Case Listings: 14-9301 – Mekigah
How much time has passed? What relevance is time now, anyway? Find me a scale to weigh reality, then we can talk time.
It’s pointless. You have no way of knowing if I’ve been speaking the truth just as I have no way of proving it. Epistemology becomes a moot point when they can simply shape reality as they see fit. There is no a priori.
I should know. We destroyed it first.
– M.
Case Number 14-9303D | Case Name: Litost
Subject Identification: Code Name: Mekigah | Adopted First Name: Vis | Adopted Last Name: Ortis
Subject Location: Australia (home base)
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In 1940, a convergence event from the parallels was recorded by an Argentine author and poet. Although the early incarnation of BZ&A was quickly made aware of the convergence, the entity that would come to be classified as 14-9303 spent an undisclosed but significant amount of time with the Argentine community before the firm discovered it. The firm would have considered this a significant oversight and costly error except for the fact that unlike most entities from the parallels, “Mekigah”, as it addressed itself, seemed to have no interest in subverting terrestrial authority here; in fact, “Mr. Ortis” (as the firm would address him in public) spoke frankly and at length with the Argentine poet regarding its origin and desire, one that the Argentine then spun into a short story of some merit.
After the firm successfully made contact with Mekigah, the entity immediately enlisted itself to the agency’s cause, claiming that its express purpose for crossing the threshold was to safeguard our particular pocket of reality. Other entities, it portended, would soon cross with notably more malicious intent, and Mekigah’s aid would not only be beneficial but even necessary. Thus goes the story of the second non-terrestrial entity enlisted into the BZ&A ranks.
Subject Information: Mekigah hails from an alternate version of Earth called Tlön. Like all members of the Orbis Tertius, Mekigah has the innate ability to use language, whether written or spoken, to distort perceptions. The duration of these distortions depends on the will of the speaker and the scope of the distortion, but Mekigah, as one of the more powerful heresiarchs, is seemingly able to permanently affix certain alterations in space time. Previously, the agency has used Mekigah to directly combat convergences and to repel other entities through apertures or to alter mass knowledge regarding particular convergence events. Unfortunately, this latter ability often had unintended effects, and after the disastrous 1984 Berlin Wall fiasco, the agency reassigned Mekigah to R&D to investigate other means of language control.
Eventually, Mekigah and the BZ&A scientists discovered that the entity’s abilities extended to musical language, and the research team began creating distortion recordings in earnest. The latest of these, 14-9303, is an anti-Survivalist tool spread to reinforce the four-dimensional structure of our reality. To human ears, it sounds like a gothic doom masterpiece, full of synthesized instrumentation and droning repetition that lulls listeners into a trance. Subjects exposed to 14-9303 have reported feelings of euphoria, enlightenment, and calm. However, a more thorough analysis reveals a startling complexity in its framework.
Heavy distortion in the notes is used to convey the droning atmosphere to dynamic effect. Many of the songs feel as though they are in fact vibrating, stimulating the cerebral cortex to induce very specific emotional cues. These cues are then enhanced by unique instrumental accents created by cello, mellotron, taishgoto, bells, and field recordings to create distinct memory constructs in the mind of the listener. These new constructs are then lodged in place by the varying intonations of the vocal work, ranging from low, spoken incantations to high, manic screams. All of the sensory effects are then cemented together through the droning motifs and emotional distortion of the music; the record is constructed on an arc that starts in a devastatingly low valley before climbing to a triumphant peak. This emotional wave pulls the listener’s consciousness along a mental journey not unlike somnambulation, with the crescendo final track acting as a sort of chemical catalyst. Tests have shown that subjects under observation typically experience peak dopamine levels as the ebullient percussion of the final track crashes, leaving listeners in a calm and hazy fog.
The key to this album’s power is emotional, rather than sonic, weight. “Total Cessation of One” befuddles the mind with sinusoidal electronic chirps and masked vocal effects, baptizing listeners into the proper frame of reference before the slow, hazy, methodical riffs of “The Sole Dwelling” plunge the mind into a black chasm of blinding smog. Through this track and the following, only Mekigah’s hypnotizing voice and the creaking, gliding lead notes cut through the haze, guiding you ever onward and upward through the dark. Rhythm flows like particles in a river, at points perceptible, but always moving, shifting, evolving, pulling us along by our pineal glands, granting us truth and knowledge as we learn and grow with each new swelling, heaving track. By the time we reach “Bir’yun”, our rapture is complete, our transfixion absolute, and our reality shifted by all our strange experiences along the way, spoken into being by the entity from Tlön. The key to this hypnosis is the heresiarch’s ability to bend all of the multifarious elements of music into one atmosphere of his intent and purpose; he is the master craftsman behind the atmosphere, and all of our perceptions are molded by his indomitable will. The agency is thankful, then for his benevolent influence.
Litost has been in circulation since late 2014, and BZ&A agents have indicated that markets it has penetrated report greater confidence in the authorities and a deeper contentedness with circumstances. A curious sidenote is that these communities also show a more profound patronage for the arts.
Attachment 14-9303S: Audio Sample of Litost
So the official story goes. – Z.
