The Old Radio

Vajdahunyad Castle Gardens
Budapest, Hungary?
7:05 PM

I was walking hand in hand with Tamamo through the palace property on his way to the cabin where Maria was. Because we were celebrating her birthday in a foreign country we had to stay for several days, most of the family stayed in hotels near here, we, on the other hand, got rooms right here. But as for Maria, she wanted to continue in this tetric environment more than anyone else, so we managed to rent her a small cabin among the palace gardens. It was guesthouse number thirteen, which really looked like the property of a nineteenth-century witch. It was clearly her desire to look like a magician and since it was her birthday we decided to please her no matter how rare her requests were, although obviously, she was not always alone, we were relatively close, in addition to the family doctor who also helped us with this, even he himself came paying all his expenses, that and maybe it was just an excuse to get away from his wife for a while because he was always complaining about her.

"This place is bigger even than the one in the palace where I lived in Japan"
"And it scares me too" Tama said returning once more to her usual cheerful way.

"You are not the only one"
"Half of the guests were also lost walking through the gardens at night"
"Every so often someone was calling someone because was lost"
"I think we were a real headache for the local police"
"But even with that, this place is abnormally large tonight"
"The cabin was not that far either, but here we have already been walking for almost thirty minutes"
"How is it that Maria dared to be in that house in such a dark place !?"

"I do not like the feeling that they look at us between the trees" Tama said as she looked around trying to prove it was true

"I knew it was strange that that feeling was only us !"
"I'm not the only one who thinks this place was really weird!"
"Everybody said the same thing during the party"

It didn't take us long to finally reach our destination, the little wooden house was right in front of us. It was a small wooden cabin from the nineteenth century, it had no type of paint, it was two stories high, and was surrounded by a hideous iron fence with patterns of twisted spears. It was very different compared to the luxurious place we were in before, almost as if it was built for the sole purpose of making it a place to hold Halloween parties. In the window near the door of the house, you could see a dim light that changed intensity from time to time, not the slightest noise was heard, it seemed that the place was completely uninhabited.

Being nervous about all of this, I left Tama behind and went quietly to take a look out the windows to try to see if the place was safe. Putting into practice the harsh lessons learned from Nanami about stealth, I bowed my knees and walked gently through the greenery like a cat. But when I tried to climb over the fence, the damn ruffled dress caught on one of the spears so I lost my balance and fell from a height of almost ten feet, face on. I made a terrible scandal along with the sound of my pain, then I recovered quickly and trying to pretend that nothing happened I looked through one of the windows on the first floor. Together when I put my face near the window I could only see how a face of terror was looking at me on the other side, and when our eyes met, we both screamed at the same time.

"AAAAH!!!"
"A GHOST!!"
"STAY AWAY!"

"FUCK"
"A TABLE!"
"AAAAH!"

"What a hell did you just tell me?" My sister went from scared to furious in a matter of a second.

"Hello my sister-in-law, how are you tonight" appeared saying Tamamo while she happily opened the door of the house.

"Are you Tamamo?"
"What are you doing here?"
"Wait, the one outside is Cesar?"

After apologizing for the scare that I gave my sister inadvertently she let me go inside the house. Once in the room, we all together discussed what was happening again. My sister looked exactly the same as she was today, she was much taller and looked much healthier than when she was here the first time. Although this party took place when she was eight years old, you could see that Maria in front of me was 15 years old. Then her clothes were exactly the same as the ones she wore tonight, only much bigger according to her height. Seeing that she recognized Tamamo and me despite having the body of a girl means that without a doubt she is the Maria we know. But still, without me saying anything, it was she herself who asked.

"Do you have any idea what this strange dream is?"
"Or rather why are you two here?"
"From Tamamo I could understand it in part, but Cesar should not have any superpower, right?" My sister skillfully asked, showing that she was aware that this was strange.

"Well that's exactly what we're trying to find out"
"When I realized I was at the entrance of the palace, everything seemed strange to me from the beginning"
"But Tamamo's version is different, she says that she thought that all this was normal until she talked to me"
"And we also suspect that mom is here and she also thinks this is a normal dream" I quickly inform Maria about how little we knew about this

"I also thought it was a dream until the only girl who looks like a ghost was not aware of it and began to haunt the house almost causing me to pass out"

"I assure you it was not on purpose"
"I just wanted to make sure there was nothing dangerous hanging around here"

"You say you killed dragons with your bare hands"
"What can be more dangerous than that?"
"What can you be afraid of?"

"A dragon that kills just by looking"

"Touche"

"But that's not the point here"
"Somehow we are trapped in the last century while at the same time your party is happening, just according to the time"
"Do you have any idea why your birthday party exactly?"
"Maybe something that happened before you fell asleep?"

"Not much really"
"I was reading the book a little"
"Then I started listening to music before sleeping"
"I've been here for quite some time, though, so I tried watching TV"
"But instead of television, the only thing here is that old radio with a strange shape"
"I turned it on for a moment but they only said weird things so I turned it off again"

My sister answered honestly while pointing towards a rather large piece of furniture in the living room. It was clearly an old radio box, but even so, that thing looked dated, somehow it still matched the design of this whole place. On the front, had a plaque with the manufacturer's name: Interstellar Hardware Company. Considering that this term was not invented until the 1960s when computers appeared, it is enough to suspect that they existed for the supposed time in which we were. I pressed the corresponding button to turn it on, and it began to sound like any radio would, the music that was playing was quite calm, and once again, agreeing with the size, it also resembled the one that was heard in the palace with the party. But at one point, during the commercial break, I saw what Maria meant.

"From the superior department of communications of the World government, the population is reminded to participate in the tests of the Operation Salvage project"
"The King of ages would undoubtedly be grateful to see that his people have volunteers or offerings to save for what he fought so much in his short time with us"
"Our world must be saved, no matter the price"
"Remember that children should not be older than ten years"
"Present them to your nearest government office" Said the voice from the radio ad.

My reaction to what you just heard I think was the same as we all think.

"What the hell is the shit that bastard just said and what the fuck does all this bullshit mean?"

"That was what I thought too" my sister said.

"I am very sorry for my lack of knowledge about the modern world and all the problems that it has caused you."
"But is any of what he said related to our world?"
"Something that I have learned yet?" Said my wife as she looked out the window.

"In our world, the United Nations was created after the Second World War, more than 75 years ago."
"But how it works as a council between all governments on earth, A forum to talk "
"There has never been anything like a world government" I explained to her

"So it is safe to say then that what you just heard is not related to the world we came from"
"We don't know anything about what this saving project is, but after hearing that they ask for volunteers or offerings, something inside me tells me that whatever happens to these individuals could not be a good thing"
"Experimentation in people maybe?"

"And the part where they ask minors just makes me want to throw up" I told Tamamo indicating to her that I more or less understood what she wanted to say
"Believe me, in our world, nobody would say publicly on the radio that they are looking for children for a dangerous project"
"Within minutes he would have an angry mob of parents claiming his head"
"Do you think it has something to do with what happened to us and what are we doing here?"

"I quite doubt it"
"Our circumstances of how we are here and that strange world of this radio are very different"
"Almost as if it were a dream colliding with reality" Tama said as she sat back on one of the armchairs in the living room.

"Brother, Tamamo is acting very strange."
"It's almost as if she actually had something else apart from cotton candy on her head."
"She is making me nervous."

"I can hear you!" the blonde girl said indignantly.

"See what I mean"
"She would normally have been thinking of food or some cheesy phrase related to love"

"I assure you that this Tamamo is really her"
"Also, at the moment she is the one who can best discover what is happening"
"But right now is not the time to talk about it"
"We have to find out what is happening and find a way to return to our original world"
"There is something about all this that makes me nervous about what could be in this strange place"

"At the moment I still believe that we should continue with what happened at the party"
"There we can see what is happening with mom and the rest of the guests"
"Maybe we will even find something of interest in that castle that will give us some clue"
"There is also the possibility that this is a mental attack from a magician"
"We cannot deny any possibility"
"So we must pay close attention to our surroundings and others" Tama said

"Is it really possible that a magician could cast a spell on a goddess?" asked with curiosity Maria.

"Well, if it was a magic attack, you could find traces of his mana everywhere, but this place has traces of different people everywhere"
"It feels like almost anyone here is a wizard"
"Which although it is strange, it is not strange that places like this exist on earth"
"But this would be too far advanced for a mere human to do it"

"Is there any chance that some other God is doing all of this?" I asked.

"That would be much more likely"
"But you already know that by order of THE BOSS the gods are now forbidden to interfere in the land of humans and their science"
"That THE BOSS let me live with you is a huge exception"
"So even I would think twice before doing something like whatever this is" she expressed dismayed

"All right"
"So our plan remains the same"
"Find out what's going on and make a plan"
"Now, considering that we are at the same birthday party, it means that the kitchen will have the same food as on that occasion"
"And that can only mean one thing"

"We have one last chance in our lives to eat those cakes again" my sister said happily, quickly understanding where I wanted to go.

"Once with a full stomach, we can hang around the party and see what others are doing"
"Tama since you were not originally at this party I would like you to let me know if you feel that there is something out of place"
"Only you have a neutral judge here"
"Maybe you can notice something that Maria or I am overlooking"

"Ok honey"

And with that lack of planning, we prepare to return to the palace and try to continue clarifying all this. Also, enjoy some of the party on the way.