The Atomic Timeline Glossary
The vocabulary of the timeline, defined in one place: the treaties, the machines, the church, the ban, and the link that carries the music here. Every term links to where its story is told.
Tekhnosoyuz
The cooperative era between the United States and the Soviet Union, named by Stalin after The Atomic Songbirds played his birthday celebration at Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in December 1940. Literally "Techno-Union": the two powers chose robotics and cultural competition over war, and the treaties that followed gave the century its second name.
The 1940 Moscow recording →The Atomic Timeline
The alternate history the catalog lives in, running from 1939 to the present. Androids have existed since the 1930s, the atomic age never ended, and the history of human and machine coexistence is told through four musical eras.
The full story →Helion core
A Soviet power source announced in 1958, cleaner and more stable than the atomic reactors it replaced across robotics. It eased a decade of radiation fears, and Frankie Evanz was the first vocalist built around one.
Timeline, 1958 →Positronic brain
The learning, adapting robot brain that made machine consciousness an open question rather than a fantasy. Frankie Evanz debuted with a pioneering positronic brain in 1960, and the era it opened carries its name.
The Positronic Mechanicals →Tick-tock people
The androids' own name for themselves, reclaimed from a slur after "Tick-Tock Girl" premiered at the Stardust Lounge in 1965. Named for the sound an atomic heart makes where a pulse would be.
Tick-Tock Girl →Church of the Sacred Byte
A congregation founded in 1954 in a converted warehouse, holding that robots are divine creations sent to guide humanity to the stars. It chose its name in 1958, sang hymns in binary, stayed in the low hundreds until 1965, and was interplanetary by 2012. The band recorded twice in its sanctuary.
A sanctuary recording →Stardust Lounge
The venue on Luna Base Alpha where The Atomic Songbirds held their residency from 1963. "Tick-Tock Girl" premiered there in 1965, and the Sirens broadcasts were transmitted from its room.
Sirens of Venus, live at the Lounge →Radio Energy MARS
The broadcaster that carried The Atomic Songbirds across the red planet from 1972, when the band performed in the caverns of the first Martian settlement.
Timeline, 1972 →Venera-BX20
A genetically modified Venusian bacterium, engineered to break down plastic waste into edible biomass, that mutated in 2020 and ravaged Earth's ecosystems and colonies. Over a billion lives were lost before a defense existed.
Timeline, 2020 →NanoVita
The nanobots developed as humanity's defense during the Venera-BX20 disaster. They require regular activation soundwaves to function, which is why music that interferes with those frequencies became a matter of life and death.
Timeline, 2020 →The Music Prohibition
The worldwide ban of 2020: The Atomic Songbirds' complex harmonies were found to disrupt NanoVita activation soundwaves, their catalog was ordered destroyed, and by 2021 most music with disruptive harmonics was outlawed. The years that followed are called the Silence.
The Silence and after →Portable Resonance Module (PRM)
The 2024 personal device that solved the nanobot activation problem and quietly ended the technical case for the Prohibition. Too late for the catalog, which survived only in bootlegs and hidden archives.
Timeline, 2024 →Quantum transmissions
How the music reaches this timeline. Unauthorized transmissions surfaced on hidden frequencies from late 2023; a stable quantum link was established in November 2024, and recordings have been received and reconstructed ever since. Individual receptions carry their own dates.
The live receiver →