D. B. Goodin

In a city tuned for harmony, dissonance is a crime. Music no longer belongs to people. It's engineered-regulated, optimized-stripped of risk until every note is safe, predictable, and compliant. But beneath the city's perfectly curated soundscape, something is slipping through. Out of Tune is a short story set in the world of Cyber Overture, where artificial systems don't just control music-they shape emotion itself.
As algorithms dictate what people hear and how they feel, a handful of unapproved sounds begin to surface. Imperfect. Unplanned. Dangerous. When harmony is enforced and silence becomes suspicious, even feeling the wrong thing can mark you as a threat. And not every rebellion starts with a riot. Some begin as a frequency that refuses to fade.