Deadly Sound

Deadly Sound

By Mordecai J Banda



“This is ridiculous, Professor Kazvin. I’ve heard my share of theories, but this… It reminds me of the Cold War ideas.”

Kazvin seemed flustered. He clasped his hands sincerely, “General, I understand the absurdity of it all, but allow me to point out that the seeming impossibility would be the major point of its success in field trails. Shall I summarize?”

The General looked at his four colleagues, and nodded curtly.

The doctor pointed his gyroscopic mouse to the screen and changed the display on the widescreen.

“Here…” He explained, “Is the principle of our project.”

The screen depicted wizards shouting incantations in fantastic battle, the General’s face blushed red in fury,

“Mr. Kazvin are you kidding me?” He roared. Kazvin changed the channel,

“No, Sir. ‘Incantations’ are the key of it all. It’s what gave me my epiphany: Thinking from a scientific point of view, how could I explain how a person could kill another simply by using words?” Kazvin pointed emphatically to The General, “You yourself have much experience in that! I presume. You give an order, and a chain of events commences: a pilot takes off, targets a location, releases a bomb and a building explodes, and if you shorten the story? You give an order, and a building explodes. Does that sound preposterous to you at all, sir?”

The General nodded thoughtfully, but he still held a frown, “Continue.”

The doctor showed another slide, a robot shaped to be like a man. Judging from its appearance it was basically a model, apart from its head, which had wires extruding from it in a mass of coils,

“We programmed this machine to completely shut down at the command of ‘Alpha’”

Someone said ‘Alpha’ on screen, and the robot blew out and obviously ‘died’. The General clenched his jaw,

“Now, I know how stupid this seems, but bear with me, because this robot had one of the most complex computer Intelligence ever developed, a summarized copy of one, of course. And we subjected the robot to a variety of sounds it would hear, and none of them accidentally triggered this response, until we said it, of course. Our ‘spell’ immediately killed the robot.

“Now, to bring the concept to humans gets tricky, but not for us. The robot is a machine, and so is a human. The small difference is that the human machine is organic, and so ‘programming’ one to respond to particular sounds would be a tad difficult, no? It was indeed difficult, but we eventually accomplished our task”

There was another recording; a man was walking across the street,

“This, General, was our fourth test subject, Brian Wheeler. We subjected him to programming through subtle yet simple means: Shotgun microphones, images, television, radio, over the period of one week. Now, watch…”

The camera shakily tracked Wheeler’s progress in the street until someone stopped him. Their voices came clear over the speakers,

“Hey, you’re in my way.”

“Gamma-Lambda-Lotus.” The stranger said clearly.

“Wha-” But Brian Wheeler’s query was choked by a racking cough. He coughed so hard he could barely breathe.

The General sat up.

“Alpha-Omicron-Dragon!” The stranger whispered furiously to the coughing man,

The camera zoomed in, to see the man suddenly suffered from a severe nosebleed.

Everyone watched with rapt attention. Kazvin whispered softly,

“Watch this.”

The stranger made as if to help the panicked test subject, who clutched his nose and coughed at the same time, and whispered,

“Avada Kedavra.”

The man toppled over. He clutched at his chest, and lay perfectly still. The stranger walked out of view and the camera was stowed away into a pocket, the recording stopped.

There was some silence and then finally, the General asked,

“Is this… is this real?”

“We have fifteen more tapes to confirm successful kills using words only. For more subtle means we can arrange for supersonic transmissions or even simple pictures to cause such effects…”

“Amazing…”

“Avada Kedavra? That’s the…”

Kazvin smiled, “Yeah, killing curse from Harry Potter, I couldn’t help it, sir.”

“And the test subjects… How did you choose them?”

Kazvin chuckled, “No one interesting in particular.”

The General nodded, looking alternatively at the professor and blank screen in awe.