The Thanatoid awakening is an unprecedented collective return to wakefulness in the area around Shade Creek and the Thanatoid Village. Set in motion by the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, it shifts the Thanatoids from solitary, troubled remembrance toward recognition of one another, then sends Takeshi Fumimota, DL, and Prairie toward an appeal carried over the radio.

Background and Mechanism

The morning is exceptional even in a region accustomed to strange dawns: the Thanatoids have slept through the night. Their waking is prepared by a musical arrangement distributed across ordinary devices. Watches, clocks, and personal computers begin playing the opening of Wachet Auf together, in harmony.

The sound has a hidden commercial history. Its percussion-oriented transcription had been recorded on sound chips released to the market during obscure trade disputes that Takeshi had himself fomented, under an arrangement with the equivocal import-export company Tokkata & Fuji. The devices’ synchronized music thus brings an earlier scheme into a new and unanticipated role: a mechanism for waking the Thanatoids.

The Collective Awakening

The music is unlike ordinary electronic sound to the Thanatoids. It carries something their troubled souls can remember. They blink, roll their eyes, and—perhaps for the first time—try to meet one another’s gaze. The change is collective and without precedent, described as resembling the sudden end of a legal dispute that had dragged on for generations. The comparison gives the awakening the force of a release from a condition so prolonged that it had come to seem permanent.

The passage connects this return to awareness with memory: a Thanatoid is figured as a remnant of remembrance, yet the remembered music briefly makes even the most melancholy among them believe in resurrection. The event is not simply the end of sleep. It brings the possibility of recognition between beings who had remained enclosed in their own troubled consciousness.

The Radio Appeal

After the awakening, the signal spreading through the air is not the familiar Thanatoid call but a long, desolate howl, repeated again and again. It travels through dark valleys, chases storms, and intrudes on sensors in the countryside below. Takeshi and DL cannot ignore it. They tune in to Radio Thanatoide, broadcasting on the unusual band from 6,200 to 7,000 kilohertz, and let Prairie hear the transmission.

Prairie asks what they intend to do. DL says they must answer the appeal and asks whether she will go with them. The scene therefore turns the mass awakening into a summons: its immediate consequence is not a settled explanation of the howl, but a decision by Takeshi and DL to respond, with Prairie invited to join them.