ZEBULUN Tapes

This reel-to-reel audio tape, recorded by SANDMAN Charley, contains songs sung in Sumerian by Zeb while he was being held at the Barn. These songs, assumed to originate in History B, have a strange compelling virality to them and are loaded with subliminal emotional impulses. In his discussion with Mitch, Zeb called these songs “hymns to They Who Provided.” The tunes would be familiar to any time traveler from about the year 2000 onwards, but were wholly unrecognizable to Mitch, Roger, and Charley in 1973.

Tunes

• “Billie Jean,” Michael Jackson

• “Where Is My Mind,” The Pixies

• “Rock the Casbah,” The Clash

• “The Sign,” Ace of Base

• “Wannabe,” The Spice Girls

• “Let's Dance,” David Bowie

• “MMMBop,” Hanson

• “Video Killed The Radio Star,” The Buggles

Each of the eight meodies has the ability to evoke an appropriate (to be determined) 5-to-10 point Mental Advantage or Disadvantage in a listener if they fail a Will roll. 5-point Advantage/Disadvantages will last the length of the song plus 1d minutes; 10-point Advantages/Disadvantages will last the length of the song plus 1d seconds. These songs were sung on “the other side” to unite populations in praise of the Red Kings, to instill values in the worshipful, or to whip up appropriate emotions in the cattle for the Kings’ benefit.

These songs also offer a superior method for encoding memetics. When used as the “carrier wave” for Anunnakku source code (most often in lyrics sung in a local language, but also could be encoded in subsonics or in the harmonies of the rendition), these songs give a +2 the meme’s Power on a successful deployment roll, +3 on a critical success.

Specific Study: Charley was the one who recorded these songs back in April when we black-bagged Zeb and brought him to the Barn. He sang his heart out that day. Those eight tunes *changed* the reel-to-reel tapes, from a mundane History A object to a reality shard that carried infectious History B data. These songs are catchy as all get out; as with the Redgrave Cassette, Charley reads the data on here using Data Retrieval rather than plugging her headphones into the Ampex. Charley knows that they would be superior carrier waves for memetics—any memetics—placed into the lyrics. They also have the effect of generating suitable mental states in those who listen... suitable to the worship of They Who Provide. But Charley realizes that using memetics, you could really instill loyalty (or fear, or awe) of anybody or anything using these tunes; you would just need to layer the right memetic or ultrasonic information into the song, maybe by making them much more sonically complex than an old man and a beat-up acoustic guitar.

When Charley plumbs the origins of these tunes, she seems confident that they did come from the Other Side. But Charley also senses (she doesn't have Sumerian, of course, so she can't understand the lyrics Zeb sang that day, but the Specific Study seems to give her this emotional information), that Zeb was singing out of not just longing for his "home" in History B, but also out of his love of everything that he had discovered living in History A for that half-century. These songs aren't, musicologically, purely products of Anunnaki worship and mind-control, Charley's Musical Ability tells her. The chord structures have elements of blues, R&B, rock and roll, and, yes, the past decade or so of radio-friendly pop. Zeb turned these songs into a kind of fusion of what he loved best about both the Histories he's lived in, and thus made them into more than merely hymns to the Red Kings. They are a child of two histories, and thus... a true reality shard themselves.