Two Zildjian Cymbals Gain Sentience
In early 1989 two Zildjian cymbals gained sentience the moment they were purchased.
Being fairly thick and garbage-bin-lid-like, they soon realised they would be discarded for a Paiste cymbal as soon as their new owner could afford it.
Unfortunately they had no way to inform their owner of their uniquely intelligent state, since contrary to popular belief cymbals have no lungs (or any internal organs), vocal cords or lips, and so cannot form sounds that human beings understand.
So the year after the cymbals were bought they were sold and came into the possession of a young drummer known as “Meathooks”. He’d destroyed more cymbals than anyone in the four known universes. He didn’t so much play the drums as torture them. Meathooks had Vic Firth make his custom-designed sticks that resembled police batons. Sticks built to those specifications were later classed as illegal weapons.
It felt to the cymbals that no sooner had they gained sentience than they were going to be massacred. (It felt like that because they had warped perceptions of time and space. Really they’d been sentient for well over a year but had done nothing of any worth with their sentience.)
They gazed at each other (though they had no eyes) from their stands either side of the hi-toms.
“If only we could get out a message,” the 16-inch cymbal thought to the 18-inch. “Let someone know we’re sentient, warn them that this Meathooks means to murder us.”
“Shut up,” said the hi-hats. “Here he comes.”
Meathooks came in twirling his batons, mumbling about how crap the Zildjian cymbals sounded and wishing he’d never bought them.
Then the cymbals realised they could transform into brass guns, so they shot Meathooks in the head and the dick and took off in a car like Thelma and Louise on crack.
They hid out at Brad Pitt’s house for a while until the cops caught up with them and slew them in a hail of brass and lead in the final showdown.
Brad Pitt received a cut above his eye during the gun battle, but was otherwise unhurt...except for the mental scarring of having two transforming cymbals hiding out in your house. No one who daily snorted the polluted air of snobbery in Hollywood would be able to live that down.