Sound Investment...

fiction

"First off, welcome to Reverb, we are so excited to have you here!"

"Thank you. I'm looking forward to digging in to the research."

"Sure, sure, sure...but today let's start with a little tour. Get you sort of acquainted with the layout of the place. Show you where you're going to be set up, finish up some paperwork, you know the standard stuff."

"Okay, but I'm pretty sure I took care of all of the paperwork with HR yesterday?"

"Oh did you? Okay, well let's get going then. Forgive me if you've heard most of this before, but I do have my standard spiel I like to give, so if you'll indulge me I'll start from the beginning?"

"No problem. The more information the better, right?"

"Absolutely! Okay, so you're familiar with the basic premise of the research we do here, the human body runs on electricity. And all electric activity has a frequency. And every frequency has a sound. A tone. A hum. A buzz. Something. Imagine walking by power lines and hearing that angry bees sound. Well, the human body's electrical system has its own sounds. What we've done here is map those sounds.

Each lab department is responsible for different pathways of exploring this phenomenon. We have personal, financial, military and custom divisions. Each one working on new advancements every day."

She paused for a moment to motion to a closed door. "Every lab is completely soundproofed. Out here in the hallway you'd never know what was going on. Though to be frank, even in the labs sometimes I have no idea what's going on! It's not like you can hear the tones just by standing near someone. How horrible would that be? If we constantly heard everyone's angry bee buzzing? And yes, we are exploring if tinnitus is actually just really acute hearing."

"That's a fascinating theory."

She laughed, "Isn't it though? Anyway...on with the tour. This is the Echos of Future Past lab. It's one of our crown jewels."

"Echos of Future Past?"

"Yes, I know. This is what happens when the company is run by well, nerds. They come up with these wild naming practices straight out of some sort of science fiction paperback. It could be worse, at least we aren't run by one of them that thinks it's hilarious to use sexual terms so everyone has to work on S.E.X. or K.I.N.K."

"So I take it you don't consider yourself a nerd?"

"Oh no. I was a cheerleader. Still am really."

"So what is Echos of Future Past?"

"It's amazing. In recording an individual's sound waves they've discovered that at times there is a resonance. It started with a group of technicians talking about their childhoods as they were recorded. One of the things they had in common was 'core memories' not the actual core memories but of their parent's discussing core memories. It was all the rage while they were growing up. But what the researchers found is that they didn't actually remember a lot of what was supposed to be the core memory, they just really remembered their parents saying the words. And when they each, individually, tapped into that memory, their frequencies would line up. They were harmonizing."

"Amazing."

"Yes! So from there they branched out to find those times when individuals would harmonize with themselves."

"Harmonize with themselves?"

"Yes! This is where it's really exciting. There are times when something from your past reverberates with your present. Closing a loop almost. And at that moment you are harmonizing with yourself. The base of our research is through individuals, some who work here, some who don't, who wear devices that record their frequencies constantly. Those recordings and then analyzed and mapped. Of course we use AI for all of that. It would be impossible for even the most workaholic person to listen to that many hours of recordings, but Mozart? Well he's ready to go at all times."

"Mozart?"

"Yes, that's what our program is called. Clever right? And, of course, there is the theory that all of the great composers could actually hear the fluctuation in the people around them. No way to really test that out with the dead masters, of course, but at least we can honor them by using their names for the programs we run."

"And Mozart found patterns, past tones and present matching. Is it just memories?"

"No! That's what is incredibly exciting. It's Moments. Capital M Moments. For instance, have you ever heard someone talk about how a moment just felt like it was important? That bolt of lightning moment when they saw a stranger on the bus and then running into them years later and falling in love? Well what we've discovered is that there is a tone when they see them, and that tone repeats when they fall in love with them. It's like the body knows and the tone from your past matches the tone in your present and you harmonize with yourself. Your present tone, and your past tone mirror each other."

"Echos of future past."

"Exactly!"

"So how does it work?"

"That's what we are researching. It doesn't seem as though it should, right? There is no way for the past you to know that the person over there is your future spouse, and yet... We've seen it replicated in spouses, in friendships, in affairs, in business partnerships. Somehow the electrical systems in your body know what is going to happen in the future. Or at least that's one theory."

"I would imagine that another is that certain emotions and events have their own tones and those repeat and sometimes they match up?"

"That's another theory. Right now Mozart is busy trying to map every distinct tone and pattern in thousands of individuals to see if that's true."

"That's really interesting. But..."

"But?"

"I guess I don't understand what use it would be. You don't know until the corresponding event happens if it actually is important, right? Like how many times have you seen someone and thought they were interesting and then never seen them again?"

"But what if it doesn't happen that way? What if the hundreds of people that you see in a lifetime that you have a moment of what if with don't actually resonate? As in your tones don't change. There is no difference from one moment to the next. Your body knows somehow what is and what isn't a capital M Moment. What if you could take those tones and predict what marriages would succeed? Or what business partnerships would be fruitful? What if you could show a suspect a crime photo and it caused a resonance? And, the most promising avenue, what if you could create one?"

"Create one?"

"Yes! Isn't that exciting? What if you could change someone's frequency to match someone, or something else? Imagine the military applications for something like that."

"You mean, like brainwashing?"

"Oh of course not. Frequency tuning."

"Does that work?"

"We don't know just yet, but we are willing to try!"

"Wow. Okay. That's a lot."

"Isn't it just? Okay, well, here we go, this will be your work space. Your lab is through that door, your office right over here. I have one more piece of paperwork for you, let me go grab it and I'll be right back!"

.....

"Do you have all of the readings you need?"

"We do."

"And?"

"Not going to work. Resonates with whistleblowers. We're hitting the clearing tones right now, you can follow up with the position no longer being available and how sorry you are. There might be some confusion over thinking they had everything taken care of but the tones should settle in by tomorrow and everything will be gone."

"What a bummer. Oh well, on to the next nerd! No offense."

"None taken."