The Myth of Music

♪ Mimi (present) ♪

My name is Mimi. I came abroad from the Cat Kingdom, reached the graduate magic research lab I had always dreamed of joining, and now I happily spend my days running experiments.

“Ah! Aww, I messed it up again!”

If the experiment had succeeded, it should have produced a beautiful little whirlwind. Instead, the ground only trembled slightly, just enough to make the skirt of my lab-coat outfit flutter softly. That was strange. In theory, electron spin should have acted on the resonance particles.

“Mimi, make sure you clean up when you’re done, okay?”

“Yes, Professor Lala!”

The moment the brilliant Associate Professor Lala spoke to me, I straightened my back. Professor Lala, despite being of demon descent, had earned recognition for her abilities and was now in demand all across the academic world.

Thinking about how much more demons had been discriminated against in the past, it really felt like the times had changed. As a cat demi-human, I had to do my best too.

“Resonance-particle engineering is still a very new field,” my professor said encouragingly. “A lot of things still don’t go right. But that just means we’re only getting started.”

It had been almost five years since Professor Lala discovered the secret behind how music could cast magic. On Otherworld Earth, music cannot cast magic. But in this world, it can.

Professor Lala had devoted herself to uncovering that mystery. She asked: what exists in this world, but not on Earth? She invited physicists from the other world, used a scanning tunneling microscope, and discovered a particle called the resonance particle.

Resonance particles receive the sound waves of the human voice and resonate with electron spin, acting on atoms and electrons. Sometimes that becomes fire. Sometimes ice. Sometimes it shakes the earth or summons lightning from the sky.

Apparently, that was the mechanism behind what humans had long called magic.

It meant we had taken one step closer to the truth behind the ancient myth passed down in this world:

“God offered humanity a choice: by science, or by magic, how would they develop society?
Humanity chose magic, and by magic, society flourished.”

Only a few decades ago, magic had been cast only through singing. But then a man named Akira, who came from Otherworld Japan, brought an electronic saxophone into this world. During an electrical accident, it was discovered that instruments, too, could cast magic.

Working together with his wife Elise, Akira went on to spread handmade magical instruments across the world.

Demand for instrument-based magic rose globally. Industry then began asking whether magical instruments could be mass-produced instead of made by hand.

Professor Lala, who was well versed in Otherworld physics, turned her attention to Fourier analysis, a method developed by the eighteenth-century French physicist Joseph Fourier.

Originally created to study heat conduction, those physical equations later came to be used in the study of sound as well. The technique could decompose naturally occurring sound waves. That meant it could identify the waves produced when resonance particles resonated with male vocal magic.

Professor Lala transformed those waveforms and frequencies into patterns approximating male and female voices, and invented a conversion device that acted directly on resonance particles without first converting them into audible sound: the Fourier Connector. The invention of this device made cheap magical instruments possible to mass-produce, accelerating their spread across the world.

So yes, it would not be an exaggeration to call Professor Lala one of the great figures who changed the history of music magic. Her name would surely be remembered in future science-history textbooks.

From the next room, a magic radio was blaring. Apparently the Rabbit Kingdom had descended into war.

“Professor, what exactly is happening in the Rabbit Kingdom right now?”

“The decline of the middle class, and the rise of extremism that comes with it.”

“Extremism…?”

“Eighteenth-century Otherworld France. A bourgeois middle class was gaining economic power, yet still wasn’t allowed to participate in politics. That created a vacuum of thought, and eventually violent revolution broke out. And even after the revolution began, the age of war continued for quite some time.”

“How frightening…”

“Or take twentieth-century Otherworld Germany. An extremist ideology called fascism rose to prominence. Discrimination and slaughter spread, and the world entered an age of war. One thing happening in that era was the loss of the middle class. In a war called the First World War, huge numbers of young people died. That generation should have been there later, in middle age, holding society together—but they were missing. And so the people who should have acted as a brake on extremism were gone.”

“From the way you explain it, both cases were caused by a lack of voice and influence for the middle class.”

“Exactly. The middle-aged are supposed to restrain young people from acting rashly, and keep elites from drifting into unrealistic dogma. The same is true of the economic middle class. A society that keeps moving forward while silencing the middle ranks who do the real practical work becomes one where cult-like ideologies spread. Young people begin acting from anger, and elites stop looking at reality. Before long, everyone is speaking only in abstractions.”

“Is the same thing happening in the Rabbit Kingdom now?”

“The generational struggle over vocal magic and instrumental magic made it impossible to cultivate the truly capable leaders who should have guided the next age. The vocal faction surrounded itself with yes-men and pushed away people with practical ability. As a result, terrorists have emerged from the instrumental faction and are now trying to overthrow the country. A massive civil war is about to divide the nation in two. The Dog Kingdom recently followed the same pattern.”

“But my homeland, the Cat Kingdom, is doing fine, isn’t it?”

“The Cat Kingdom got the short end of the stick in the age of vocal magic, didn’t it? Catfolk weren’t blessed with voices suited for magic, and the circulation of dictionaries for the ancient language was unfairly restricted. You could say they were discriminated against, at least a little. That’s why they were able to place their hopes in the next generation and achieve a smoother political handoff. Ironically, the lack of past success is what led to their prosperity today.”

“Humans are foolish, Professor. Even when history already contains the answer, they repeat the same mistakes once the form changes.”

“Because everyone thinks they’re the exception… They believe they alone are smart enough to handle things properly. They pick at history, taking only the convenient parts. And that’s exactly when they fall into the trap.”

“I’m scared.”

“You mustn’t look away. We have to survive the age of upheaval that lies ahead.”

The setting sun shone in Professor Lala’s emerald-colored eyes, and somehow it seemed more dazzling than usual.