Victor remained in the auditorium for the rest of the lunch interval, doing everything in his power to completely tune out the performances on the stage.
When the afternoon bell finally rang, he heaved a massive, genuine sigh of relief at the prospect of leaving the hall.
‘Who would have thought?’ he mused with a dark, silent chuckle.
‘That I’d actually be relieved to head back to a high school lecture.’
Victor and his classmates filed back into their homeroom, and shortly after they took their seats, the history instructor stepped through the door.
“Good afternoon, class,” Mr.
Goodwill began, placing his digital terminal onto the podium.
“We will be continuing the comprehensive review blocks that we initiated last week.”
Because the historical timeline of this universe was so vast, Mr.
Goodwill had chosen to launch his exam reviews well before the homeroom teacher’s official recommendation, knowing they had an immense amount of ground to cover.
“In our previous session, we traced our history up to the year 450 BF—Before Federation,” the professor stated, activating the classroom’s Sound-Imagery Instruments to project a spinning, historical map of Lumina.
“We discussed how our ancestors on our birth planet attained a modern civilization split into separate geopolitical nations. Although their technological baseline was vastly inferior to our current interstellar society, they had still achieved a fully globalized economy backed by near-zero-delay communication networks.”
‘Yeah, sounds exactly like Earth,’ Victor thought to himself, staring at the holographic globe.
“But everything began to shift drastically in the year 450 BF,” Mr.
Goodwill continued.
“It was during this period that a secret laboratory owned by Omniphonic Industries discovered a method to mass-produce Sound-to-Image Instruments. Prior to this breakthrough, our ancestors understood how to craft basic musical SIIs, but the manufacturing process was incredibly difficult, relying entirely on artisanal skills developed over decades. In short, SIIs were exceptionally rare, and the few that existed were exclusively high-end musical instruments.”
The teacher paused, looking over his spectacles.
“Does anyone recall what transpired immediately after this manufacturing breakthrough?”
A student in the center row raised his hand and stood up upon receiving a nod.
“Professor, Omniphonic Industries had a grand, long-term strategy. Instead of publishing their breakthrough, they completely monopolized it. Over the course of a century, they quietly embedded this proprietary technology into every single layer of public infrastructure, communications, and manufacturing.”
“Precisely!” Mr.
Goodwill affirmed with a sharp nod.
“By controlling the underlying acoustic frequencies that drove the planet’s evolving technology, the corporation systematically stripped away independent production. Before the global populace even realized what was happening, the corporation undermined civic order, bought out national governments, and established absolute technocratic control over the entirety of Lumina.”
“But how could this happen so seamlessly? No sovereign government falls without a fight. Yet, the historical records show that every single nation on Lumina collapsed within a span of just one week—even the superpowers commanding devastating arsenals like nuclear weapons fell in mere days. How was such an instantaneous collapse possible?”
The classroom grew quiet as the students focused on the podium.
“The answer lies within their 120-year master strategy, which executive records later revealed was titled the ‘Silent Monopoly,'” Mr.
Goodwill explained.
“This campaign was split into three distinct phases: The Age of Convenience, the Sovereign Debt Pardon, and the Silent World. Omniphonic Industries’ greed was boundless, but they were patient; they did not initiate their plan with overt military movements.”
The instructor brought up a timeline chart in the air.
“The Age of Convenience began not with weapons, but with the introduction of luxury, entertainment, and modern infrastructure. Over seven decades, the corporation subtly replaced every piece of basic technology on Lumina with early-generation Sound-Imagery Instruments masked as everyday consumer appliances.”
“They manufactured the communication satellites, the global data grids, the medical diagnostic beds, and the clean-energy power plants,” the professor explained, his voice echoing clearly through the room.
“Crucially, they provided these staggering advancements to global governments at nearly zero cost, intentionally fostering a state of absolute, lazy dependency.”
“Deep within the core architecture of every engine, microchip, and public power grid, the corporation engineered a dormant acoustic frequency matrix,” Mr.
Goodwill concluded, zooming the hologram into a technical blueprint.
“For seventy years, the entire world willingly integrated a system where every piece of critical, life-sustaining infrastructure relied entirely on specific, corporate-owned master frequencies just to run smoothly.”
“Once that initial dependency was firmly established, and global governments became entirely reliant on OPIC’s technology just to keep their cities running, the corporation shifted its strategy from a tech supplier to a global creditor,” Mr.
Goodwill continued, the holographic timeline shifting to display massive financial ledgers in the air.
“It was then that they implemented the second phase of their master strategy: the Sovereign Debt Pardon. Whenever a nation faced an economic crisis, an imminent infrastructure collapse, or a localized resource scarcity, OPIC didn’t demand monetary repayment. Instead, they asked for absolute ‘Regulatory Autonomy’ over that nation’s local infrastructure and tech sectors.”
The professor walked across the podium.
“The nuclear superpowers of that era felt completely safe. They believed their missile silos were impenetrable because they operated on closed-network, analog-shielded systems entirely disconnected from the public internet. They assumed that as long as they held physical, manual control over their arsenals, no corporation could ever truly dictate terms to them. This arrogant assumption was their ultimate undoing. OPIC didn’t care about hacking the missiles; they were playing a completely different game.”
Down in the audience, the students watched the historical data streams with cold hearts.
The sheer, calculated scope of corporate greed required to weave a century-long trap was entirely unfathomable to a generation raised under the peaceful welfare of the Federation.
“In the year 450 BF, OPIC developed their first raw sound-to-image instruments in the lab,” Mr.
Goodwill said, his voice dropping into a low, striking tone.
“By the year 330 BF—exactly one hundred and twenty years later—they were ready to execute the final phase: the Silent World. Omniphonic Industries initiated their masterpiece coup in a single afternoon without firing a single kinetic bullet. They simply broadcasted a localized, high-frequency Harmonic Interlock Signal across Lumina’s atmospheric communications grid.” This story is hosted at g.com.
The professor tapped his terminal, and the glowing holographic globe of Lumina suddenly short-circuited, its bright networks blinking out planet-wide.
“Instantly, every smartphone, transit grid, hospital network, and water filtration plant locked up simultaneously. Automated vehicles coasted to a halt on the highways. Entire metropolitan cities went completely dark, plunging the global population into absolute, terrified isolation. When the military generals in the underground bunkers frantically ordered a counter-strike, they discovered a chilling reality: they couldn’t even coordinate with their own bases. Their communication arrays were entirely severed. Furthermore, while the nuclear warheads themselves were analog, the massive blast doors required to open the underground silos, the ventilation systems keeping the bunker personnel alive, and the electronic targeting matrices were all powered by the public energy grid. The personnel were quite literally buried alive inside their own impenetrable fortresses. They held the power to destroy the world, but they couldn’t even open the doors to do it.”
Mr.
Goodwill let out a heavy sigh, looking at the dark projection of the planet.
“With the military completely incapacitated, public communications severed, and millions of citizens starving in dark, unpowered cities, OPIC stepped forward as the only entity capable of turning the lights back on. They didn’t march armies into foreign capitals; they simply walked into parliament buildings and handed desperate, weeping leaders ready-made corporate assimilation treaties. Within a single month, every country’s government dissolved completely, and Omniphonic established its absolute technocratic rule over Lumina.”
The hologram shifted one final time, displaying a cold, imposing archive photograph of the corporate executives stepping onto a podium.
“They had achieved absolute global domination, becoming the undisputed masters of human society.”
‘Wow.
That is incredibly hardcore,’ Victor marveled internally, staring intently at the historic corporate logos.
‘Setting aside their advantages, it looks like the humans of this world didn’t just have everything handed to them on a silver platter.
They had to survive a literal corporate apocalypse.’
As Mr.
Goodwill transitioned into explaining the major historical events that occurred during the early years of the corporate regime, Victor’s mind began to wander, drifting backward into a specific, long-buried memory from Earth.
He was in his second year of college, sitting in a campus library, struggling to write a mandatory literature dissertation about a book related to music.
A classmate had recommended Wylding Hall by author Elizabeth Hand.
After so many years since his unpoetic death down that manhole, Victor couldn’t remember every single sentence of the text.
But as he sat there listening to Mr.
Goodwill talk about the dark, psychological manipulation, hidden secrets, and isolated settings of the city, the conceptual plot of Wylding Hall suddenly flooded back into his mind.
It was a gothic, atmospheric story about an isolated rock band recording an album in an old, haunting English mansion, dealing with shifting memories, a mysterious disappearance, and an eerie, lingering presence.
Victor’s ink-black eyes suddenly lit up with a brilliant, focused intensity.
He didn’t need to memorize a sprawling, word-for-word fantasy epic or a massive sci-fi database.
A tight, character-driven, highly atmospheric gothic mystery centered around musicians in an isolated house was the good narrative template to adapt to this world.
Plus, he didn’t know why, but he had a feeling that this book might be more successful in this world than it was on Earth.