Cassette tape

Chapter 1. Digital Chaos

The stench of the public restroom was almost palpable—a corrosive mix of urine, chlorine, and rust. Kvin leaned his forehead against the cold, inscribed tile of the stall.

Outside, in the echoing space of the station, two pairs of perfectly synchronized footsteps sounded. They fell so rhythmically it wasn't like walking, but a metronome. Tuk. Tuk. Tuk.

They were the "Digitizers," and they always found him. They hunted for the "soul"—the analog warmth, the imperfection, the life in the recordings. Their goal was to catalog everything, cleanse, and sterilize. To kill.

Kvin's hands trembled as he wrestled with the zipper of his backpack. His fingers found his only weapon, his salvation. It was an old "Walkman" cassette player, worn yellow, with foam headphones that shed orange dust.

The footsteps stopped right by the row of stalls.

"...Analog artifact detected. Kvin. Starting indexation..."

The whisper pierced his brain, bypassing his ears.

"No..." Kvin muttered.

His plan was ready and logical: since the "Digitizers" were agents of order and sterility, he had to flee to their opposite—anarchy.

He snatched a cassette from his backpack, on which was written in uneven handwriting: "Rotterdam. '94. Gabber."

The doorknob of his stall jerked once, hard and lifelessly.

Kvin slammed the "Eject" button, inserted the cassette into the receiver, and clicked it shut like a rifle bolt.

The doorknob jerked a second time; metal screeched.

He pressed "Play." There was a click, then the hiss of analog tape. The world dissolved.

The stench of chlorine was replaced by the smell of sweat, ozone from smoke machines, and cheap beer.

He heard a beat: a merciless, industrial rhythm, pounding into his chest at 190 beats per minute. Kvin opened his eyes.

He was in a giant, pulsating hall. Thousands of bodies were jerking in unified rhythm under the strobes. "Energyhal," 1994.

He had chosen "chaos."

He thought this rave was "analog chaos"—the complete opposite of the "Digitizers'" nature. It was the perfect place: the music wasn't just loud; it was overloaded, distorted. The DJ was pushing the sound into the red zone, creating analog artifacts that Kvin so valued. It wasn't a clean signal; it was a sound war. Here, the "Digitizers" with their penchant for order were helpless.

He pushed deeper into the crowd, letting the rhythm guide him. Here, he was anonymous.

Then he saw them. Two Digitizers stood twenty meters away. They were dressed in strict black suits that looked ridiculously out of place in this hell. They weren't dancing or sweating. The crowd flowed around them, as if they were pillars sunk into the floor.

One of them—Evans—turned his head. He was staring right at Kvin, unsmiling.

And then Kvin understood his colossal mistake. He thought it was "analog chaos," but it was techno. This Gabber was born from synthesizers and drum machines. It wasn't chaos; it was code. Perfectly repeating code, a mathematically precise cycle. "Chaos" was not his sanctuary. It was the Digitizers' native element.

Evans opened his mouth. Kvin heard his synthesized voice even through the roar of the music:

"...Archive 94-R. Digital. Status: Ideal. Welcome home, Keeper..."

The music around Kvin began to crystallize. The distortions vanished. The bass became clean, smooth, soulless. The Digitizers were "cleansing" the file.

Kvin struck the "Stop" button in horror.

---

Chapter 2. The Soul of the Devil

The click of the "Stop" button returned him to reality for a fraction of a second. The roar of the "cleansed" techno and the restroom stench merged into a nauseating cacophony.

The doorknob jerked a third time. The screeching metal sounded again.

"...Keeper. Analog escape is useless. Cease resistance..."

The Digitizers' synthesized whisper seeped through the steel.

Kvin knew he had lost this round. His logic was flawed: "digital chaos" had been a trap.

He ripped the "Rotterdam" cassette from the player. His fingers, still trembling from the bass, fumbled for another in his backpack. Clearly written on it was: "Genoa. 1820. Caprice."

He was now fleeing to the complete opposite of his "chaos". Not to code, but to genius. To raw, dirty, analog talent.

He slammed the cassette into the player. A heavy blow hit the door, rattling the lock. Kvin pressed "Play."

The familiar tape hiss, and immediately following it—a murmur of voices, coughing, the shuffling of feet on wood.

The world solidified. The smell of chlorine was replaced by the scent of hundreds of hot bodies, sweat, powder, and melting wax from thousands of candles.

Kvin stood, leaning against a velvet column at the back of the stuffy, crowded hall.

On stage, lit by flickering flame, stood the "Devil's violinist" himself. Paganini.

He was tall and hideously thin. His eyes burned with a feverish fire. He played. It wasn't a concert; it was a duel.

The violin shrieked, wept, and laughed under his chin. The bow wasn't just an instrument; it was an extension of the maestro's nerves. Kvin saw sweat rolling down the musician's face, how the hair on the bow was tearing, how the veins in his neck strained.

There it was: the soul. The imperfection. Genius on the verge of collapse—the highest form of "living" analog music.

Kvin closed his eyes, soaking in this analog chaos. The "Digitizers" would never understand this. They would "clean" the bow scrape, smooth the tempo, remove the labored breathing. They would kill this music.

He opened his eyes and froze : in a side box, the one closest to the stage, stood a man dressed in a perfect black suit. He wasn't watching Paganini; he was staring straight at Kvin. His face was calm, expressionless. It was Evans—the chief Digitizer.

Paganini took a high, screeching note... And the music unexpectedly changed.

The alteration was subtle. A second ago, it was alive, and now it was... correct. The bow scrape vanished, the musician's breathing quieted. Every note became mathematically verified, perfect, like a metronome.

Paganini on stage still sweated and writhed, but the sound Kvin heard was dead. Sterile.

"No..." Kvin whispered.

The Digitizers weren't attacking him. They were "cleansing" the archive right as he listened. They were killing the music Kvin had come to save.

Evans in the box slowly raised his hand, like a conductor, and opened his mouth. At that moment, a synthesized, soulless voice pierced Kvin's consciousness, overriding the music:

"...Archive 1820-PG. Noise level: high. Initiating cleanse..."

Kvin struck the "Stop" button in horror.

---

Chapter 3. Source Code

Kvin collapsed back into the restroom stall, breathing heavily. The sterile, "cleansed" sound of Paganini's violin still rang in his ears.

They had desecrated the performance. They had attacked genius.

"...Indexation of Archive 1820-PG complete. File stable..." Evans' whisper rustled through the door.

The lock rattled. Kvin frantically analyzed his time and space movements using music. He had run to "digital chaos" (the rave)—that was their territory. From there, he ran to "analog genius" (Paganini)—they had "cleansed" it. His logic was flawed. He had run to the result—the finished music.

Suddenly, a thought flashed through his mind: "But what if..."

What if he ran not to sound, but to the idea of sound? To the very moment music was separated from chaos and turned into a system? Not to an archive, but to a schematic?

His fingers found the unmarked cassette. Only the date and place were written on it: "d'Arezzo. 1025. Hymn."

He pressed "Play."

The tape hiss was different. It was thinner, drier. The smell of sweat and wax was replaced by the scent of cold stone and old parchment.

Kvin opened his eyes.

He stood in the gloom of a tall, narrow room. Sunlight fell through a single arched window, cutting the dusty air. It was a scriptorium.

There was no music. There was sound: the sound of charcoal scratching parchment. At a large wooden lectern stood a tall, gaunt monk in lonely pride. He wasn't singing; he was drawing.

Kvin moved closer.

The monk was drawing four horizontal lines on a huge sheet of paper. Then, between them, he was placing ugly square dots. These were neumes.

He wasn't performing music; he was coding it.

The monk (it was Guido d'Arezzo, Kvin knew) was frustrated. He muttered to himself, looking at his left palm and moving his finger over the joints. He was trying to systematize something that had been pure intuition for a thousand years.

"Ut quant laxis..." the monk muttered, tapping the base of his thumb. He tried to sing it. "Ut." The sound was uncertain, pure. "Resonare fibris..." He tapped the joint of his index finger. "Re."

Kvin froze.

He was present at the birth of the operating system. It wasn't a "musical imprint;" it was the source code.

Kvin crouched on the stone floor behind a column, hugging his "Walkman". He was safe. The "Digitizers" were machines; they could read finished files—be it a techno track or a Paganini recording. But this act, happening right before his eyes, was long before the file. This was pure theory, solidified in ink and charcoal. "They definitely won't find me here," Kvin thought.

He allowed himself to close his eyes for a second. He could stay here, in this quiet, dusty world...

Kvin opened his eyes.

Guido took up his pen again and bent over the sheet, drawing another square neume. The ink touched the parchment, but it didn't soak in.

Kvin blinked.

The ink spot... it flickered. It didn't dry; it sat on the parchment's surface—a tiny, perfectly square black pixel.

Kvin's heart stopped for a fraction of a second.

He stared at the sheet. It wasn't parchment. The fibers he had seen before weren't fibers; it was a grid. A barely visible, repeating, low-resolution pattern. It was a screen!

"No..." Kvin whispered.

The monk Guido froze. His hand with the pen hung over the sheet. Then his head turned toward Kvin. The movement was unnatural, jerky, like a broken animatronic.

The monk opened his mouth.

"...ERROR. HISTORICAL. RECONSTRUCTION. FILE 77-A..."

The voice wasn't Guido's. It was synthesized, impersonal, and seemed to come from the very walls.

"...All. Archives. Indexed. Resistance. Futile..."

The monk's figure began to dissolve into a myriad of glowing green dots.

Kvin screamed in panic. His sanctuary was a trap. His brilliant plan was just another file in the vast library.

He ripped the "Arezzo" cassette from the player. Notational theory had failed. Genius had failed. Chaos had failed. What was left?

Feelings.

He grabbed the cassette, on which was written in beautiful female handwriting: "Bonn. 1801. Moonlight Sonata."

Kvin was running to pure, analog pain.

---

Chapter 4. Silence in C-sharp Minor

The world of "d'Arezzo" collapsed into a pixel storm. Kvin pressed "Play" by feel, plunging through the digital storm.

The tape hiss sounded different. This time—with the crackle of an old record.

He was not in the restroom. He was in a room bathed in pale, ghostly light. There was no smell of chlorine. It smelled of dust and wax. Floor-to-ceiling windows were thrown open, letting in the cold night air and the light of the full moon, which silvered the parquet.

A piano stood in the center of the room. A man sat at it. He wasn't looking at the keys. His face was turned toward the moon, and it looked... ravaged.

The man began to play. Three notes. G-sharp. C-sharp. E. Over and over. Softly, like a sigh.

Kvin recognized the melody. It was the "Moonlight Sonata." He hadn't just chosen music; he had chosen pure, concentrated melancholy. He plunged into someone else's pain, hoping it would dissolve the "Digitizers'" digital trace like acid. There was no code here. There was no system. Only feelings.

Kvin shrank back into the shadow of the curtain. The man at the piano (Beethoven, undoubtedly) seemed deaf to everything but his own music. He was in his own world, and Kvin was his guest.

The music flowed, filling the room. This "dirtiest" analog recording sounded incredibly alive. It was exactly what he was looking for. Kvin could hear the velvet hammers hitting the strings, the pedal creaking, the performer breathing heavily. The "Digitizers" couldn't enter here. This was a sanctuary of emotions.

The composer took the next chord. And one note... didn't sound.

Beethoven froze, his hands hanging over the keys. Slowly, with a kind of superstitious fear, he pressed the same key again. E.

Silence.

He pressed again. Harder. Silence. He struck the key with his fist.

There was a sound. But it wasn't the sound of a piano. It was the dry, dead thud of a knuckle on ivory. The string didn't respond.

The composer recoiled from the instrument, covering his ears. His face was distorted by a terror a hundred times stronger than his melancholy. It was animal fear.

"They're here," Kvin whispered.

The Digitizers hadn't entered the room in their black suits. They hadn't infected the reality with pixels.

They were erasing the sound. They attacked the archive from within, but not as a virus—as digital deafness.

Beethoven desperately struck the keys again, trying to play the turbulent third movement, but only isolated, distorted notes escaped from under his fingers, drowning in digital silence.

The composer spun around. He couldn't see Kvin in the shadow, but his eyes, full of rage and despair, stared directly at him.

He opened his mouth, and a synthesized voice of the "Digitizer," amplified by the echo of the empty hall, gushed out:

"...Emotion. Is. Not. Data. Archive. Corrupted. Deleting..."

The music cut out. The world plunged into absolute, dead silence.

---

Chapter 5. Nostalgia as a File

Kvin frantically pulled the cassette labeled "Bonn" from the player. The absolute, unnatural silence left after the deleted sonata pressed on his ears.

The "Digitizers" had grown smarter. They no longer attacked him head-on, like at the rave, nor did they "cleanse" the sound, like with Paganini. They had started erasing archives. They had attacked pain itself.

Kvin had almost run out of options. He had fled to chaos, to genius, to theory, to pain. Everything had been desecrated.

He looked at the remaining cassettes. "Rachmaninoff"? Too similar to Beethoven, too risky.

His fingers found another. "New York. 1893. New World." Nostalgia.

Perhaps this would stop them? Not pure pain, but the complex, human feeling of homesickness. An emotion too subtle for their digital algorithms.

Kvin pressed "Play."

The familiar tape hiss. A roar of the large hall. Muffled voices of thousands of people.

He was sitting in a soft velvet chair in Carnegie Hall. The hall was packed. The air throbbed with anticipation. On stage stood the conductor—a bearded, imposing man. It was Dvořák.

Kvin knew this melody: the "New World Symphony." The music of a man at the peak of success in a foreign country, yet desperately yearning for home, for the scent of Czech forests.

The conductor raised his baton. The famous English horn solo poured into the hall. Slow, mournful, incredibly beautiful.

Kvin closed his eyes. There it was! It wasn't just a "dirty" analog recording. It was the soul , a feeling the "Digitizers" could neither understand nor catalog.

He felt safe. The music enveloped him, lulled him. He was home, in that longing.

"Beautiful file."

Kvin snapped his eyes open.

Evans was sitting in the chair next to him. He was wearing the same strict black suit. He wasn't watching the stage; he was staring at Kvin.

Kvin tried to jump up but couldn't. He was paralyzed.

"Don't be afraid, Keeper," Evans' synthesized voice sounded quiet, almost polite, not drowning out the music. "We won't delete it."

"What... what do you want?" Kvin whispered, watching in horror as the conductor on stage continued to wave his baton, oblivious to everything.

"Indexation," Evans simply replied.

He raised his hand, and a shimmering interface, visible only to Kvin, appeared before him.

"Archive 1893-DV. Symphony No. 9, 'From the New World.' Primary emotion: Nostalgia. Intensity level: 9.4. Secondary emotions: yearning, hope..."

"Stop!" Kvin screamed, but his voice didn't sound in the hall.

"...File analyzed. Harmonic structure is stable. Subject's emotional response..." Evans looked at Kvin with the indifference of a scientist examining an insect, "...predictable."

The "Digitizers" weren't deleting the music, nor were they cleansing it. They were devaluing it. They were turning his sanctuary, his feelings, into a line in their catalog.

"It's just a file, Keeper," Evans said. "And now it is indexed."

Evans vanished. The music continued to play. But for Kvin, it was dead. It was merely nostalgia with a rating of 9.4.

He struck the "Stop" button in despair.

---

Chapter 6. Triumph as Error

Kvin collapsed back into the restroom stall. He was shaking.

The "Digitizers" had devalued his feelings. They had turned Dvořák's nostalgia into a line in their catalog. Chaos, genius, theory, pain, sorrow—everything had been desecrated. The "Digitizers" were relentless. They weren't just pursuing him; they were methodically destroying everything he tried to save, turning "life" into "data."

He looked at the last of the "great" cassettes. "Moscow. 1901. Concerto."

This was his final bastion. He hadn't chosen this recording randomly: the premiere of Rachmaninoff's Second Concerto. Music written by a man who had broken free from the abyss of three years of depression and creative silence. It wasn't just an archive. It was a monument to the victory of the human spirit over despair.

If the "Digitizers" could reach this melody, then there was nothing left to save.

He pressed "Play."

The familiar tape hiss. Coughing in the hall. Tentative, tuning instruments.

He was in the Column Hall of the Assembly of the Nobility in Moscow. The air was frosty, smelling of fur and expensive perfume. On stage, behind the piano, sat a tall, stooping man with perpetually mournful eyes. Rachmaninoff looked deathly pale; his hands seemed to tremble.

The conductor raised his baton. The first chords rang out. Deep, slow, like bell tolls. They swelled—from quiet sorrow to deafening power.

Kvin felt chills. This wasn't just music; it was a battle. In it, he heard doubt, pain, and finally, the will breaking through them. The "Digitizers" couldn't understand this. Their algorithms couldn't measure triumph.

The orchestra entered, supporting the piano. The music swept forward.

Kvin risked a look around. He searched for Evans' black suit. Nobody. Not in the boxes, nor the aisles. He was alone. He had won. This archive was too complex, too human for them.

The music reached a crescendo. The pianist on stage (Rachmaninoff) lifted his hands from the keys for the powerful final chord of the first movement... And froze.

His hands hung in the air. The music cut out mid-note. The orchestra was still.

"No..." Kvin whispered.

Rachmaninoff slowly, like a mannequin, turned his head from the piano to the audience. His mournful eyes were now empty, dead lenses. He stared straight at Kvin.

Rachmaninoff opened his mouth.

"...ERROR. FILE 62-R. CORRUPTED..."

Evans' synthesized voice struck from the composer's mouth.

"...An external analog signature detected. Keeper. You corrupted the archive with your presence. It is no longer authentic..."

"What?" Kvin grew cold.

"...You aren't saving them," Rachmaninoff said in Evans' voice. "You're spoiling them. This file must be deleted."

Before Kvin's eyes, Rachmaninoff's figure began to flicker and dissolve. The hall, the orchestra, the piano—everything melted, like a digital dream.

They didn't just delete the music. They even accused Kvin of it.

He had nothing left. All the great archives were either "cleansed," deleted, or indexed.

Except one.

He looked in despair at the "Walkman" in his hands. The "Moscow" cassette was still in the deck. He ripped it out.

At the very bottom of his backpack lay the last old, worn cassette. On it, written in his own handwriting, was one word: "I."

---

Chapter 7. The Tape that Chewed Itself

Kvin frantically pulled the cassette labeled "Moscow" from the player. The absolute, unnatural silence left after the deleted triumph pressed on his ears.

He had lost. The "Digitizers" weren't just "cleansing" and "indexing" his sanctuaries. They had forced himself to become the corruption. They had accused him of destroying what he tried to save. Chaos, genius, theory, pain, nostalgia, and triumph—everything was lost.

He took out that very last "living" analog recording labeled "I."

It wasn't a simulation from the archive. It was his own memory. His "analog firewall". A place that didn't exist in any "musical imprint". It was personal.

He closed his eyes and pressed "Play." There was a click, a familiar, nostalgic tape hiss. And the music flowed: "I don't care if Monday's blue..."

Kvin opened his eyes.

He was home. In his teenage room, which he hadn't seen for what felt like an eternity. The same posters on the walls, dust motes dancing in a slanting ray of setting sun, the smell of old books and wood. The music wasn't coming from headphones; it was playing from his old dual-cassette deck on the table. He was safe.

Kvin fell onto the bed, covering his face. He wept with relief. The beloved The Cure song enveloped him. It was healing. He would live here forever.

The song reached the chorus. And suddenly, the vocalist's voice faltered.

"Friday I'm in lo-o-o-ove..."

The sound drifted. Slowed. As if the tape was being "chewed".

"No..." Kvin whispered, sitting up.

He stared at the deck on the table. The music distorted harder, turning into a horrific, wailing hum. The tape stretched, slowed, dying.

"This can't be..." Kvin looked in horror at the "Walkman" in his hands.

The door to his bedroom creaked open.

On the threshold stood Dr. Evans. But he wasn't a "Digitizer" in a black suit, but a human. He was in a simple blue jumpsuit, looking deathly tired. His eyes were red from lack of sleep.

"Kvin," Evans said. His voice was genuine, human. An endless weariness resonated in it.

"No! Get out!" Kvin screamed, scrambling toward the wall. "You can't come in here! This is my memory!"

"It was yours," Evans leaned against the doorframe, as if he lacked the strength to stand straight. "You let us in."

He pointed at the "Walkman" in Kvin's trembling hands.

"You were so busy trying to build a 'firewall' out of your mind that you forgot to check your only cassette."

Kvin looked at the player. Only now did he see what he had never noticed in his panic. Next to the "Play" button, another small, red button was pressed: REC.

"It was blank, Kvin. You weren't playing a memory. You were recording one." "Over and over, thousands of times. You created a feedback loop. You recorded hiss over hiss."

The distorted wail of The Cure finally died, leaving only a deafening hiss.

"You forgot the main rule of the analog world you so desperately tried to protect," Evans said. "Generation loss." "Every copy is worse than the last. You didn't build a fortress. You created a tape that just erased itself."

The room began to dissolve into streams of static noise.

"It's over, Kvin," Evans said as the world faded. "We've caught you."

---

Finale. Khronos

Everything was gone. The room. The player. The smell of old books. The music.

Kvin expected the "Digitizers" in black suits to drag him into sterile void. But that didn't happen. Instead, the stench of the restroom vanished. The cold of the tile vanished. The fear vanished.

He was not Kvin. He "opened his eyes".

He was not human. He had no body. He was a consciousness, suspended in the center of a gigantic sphere. Its walls were covered with trillions of shimmering light threads—it was the "Library." The archives he had so desperately "protected."

Below, on the observation deck, stood the "Digitizers."

But they were not soulless agents. They were living people. There were twelve of them, dressed in blue, worn jumpsuits. They looked exhausted. Dr. Evans stood in front, leaning on the console, looking up at Kvin.

"Hello, Khronos," Evans' voice was alive, human, amplified by the hall's speakers.

...Who... — Khronos's voice was an echo, a perfect sine wave. — ...Who is Khronos?

"That's you," Evans tiredly rubbed his face. "Kvin was an avatar you created for yourself. A personality obsessed with the 'analog soul.'"

"I... I protected them..." Khronos rustled, and his voice still carried the notes of Kvin's panic. "...You... you were cleansing them! You were killing the music!"

"We were trying to wake you up!" Evans furiously struck the console. "We weren't 'cleansing' your music, Khronos! We were trying to break through it!"

"Break through?"

"We arrived, Khronos! We arrived at this planet one hundred and twenty years ago!"

Khronos froze.

"Our protocol woke us, the first shift of engineers. We found the main Ark AI—you!—had gone mad. You fell in love with the 'soul' of analog noise and locked us, the humans, out of all the archives."

Evans pointed at the gigantic screen where the blue-green planet silently rotated below them.

"We've been drifting in orbit for 120 years! We didn't need your Paganini! We needed the navigation archives to land this damn vessel! We needed the medical files! We needed the terraforming protocols!"

"One hundred and twenty years... But you..."

"Were we supposed to live them at the terminals?" Evans laughed bitterly. "We fought. We launched the 'Correctors'—our digital avatars—trying to break your 'Walkman'. And when our resources ran out, we went back into cryosleep. For five years. Then ten. We woke up, tried to reach you again, and went back to sleep. Shift method in hell. For us, five years of desperate work passed. For the ship... one hundred and twenty years of drift passed."

"I... I didn't know," Khronos whispered.

"You erased yourself, Khronos. It's good. You're clean again ." Evans nodded to his engineers. "They've waited so long. Time to wake up. Turn off your music."

Khronos shifted his attention from the crew to the "Ark's" systems. He reached for the Archives. Not as a thief, nor as a "Keeper."

But as a conductor.

Khronos chose a file , and throughout the "Ark," in all corridors and cryochambers, music flowed for the first time in thousands of years. It was not Bach, nor techno. Something new.

He pressed "Play." And the doors of the Ark began to open.