I’ll call my parents, I’ll brush and floss every day! Twice!!
3, 2, 1…
As you slowly pull the hood up and over your head, it takes a moment for your eyes to adjust to the darkness while you rip the remaining duct tape from your wrists and ankles. Wait a minute. . .everything seems the same except for the broken picture window, the hole in the ceiling, and the debris. Your feet crunch on broken glass and plaster as you survey the room when it finally becomes clear—the mission objective fixes your gaze and sends an ice cold shiver down your spine, rendering you unable to move or even swallow. Your hifi is gone.
In its place is a new hifi. A much less expensive hifi with thin, generic cables and stock power cords. The power conditioner is gone, the turntable is gone, too. A small two unit stack of less than half-width-sized plain silver components are all that’s left sitting on the floor (the rack is gone too) in between two stand mount generic two-ways wrapped in faux wood grain black vinyl.
Prologue
