It’s time for us to meet the Styx machine

Editor’s note: With the Styx concert at Silver Mountain Amphitheater on Sunday, 7 revisited the band’s 1983 sci-fi concept album “Kilroy was Here.” The following is a fictional interpretation – inspired by the album’s liner notes – of the events portrayed in the climactic song “Mr. Roboto,” in which the rock-star hero escapes from prison disguised as a robot guard. All quotes are lines from the song.

Walls. Nothing but gray walls.

Gray was a color for fall skies, cold sidewalks and empty stages before Dr. Everett Righteous and The Majority for Musical Morality hid me away in this place.

Now it smothers everything I see: bars, blankets, even the toilet paper.

Yeah. And the mock-human faces of the Mr. Roboto™ brand robot guards. Gray.

But last night’s 3-minute mind-meld dosed me with color.

Jonathan Chance, leader of the Free Thought Rebellion, hacked Dr. Righteous’ program and replaced it with old concert footage.

I saw my reflection in the box then, except I wasn’t in this cell. I stood onstage in front of millions of citizens of New Freedom, wailing like the banshee messiah of rock ‘n’ roll.

Molasses-slow thoughts warmed and ran quick like water.

I wore a groove in the floor overnight. I know the guard schedule; they won’t randomize again for three days. I can make a break.

Morning’s almost here now – the crushing trash compactors one floor down shake my cell.

A Mr. Roboto wanders so close I hear its gears grinding. I snatch the exposed wires in the back of its neck, yanking down and away.

Five minutes until they find out what’s happened.

Time to rock.

“Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto,” I say, detaching the robot’s faceplate. It answers with a hiss of compressed air, then silence.

I secure the mask over my face, wondering if the IBM- manufactured brain can hear me.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto, for helping me escape just when I needed to. Thank you,” I say. Still no answer.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, I want to thank you, please, thank you.”

Silence. No more Mr. Roboto. I slip on black rubber gloves and fasten the armored chrome chest plate.

Alone in the long, gray hallway.

Off to find Chance. Off to start a revolution.

•

I’ve been a Roboto for three weeks since the escape.

Encoded tags, graffiti messages, scrawled notes. I’ve bled words onto the walls of this city, trying to contact Jonathan Chance with two things: a time, a place.

That time is now. That place is here, in a wing of Dr. Righteous’ Museum of Rock Pathology.

Onstage a group of Mr. Robotos mimic the last concert of Kilroy, that enemy of morality, arrested and jailed along Righteous’ path to power.

I spot a tall, dark man casually glancing around, looking for someone.

Still in my Mr. Roboto guise, I march up next to him and quietly, matter-of-factly say, “The problem’s plain to see.”

He straightens slightly. “Too much technology,” he replies.

“Machines to save our lives,” I say.

“Machines dehumanize,” he returns.

This is Chance. We turn slowly; his face gnarls, confused.

“The time has come at last,” I say, “to throw away this mask, so everyone can see my true identity.”

His eyes widen as I unfasten the faceplate and let it clatter to the floor.

“I’m Kilroy,” I shout, fist pumping. “Kilroy! Kilroy! Kilroy!”