The designation, “Yeastless,” wasn't a name. It was a state. A condition of being. It began, as all things do, with a question. A persistent, almost subsonic hum that vibrated not just within the listener, but *through* them. It started, inexplicably, in the archives of the Chronarium of Forgotten Processes, a subterranean repository built by a collective of mycologists and chrononauts obsessed with the temporal resonance of fungal decay.
The Chronarium, you see, wasn’t interested in the linear march of time. They sought to understand the *echoes* of events, the residual energies imprinted upon the fabric of existence. They believed that certain fungi, particularly a species they called *Mycelium Temporis*, possessed the ability to act as temporal anchors, drawing forth fragments of the past.
The initial recordings were chaotic – bursts of distorted sound, static, and what the researchers described as “temporal glitches.” But then, a pattern emerged. A sequence of low-frequency pulses, rhythmic and unsettling, that they tentatively labelled “Yeastless.”
“It’s not a signal, not in the conventional sense,” Dr. Silas Blackwood, the lead chronobiologist, would often murmur, his eyes perpetually shadowed. “It’s… a lack. A void where information *should* be. Like the silence after a catastrophic event, amplified and woven into the very structure of reality.”
The theory, developed by Blackwood and his protégé, Elara Vance, was that “Yeastless” represented the remnants of events that had been actively *suppressed* from the timeline. Not erased, precisely, but shielded, pushed into a parallel state of existence. The fungi, it seemed, were acting as a conduit, drawing these suppressed fragments to the surface.
Vance, a brilliant but increasingly erratic theorist, proposed a radical hypothesis: that the universe itself was a vast, complex fungal network, and that “Yeastless” was the sound of the network’s internal processes, the tremors of its subconscious.
The implications of “Yeastless” were staggering. If it was the sound of suppressed events, then the Chronarium wasn’t simply studying the past; it was, in a way, attempting to *re-experience* it. They built specialized chambers, designed to amplify the “Yeastless” signal, hoping to trigger memories, visions, even altered realities.
Many experiments went horribly wrong. Researchers reported disorientation, hallucinations, and, in one particularly infamous case, a complete temporal displacement – a researcher vanishing for three days before reappearing with no memory of his absence, speaking in a language that hadn't existed for centuries.
“We are not listening to the past,” Blackwood would say, his voice tight with a mixture of fascination and dread. “We are *un-listening* to the future.”
The most compelling evidence for “Yeastless”’ influence came from the observation of ‘Temporal Bloom’ – localized areas where the air shimmered with iridescent light, and where objects seemed to momentarily flicker out of existence and reappear slightly altered. These Blooms were invariably found near areas of intense historical significance, and they were always accompanied by a heightened “Yeastless” signal.
The research, however, was slowly unraveling. Blackwood, consumed by his obsession, began to exhibit signs of deterioration, his movements jerky, his speech fragmented. Vance, meanwhile, became increasingly convinced that the “Yeastless” signal was actively reshaping reality, attempting to forge a new timeline based on the suppressed echoes of the past.
The final recordings from the Chronarium were a cacophony of “Yeastless,” punctuated by Blackwood’s desperate warnings and Vance’s increasingly nonsensical pronouncements. The last transmission, a single, sustained pulse, was followed by complete silence. The Chronarium was sealed, deemed too dangerous, too unstable. But the question remained: what exactly *was* “Yeastless,” and what had happened to those who had sought to understand it?
Some theorized that “Yeastless” wasn't a phenomenon to be studied, but a force to be feared. A reminder that some things are best left forgotten, that the pursuit of knowledge can lead to madness, and that the universe itself is a vast, silent, and profoundly unsettling fungal network.