Z-2 - "The Audio Tape"

Category: Z

Current Attitude: Docile

Containment Procedure:

• Z-2 should be kept in a room no bigger than 3m x 3m x 3m.
• When being transported, Z-2 should be kept in an unmarked and unlabelled cassette case.
  • Under no circumstances should the cassette case be labelled with anything other than “Z-2”.
• Z-2 may be played in any Cassette Player without incident (Z-3 is preferable but not required) but must be removed from the Cassette Player immediately after playing.
  • Under no circumstances should Z-2 be fast-forwarded, rewound, or recorded onto.
• Do not leave Z-2 in a Cassette Player unattended: whether playing or otherwise.

Description:

• Z-2 is an analog magnetic tape 1/8th inch compact cassette tape measuring 10.2 cm × 6.35 cm × 1.27 cm.
• While cassette tapes store a maximum of 60 minutes of audio per side, Z-2 has been observed to hold considerably more: no limit to Z-2's storage capabilities have been noted.
• The audio of Z-2 is a monotone voice reciting a string of numbers.
  • Research into the numbers is being conducted by [DEPARTMENT] and is [CLASSIFIED].

Records of Z-2's appearance are confused at best since at the point it entered the Foundation's collection the invention of plastic – let alone magnetic tape – was over half a century away. Foundation staff therefore had multiple reasons to believe Z-2 was a powerful anomaly, not least because of its appearance alongside Z-3 - The Tape Player which predated the invention of the gramophone by over 30 years and functioned without any obvious power source.

When investigators eventually determined that they should place Z-2 into Z-3 and press the triangular button down, they were shocked to hear a voice reciting a series of numbers (and assumed that this was the anomalous behaviour). Much to the chagrin of modern Z-2 researchers and numerologists, it took a full three minutes of listening to numbers before the 19th Century investigators determined that the numbers were not looping and began recording them. The exact nature of the numbers is still an ongoing research point.

Despite documents confirming that investigators did work out the function of the square button, records of [INCIDENT] in which [MULTIPLE SUDDEN UNEXPECTED RETIREMENTS] occurred suggest that it was left running and unattended. The room in which this occurred was unfortunately destroyed in [SEPARATE INCIDENT] meaning that the numbers scrawled on the walls are no longer recorded – again, frustrating modern numerologists.

Once it was determined that Z-2 should not be left unattended (nor rewound) (nor fast-forwarded) (nor recorded onto), Z-2 was determined to be sufficiently harmless and of insufficient motivation to be classified as anything other than a Z-Category anomaly and it and its number sequence were consigned to the interest of staff mathematicians whose [CLASSIFIED] work has [CONTINUED].

What is of more interest to investigators is the fact that an artefact that by all accounts should not have existed until the late 20th Century appeared over 100 years prior. Multiple theories on [TEMPORAL INTRIGUES] have been tested and the general consensus of the Foundation is that it must somehow have travelled through time, yet the lack of maker's marks or other indicators of age on Z-2 have made it difficult to pin down.

So far, Z-2 and Z-3 have yet to disappear from the Foundation, meaning that [TEMPORAL BOOTSTRAP THEORY] remains intact.