Recommended soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdYRzH10L2M

For someone like Serena, a move across country really didn't take all that long.

She'd returned to Austin that afternoon, paid up her rent and given her notice. Packing consisted of putting her pictures, CD's, books, and other personal items into boxes for shipment to New York via DHL. Her two electric guitars and her twelve-string she would take to the city personally -- they'd join her six-string in her new quarters at The Pier.

It was done in ninety minutes; and it wasn't until she was signing the forms with the DHL guy that she realized she wasn't feeling elated, or nervous, or excited. In point of fact, Serena realized what she had was a case of the blues.

"Am Ah really gonna miss all this?" she muttered, standing for a few minutes to look out at one of the seedier neighborhoods of downtown Austin through her 3rd story window. It wasn't rock bottom, but you could definitely see it from here. Half a dozen more blocks to the south were the neighborhoods that even the cops didn't like patrolling and usually didn't after sunset. Across the alley from her building was the back of the Korean market, and the flat above it where Mr. and Mrs. Lao still lived and had raised their six kids in better times. Nowadays all the ground floor windows and doors were heavily barred and locked, and Mr. Lao only left the store when his eldest son was there to make Mrs. Lao feel safer. Serena'd personally foiled a dozen robbery attempts against the Laos since she'd moved in, always behind the scenes, never doing anything obvious enough to be noticed. Ten of the twelve perps were serving jail time too -- and Lao's Korean Market was now known as an unlucky place to knock over.

Serena turned toward the small kitchette (not really a redundancy, in this case), put the few perishables in a box for one her neighbors, then turned off the mini-fridge. She stepped out onto the landing to place the box in front of Marty's door, wrinkling her nose as the twin odors of chitlins and kimchee wafted up the stairwell from the neighbors downstairs.

No, she wasn't going to miss any of this. What was bringing her down was facing the death of a lifelong dream: Being a well-known (if not famous) blues recording artist. All this time she'd told herself she was paying her dues, working her way up again after the break up of her band, staying alert for that longshot probability that would get her noticed, if not take her straight to the top. Every day those probabilities had receded further and further into the distance, a reality she simply had not wished to face. In the simple acts required to pack up her life there in Austin, Serena Shaene was forced to face it, to look at it squarely and accept it for what it was -- the end of that dream.

That's hard, damned hard. Am Ah a failure, really?

It took her a few minutes to get her stuff up to her new room at The Pier (most of it due to getting through security there) and then back to her former apartment. The last guitar case sat there, the one that held her old, third-hand SRV Signature Stratocaster. Daddy'd helped her buy it years back, from the pawn shop where she'd found it, her very first electric guitar and one she wouldn't give up now for love nor money. Well, hell, she mused, slinging it over her shoulder with a rueful grin. If Ah gotta go out, Ah'm goin' out in style...

It didn't take her long to get to the corner of 6th and Brazos. A day ago, she'd have taken the bus. Today, somehow liberated from any desire for a "normal" life, Serena "P-jumped," using her talents to find other locations in the probability stream and to put herself there. In between heartbeats she'd switched from worn jeans and t-shirt into an outfit that would have made Elvis proud -- white leather pants and jacket with fringe, white tank top (her brothers had called them `wife beaters' until their wives made 'em stop), snowy-white cowboy hat, and a pair of white-on-white cowboy boots.

She was suddenly happier than she could remember being for a very long time. Just the prospect of playing some blues for some folks without worrying about anybody's bottom line was enough to make her feel like she could fly.

Laughing, she stepped into Danny's Rent-All, where she had an account to rent equipment, looking for a simple amplifier.

"Serena?" He said, looking at her is if she'd sprouted horns. "Girl, you got a gig? That's some get up!"

"Yeah, Ah guess you could say that," she agreed, unable to stop laughing. "Gimme that Vox Valvetronix, Danny. And one o' those wireless mic's. No, a headset, not a handheld. Ah'm on the Street tonight."

Danny whooped, then disappeared into the back, reappearing moments later with an amp on wheels. "Top o' the line tonight eh? Where you playin'?"

"Just on the corner down there," she chirped, suddenly so happy she could barely stand it, and held her smile even as the older man gaped.

"Gal, you know better'n that! You cain't make no money down there! Your daddy'd stripe your hide!"

"Ain't worryin' about money and don't you neither," Serena replied, handing him the debit card Lee had given her. "This is for me, and for the Street, and for Austin tonight. Hell, let the rest of it take care of itself, for once."

He looked a little dubious, but turned toward the POS machine. "Wanna clear off your account while you're at it?"'

"Hell yeah. Do it," she agreed, reveling in how good it felt to say that. "Ah still got a few days on that last buskin' permit Ah bought, might as well use it."

Danny shrugged again, nodded, then handed her the receipt. She shoved it in her pants pocket without looking at it, tipped her hat to him, then took both guitar case and amp out onto the sidewalks until she reached her corner.

This wasn't a very popular corner with the other street musicians given that Hard Rock Cafe Austin was at the other end of that block , with a dozen other clubs between. It wasn't what was known as "money maker" but this night, as she'd told Danny, Serena didn't care. Tonight, she just wanted to play and maybe sing a little and it reallly, honestly didn't matter to her who might or might not be listening.

At about 10pm, with an opening peal from the strings that caromed crazily off the buildings across the street, Serena Shaene launched into Ballard's Look at Little Sister, which sequed into Texas Hootchie Coo and Sweet Home Chicago interspersed with pure improvisation. She flashed back to a memory of herself five years ago, sitting near a rock on her family's property, using her guitar to learn how to access the very core of her power for the first time. As the chords evolved into Tick Tock, each slap of her fingers on the shining surface marked a crucial choice she'd made since then. More than one of them involved leaving for a MATST mission rather than making a gig with her band.

No doubt, those choices cost her the thing she said she wanted most. There were other Serenas in the time streams all around her who had made different choices. Some of them were rising blues artists, others peaked early then slid into obscurity, but they'd all tasted something that had been denied her.

She opened her eyes, looked around. People were in the streets dancing, drinking, laughing, just having a wonderful time. How many of 'em wouldn't be here now if you and the team hadn't stopped those bombs from makin' it into DFW out of Kuala Lampur, what was it, four years ago now?

The answer to that question flew by in a flash, causing her fingers to fumble over the strings. A young couple stood toward the back of the crowd that was gathering, obviously very much in love, the child perched on the shoulders of the male half conceived and born of it. In her Probability Sight, the couple was dead and the child, never born.

Serena smiled, fingers flying over the strings so deftly only another crack picker would've known what had happened. Yeah so, Ah never even got on the charts, much less made it to the top. Big whup. What's that against knowin' there's some good folks in this world that are still breathin' because of the choices Ah made?

A redheaded hottie stepped forward, bold as you please, and took the headset from Serena with one of those smiles, which just made Serena grin.

"Let's give 'em a Fever, gal. You know it?"

"Like Ah wrote it," Serena agreed, laughing. She was remembering what it was like to love the blues.

---

Six hours later, Serena sat on her rented amplifier downing her third bottle of Gatorade, hat pushed back, ignoring the sweat trickling down her chest, laughing and bullshitting with a few of the harder core partyers who, like her, were too wound up to go to bed just yet. Doyle had stopped by for a set, briefly, and so had Chris, Kenny, and Jonny, and Colin... Her fingers were almost bleeding, closer than they'd been since she'd first gotten serious about the guitar, almost ten years before, but she didn't care. She was too happy to care.

There were a dozen business cards on top of her guitar case from agents, concert promoters, and other blues bands. She looked at them and laughed again, appreciating the irony.

"All righty boys, Ah gotta roll. Sure has been nice, though."

"You comin' back this weekend, Serena?"

She thought about it, laughed again. "Nah. Gonna head north for awhile, put some miles under my boots, maybe spend a few years seein' what those yankees know about the blues."