“Kaname-san,” said Tessa, breaking into her thoughts. “Are you wondering what’s inside the cylinders?”
“Yeah. Are they...”
“I don’t think they’re human brains, at least,” Tessa said weakly. “More likely the brains of other higher mammals. Dr. Valov’s team included a neuroscientist who specialized in dolphins, so it was likely those who were slain on this altar.”
“That’s awful...” One or two would have been sickening enough, but there were thousands of those cylinders in this facility. Kaname felt herself dry heave a few times, but managed to keep the bile down. It was clearer now than ever that these ruins were the product of evil and madness. Even if the sacrifices weren’t human, it had been an unspeakably cruel thing to do. “So, this is a TAROS?”
“Yes,” Tessa told her. “The world’s first TAROS, constructed by Dr. Valov, though he apparently called it the ‘mental transceiver.’ The modern TAROSes we use in the Laevatein and the de Danaan use cutting-edge, massive-scale logic elements—Al and Dana—as amplifiers to send to and receive from the omni-sphere.”
“But they didn’t have those when this place was built, so they used living brains as amplifiers?” Kaname clarified.
“Yes. The Yamsk-11 plant complex was designed to create the chemicals needed to keep the brain tissue at work here alive and chemically controlled,” Tessa told her. “The manufacturing was contained to the city in order to better preserve the secret. Once, some of the brightest minds of the Eastern Bloc lived here... though most of them didn’t realize the full scope of the experiment they were involved in. It took me some time to find out this much myself. The danger that Lemon-san and Wraith put themselves in brought the last of the pieces into place.”
“Why was it so hard?” Kaname wondered. “Even if it’s a secret city, someone had to still know about it...”
“They didn’t,” Tessa answered. “Because everyone who lived here either died or went mad eighteen years ago, over the course of one night.”
“How?”
“It appears something went wrong while they were running a full power test. The TAROS lost control and began emitting exceptionally powerful mental waves,” Tessa explained. “All humans within a thirty-kilometer radius received serious mental poisoning... The result is the ruins you saw outside. I believe they lost their minds, killing their neighbors and themselves. Those closest to it likely died immediately from shock.”
Kaname hadn’t gotten a good look at the city, but the scene was easy to picture. It must have been like hell on earth.
“Like a telepathic version of Chernobyl?” Lemon whispered, breaking his long silence.
“Something like that,” Tessa agreed. “The accident sent two kinds of mental waves through the omni-sphere: one was iota waves, which lose strength with distance and time. They affected a relatively narrow area, and are what drove the people of Yamsk-11 mad. The other kind were tau waves, which can travel on and on without weakening, irrespective of distance and time. They do little harm to most people, mainly causing a momentary feeling of déjà vu. But they did affect a very wide area—the entire Earth, most likely.”
“But no one realized it?” Lemon asked incredulously.
“No. Tau waves can’t be perceived through any material means, and they affected only a single small class of people. All over the world, that class of human being was affected during the time in which the TAROS was running out of control—for exactly three minutes, beginning at 11:50 am Greenwich Mean Time, on December 24th, 1981. Eighteen years ago. Can you guess what that class might have been?”
“I... have no idea,” Lemon said, looking baffled.
But Kaname let out a deep sigh, perhaps the deepest of her life. The last piece of the puzzle had snapped into place. Her secret. Their secret. “Newborn children drawing their first breath,” she hypothesized.
“Yes,” Tessa agreed. “Us.”
Kaname recalled a project they were given in elementary school: Explain something that happened on the day that you were born. Her mother had shown Kaname her birth certificate then... December 24th, 8:50 pm Tokyo Time. In Greenwich Mean Time, 11:50 am. Mom... she wondered mournfully. Why couldn’t you have had me just a minute earlier?
“I’m not entirely sure why the tau waves influenced only infants at the moment of their birth,” Tessa confessed. “A biologist named Alice Miller theorized that in the moment babies are born, there’s a brief flurry of activity in the basal ganglia and occipital lobe. But there hasn’t been any medical verification, as it’s difficult to receive parental permission to study it.”
“That’s for sure... I can’t imagine many mothers are raring to have electrodes hooked up to their baby’s head just before it’s born.”
“I think it would be possible to use more advanced technology... For instance, you could have the birth inside a special NMR,” Tessa speculated. “If you have a chance to give birth in the future, I hope you’ll consider it, Kaname-san.”
“Wh-What the heck? Why don’t you do it yourself?”
“I’ll likely be single all my life.”
“Hey, what’s with the glare?” Kaname wanted to know.
“I’m not glaring,” Tessa protested innocently. “But, well... If you would lend me Sagara-san, I would happily try it myself.”
“That’s pretty out of nowhere...”
“You object?”
“You bet I do!” Kaname responded hotly. “I mean, he and I haven’t actually... you know...”
“I was joking. There’s really nothing for you to worry about.”
“You are so...” Kaname trembled angrily.
Lemon hesitantly chimed in, “Hey... Weren’t we having a really serious discussion just now?”
“Ah, right,” Kaname agreed with a blush.
“I’m sorry,” Tessa said. “I was distracted.” By now, they’d made it up to the giant dome at the center of the space. She began tracing its circumference, seemingly searching for a way inside. “Now, then... children imprinted with information carried by the tau waves at the moment of their birth became the Whispered,” she said, confirming Kaname’s theory. “Of course, that alone didn’t give us our knowledge. I believe it simply gave us the ability to receive other mental waves transmitted through the omni-sphere, from some point in the future.”
“Some point in the future?” Kaname echoed.
“Yes. The omni-sphere makes it possible for information to travel back through time,” Tessa told them. “We weren’t born with the knowledge of all this unknown technology; we’re simply receiving mental waves from the future that contain the information. What was imprinted upon us in the moment of our birth was the minimal requirement needed to receive those waves.”
“Like an access code or a protocol...” Kaname mused. “And as the children grew up, their intelligence increased, or something would trigger them to start receiving those strange transmissions.”
“Precisely. We can identify 174 children in the world born within the three minutes in question,” said Tessa. “Given that countries with less advanced healthcare systems often don’t record the precise time of birth, there are probably even more than that. We estimate these extra births to number approximately 135. By the way, the number of currently confirmed Whispered are a mere handful of that—ten or fewer.”
“What accounts for the gap?” Kaname questioned.
“There may be other traits that cause Whispered to awaken at different ages, and other conditions besides birth time that determine who becomes a Whispered and who doesn’t. An ‘aptitude,’ as it were... Humans are born with a variety of traits, and it’s entirely possible that not all newborns were affected equally by the tau waves,” Tessa pointed out. “At the moment, the rate of Whispered ‘onset’ is less than three percent, and I don’t find that surprising. Either way... those of us who were affected became output terminals for information about technology being broadcast by someone in the future.”
“It’s almost unbelievable,” Lemon whispered. His face was pale, and it didn’t seem to be the result of his injury. “‘Information about future technology’...does that mean there’ve been weapons produced based on that information?”
“Yes. This is the so-called ‘black technology’ that led to ASes, among other things.” Tessa’s voice, flat, echoed hollowly in the vast dark space inhabited only by the three of them. “I believe the influence of black technology began in the mid-80s. There are records of a Whispered child beginning to show their abilities at a mere three years old. My father was investigating it before he died.”
“It’s been there since the 80s?” Leonard asked incredulously. “Then the world we live in now...”
“It’s not difficult to imagine what effect black technology would have had on the world these last fifteen years,” Tessa speculated. “Explosive advancements in computer technology. Revolutionary inventions in the energy sector. Drastic changes in radar capabilities...”
Companies that should have developed might never have been conceived. Companies that should have gone under might have survived. Military operations that should have failed might have succeeded. It would definitely have had an effect on the world economy, might have changed the course of elections in superpower nations... administrations that might never have been could have come up with policies that changed world events. A country that should have collapsed might have remained intact. A country that should have been united might have split in two. And, perhaps... the Cold War might have ended.
“If there’s a ‘proper history,’ a history that might have come about if not for black technology—and this is pure speculation, of course—then perhaps there, technology hasn’t changed much since the early 80s,” Tessa went on. “Voice recognition would still be in its infancy, palladium reactors would not exist, and robotics would not have reached the bipedal stage.”
“And this is just technology, right?” Lemon asked.
“The influence it’s had on politics, economies, and militaries... it’s too much to speculate on,” Tessa agreed. “There could have been a full-scale nuclear war, or an end to the Cold War entirely. Regardless, that world would be very different from the world we know today. The small group of people who know the truth about this refer to our situation as a ‘time hazard.’ But nobody really knows if this ‘proper history’ really exists. If the existence of the Whispered and the omni-sphere influence represent a causal loop, then the way the world is now is the only way it could be.”
“It’s all too big to conceive of... That plus all the déjà vu is making me feel a little crazy,” Lemon admitted.