Twisted Wonderland Book 5: A Beauitful Tyrant

Chapter 14: Speaking Software

Everyone ends up getting a surprise when Ortho, Idia's little brother has appeared before them, and he is not too pleased to hear Grim's comment about his brother

Ace whispers, "Does everybody in this school have super hearing? This lounge's buzzing with people, and we were over ten meters apart."

"The directional mic my brother installed in me can pick up human whispering fifty meters away," Ortho says.

Lilia takes an interest, "Oho! Impressive. Not even the fae and beastmen have many capable of that."

Ortho chuckles, "Heh heh! I know, right? My brother's amazing! ...Ahem. Anyway, Idia got permission from the headmage to let me come with him to class. He's not desperately lonely or anything, okay?"

"O-oh, gotcha. Sorry about that. My bad!" Cater says, "You Shroud bros are this mysterious, almost legendary presence on campus. Guess I got a little carried away talking about you.

"Apology accepted. And I'm sorry for getting all huffy about it. I just don't want anyone getting the wrong idea about Idia," Ortho says.

"That's very sweet of you. Sorry about what happened just now," Briar says

"Bee tee dubs, Orthy, are you here for the SDC audition, too?" Cater asks.

"Yes, that's right! See, my brother..." Ortho explains.

Flashback:

In the Ignihyde dorm, more specifically Idia's room. Idia is busy typing on his computer.

On the tablet, Idia says, "I told Riddle at the housewarden meeting that I'd practice presenting my research...vBut it doesn't matter how many thousands of simulations I run in my head. Presenting stuff to an audience? That's unplayable difficulty! I still don't wanna get YEARGHed at by Riddle, though... So with that in mind, I built a sound library for my own voice. And I've finally finished a program that reads out text smoothly in real time as you type!

I never knew I could sound so articulate. It's a level of fluency you'd never expect from synthesized speech!"

He then turns to Ortho and asks, "What do you think, Ortho? Is it sick or is it SICK? Nobody would ever guess the voice you're hearing is coming from text-to-speech software, right?"

"That's incredible, Idia! Your voice is so crisp and clear!" Ortho happily says.

"Right? Man, I never knew I could sound so smooth!" Idia says, "With this, I should be able to handle Q&A no prob. Whee hee hee! Science always beats brute-force grinding! Yeah, I'm a genius, I know."

Ortho nods, "Uh-huh! I'm sure Riddle Rosehearts will be very impressed."

But Idia says, without the tablet, "U-uh, don't tell him, okay? I want to keep this a secret from Riddle until the presentation's over. He's gonna give me that smug, know-it-all look and be all like, 'See? That wasn't so hard, was it?' And I'm gonna go, 'Wow, you didn't even notice I was lip-synching? Talk about amateur hour!' I'm gonna wipe that smug look right off of his face. Whee hee hee!"

"Now, come on, Idia... It's not nice to pick on underclassmen," Ortho replies

"Oh, it's cool," Idia says, "He's a grade beneath me in school, but he's been housewarden longer than I have, so he's close enough to an upperclassman. I have to say, though—after doing a deep dive into text-to-speech, it's a fascinating field. Virtual idols and stuff are popular nowadays. I was thinking of maybe installing a vocal synthesizer in you.

"Ooh, that sounds like fun! I'd love to try singing," Ortho says, excited

"Great! I'll get you trilling like a canary in no time, little bro," Idia says with a grin on his face

Flashback Ends:

Ortho continues, "...So my brother's been getting big into making vocal synthesizers. Since he went to a whole lot of trouble developing and polishing this, I want to see how far I can go with it. That's why I'm here auditioning."

"Wait, he PROGRAMMED a singing voice? Are you for real?!" Ace asks, shocked.