Read Online Memoirs of a Timelord by Ralph Rotten - Free Book Online Page A

Cree and rock out.  The Boss had an astounding collection, and the House could play music so loud that you felt it in your morphic bones.  Sure, some of the alien music was a little weird, but still it was the easiest class I'd been in yet.
           Then one day I get a visit from Aldoo.  
           "Master DorLek has asked me to inquire of you for tutoring assistance." He seemed to almost stutter at the request.  
           At the time I took this for pride, his having to bend that stiff neck of his to ask for help from the cave girl.  He was future-boy, he knew how to use a Yort energy splitter without losing any fingers.  I just naturally figured he hated having to ask a primitive like me for help.  
           "I am having a great difficulty with...music." He spoke as if the word held blasphemy.
           Now right here I gotta take a segway to give you some perspective.  See, Veena and Aldoo were from the same species, but that was the end of the similarities.  Veena came from a time when they had to shape-shift to survive. They had a few alien contacts and had hungrily soaked up their music and culture.  Veena's generation enjoyed new experiences and sought them out whenever possible.
           Whereas Aldoo came from a time when the Saik had encountered and copied thousands of species. Their people were scattered throughout the galaxy on millions of worlds. But after a millennia of gorging on vast databases of every imaginable species, extinct or extant, his people had become disparate and jaded.  
           What you have to understand about most morphic beings (class IV and below) is that when they join your society they don't do it to take over the world.  They adopt the lifestyle and live among you like productive members of society.  After a generation or two of complete submersion they begin to forget what it was to be Saik.  So with their people scattered all over the galaxy, they had begun to fragment as a society.  Think about it, they had copied so many other cultures that they didn't even remember their own.  That's when the Revivalists took power and began the Hajj Conservative Revolution in an attempt to reclaim the former glory of the Saik Empire.  
           See, just about the time Aldoo was born, the Conservative Revolution was full swing.  They banned morphing beyond a few approved skins native to their home world.  Other xeno distractions they outlawed in their religious fervor were multiplistic duplication (sex), foreign entertainment media (movies) and music.
           See, we humans take music for granted.  We can both appreciate it as well as write it.  We naturally assume that other species should get Hendrix or Joplin, but they don't always.  The Saik were a species that could appreciate music, but were not naturally inclined to it.  In other words, they could be taught to enjoy music, but not in a million years could a Saik ever write music (they are notoriously bad singers too).  A century before Aldoo was born, his people were musically mature.  But the Revolution banned alien distractions, so drugs, sex, and rock n' roll were outlawed, literally.
           So pretty boy knew bupkis about music.  I couldn't help but smile as I thought to myself; now there're two things I could teach him.  Coming from a culture where everybody has vast piles of digital music, I assumed it'd be easy to find a genre or two that he liked.  
           Right away I pulled out the classics and blasted some Smooth by Santana.  I was really grooving to the song but Aldoo just stood there stiffly.  He didn't want a beer, and he didn't want to sit down.  I could tell this song wasn't working for him so I switched it up with some Everlast, but that made him even edgier.  I tried some Stones on him but the beat of the drum seemed to intimidate him.  After that I threw in some Mamas and Papas and he seemed to almost respond to that.  At least he stopped inching towards