Reality Programming Association

Chapter 51: Chapter 22: TDI Dream Net Protocol

Even though it wasn’t even four in the afternoon, the sky outside had already gone completely dark.

The thick clouds hung low, giving Yu Xian his first real sense of the imposing atmosphere from the saying, ”Dark clouds bear down on the city, threatening to crush it.”

He looked away from the window, his fingers switching between two apps as he entered the MAC address and invitation code, then confirmed the verification.

The loading circle in the center of the screen spun twice, then the browser window noticeably lagged. Even the spinning animation was dropping frames.

After spinning for what felt like an eternity, a line of small English text popped up.

”Device successfully bound. Please play audio through the phone’s speaker. Do not use headphones or other external devices.”

’I don’t get it. Don’t most apps usually recommend headphones for the best experience? But this TDI thing insisted on only using the phone’s default speaker.’

As he was thinking, the lag on the screen disappeared, and the page changed.

There was no complex interface like he’d imagined, no futuristic data dashboards—not even a download link for an app.

All that appeared on the page was a solitary download prompt.

The filename was simple: TDI_Audio_Session1.wav, Size: 45MB.

Yu Xian paused.

’An... audio file?’

His finger hovered over the screen, but he hesitated to press the confirm button.

’Five thousand one hundred yuan for just a 45MB audio file?’

It was so shoddy, it felt like buying a bootleg CD from a roadside stall...

No app, no installer package—the whole thing felt unnervingly strange.

He tapped to confirm the download. The connection was fast; in the blink of an eye, the file was sitting in his browser’s list of completed downloads.

He’d heard of programs that hid their installer packages inside a JPG file. To use them, you just had to change the .jpg file extension to .zip and decompress it.

’Could this audio file be the same kind of trick?’

He tapped the file, and the phone’s native audio player interface appeared on the screen.

There was no text or explanation, just a simple, black, triangular play button with a gray progress bar below it.

’This was the entry point for the TDI project? An audio file?’

’Whatever. I already bought it, so I might as well listen. Maybe it’ll have some miraculous effect.’

He settled into a comfortable position on the sofa, resting his head on a cushion.

His fingertip trembled slightly as it hovered over the black triangle. He pressed it.

He didn’t hear any distinct sound, just an extremely faint hissing, like the low hum of electrical static.

In contrast, the howling wind outside, the distant rumble of thunder, and the splatter of heavy rain against the outer walls sounded like a symphony.

Frowning, he turned up the volume a little.

Still just static. It sounded like an old television with no signal, reminding him of the white noise tracks he’d used to help him sleep.

’That’s it?’

’How is this any different from a normal sleep-aid track?’

’Five thousand one hundred yuan for white noise?’

A faint sense of disappointment began to creep in. His wallet ached, and the feeling that he’d been scammed started to grow.

Just as he was about to contact the seller to demand an explanation, the monotonous static from the speaker suddenly changed.

With no transition, not even an intro, an abrupt, piercing piano piece suddenly rang out from the phone.

The longer he listened, the more his brow furrowed.

It could hardly be called a piano piece. Even though Yu Xian knew nothing about music, he could tell it sounded like a beginner just randomly hitting the keys.

No, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t even at a beginner’s level. Honestly, if it weren’t for the fact that the rhythm was somewhat coherent, Yu Xian would have suspected it was the sound of a cat walking across a piano.

No melody, no harmony, no key. The high notes were piercing, the low notes were heavy and oppressive. It was like... noise.

Forget about being a sleep aid; this music made his skin crawl. His heart seemed to clench in time with the utterly chaotic rhythm.

’What is this god-awful music?’

Yu Xian frowned, fighting the urge to turn it off. Instead, he opened a music app on his computer and activated its song recognition feature.

The recognition was fast. A result popped up in just a few seconds.

The cover art was a black-and-white portrait of a bald man with melancholic eyes.

Composer: Arnold Schoenberg

Title: *Piano Suite, Op. 25*

’So it wasn’t just random banging? The piece is real?’

Staring at the portrait of the pointy-headed musician, ”Arnold Schoenberg,” Yu Xian switched back to his browser and typed in the name.

The search results appeared instantly. The first line of the encyclopedia entry read: ”Austrian composer of the 20th century, a leading figure in Western modernism, and the founder of the ’Twelve-tone Technique’.”

And his *Piano Suite, Op. 25* was one of the earliest works to use the Twelve-tone Technique.

’The Twelve-tone Technique...’

He scrolled down. The explanation for this compositional method was a bit abstruse, but to put it simply, this method completely abandoned the conventions of traditional music.

In traditional music, there is always a ”tonic,” like the note C in the key of C major. All other notes are structured around this tonic, creating a stable, gentle, and pleasant sound. This is all thanks to harmony.

The overall effect is harmonious, which is exactly what the term ”harmony” implies.

But in the Twelve-tone Technique, all twelve notes of an octave are treated as completely equal, with no distinction between primary and secondary. As a result, the music sounds abstract, bizarre, and dissonant.

In this compositional method, the composer must strictly adhere to mathematical logic, arranging all twelve tones into a ”tone row” in which no tone is repeated.