Mars plays with the idea of telepathy as an ancient universal language like in the story of the Tower of Babel where all the people of the world spoke one language. Why couldn't that language have been telepathy? There have been many studies that show there is some truth in the idea, especially between twins and people in certain highly charged situations. Like the one we're in now.
Every semester, Mars and each of his housemates pitch a project to take on as a team and every semester Mars' ideas get shot down. But, not this time. He has a design for a machine that can make a person telepathic and he has a working proof of concept. The team builds the machine and calls it T.I.N.A. which stands for Telepathic Induction through Neurological Amplification. After a few near disastrous attempts, they finally get it working, but one of the teammates has his own plans for the machine.
This teammate, Qaseem, was used to having his projects chosen and he wasn't too happy when Mars' project was picked over his. Qaseem's project was to achieve world peace by creating a translation machine that works in real time. The idea being that people would find more things in common with each other than differences if they could just speak to each other without language barriers. Qaseem alters Mars' machine and the rest of the world has no choice, but to follow his idea of world peace.
About
The Tuning is the story of Mars, short for Marshall, a shy but bright engineering student, who wants to finally show his teammates his scientific ingenuity by designing a machine that gives a person the ability to read the mind of another. But, when one of his teammates alters the machine so they can not only read the minds of the entire world, but control them, Mars must give up everything he loves in life to put right what his machine has put wrong.