Synth Backstory
Within the context of the world of Synth, there is a lot going on, especially in regards to this OTS which will set the stage for a much grander tale.
We start our lore in the early 2000's when soldiers returning from the Iraq conflict would routinely be afflicted with severe P.T.S.D, also known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a cognitive anxiety that would ail troops back from across the seas with nightmares, guilt and a whole swathe of socially impeding disorders including triggers and flashbacks,
Extract taken from the NHS page on PTSD -
"Someone with PTSD will often relive the traumatic event through nightmares and flashbacks, and may experience feelings of isolation, irritability and guilt. They may also have problems sleeping, such as insomnia, and find concentrating difficult. These symptoms are often severe and persistent enough to have a significant impact on the person’s day-to-day life"
With many patients arriving in hospitals with either breakdowns or violent out-lashes as their minor symptoms, a hypnotherapy program was revived in order to not only help the conflict veterans but to protect the public from the increasingly violent bursts the more extreme cases were enacting, the culmination of which (which observant viewers will pick out from the TV in the OTS) was a case where a soldier slaughtered eight people, the first two with a fishing wire and the rest with an army service revolver; among that number was his wife of nine years and his four year old son.
The hypnotherapy program grew more and more dramatic, assets from post-Vietnam efforts of a similar vein were incorporated with the two most successful additions, the use of music and the control of the subjects through methodical number chains proving a great way of controlling the more unruly of the pack. For four years the program ran, rehabilitating over two thousand marines in clinics across the country with dedicated training schemes. Whenever soldiers would start to display signs of unrest, doctors, and eventually loved ones would play a piece of selected music and repeat number strings at them which they'd be subliminally associate with serenity and peace. Codes such as '03, 09, 20' would speak to an inner calmness that invoked sleep in the subjects, almost as if it were a reboot. In many ways, the soldiers were unaware of their being during these strings, lost in the numbers and the music as their bodies were commanded back to safety.
In fact, the only reported incident prior to the campaign of 'The Doctor' was an instant where a soviet era Numbers Station which has been broadcasting harmlessly for the best part of five decades somehow triggered a response in a patient with its number patterns, although no one was injured, the subject was described as completely at the mercy of the broadcast, responding to the numbers the doctors had ascribed as a home command which, without the proper musical stimulant or complete number string lead the marine to walk around one room continually knocking into desks and chairs. Realizing the threat random number chains could pose, the program initiated a command word to be used as a carry out instruction to end a chain. The word was 'SYNTH'.
We start our lore in the early 2000's when soldiers returning from the Iraq conflict would routinely be afflicted with severe P.T.S.D, also known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a cognitive anxiety that would ail troops back from across the seas with nightmares, guilt and a whole swathe of socially impeding disorders including triggers and flashbacks,
Extract taken from the NHS page on PTSD -
"Someone with PTSD will often relive the traumatic event through nightmares and flashbacks, and may experience feelings of isolation, irritability and guilt. They may also have problems sleeping, such as insomnia, and find concentrating difficult. These symptoms are often severe and persistent enough to have a significant impact on the person’s day-to-day life"
With many patients arriving in hospitals with either breakdowns or violent out-lashes as their minor symptoms, a hypnotherapy program was revived in order to not only help the conflict veterans but to protect the public from the increasingly violent bursts the more extreme cases were enacting, the culmination of which (which observant viewers will pick out from the TV in the OTS) was a case where a soldier slaughtered eight people, the first two with a fishing wire and the rest with an army service revolver; among that number was his wife of nine years and his four year old son.
The hypnotherapy program grew more and more dramatic, assets from post-Vietnam efforts of a similar vein were incorporated with the two most successful additions, the use of music and the control of the subjects through methodical number chains proving a great way of controlling the more unruly of the pack. For four years the program ran, rehabilitating over two thousand marines in clinics across the country with dedicated training schemes. Whenever soldiers would start to display signs of unrest, doctors, and eventually loved ones would play a piece of selected music and repeat number strings at them which they'd be subliminally associate with serenity and peace. Codes such as '03, 09, 20' would speak to an inner calmness that invoked sleep in the subjects, almost as if it were a reboot. In many ways, the soldiers were unaware of their being during these strings, lost in the numbers and the music as their bodies were commanded back to safety.
In fact, the only reported incident prior to the campaign of 'The Doctor' was an instant where a soviet era Numbers Station which has been broadcasting harmlessly for the best part of five decades somehow triggered a response in a patient with its number patterns, although no one was injured, the subject was described as completely at the mercy of the broadcast, responding to the numbers the doctors had ascribed as a home command which, without the proper musical stimulant or complete number string lead the marine to walk around one room continually knocking into desks and chairs. Realizing the threat random number chains could pose, the program initiated a command word to be used as a carry out instruction to end a chain. The word was 'SYNTH'.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24910397
Although too long to quote in its entirety, this article details the rise of Number's Stations as a concept; short, repetitive transmission supposedly used to send encrypted messages to spies but with no confirmed purpose.
In one particular clinic however, the therapy had taken a very different turn. Fascinated by the numbers chain incident, the doctor in charge began using the number strings as a way of controlling his patients, backwards engineering the program to associate the numbers with the victims trauma, causing them to endure a psychological hell as their bodies reacted in a horrifically primal fashion, attacking those who the doctor instructed as they relived warped and nightmarish incarnations of their past. The most public case of which was in 2009 where a young man, barley 23 in age, was commanded to march down the street and attack two women walking back from their night bus. Although only one survived, the victim has always said that the attacker was seemingly ravenous with nothing but the blaring sound of electronic music heard over his seething grunts. As a quick aside, the victim also recognize the attacker, stating that she'd made his face in the clinic her recently divorced husband was the head of. Rather luckily, the longevity of this indoctrination scheme and the specific traumas required for the correct control being scarce lead to very few attacks and in fact, the eventual arrest of the lead doctor when one unfit patient reported his strange behavior. The Doctor was never seen again.
In a completely different strain of the story, an anarchy group devoted to the expression of violence as a pure human artistry began to gain prominence with famous incidents such as the Tuck Riot on 2012 and the SilverPeak massacre of 2014 gaining headlines such as 'Violence Devours The World With Fear!" and "Savages Among Us!" daily. In the fall of 2014, the group revealed itself, unsurprisingly, as the 'World Eaters' whose tenants of unadulterated brutality lacking any stigma of purpose drew more and more to its heel,in particular, young returning soldiers shaken by their time spent at war. With the voice of this group, the titular 'Kingston', claiming a remorseless way of indulging in the violent catharsis, participants were told to provide detailed medical records and to await further instructions. With several of the SYNTH program's patients in the rankings, orders were sent out to sixteen of the eighteen thousand applicants to purchase dark clothes that covered the face, a self-defense weapon light enough to use quickly but deadly enough to kill even quicker, a long-range transmitter modifier for their mobile phones and the loudest head phones they could.
And so we arrive at the events of SYNTH, the OTS begins one late night during the death of the summer, a young gang of teenagers lounge lazily around their parents house, drinking and wrapped up in the dramas of adolescence. Alex, the eldest of the group, struggles to enjoy the evening however with the stress of the next university year looming and an ever growing pile of student debts to be reconciled. With the group weary from the fatigue of youth, a car pulls onto the driveway, a man gets out dressed head to toe in black with nothing but his silver goggles and claw hammer distinguishable. Cutting through the air can be made out the chimes of something dreadful, something loud and blazing, electronic music thumping excessively as a muffled voice reads aloud"
"13, 27, 05, 05, 40, 91, 40, 77, 28, 12, 02, 28, 08 - SYNTH"
In a completely different strain of the story, an anarchy group devoted to the expression of violence as a pure human artistry began to gain prominence with famous incidents such as the Tuck Riot on 2012 and the SilverPeak massacre of 2014 gaining headlines such as 'Violence Devours The World With Fear!" and "Savages Among Us!" daily. In the fall of 2014, the group revealed itself, unsurprisingly, as the 'World Eaters' whose tenants of unadulterated brutality lacking any stigma of purpose drew more and more to its heel,in particular, young returning soldiers shaken by their time spent at war. With the voice of this group, the titular 'Kingston', claiming a remorseless way of indulging in the violent catharsis, participants were told to provide detailed medical records and to await further instructions. With several of the SYNTH program's patients in the rankings, orders were sent out to sixteen of the eighteen thousand applicants to purchase dark clothes that covered the face, a self-defense weapon light enough to use quickly but deadly enough to kill even quicker, a long-range transmitter modifier for their mobile phones and the loudest head phones they could.
And so we arrive at the events of SYNTH, the OTS begins one late night during the death of the summer, a young gang of teenagers lounge lazily around their parents house, drinking and wrapped up in the dramas of adolescence. Alex, the eldest of the group, struggles to enjoy the evening however with the stress of the next university year looming and an ever growing pile of student debts to be reconciled. With the group weary from the fatigue of youth, a car pulls onto the driveway, a man gets out dressed head to toe in black with nothing but his silver goggles and claw hammer distinguishable. Cutting through the air can be made out the chimes of something dreadful, something loud and blazing, electronic music thumping excessively as a muffled voice reads aloud"
"13, 27, 05, 05, 40, 91, 40, 77, 28, 12, 02, 28, 08 - SYNTH"