Ch. 1: The Recordings

It was a disturbing thing to think about and study, but someone needed to look at it seriously. It was completely anecdotal for so many years. Psychologists dismissed it after designing simple studies that, in hindsight, showed only their lack of imagination. Very serious people, mostly philosophers and politicians, dismissed it by relying on their materialistic world views and mocked it with majestic hand waving and flowery and useless words. Pundits mocked it in a more basic tone. The media simplified it or sensationalized it, and trash rags and tabloids ran with stories that they embellished or made up from whole cloth.  

But to Wyland Blake, it was all beginning to look real. Frighteningly real.

It took the modern western world and its plethora of closed circuit cameras, data gathering software, statisticians, and social media to notice the trends. The whole thing was a web of anomalies and coincidences that made it easy to miss if you weren't looking for it. A few insurance adjusters had to have noticed these trends, but probably just chalked it up to their clients' exceptional bad luck.

The London episode had blown the whole thing up. That nobility could be subject to such a thing was a shock to many. The plethora of TV cameras and paparazzi following the daily lives of these harried dukes and duchesses made it clear that this probably wasn't a conspiracy, but was certainly more than simple bad luck.

Wyland reflected momentarily on his own bad luck, and furrowed his brow. He pushed old memories away and told himself, half silently, half mumbling, that he needed to get back to work and, head in hands, slumped back into more focused thought.  

Maybe it was the dark side of the new age movement? Maybe it was just the inevitable crushing backlash to the motivational posters, self help books, modern pop psychology, and feel good BS that passes for a common religion these days. 

Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was older than that, and we were just rediscovering it?

That would explain certain features, certain names and old languages that kept popping up in his research...

But at any rate, who would have thought it would be so effective?

It's insidious, sometimes slow, sometimes swift, usually painful and clearly life changing. 

It's so subtle, or perhaps just so improbable, that it could easily be missed or attributed to something else. 

Except for the utterance that starts it. The venom and hatred must be real, the timing and cadence seem to have a pattern, and the words... 

The goddamn words.

Nobody reports hearing the same words. Cameras and recorders only seem to record a low guttural growl and a hissing noise that sounds like a poor recording of an old foreign film. It really just sounds like the audio circuits fail for a few moments. Different lip reading experts, while watching video feeds, also report different words. And the recordings are the key. This whole thing revolves around those recordings and what words were actually spoken...