Reia- A Novella (COMPLETE)

Chapter 3

Marfa turned to Hazira, who was watching the door swing on its hinges. "Oh, and Hazira, m'dear, you're welcome to stay if you'd like."

Hazira smiled. "I'd be delighted, sir, but what is it we're actually doing?"

"It's rather simple, really," Morai shrugged. "You know what it is that Morai and I study?"

"Well," Hazira winced. "I'm a physicist myself. All of this tends to sound like nonsense to me."

"Physicist," Marfa said, incredulous. "Hm. Never thought Morai would be able to do that well."

Hazira blushed. "He's... he's-"

"Delightful, I'm sure," Marfa interrupted, "I've never kissed him, personally. You were wondering about my field of study?"

"Yes, sir," Hazira said quickly, red in the face.

"Well, if you'd be so kind as to follow me, I could show you," Marfa said, scooping up the old book. He walked to the back of the lab, to a sliding metal door locked with a passcode. "0...7," he muttered, punching the buttons. "1...9. That's the password. All the doors around here use it, in case you need to know."

The door opened effortlessly, revealing a short, dark hallway ending in another door.

Hazira eyed the hallway uneasily as Marfa walked through. She stepped inside, and the door slid shut behind her. She spun around, but the door was locked again.

"0719," she muttered to herself.

"Here we are," Marfa said, opening the second door. "This is the WSEC, what the people upstairs call 'the sound machine'."

Hazira gasped, looking into the massive room before her. The door led out onto a metal grate balcony looking over the strangest room Hazira had ever seen.

The room was a perfectly smooth oval- the ceiling and walls were rounded, and even the floor dipped slightly below. The balcony protruded from one of the oval's narrow sides, a long way from the other end of the room. Twenty cars could have fit end to end inside.

All the walls were pure snow white, with lights built in. Indeed, the whole room was white except for some strange markings on the floor. There were two black circles that stood out to Hazira. One was just ahead of the balcony on the ground below, and the other was on the far end of the space. They were the foci of the elliptical room.

Hazira could see near the far dot that there was a podium, with a few neatly stacked books nearby.

Marfa didn't even look out from the metal platform, instead opening up a computer that was stationed there.

"This is my masterpiece," he smiled, finally glancing up at his room. "Let me explain. You're a scientist- you probably know about the Theory of Transmutation Acoustics."

"Yes, sir," Hazira replied. "At least, I think so. It's... the idea that sounds such as speech could be converted into energy and, well, even mass. It's... theoretical, though. But..."

"Not just theoretical, my dear," Marfa corrected her. "What did you think Morai and I do down here? What do you think those books are for?"

"It's... it's true, then?"

"We've been documenting the kind of sounds- words, mostly, that have the power to do this," Marfa explained. "Those books are full of them. Most of the words are made up, gibberish-like. There are patterns, though, which we analyze to create more word strings. And I think we might have stumbled upon something big."

"So... what kind of things do you do with this?" Hazira asked.

"It's almost boundless," Marfa grinned. "I wish it was being put to more use, but many scientists like yourself just don't believe in it, and aren't willing to waste precious time to see the truth. It is a relatively new field of study, anyway. But the potential! We can create objects out of sound itself! Alter the world around us. Change ordinary things into something bigger..."