After a while, they reached Shit Hall™.
The drone immediately shot upward—thirty feet or so—doing a wide sweep over the sector. It spun midair, caught the glow of neon signs, and pushed a panoramic view of the madness Mülldeponie dared to call a “street” onto the stream.
Below, hundreds of beings packed the space:
aliens, humans, mutants, cyborgs, and droids of every possible kind.
The dust was so thick you couldn’t see past two feet.
Dick covered his mouth and nose, rasping:
“What the fuck is going on here?
HallMart clearance sale or a revolution?
We better not go—”
And then—
A trumpet blasted. Then a whistle. Then a quack.
Jackie clapped her hands and practically jumped.
“NOOO WAY! NO WAY!
THAT’S DIE WÜÜD!
A street concert!”
Dick instantly grabbed control of the broadcast again.
“Alright, gremlins…
Looks like we’re about to hear the fucking cultural heritage of this garbage planet.”
The concert began.
On a stage built from containers, old platforms, and what might’ve once been part of a rocket hangar, stood a man in battered lederhosen—like they’d been ripped straight out of a Bavarian festival that survived thirty trash storms in a row.
He held a microphone welded together from an antenna and a military transmitter.
The drone—like a deranged MTV cameraman, spherical and slightly fried after a magnetar—lunged forward instantly.
It hovered fifteen feet above the stage, snapped into a tight zoom—and caught the singer’s mouth right as he screamed:
“Ffffiii–fffiii–KVAAARK!”
His voice sounded like a diesel truck trying to become an opera singer.
The crowd roared.
The drone screeched its stabilizers and whipped the frame left—locking onto a musician whose face was smeared with dust and machine oil.
He blasted into a massive tuba.
BUMPA—BUMPA!
BUMPA—BUMPA!
The sound rolled through the streets like a beer march that got lost in a scrapyard of starships.
The drone jerked again—
its stabilizers twitching like even it was losing its mind from the volume—
but it held steady and pulled a wide shot of the stage.
From above, the stream looked like:
a dancing metallic hive,
running on booze, waste, and pure enthusiasm.
Below, the crowd swayed, fingers locked together, rocking side to side in some ancient German-galactic ritual.
And somewhere inside that moving mass—
Jackie had already merged with the rhythm,
like she’d been grown there.
The drone caught her profile for a split second—
zoomed in, lit up her face,
and the stream saw pure, unfiltered joy in her eyes.
Then it got yanked sideways again
because the tuba player decided to go solo,
and the drone refused to miss a single note.
“You all hear this shit?!
WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!”
Dick yelled, trying to overpower the concert.
“But apparently… our DJ Jackie’s into it…
God… I’m gonna go deaf…”
The crowd surged like a wave.
All together, one massive, dusty, drunk organism, they roared:
“Fichtl-Frosch! Fichtl-Frosch!
pfii-pfii—kvaaaark!
Make the world not fall apart!
BRÜMM!
Fichtl-Frosch! Fichtl-Frosch!
fiii-fiii—pfrrrt—kvark!
Save the woods and all the dirt!”
Next to the lead singer stood a girl in a torn dirndl, decorated with metal plates, glowing wires, and a copper crown of lightbulbs.
She threw her arm toward the sky.
“Wir pusten Müll und Staub beiseit’…”
Her voice was higher—but just as wild.
A blue-skinned mutant on keys slammed an ancient synthesizer:
“PIU-PIU-BRÖÖÖHH.”
The drone instantly rushed closer.
It hovered at stage level, snapped hard left—like it was hunting for the perfect shot—and locked focus on her raised hand cutting through the air.
Then it switched to the keyboard player—
zooming tight on his blue skin like it was shooting a cover for Galactic Swamp: Hits of the Year.
Behind the stage, a group of men started some kind of chaotic chorus performance:
“BRRRRRR!”
“pih! pih!”
“kvaaaark! kvaaaark!”
The drone got confused—started bouncing between voices,
every sound triggering a tiny, nervous cameraman twitch—
and the stream turned into a chaotic sequence of cuts,
like a camera-bot filming a music video for a band called Frog Apocalypse.
The whole thing sounded like a swamp decided to record its first rock album.
The crowd was losing it.
Someone was waving a rusty metal rod.
Someone was beating on a barrel.
Someone was just jumping, having completely forgotten why they even came.
The drone rose above the crowd, pulled a wide shot—
then suddenly executed a perfect smooth descent—
and revealed, on stream, a tiny green frog sitting at the singers’ feet.
It blinked. Calmly. Like this was just a normal Tuesday.
The drone hovered above it, max zoom—
and added a soft lens glow,
like it was introducing the frog as “main character of the season.”
Off in another pocket of the crowd, deeper in the mass,
Blindy was dancing like he was under attack by a swarm of wasps.
He flailed his arms, spun around,
and screamed in a mix of trance and pure stupidity:
“FIIII—FIII—KVAAARK—pfrrrt—BRÜÜMMM—kvark!”
The drone turned toward him—
and for a second, it vibrated, like it was trying to understand
what the hell it was filming…
and why it even existed.
Dick, completely fried on a “brain shut down for self-defense” level, slowly turned his head—
and spotted the author forcing his way through the crowd like a bowling ball smashing through cyborgs and mutants.
The author—out of breath, wearing a hat that clearly already tried to escape the noise—finally reached them.