It was a beautiful day in the forest. Small brown birds were chirping noisily at each other from the trees, while bright sunlight came down through the dense leaf cover in fits and spurts, leaving dancing shadows and pools of light on the ground. There was a moment of anticipatory silence as the birds suddenly went silent, only to have their songs mimicked a few moments later by a lone figure walking well below them.

The cheerful whistling was followed by cheerful humming, which then turned into full song, accompanied by the sound of a guitar. After a minute or two, it stopped. The figure was looking up into the canopy, a silly grin made to look all the more absurd by his long, angular face and pointed ears. A few cautious chrips floated down to him.

"Is that so? Well, I thank you for the inspiration," the figure called out. After a moment, he sighed and sat down against a tree, shrugging his pack and guitar case off to the ground. "You know," he said to the tree, "that probably wasn't actually was was being said, but always good to assume the best, eh?"

The elf known to the people of the nearby lands as Loopi settled down to practice, running through more and more complex finger exercises, until finally he slipped and badly missed a transition. With a slight smile, he went over the difficult passage until he had performed it flawlessly a dozen times in a row, then he stopped. "Everything comes with practice," he murmured to himself. "Or does it?" He turned to the tree and took a deep breath.

"This unit recognizes the object next to him as a tree," he said, his voice suddenly forceful, projective, and sounding not at all like it had a few moments prior. "No, not at all right," he muttered to himself in a more normal voice.

"This unit... This unit... This unit..." Each time he spoke he altered his inflection slightly, but seemed unsatisfied with the result.

He laughed suddenly. "They were trying to make it sound like a human man, I think, or perhaps a gnome, but couldn't quite get it right," he told the tree in a normal voice. "But what an error. I wonder what they used for a model. Did they have someone speak every possible word over and over until the machine could learn, or did they somehow break down the sounds into their most basic parts and reassemble them at need?" He looked down at his guitar for a moment before continuing his one-sided conversation. "I wonder if you could do that for any sound, like the sounds of instruments. What is the most basic part of a sound? What would a guitar sound like, distorted vaguely by whatever mechanics the golems use to speak. I wonder if you could deliberately alter the level to create whole new sounds. A golem chorus the likes of which the world has never heard, by deliberately pushing the sound away from what the designers currently strive to find."

He paused for a few moments, as if to give the tree time to answer. Leaves rustled softly in the wind. After a while he nodded. "You're right, only way to find out is to try it. Not as far fetched a thought as it might sound, now that I'm holding some of the Golemworks secrets, and have signed enough papers to be recognized in their system." There was a long moment of silence as his face shaped itself into a rueful grin. "I wonder how thorough that 'background check' really is."

The sound of strong guitar chords filled the air as Loopi returned to his practice, to be cut off sharply some time later, as Loopi turned around to stare at the tree trunk for a moment. "Now that's a thought. What if you don't need an entire golem? It seems downright silly that you would, since so much space is dedicated to having them move around and and be able to do other things. And that suicidal professor Nubit managed to carry an entire golem around in his pack, so they must be able to get the most essential parts down to a very small size. Could you get it small enough to carry around on a belt, or an arm, perhaps?"

A few falling leaves were his only reply. He caught one as it fell. "Yes, again, only one way to find out." He released the the leaf, watching it spiral to join the others already on the forest floor. Long, slender fingertips touched guitar strings lightly for a moment. "You may think me silly, as Ta'Grdzk says you do, but to make music in a way that nobody else ever has would mean much to me."

The forest was again filled with the sound of music, guitar and vocal work being practiced in turn and sometimes together, and the music did not cease again until dusk.