John lived in a world with no sound.

This is not to say that John was deaf—for he certainly was not—nor that there was no sound in his world at all; there simply was no natural sound. Every step you took would be but a feather on the pavement, and those bellowing from the depths of their lungs could only be seen with their mouths agape, not making a squeak. To put it briefly, it was as though the world had gone deaf, and life passed by like a silent film, but everyone knew this was not the case.

Sound had existed in the days gone past, back when scientists confused it for the movements of air particles that reverberated off the eardrum to send signals to the brain, and although this might sound silly to us now, they really cannot be blamed, for it was really all they could have known with their technology at the time. As such, convinced that sound was a form of energy, and not a finite resource, partnered with their ‘Laws of Thermodynamics’—aptly-named, as from their inception laws were made to be broken—little by little people consumed all the sound in the world. Till one day, everyone woke up in the morning, put their kettle on to boil, and when they didn’t hear it whistling, noticed that all the sound was gone.

It took some time for science to see what had happened. But eventually, scientists noticed that the little differences in calculations they had initially dismissed in their experiments as ‘random noise’ were in fact an imbalance in the utility of their equipment, which naturally produced sound, and hence distorted the world around them, as the sound, which lies at the centre of every electron, escaped and flew by, before disappearing forever.

Interestingly enough, it was humankind’s fault that all the sound had gone. All other living things, including plants and just about everything else, knew perfectly well that sound was finite, and only used it when necessary. At the rate sound was being used by the animals and plants, and all other living things, it would have lasted till the end of the universe. Humans, who were apparently the only ones that didn’t know this, acted completely ignorant to this fact, and used sound liberally and freely, as if it would never run out.

They would incessantly speak, and always hear. Hearing was the worst of these two, since it was constant, and it absorbed sound that would otherwise stay in the world around them. It would have been understandable if the humans, at least, always needed the sound—needed to speak and listen—but this was not the case. They would oftentimes speak complete nonsense, and it was a rarity that you would get a sensible word out of them. They talked for pleasure, and listened for pleasure too; the fools. They would produce an odd invention, called ‘music,’ and some would cycle through it almost without stopping. To every other living being, this music was but another cluster of noise, indistinguishable from any other cluster of noise one might hear, like rustling leaves or barking dogs, but if you asked the humans, they would indubitably claim that one sound, however arbitrary, was to them music, and protest that the other sound was not. Worse yet, if the same sounds were played to one human, as were played to another, at odd times you would not only get a different opinion as to what that sound was, but you would also get testimonies that the sound—the same sound—was music to one, and filth to another, further complicating the matter of these clusters of noise begin something they aren’t, except for when they are, when, to anything else, they never really were.

But enough about that, and back to John, who never knew a world of natural sound, hearing about it—pardon the expression—only from history books, that were only written after its absence, since, as has already been told, humans had taken it for granted before, and saw no need in specifying its presence. John was only born after all the sound was gone, and to him, unlike all his elders, who reminisced about their confusing music, it was completely natural that there was no sound in their world, and that signing was the accepted means of communication.

Sound—to John’s consciousness at least—was only a luxury, something you could delight yourself with when you had the time and means to afford it. For it is absolutely true, no doubt, that despite an absence of natural sound, science had struggled to overcome its past shortcomings, and although it would never restore natural sound to the world as it had existed in the past, it succeeded in creating something different—an artificial sound, that, in the spirit of the bestial wisdom that preceded their human foolishness, was only used when absolutely necessary, as it was quite scarce and difficult to produce.

I am unable to detail to you how this artificial sound was made, but John would, as for three years now he had been working for AudiCo™, in a position that was soon destined for a promotion; the best I can say, is that for whatever reason, these sounds were held and stored in glass vials, such as the ones customary to use in scientific experiments, and purportedly these vials, though small, would contain high concentrations of sound that were diffused gradually over time, to improve efficiency—everything else is a mystery to me; back to John. 

John was an ardent worker, always outdoing his peers and, indeed, himself. He had started in the company only a short time ago, initially only as a sound sampler and mixer, but in that short span of time demonstrated that he was more than capable of a higher position. He quickly became one of the floor scientists, a transition easy for him not only because he was already well-acquainted with all the many scientists in the company, but also because he had already read all there was to read about the newest developments in sound theory, meaning that when he eventually found himself in the bright-green coat that all the floor staff had to wear—on which sound residue was most easily seen, especially the toxic kind—he was as home, coming in to another day of a job he’d been working in for months, if not years.

John was fascinated by sound. Well, let me correct myself: John was fascinated by the intricate process by which sound was created, and the small shifts in nuance he had to manage and keep under his control in order to produce a most satisfactory product; a process and nuances I am, as already mentioned, unable to describe, though John’s hands would have no issue. It was a line of work he had found himself in by accident, drifting, as one tends to drift, in his studies of biology onto the studies of the mind, then of the mind’s connection to hearing, and then inevitably to the connection between hearing and sound. Here he stayed, and no longer wandered, and progressed to become more and more infatuated with the subject matter. He’d open a sound theory book, and by the time he’d close it, the clock hand would have moved by a few hours, or the sky would bear a much darker hue than when he started; or a much brighter one, depending on when he opened the book. His interests were further magnified by his connections to school acquaintances, that soon became close friends, and who also found a passion for sound theory. They would digress over the topic for hours, always finding something new to say and never struggling through void in their conversations. The friends passed time, studied and graduated together, and when the search for work came, this too they did by each other’s sides. It was only once the work came, that the friends’ paths were forced apart, and while contact was still maintained between all of them and they never forgot one another, none of them ended up working with John, who entered AudiCo™ a lone wolf.

What every outward appearance will tell you is that John was a most ambitious sound theorist, who had many great sparks of inspiration that would guide his research and drive him forward. Somewhere in the depth of John’s mind, was one such ambition, and it was the underlying foundation of all his other goals. It was an egalitarian target, a consequence of his genuine desire for people of all sorts to have access to sound and to enjoy it as much as he enjoyed making it. You see, what I have written before about humans only using the sound when necessary was partly true, but as with every human matter, prudence requires constant scrutiny. The fact of the matter was that the rich and privileged, who never knew poverty or its concept, had access to all sorts of sounds and—once more, the confusing term—music, that no one of the middle class could ever dream of hearing. The only sound the poor, or even non-rich—since one does not imply the other—would ever hear were, in fact, screams. Indeed, the principal focus of AudiCo™ and other sound manufacturers, their primary goal, was to produce warning sounds, a signal that, unlike light, could both permeate and overcome surfaces which would obstruct lines of sight of a tragedy taking place. Men and women alike kept with them what was colloquially called a ‘scream in a bottle,’ though officially it was sound SA130, -M or -F depending on the sex of the screaming voice. This device, which each person got designated to their sex, consisted of a small red plastic container, with a transparent cap that covered a thumb-sized red button on top. When the button was pressed, it would release a scream, a hellish howl of demonic proportions, of a magnitude that would often deafen those closes to its release; enhanced further by the sparsity with which most heard sound; and it served to alert—that’s what the A in the name stood for—everyone nearby to an emergency occurring, and hopefully stun the assailant, if there was one, for a short moment, giving the victim a chance to escape, should they not themselves be stunned by the overpowering screech. It can be, and has been, speculated where AudiCo™, or other unnamed sound manufacturers, who were many, had gotten the sound of such a scream, impregnated with intolerable pain and suffering; a scream that seemed not to beg its neighbour for assistance, but was rather directed towards deity, to bring an end to the suffering the faceless bearer was enduring. The explanation was a difficult one to give to the general public, who understood just about as much regarding sound theory as they did anything else, but John knew it well, and tried his best to explain as gently as possible to those who asked. The short answer was, that most of the scream came from manual tinkering by the most pronounced psychologists and sound theorists in their respective fields, who authored the sound in a manner that ought to evoke immediate action from those that heard it. However, the original sound did come from an old audio recording, and he would not divulge any more than that.

In his first position in AudiCo™, John was mostly occupied with the testing of various sounds and their effects on the environment, a role that was very simply known as a sound tester. What was unknown to scientists of the audial world—this was the term coined to differentiate between the world with natural sound, and the world they lived in now, the post-audial world—was that grass, shrubs, trees, and all plants alike could hear and respond to sound, and they too were more efficient with managing sound than the humans were—‘We were beaten by grass,’ were the words of the scientist who discovered this. As such, once all the sound disappeared, all dependents on its presence were left peckish, then hungry, then eventually starving for it, not knowing how to compose themselves in its absence. Flowers would wilt; trees would lose all their leaves and wither; and strangely enough carrots would grow twice as quickly, but soon they realised that the absence of sound was a lamentable matter, and they too slowed down below their normal pace. It was the duty of science, then, to try to compensate for this robbery of the world, and once sound theory was developed enough to allow for mass production, scientists were employed to learn what they could about plants and their responses to sound, to hopefully restore the world of agriculture from before, and perhaps even improve it, though that was more of a dream than a destination. John was, initially—in his first position—one of these scientists, and in this field he made no small discoveries. It was John who discovered that, contradictory to the beliefs of the audial world, it was not water, but rather the sound of rain, that caused plants to grow faster. Once a sustainable formula was developed for the mimicry of raindrops falling on wet soil—a sound called SA121, the A this time standing for agriculture, to no little confusion of everyone but the scientists that named it—plant production skyrocketed, and the culinary world was mostly restored to its former glory. This may seem revolutionary, and it was, but it was actually also John who later outdid himself. For it was also John who discovered that more effective than any sounds of rain on any surface on the growth rates of plants, were the romantic melodies of 6ix9ine and Death Grips, both audial world composers. To these tunes, the plants would dance and bop, and before they knew it, they were ready to be harvested, since time passes much faster when you’re having fun.

These discoveries, and many more minor ones—though these were the primary ones—garnered John recognition across the entirety of AudiCo™, that was at the time in its relative infancy, having branched from a larger, broader firm, that had decided the next, most natural step from shoemaking was the production of sound. He was lauded, praised, and smothered in adulations, and for weeks his name was quietly signed out of lines of sight of him and other workers; an attempt to mime what in the audial world were whispers and gossip, though it must be admitted not without a loss of much intimacy and charm. John was riding high for these few weeks, and eventually the message was signed to the top of the food chain that John was making such monumental strides in the field of sound theory in so low a position. In response to this, the CEO of AudiCo™ of the time, a deranged madman who knew little of sense, chose to promote his worker based on the merits of his work, forgetting completely to involve any politics, briberies, nepotisms, or anything of the sort, in the sight of progress, he paid no regard to the pennies it would cost the company on a macro scale. As such, John was promoted, and quickly found himself in the position he is at now, and is already headed for another promotion above this one. Naturally, the CEO was quickly usurped by other board members who would not tolerate any pennies slipping through the cracks—if they were to lose money, they were going to lose it all and lose it quickly, not at a paltry rate as was giving raises and promotions to workers. As a result, John was quickly convinced that the higher pay of his new position was but an accounting error, and that it would not be continuing into the future—an explanation which John, too scared to contest in light of his new place in the company, that could be swept from under his feet just as swiftly as it was given, accepted without any fight, gladly taking on the greater workload for lower pay—his salary from before the promotion had also been an accounting error, a large one at that, and was now being rectified accordingly.

But despite what a sane person might feel, John was not that concerned with the pay of his new position. From here, he would have access to more research, more tools, more like-minded sound theory enthusiasts who wanted to progress and change the world just like he did. He had already known them, and they had already known him, from the aforementioned gossip, but working alongside them was another matter altogether, and excitement was an understatement for John’s state of mind. Adorned in his bright-green lab coat, he would march the halls of the labs with his chin high and chest inflated with pride, passing by containment units for hundreds of different sounds, as well as the machines that were used to produce them. The machines were nicknamed ‘the ones that talk out of their ass,’ or asstalkers for short, supposedly after a similar audial phenomenon used to describe one of the most reliable sources of excess and useless sound ever known to time. Unlike these audial asstalkers, however, these machines were capable of producing any kind of sound, granted that its formula was known, and to the greatest degree of accuracy and precision. These machines would breed the sweet melodious chirping of birds in spring; the most blessed words of song that resonated the heartstrings; even the sounds of tears of joy of a mother who had not seen her son in over twenty years, and was now holding him tightly in her embrace. But above all else, they mostly produced screams, as these were in the highest demand at all times. John knew how to operate these machines well, even though he had never had the chance to see one beforehand in person, and wielded the knowledge he had learned from books as though it were years of manual practice. He even corrected and helped some of the scientists that were already working there, telling them it was not that button, but the other one, and that that dial shouldn’t be turned up so high because of X, Y and Z—once again, I know little in the way of sound theory, but John explained it well—and it can be assumed that if his reputation had not preceded him by milestones already, and if he hadn’t already been acquainted with the scientists he was helping, he would quickly have found himself in a position of infamy, and not fame, such as he was celebrating now.

Time passed within an instant, saving its lengthier portions for times of suffering, and before John could look around him twice, he had already been two years in his new position, working around the same enthusiastic people for the same lousy pay. In this span of time, he managed to outdo his outdoings, further revolutionising the employment of sound not only in agriculture, but also in the management of natural phenomena, which too relied on the finite resource the clumsy humans had all but wiped from existence completely. It was only the constant effort of people like John that kept hope and the memory of sound alive, and prevented the cementation of the distinction between the audial and postaudial worlds for all of eternity; at least that was the hope. These natural phenomena were those we once again took for granted every day, and whose connection to sound we once more only acknowledged far past the appropriate time. I will not begin to denumerate the entire list of anomalies that were witnessed after a year in the postaudial era, because that would go on and on, consuming paper I don’t have and ink I cannot afford, but the most significant ones can still have their place here, if only to help accentuate the grandiosity of just how meaningful a scientist John was.

The first of these anomalies, that have all been linked to the absence of sound and have since been helped to be resolved by John and his team of scientists, happened some thirty years after the quiet point, or the exact moment that sound ran out completely, and people’s kettles went mute. It was approximately a week into John’s new position at AudiCo™ that it was brought to the scientists’ attention, that the sun was appearing to fade. ‘Fade? What do you mean, fade?’ asked one of these scientists, about whom all I know is that he wasn’t John, because John knew immediately what this imminently threatened. The sun was running out of energy much faster than any audial science could have calculated, and it was immediately obvious to John, who, like any good scientist, always saw himself at the centre of the world, that this drop off in energy was caused by nothing other than the absence of sound. Without a moment’s hesitation, he informed everyone else of his conclusion, and without any more sensible scrutiny or investigation, everyone chose to dedicate all their time and resources to producing a sound-based solution, lest they disagree with the lauded scientist. 

Fortunately for them, they were at least partly correct. The true reason for the sun’s sudden loss of energy, was the unexpected distancing of itself from another star that it was quantumly linked to—a star that, without any word or prior indication, besides perhaps a general sentiment of indifference that the sun had failed to notice, suddenly quantumly linked itself with another star—a much larger, powerful star, that was closer to it—and cut off all contact with the sun, with the same indifference that the sun had failed to notice beforehand. This departure elicited an inexplicable chain reaction within the sun’s hydrogen atoms, which all lost their routine and synergy with the quantum cut-off, and, unsure how to behave normal afterwards, started behaving completely abnormal, going absolutely crazy and drifting off into space, before disappearing entirely into oblivion. The sun hence lost a lot of its energy, and this was the true cause of its fading. But the pompous human scientists, who once again failed to learn anything from their past mistakes and succeeded in superseding every other living thing in both stupidity and arrogance, confused the sun’s reaction as a response to what they themselves incurred. The fact of the matter was that they were in fact completely uninvolved, as is most often the case.

Within a few days—three to four at most—a sound was developed that, if their calculations were correct—and they surely were; John calculated them himself—would at an instant indemnify this energy drop-off, and return activity to standard levels. And so, rocket with a powerful speaker was sent into space—audial scientists, at one point in their existence, erroneously concluded that sound could not travel in the vacuum of space, and to no one’s surprise they were completely wrong. The fact of the matter was that, although no scientist or devices located between two points in space could ever hear or detect sound moving from one point to another, the sound was still there, gravitated to bodies of larger mass, such as the sun or, most often, the Earth. There the sound would descend at a rapid rate, and a poor farmer living in the outlands of Mongolia would hear it (this is, for reasons still unexplained, where all the sounds from space would end up. The marvels of our world.) and, usually frightened and confused by the whispers of Hung Up or Dancing Queen, would speak of spirits and ghosts in the haunted region, which quickly became sacred to the religion that spawned from those who experienced these explicably inexplicable sounds.

But more to the point: a rocket was sent out into space, destined for the sun, equipped with powerful speakers that would play the mending melody; the reparative rhapsody; the healing harmony, and in what was estimated to be three days, they would see the positive impact on the sun, so atrophied in its depression. The three days passed in stress and anxiety for everyone but John, whose ego had by now expanded to unhealthy proportions and was only growing, and who dismissed the possibility that his theory could ever fail. A tracker was mounted on the rocket, and its slow progress was traced carefully, pixel by pixel, by all those who had a screen at hand. The news of the fading sun had spread quickly to each corner of the globe, and it was well understood, even by lay people like myself, what the consequences of this rocket launch were. The days were getting colder and darker, and the atmosphere everywhere on the planet was becoming gloomy and terrifying. Some had already hastened to abandon all hope and announce this as the apocalypse, while others took the opportunity to clear their bucket lists of mass larceny and grand arson, before it was too late. People were killed, lives were ruined, and those that could not accept the end of the world as it was being given to them refused to lose hope, almost praying to the little dot of a rocket on their tracking cams to move faster, and to restore the world that faded before their eyes.

At last, after seventy two hours of terror and dread, uncertainty and anticipation, violent outburst and silent prayer, the blip of a rocket disappeared from the tracking devices, and all breathing was suspended at once. All eyes darted up to the sky, where the ball of flaming gas slowly shifted in its course, rolling like a snowball on bright blue wet ground. Seconds, minutes, and hours passed; and with the sun remaining seemingly unaltered by the rocket launch, hearts began to sink. But it was all well, rest assured, as flicking on the news broadcast would soon confirm.

‘Today, on the — of —, —, people all around the globe were witness to a rocket launch meant to save the collapsing sun, and rescue humanity from a perilous, icy death. After hours of anticipation and waiting for a response, the world’s leading sound scientists have confirmed that the rocket launch was a success, and though it will take some days to return to past normalcy, we will soon be once again seeing the strong, healthy sun we all know and love. Rejoice everyone, rejoice! and since the sun will be returning to its past potency, we don’t want to be getting any new sunburns to ruin plentiful hours of playing and sunbathing in the sun. For this, we have the perfect solution: AudiCo™ sunscreen will help keep your skin…’ and at this point you would turn the broadcast off, as even the signing interpreter and closed captions seemed to show little interest in what was being advertised.

But the news was good, great, amazing even, and sunken hearts rose once more, and sighs of relief were released from taut lungs. Society was rebuilt, and those that practised armageddon were duly persecuted and punished; but we will not be detailing that here, as here we are speaking of John’s successes, and that was not one of them.

The melody John helped compose, the one responsible for the stabilisation of the solar star, did not bring back the quantum link that once motivated the hydrogen atoms into action; but it provided something different: something new. Amid the careful cords of John’s solar symphony, rested potent bursts and jolts of energy that, combined with correct timing and circumstance, assisted in bringing the sun into a new, healthier course of optimism and positivity, and it was this optimistic and positive energy that revitalised what was otherwise headed for a steadfast doom. This is a lay explanation; once again, my lack of understanding restricts the clarity of my communication. If only it was John explaining these intricacies that elude me, and not my philistine pen. Yes: if only.

But this was only one of the magnificent discoveries and adventures that John encountered in his new position. I know what you must be thinking: ‘There’s more that can be done beyond saving the solar star? Something more, something somehow greater than the salvation of earth, and all those, both good and evil, that lived on it? Could there possibly be something that supersedes such excellence?’ And indeed, I assure you, there is such a thing; and what other thing could it possibly be, if not the salvation of the whole universe itself?

I am perhaps guilty of omitting certain vital components and characteristics of the post-audial world, and for this reason it can be pressed against me that I am taking the following seemingly out of the blue, and without sufficient context; but I believe I have good reason for doing this. You see, the events that followed not only the disappearance of sound from the universe, and later the fading of the sun at the centre of our solar system, did not go down as quietly—once more, pardon the expression—and as desolately as we would have hoped. No, instead the catastrophic failures of humanity—failures worthy of distinction between two points in time: those before and those after the failure—were being brought to the attention of all life in the universe, which, upon losing its most practical and most useful sense of sound, immediately started blaming the foolish humans for another travesty once again (the other travesties we are guilty of apparently only happen in the future—a time which, once again, only humans have been left out of the loop on, with understanding of it only eluding us, and no other living thing—and as such I am unable to explain our mishaps that have not yet happened. I do, however, know enough about them to know that I will not live to actively contribute to them and, as a result, at least to my conscious mind, they are not my issue). Those that cursed humans the most were of course those that had cursed them from their departure in evolution from the AlalaIalalapacs, the beginning of human existence as we know it. To name names, these were the , whose name cannot be successfully transcribed into anything written because they communicate in ultraviolet sound—yes, even light is intrinsically linked to sound, but; and this is somewhat embarrassing to admit this; even John did not fully grasp the connection between the two, and me attempting to do so would be a mockery of him, and the entirety of sound science, so I will not even try. Their ultraviolet sound was compressed, and by some mathematical magic on the part of the sound scientists, mapped to the image you see before you here . More accurately, the image has been greatly scaled down from its original size, which would have just been able to fit into our galaxy with careful finessing of its edges and points, however as the pages I am working with are rather limited in size of their area and do not approach in magnitude the proportions of the Milkyway, my hand is twisted, and I am obliged to scale the original image down in order to fit it on the page, and even the line, and so is what we get, though we are careful not to forget the original proportions of the glyph and that this is only a minimisation of the otherwise grandiose symbol.

But back to reality. The were simply outraged that the humans could impact existence on such magnificent proportions, and for the first time in their infinite history, they regretted moulding them from the AlalaIalalapacs—which were now extinct and had never been such a nuisance as these bipedal disimprovements—and as their vision was not restricted to only the moment, as is our own, they knew further obstacles would arise down the line as a result of these vermin, and they felt even angrier still for lacking the practical foresight that they undoubtedly had to avoid such unnecessary troubles in the first place. These were, after all, the same that created the AlalaIalalapacs the humans were made from, but at least with those they had enough foreplanning to give them a name of a length that would precisely prolong their existence to the point necessary for their ultimate termination, as with their extratemporal vision they knew when and how this would come and they observed even the minutest details to make sure that AlalaIalalapacs used the limited time they were allotted to say exactly everything they wanted to say, and nothing more and nothing less. And this worked out perfectly, and when the AlalaIalalapacs’ end eventually came, everything had gone exactly to plan, and the AlalaIalalapacs had left no stone unturned and no stones upturned too many, and they passed in a contented existence, so that when they were being evolved into the humans they had absolutely no objections and they embraced their fate welcomingly and with open arms. However, when it came to the evolution itself, whose genetic foundations should have drawn on the very best of their ancestors’ traits and characteristics, the took a lacklustre approach and, fuelled by the delusion of grandeur derived from their successes with the AlalaIalalapacs, managed to leave out all vital components of planning and sense from the humans’ structure, and instead imbued them with that very same delusion, that drove the to this error in the first place, and which has survived as a central part of the human psyche to this day.

A natural response, one might think, would be simply to kill off all the humans, and be content with all other life in the universe, which was understandably far more interesting and far less disastrous. The humans were, after all, only a speck in the vast cosmos, and their disappearance would leave initially little, and eventually no impact on any universal plane that might utter the slightest significance. The issue with this solution was, however, that although the humans were insignificant on a broader, more nihilistic scale, their annihilation would lead to far more disastrous consequences down the line, especially for the that had created them. The had, as has been mentioned several times already, access to visions of the future—or sounds or tastes, something like that; I’m not enlightened enough to understand the workings of their alien brains—and it was through this access that they could foresee the consequences of various actions, and their impacts on the parties involved. In all outcomes where the humans were eradicated, not only the but also almost all other life in the universe would suffer in one way or another, not to mention how upset the humans would be to stop existing, though this apparent significance should serve to boost their human egos somewhat, which is a direct method to lifting all humans’ spirits. 

Beyond the direct consequences of human genocide, there remained the whole reason humans existed in the first place, and the nature of the ‘s reliance on their continued existence. You see, humans had been created at some point in time—maybe even in the future, but the that started explaining this to me lost my attention very quickly—and their creation was the solution to a problem; a dilemma that faced the for years—or was it seconds? these do surely have a perverted notion of time—and that was the issue of their incessant requirement of sustenance, which was apparently absent in all other forms of life in the universe. Initially, the would travel the universe looking through galaxies, solar systems, apalatalols—with this again. I will from now on deviate my explanations from those given to me by the whom I asked about this matter. An apalatalol is apparently a kind of galaxy, kind of star, that exists only between two separate points in time and only if you move quickly enough between them. These apalatalols can supposedly house universes of their own if they are large enough, but topics such as these and other matters I have discussed before are so beyond my own comprehension that my mind hurts when anticipating thinking about them. Know that from now on I will no longer mention these untouchable concepts, but that there still remains plenty about the universe that we can’t hope to understand.

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, the required sustenance, and they travelled to all sorts of places, always looking for the most unconventional means of sustenance possible. Well, unconventional at least in a human sense. You see, the never killed or ate for food; that was not their source of energy, and it is quite atypical that life in the universe needs energy at all, as most beings do just fine without it, but unfortunately the were burdened by just this requirement, and it was the source of their nomadic ways. The list of potential energy sources for the   went on and on, limited effectively only by my own creativity, it would seem. In time, they found that the most effective means of all—the one that not only provided the greatest supply of energy, but which was most easily and most readily available, was actually the observations of movements; well, there as one method that provided far more energy, but it was much less sustainable and required—no, I promised to leave the remaining matters to themselves, and we will pretend the observation of movements was their last and only resort. But what does it mean, this observation of movements? How can simply looking at something change its position in space and time generate any energy at all? Well—and this is certainly a theme at this point—a concrete and concise answer to this I am unable to provide, however unlike all other accounts of my limited comprehension, here I might have a human comparison I believe some might be able to relate to. It is something like that feeling, when a man has his gaze fixed on a woman, and he is observing her intently. The more the woman moves, the more the man feels a spark flicker inside him, and if a sufficient amount of the woman’s skin is visible, that spark can mount to an ambition to demolish nations and wrestle mountains, an energy the could only dream of feeling. This is how I see it, but supposedly the acquisition of energy by the was not as demanding as that of men, and it would be just about enough for a to observe a rock being thrown across a field for them to feel their energy increase, though it must be said this is somehow the case for certain men, too. In any case, once we accept that the absolutely needed to witness movement, we can better understand their expansive search for any and all forms of it everywhere across the universe. As they travelled, they too moved, however this was greatly insufficient to fill the aqol—no no no, we are calling them stomachs—to fill the stomachs of all the and a greater, more sustainable source would have to be found if they didn’t wish to live their infinite existence with rumbling tummies. So they travelled and wandered till such a source was found, often a planet inhabited by a multitude of species or even sometimes a galaxy, should the many stars within it be moving quickly enough. But no matter what source they found, no matter the species, no matter the planet, no matter the star and no matter the galaxy, it was always finite, it always ran out, and this was certainly insufficient for an eternal existence like the one the endured. Their endless search for energy could only be sustained for so long, and so from the lazy minds of the some stroke of genius inspiration would be needed to reform the how they lived. Let me digress briefly to elucidate on something I have been inferring for some paragraphs, and which I myself was confused by until I inevitably asked the I have been hitherto consulting on all matters pertaining to this story. What I understood earlier and described as a need of the I have come to learn has less to do with survival of the body, as we humans see it, and more with the survival of the mind, as the body never withers, and the only true ‘death’ they can experience is the collapse into insanity: a collapse that can apparently be warded off with enough movement. Now we can return to the absurdity of the whole ordeal; fortunately for them—perhaps fortunately isn’t the right word; they live forever, after all, it was bound to happen eventually—such an ingenious thinker, blessed with ideas seemingly from the tendrils of Mother Universe herself, was born one day, and it’s thanks to him all the are not in a perpetual cycle of immortal madness. Because I have already resigned to the masculine pronoun for this individual, though pronouns makes little sense in the case of the who are simultaneously singular and plural, masculine, feminine, and nothing at all, all at once, and on account of his being lauded by all the for his fantastic discoveries in a time of dire need, I will call this particular the John . This is somewhat disrespectful of me, I must admit, since John really had absolutely nothing to do with the discoveries of John and the have already been described for their distaste towards humans, but as it is custom for humans to associate all greatness with themselves and those close to them, it is only fitting that I carry on the custom, no matter whose feelings are hurt; and it’s not like the can stop me either, what with their deadly allergy to ink and all that—deadly in the sense of a threat to their sanity, not their hearts (of which each have a negative quantity, somehow?) and it can be assured that they would still reach the end of time no matter how much ink they were exposed to.

In any case, the genius idea that dawned on their hero, John was that hunting in the fashion they were doing was absolutely unnecessary, and all things considered inefficient—and in fact many, if not most, of their troubles—found source in their nomadic lifestyle, outside of which they could live quite serenely. Should they only find, somehow, a planet or galaxy that did not run dead within only a few million years, all their troubles would disappear, and they could transpire the rest of existence harmoniously and with peace of satiated, sane minds.

The issue with such a plan, of course, was—as has already been mentioned—that in aeons of searching no planet or galaxy had been found to exist that would provide the with a sustainable source of energy, and it seemed to be some unstoppable law of nature that these resources were in fact finite, and that the were doomed to live forever in search of their next meal. But this is where the true genius of John shined. He said:

… something I cannot write due to its ultraviolet nature, but in equivalent human words it carried in essence:

‘Why find, my fellow when we can create?’

And with this prophetic phrase, the all set out to create such a lifeform that would satisfy all their observatory needs; a task that kept them busy for who knows how long, with all their indescribable perceptions of time.

Eventually, however, the task was completed, a point which serendipitously coincided with doom of the planet they were watching at that time (and had the project not reached its desired state within the time permitted, there was no telling how long the would have to postpone it while they searched for another entity to observe while they worked on the finishing touches). But the task was nonetheless done, and what came of it were, at least in some spiritual sense, the first humans.

I have mentioned here before that the created the humans, which is true, but I have also mentioned that the humans were not the ones they created first. More specifically, the first creation of the was in fact the AlalaIalalapacs, a creature planned to perfection, but perhaps not given enough justice in the few words that captured it. These beasts—as it is customary for humans to refer to anything living that is not human, but moves in a similar fashion, as a beast—were designed to a higher calibre. Each and every step one of the AlalaIalalapacs took, every glance, every breath, every twitch; every minutest movement over which a singular body had control, was accounted for. They were made mobile, as was required, but they were also made enduring. The planet they inhabited was given a plentiful supply of everything the creatures needed to thrive, from an abundance of healthy and delicious food to endless rivers of delectable drink. As such—and this too was by design; everything was—the creatures were also made inimitably happy. All their conversations filled them with boundless joy, and the paradise in which they walked was endowed with weather that reflected their epithetic glee. They were made to never ask too much or too little, always asking just the right amount, and they were designed to dispense accordingly. Even their speech, as has already been mentioned, was tuned acutely: all they could ever want to say, they would, and the name given to them corresponded with the exact time it would take to fill their finite existence, and its enunciation, including the confusion and uncertainty bred by the interposed I whose pronunciation was unclear and tongue-tying, filled all the time that would have otherwise gone to unnecessary and harmful things; this was how exact their existence was made.

But from the outset of their planning, the knew well that these AlalaIalalapacs would not last forever. Well, at least some of them did. Because on the day of their inevitable extinction, only a few realised that their replacement was not yet complete.

‘What do you mean, no work has been done? What will replace them, when they’re gone?’ an approximate translation would yield.

‘What do you mean, replace? And what are you talking about, gone?’ one might translate in response.

Apparently the finiteness of this perfect resource had not been duly communicated among the whole race, and almost all of the bar basically John whose idea it was to begin with, did not know about any inevitable extinction, and were perfectly convinced in all their acute planning that they had accounted for this fact, and nothing was overlooked. In truth and technically speaking, nothing had been overlooked, but to the better informed—so just John —it was obvious all along that extinction could not be overcome, but would have to be managed, and thought of not as a cure but a treatment. From the very beginning of his ideas’ announcement, John foretold that once these AlalaIalalapacs were created, a replacement for them would have to be designed such that instead of going extinct, like all other life on all other planets they observed, they would in fact evolve, still leaving no trace of past selves, but leaving something new in their place, rather than the empty void that was customary. This was John ‘s solution, but he had apparently communicated it poorly enough that it was only known to him, and the had carried out the span of the AlalaIalalapacs’ existence in ignorant bliss, till the day in question, when all came crashing down.

‘Extinct? In three hours?’ they would cry—approximately, in ultraviolet, of course.

So the had three hours—or however you want to measure their counter-intuitive time system; the point is, they didn’t have much time—to create a replacement for something that had taken them an immeasurable amount of time to draft, fine tune, adjust, tweak and polish to perfection. They all hurried to work, and just before the doomsday minute they had something functional ready, but not having enough time to check the future to see how it would go, they had no way of telling just how much their erudite planning was worth; but I, after a few million years of human existence, and a few decades of my own, can say with at least some confidence that it was worth a whole lot.

In those three-odd hours, the had succeeded (if that really is the appropriate term) in creating humans, as we know and hate them today. I won’t comment much on humans themselves, as that is not the purpose of this recount and it would consume volumes of wasted ink, but perhaps giving them a longer name would have been a start; and not letting infantile and incompetent who had been employed to work on the project from necessity and insufficient manpower, play stupid, long-running pranks, such as making humans like things that are harmful for them, would have been even better. The humans were, of course, then later required to evolve again into what came after them, hopefully with better foresight this time, but for that reason killing them off was strictly out of the question. This history can also give us a more empathetic insight into just why the were so angry with the humans for consuming all the sound: it was their own mishap, their own ignorance and miscalculation whose consequences magnified outward into the far corners of the universe. And who can’t relate to such a mess-up, at least slightly?

But oh well, thought the , the whole thing would blow over soon enough, and none would care after all was forgotten. Sure, one might argue that the disappearance of sound made a noticeable impact on the universe, but all in all worse things had happened, and if every creature in the universe had the time or energy to complain over every single cataclysm, they would never get anything done—whatever it is they actually do, since I’m not at all that sure, not even about the humans. The sat back, not relaxed entirely, but somewhat anxiously, and thought that if there was anything they had plenty of, it was time, and something time inevitably teaches is patience, of which they were great masters, so all they had to do was close their eyes to it all for a little while—covering their ears was no longer necessary—and all would go away.

That was, till they started floating. Everything did. The felt themselves being lifted up from their seats and opened their eyes to see that everywhere in the universe gravity was starting to disappear, and particles that were otherwise inexplicably bound to one another started to drift apart. One might be confused at such a sight, but the felt somewhat enlightened, for it explained what they had seen when they looked into the future that otherwise felt to them so strange. However, their relief was only momentary, and quickly the terror of the situation encompassed them, and as they slowly processed what this would all imply, they didn’t need to look into the future to know that for all their immortality, they could not outlive the disassembly and downfall of the universe, and for the first time in their eternal existence, they were overwhelmed by that mortal fear of death, and should they have been predisposed to it since the beginning of time, they would have learned that the fear never truly passes, which was the answer to the question on all their minds.

They were all terrified and fear-stricken, paralysed beyond action—all of them, but one. Only one had distinguished himself in uniqueness to the point of self-evidence as to who would have to be their saviour. That was of course John who, calm and collected, swiftly assessed the necessities of the situation despite the drifting apart of neurons in his brain. By his keen eye, it was noticed that none other than that Earth, with all its filthy humans—this is not my own rhetoric, but I am empathising—wasn’t suffering the gravitational loss that the rest of the universe was experiencing, and without a second thought which his mangling brain could not form, he transported all the to Earth—by what means was never explained to me, or remembered by any of them. Their brains were too much of nothing to remember any of it.

Upon the arrival on the blue marble, which was only fractionally composed of marble, and wasn’t all that blue, the brains of the reassembled into their original form. Lost and confused about their whereabouts, and acknowledging their dependence on the recently (and implicitly) established hierarchy, the referred to John for answers. He explained that they were on Earth, that for whatever reason, the gravity here was normal and for the first time in its history, Earth was the safest place to be in the entire universe—the eye of the storm, it would seem. Upon seeing the explanation of John followed with another, more pressing question, or rather a flurry of them, whose commonalities can be summarised in asking: ‘What now?’

John as his namesake implied, knew precisely what had to be done, and without hesitation guided all his people to the necessary destination leaving all the surrounding Mongolian townsfolk terrified beyond belief, that their prayers had actually been answered, and the spirits came to see them, before being disappointed in seeing their insulting disinterest in their worship.

The destination John had in mind was, naturally, AudiCo™ HQ, where John, and others, whom I guess you could technically call scientists too, were still celebrating their magnificent revival of the solar star, and whose calendars had no entries for new catastrophes in the near future. The travelled across many countries to find them, and every step they took sent fear and confusion into the minds of those standing by, all whilst casting disapproving looks at the inferior species, who had the misfortune of having to meet its maker by its own consequence. After asking a few terrified humans for directions, the eventually found themselves at the horrid pile of brick and mortar that was AudiCo™ HQ, where, imitating human style, their leader in John stepped up to the reception desk, looked with a cold stare dead in the receptionist’s eyes, and asked where he could find the lauded scientists whom all the other scientists praised with their lives and their salvation.

The receptionist, who could not look away from the nebular pupils of the cosmic guest, directed the ensemble to the exact lab John and all the other scientists were in at that time. John who could barely understand her through her twitching manual movements, thanked the kind woman, and persevered along the path she had mimed with her hands, his entire population behind him. The instructions were followed to a human level of success, and upon reaching the door labelled Lab 2B, the one he was directed to, the unwavering leader stood for a second, was thought uncertain of following the right way, but swiftly concluded no mistakes were made—he had traced the path to perfection—and he had not embarrassed himself in front of his people. With more force than reasonable, he opened the door.

A loud writhing sound, like that of a scream in a bottle being hit with a lab door flying across the room and landing on a desk, startled every scientist in Lab 2B, causing them to jump or hide, and everyone ceased any conversation they were maintaining in order to see the source of the earth-shattering sound which had come from the door, now unmistakably vacant from its intended position, and a crowd of quasihumanoid figures with various pigments of skin, some blue, others green, occupying the space left behind. The scientists stood paralysed, not knowing what to do or say, how to behave so as to escape what seemed to be a life-threatening situation to all eyes that were looking at the extraterrestrial lifeforms before them. All eyes, but one pair, that is, and it was the hands below this pair that broke the taut air between them.

‘I see you’ve finally come,’ said John, who was just as clueless as all his colleagues about their abnormal visitors, but wanted to seem smarter and better informed than his peers, as he always did. This partly worked, but it seemed a purpose John was not ready for. The false confidence immediately relaxed his companions, some of whom let out sighs of relief, for they believed this was all a part of their implicit leader’s plan, and the presence of these figures would soon be explained by a logical, sound reason—in both senses of the word. One of his colleagues even inquired to this end, who leaned close to John’s hand and signed by touching his fingers:

‘Who are these freaks?’ It was quite rude really, but it must be forgiven, since many act harmfully when in fear, especially to those that are sourcing their timorous feelings. To this, of course, John didn’t actually have an answer, and for the first time in his scientific career, some sweat began to collect on his brow. He was about to let something foolish slip his fingertips, when he was saved by one of the alien visitors, who signed in a firm, adroit manner, the introduction of their presence.

‘We are your creators. We have come to speak to John.’

John had not meant to sound so dramatic when he signed this message, but he knew well that to such a message, the humans, and especially the scientists, would respond most hastily. He was correct in this, as immediately after he let his hands back down by his sides, the entire room of scientists distanced themselves from John, who was left standing alone in the middle of the room. John saw how everyone was singling him out, and his ego consumed so much pride, that had he not been practising arrogance for such a long time at that point, he might have dropped dead on the spot from flattery. But he did not die, and with his heart beating out of his chest, his god complex even pushed him to take a step towards the alien creatures, drawing gasps of awe from all the humans in the room.

John responded in kind, and with the two Johns moving towards one another in the centre of the room, all could witness a scene of poetry unfolding; a poetry that none of them could appreciate, as the humans had no idea the alien was called John and the aliens knew perfectly well that that wasn’t remotely his name. In the centre of the lab, the two stopped some two metres apart, and John—the human one—would have commented on the puny size of the alien visitor had he not been overwhelmed by having an alien visitor before him, and had the alien visitor not taken immediate initiative in beginning the dialogue between them.

‘Hello, John,’ the alien began, ‘we have no time for formalities. We have come here to address the pressing peril the universe has found itself in on account of your human stupidity…’ Here, the alien proceeded to tell John the entire situation of the world beyond Earth, and how in every place but this one the gravity was failing. He said all this while interjecting comments about how it was all humans’ fault, how they were all stupid, inferior, and so on, and John might have added his own comments about the aliens’ level of intelligence for creating such an allegedly stupid creature, had his own genius not taken precedent over all other actions, interpreting and analysing everything John was signing to him. It must have been particularly effective, because the moment John ended his mute soliloquy, human John replied, with one sign, and one sign only. He pinched his fingers and opened them quickly, meaning:

‘Scream.’

And just like that, human John managed to confuse all his alien visitors, who had hitherto believed him to be the most lauded and greatest in his field, and not the idiot he just suggested himself to be.

Both the aliens and John’s human colleagues were powerless to do anything but stand and observe John at work, each of them wondering what screams could possibly have to do with this, and what the end result would be once John stepped away from the sound machines he was working at. As this was happening, one of the standing closest to the receptionist—who was as scared as she had been when the multi-coloured creatures stepped through the front door—wondered how things were looking everywhere else in space, with gravity failing and all the organic life surely long molecularly disassembled by this point, and far beyond the point of salvation. But the thought only crossed the mind of the mind, and it was gone before it could start to evoke any emotional response from the extraterrestrial philosopher.

After some thirty minutes of a spectating gallery, both human and beyond, watching John operating the asstalker, John finally took a step backwards from the machine, and everyone watched as the tiny vial slipped from the device’s output field and into John’s hand. At this point, after a painful hiatus, John started giving the long-awaited explanation, that would hopefully clear him from the rank of idiots and back into the rank of geniuses, where he rightly belonged.

‘You see,’ he began calmly, with all eyes on him. There was that air of superhumanity about his words and actions that seems to surround anyone that is explaining a great idea to those who aren’t familiar with it. ‘This phenomenon is not as new to me as you might expect, and your intelligence about the matter seemed more to confirm what I already suspected, rather than to educate me of a beyond that was foreign to me.’ 

‘I have long believed that sound, which has revealed itself as far more significant than we had ever imagined it in the days gone by, was somehow intrinsically linked with the physical properties of the matter that surrounds us. This idea first occurred to me when we witnessed the sun’s loss of energy, and the experiments that followed seemed to demonstrate that all forms of energy known to us have a similar dependence on sound, and that often in vacuums long separated from any sound at all would experience volatile shifts in their appearance and nature, sometimes even changing entirely within only a second, and the re-exposure of the substance to sound seemed to verify the scientific hypothesis that it was the independent variable of sound that was the root of this abnormal behaviour. The object behaving abnormally would not only return to its standard state once the sound was reintroduced, but even to the exact state it was in when the abnormalities started, as further experiments confirmed without a shred of doubt…’

Had the philosophical seen this last part about things returning to their original states after all sorts of alterations, it might have reignited its initial empathy for other extraterrestrial creatures, who likely did not have the haven of Earth to shelter from the loss of gravity everywhere else. However, the was too far to see anything of what John was signing, and with these thoughts long forgotten in the back of its mind, it didn’t react at all. The receptionist had by now grown a bit used to the nearby alien, and even felt he had quite a handsome brow. John continued his explanation in the lab above them:

‘So that gravity too should be linked this way does not surprise me at all. Now here, I will be completely honest: I don’t entirely understand and can’t even begin to explain the precise nature of the relationship between sound and gravity, and why such a long period of time elapsed between the disappearance of sound and the deterioration of gravity; but one thing is immediately clear to me, and that is that you don’t need to know exactly the illness in order to know that stopping the bleeding will help,’—here John lost the again for a brief moment, but they learned quickly.

‘So I thought to myself: what do we have here on Earth, that is so different from the rest of the universe, and likely distinguishes the loss of gravity everywhere else from the different reaction here? And the answer came quite naturally to me, even still while you were explaining everything: the answer was, of course, screams.’

Here was a perfect opportunity for John to be absolutely and utterly incorrect in his assumptions. He was walking a very fine line—a fine line that separated solid reason from flimsy speculation, and he needed only take one step wrongly on the thin path to fall into the bottomless chasm of crude carelessness. After all, John had never been anywhere in the universe apart from Earth, and had no evidence to suggest that the artificial screams produced on his favourite planet were absent everywhere else, or that screams were definitely commonplace and hence could not be a solution to the universal gravity problem. John was, after all, only a human, who thought he knew far more than he did, and despite him presenting the solution he found in complete earnest, believing his own logic entirely and not for one moment guessing or pretending in front of his colleagues to impress the space aliens, it could have been this exact confidence that lost him all future credibility or good reputation in the scientific community, both terrestrial and extra, for nothing in his reasoning excluded the chance that screams were everywhere, apart from a baseless feeling he had, telling him it was probably the case.

But despite this excellent chance for a pitfall, he continued his explanation, and the continuous attention of his extraterrestrial guests drove him further in his conviction that what he was saying actually held some water, and that he should proceed in giving his wisdom to the greatest audience he could have ever dreamed of captivating.

‘Screams. We don’t hear them often here on Earth, but whenever there is sound to be heard, you can almost guarantee it is a perilous scream or desperate cry, since the pleasant sounds are almost exclusively reserved for the rich and the scientists in this building…’

At this last comment all the scientists started staring daggers at John, who, standing well in front of them with his front towards the aliens and his back towards the humans, didn’t notice any changes in his colleagues’ dispositions, and continued on as if he hadn’t revealed one of the greater luxuries the AudiCo™ personnel treated themselves to when nobody was looking. The didn’t particularly care, and listened on.

‘And since it is the sound of these screams that is on Earth, seemingly the only place around which still has gravity, and it is this same sound, as well as all others, that elude the places gravity is waning, I have been led to the one and only definitive conclusion, which is that it is the sparse introduction of these screaming sounds into our surroundings and atmosphere that helps conserve the strength of the gravitational forces that are acting only here, and which you wish for everywhere else.’

Here John stopped, seemingly content with what he had said, but the static air of his audience lingered on. His spectators, both human nd had stern, inquisitive expressions directed towards the vials John was holding in his hands, which he picked up from the desk he had put it down on when signing his soliloquy. Noticing this mute inquiry from his viewers, John responded in kind, and provided further elucidations to those he had set down already.

‘This vial,’ signed John, placing it on the table again for easier signalling, ‘contains one such scream, though modified in a manner that will be more appropriate for the enterprise I wish to utilise it in. The scream is one of the common ones, namely SA130-F, but has been altered so that its high pitch, which is better suited to the atmosphere of Earth and the properties of air, is lowered to a more bass-heavy tenor, that will reverberate better through the vacuum of space, where I would like to release it in sparse intervals similar to those we witness on Earth, though in much greater quantity and in far more space than we see here, and I believe that this imitation of our Earthly conditions will provide a remedy to our universal gravitational disaster, and if these experiments we have already run have anything to say about it, will hopefully restore the state of things to how they used to be, and this seeming catastrophe can be merely remembered as a fault of the past, rather than a reality of the present and of the future.’

Here John stopped his movements, and with no more inquisition from the part of those watching, he concluded his monologue entirely with that remark. The scientists with him in the room wanted to ask him why he had chosen SA130-F, the female variant of SA130, to be modified into a basser tone rather than the more suitable SA130-M, the male variant which would have provided better results to the desired end. Many considered saying something, but nobody moved, too timorous to question the genius even when he was being foolish, if only to avoid exposing themselves to potential ridicule, as had happened many times in the past. The one such scientist who did speak up chose to question the motivation of screams at all, and not the choice of one SA130 over the other, since, as John himself agreed that it wasn’t screams, but any sound at all that sustained the gravity on and surrounding Earth, and that by that reasoning screams seemed a horrible sound to choose, since a low, barely audible murmur would do just as well without filling the universe with a terrified url every so often. He was immediately dismissed, however, as he was also the scientist that argued it was not the humans who had landed on the moon—back in audial times, when this was a matter of any significance—and instead argued it was the moon that had landed on the humans, which was an overall foolish thing to think and was clearly only driven by his humanocentric beliefs: he almost disagreed that the Earth spun around the sun as well, but this seemed, even to him, a step too far, and he only left his humanocentric deliberations at the moon landing, which still gave him enough discredit by the scientific community to take none of his suggestions seriously, no matter their objective validity.

The who ignored any further dialogue than that which was used to aid their cause, had finally received explanation for what they had witnessed in their prophetic glances, and they set out immediately, already deliberating how John’s plan should be executed in order to achieve maximum results from their endeavours. They left the room and the street in front of AudiCo™ HQ, which they were filling to their respective capacities, attracting masses of media attention from curious journalists demanding answers, and receiving none. In moments they were all gone, and the scene was left as if untouched by a most unusual presence. The receptionist was no longer at her station, having gone as well with the or more specifically with the philosophical one, whose pensive distant stare charmed her beyond explanation, and she left her place of work holding his hand, and there was no other place in the whole world that she’d rather be.

The all stationed themselves on Earth, since anywhere else was agreed upon as dangerous and uninhabitable, but despite the tremendous volume their immortal population occupied, they were able to carry out their work there without disturbing the natural order of human life. However, the humans, now aware of the extraterrestrial presence on their planet, wished to be disturbed, and exhausted all possible avenues of making contact with these supreme beings of such a peculiar nature. But no effort disrupted the who were fortified beyond human intervention, and in the immense focus that was left after its absence when creating the humans, the Scream Protocol, as it became named—more colloquially than officially—was put into effect after only two days of work. The made it their priority to utilise the natural resources of the planet they themselves had helped create to form devices that were aeons beyond human comprehension; an affirming ‘this will work’ would have to suffice for the poor mortals, who were overall happier that no misfortune was befalling them than they were upset that it was befalling everyone and everything else.

The devices engineered by the extraterrestrial minds consisted of powerful speakers that could reach the farthest corners of the universe with any sound, even those corners that didn’t exist yet. The technical workings of the whole project were more involved than that, but for the first time in this recount I am able to say that no human, not even John, could explain it any better, and it isn’t my own lack of understanding that diminishes the explanation, but the comprehensive shortcomings of the human minds that limit communication of this nature, so to this insufficiency I attach no personal guilt as I have with the prior ones. The modified SA130-F, called PQ411-C, because the taxonomy department were more drunk that morning than usual, was quickly loaded into these new apparatuses, which were shot all over the universe for maximum effect, but not before testing the devices a few times closer to Earth, lest they fly too far out and become disassembled by the absence of gravity.

A bass, humming scream, as though the cosmos themselves were in some kind of suffering, spread to the eardrums of every living thing that used eardrums, as well as the various other modes of receiving sound. After the initial hesitation that follows any such trial run, changes in the entire universe were witnessed, and things seemed to be falling back into their normal places and forms. Everyone rejoiced once again: even the seemed to smile, though it was not their custom, and another victory was tallied in the column of the ingenious John, who even after his success saving Earth from an icy peril, was capable of outdoing himself, advising superior beings on how to save the entire universe. John, as can be already expected from his haughty character, appeared unfazed, acting as though this success was inevitable, and the aliens were bound to kneel before him eventually, but everyone was so happy that they paid little attention to his arrogance.

Soon after the matter of the gravity was resolved, the deemed it safe and appropriate to leave Earth, which they had inhabited long enough now to feel comfortable distancing themselves from it. The philosophical left Evelyn, the enamoured receptionist, without even a word to her about it, leaving her crushed and heartbroken, though he never really did understand her clinginess, and it tended to annoy him more than anything.

And in this way, the Cosmic Scream Protocol—or PGD when the taxonomy department got their hands on it—was established, ensuring enough sound was provided on a universal scale to not have matters fall into complete disarray, as the knew they no longer would when they checked their forecasts for the future. Naturally, the humans’ first response, since they were the ones to create the sound devices, was to try to create a market for sound across the whole universe, where they were at the centre as the greatest provider. This idea was short-lived, however, soon after the Cosmic Scream Protocol was established, along with the tag line: ‘In space, you better hear someone scream, or you’re in big trouble,’ many species realised how seemingly trivial it was to create the artificial sounds themselves, and before the humans had the chance to knock on their doors and make their pitches, everyone already had their own artificial sounds, and the plan fell apart before it had even begun.

This details how John had saved the world not once, but twice, and how whether they liked it or not, all of humanity was boundlessly indebted to the ingenious sound scientist, who time and time again not only excelled his peers and himself in matters of theory, but also those of quick-acting and reactive practice, which seemed to be his overall speciality. Banners were hung from buildings, poems were composed in his name (this was the unfortunate counterpart to music in the post audial world); even a national holiday, that soon grew international, was created to celebrate this brilliant man. In his typical egocentric pride, the most he was willing to do was shrug, acting unsurprised and unimpressed, which lost his support in the eyes of many that would otherwise have loved him, only because he wasn’t willing to act human for an audience. 

But nonetheless, everyone respected his undeniable genius, even those who would be last to ever respect it, namely the AudiCo™ shareholders, who were seeing skyrocketing stock value, all thanks to John. They felt so happy about their newfound riches, a speckle of empathy sparked in their cold capitalist hearts, and they offered John another promotion, not all that long after his receiving the first one. In all honesty, one would probably expect John to be the CEO of AudiCo™ at this point, but things never work so simply in the corporate world, and when the elevated position was presented to him, John took it gladly, though not without his epithetic smugness, which all had grown to expect from him by that point.

His things were not moved, because he didn’t bring personal effects to work—that was not the AudiCo™ policy—and his desk was not cleaned, because AudiCo™ employees seldom used them, and they were seemingly more of a formality than anything else. The only thing that changed was John’s personnel badge, which had acquired a new shiny stripe on it, that indicated he was vetted for the higher levels of lab clearance. These elevated permissions not only gave him access to all the premium sound ingredients, utilised in the creation of all the sounds and melodies enjoyed by the rich and affluent, but also—and this was John’s primary interest—allowed John all possible machinery and chemicals needed to make any sound he could possibly imagine. What John was able to do with his limited resources in his past position was amazing enough, but these new opportunities presented to him opened a mansion of doors, which he, guided by his prolific genius, could navigate at will and with ease. If I were a liar I would say this overjoyed John and put a smile on his face, but I’m not, and I document that any pleasure John once experienced practising and perfecting sound theory was all long gone; it disappeared once he acquired all the fame and recognition his ego could muster to hold, and his only ambition now was to live on forever in the annals of history as the greatest sound scientist that ever lived, and no one or no thing would ever get in the way of his vaulting ambition.

It was this ambition, mixed with these new opportunities and boundless horizons, that motivated John to put into action an idea he had been holding in the back of his mind since he first opened a sound theory book, and the sensation of having its realisation just within his reach filled John with an unfathomable urge to work like he had never worked before, not even in his early days as an AudiCo™ intern or in his days as a passionate student. The moment he arrived on the third floor, he didn’t bother himself with formalities and introductions, and instead headed straight to work, which was not an issue because regardless of floor or security clearance, John was more familiar with the layout of AudiCo™ HQ than the back of his hand. This was the first and only time John’s attitude served to assist him in his mission, since his new colleagues had already anticipated his crassness and themselves didn’t even bother extending their hands for a handshake; every other time, however, John’s disposition of lofty arrogance was a hindrance to his own work and the work of others, since it was often the case that his lack of communication and general disrespect for his fellow scientists prolonged the completion of several projects, as even the greatest genius is amplified by cooperation and teamwork; but that’s of little importance now: the projects were eventually completed, and his attitude was useful at least once, which is one more time than can be said for most things.

He was posted by his floor manager to work on the creation of MGQPs; another senseless concoction of the taxonomy department, as the name was admitted later to having absolutely no origin bar the random pressing of keys on a typewriter that happened to be at hand. These MGQPs were luxury sounds, often constituted by audial music or ambient sounds that were played on special occasions, like the chirping of birds through rustling forest leaves or gently crashing waves on the shore of a beach. As was already mentioned, these sounds barely interested John, whose focus lay solely in the theory of sound, and not its products.

‘Listen to this wonderful melody I have composed,’ a colleague might have said to him, only to be shut down or dismissed either by absence of reaction or a rude gesture. There were no pretty things, in John’s eyes: only practical ones, and he dedicated no time to the things many others deemed pleasant, as he deemed them impractical.

In this fashion, John carried out his work as an Artificer—a title formed by no other anomaly than the taxonomy department—and created these MGQPs not only to a satisfactory, but to an excellent extent, without ever even listening to his own products. One might have even thought him an artist, if he so clearly was not one. His colleagues were initially envious of him, wanting to understand and learn from his masterful ways, but after not many failed attempts to draw any at all information from John, they soon settled with focussing on their own work, which tended to work out best for all involved. John’s privacy was maintained not only out of his contempt for those he deemed below him, because he would normally at least entertain their inquiries or if only to be praised afterwards, but because he wanted the projects he worked on to be kept a secret, outside the instructions of AudiCo™, lest someone else take his imminent glory from him once he eventually completed what he was eventually bound to complete. He grew more distant than normal, and in time became a hermit of lab 3G, who was never even seen leaving the lab that he alone occupied, for working anywhere else was more pleasant than working with John, not only because of his venomous character, but also on account of his venomous bodily odour, that conquered the chamber he inhabited which was not equipped with the shower he ought to utilise—though even with the relevant toiletries available, there is doubt to the lengths John’s absent empathy would go to satisfy what he deemed to be the capricious desires of his ungrateful colleagues. John slept, drank and ate in lab 3G—for he requested food be brought to him, and it routinely was—as well as, somehow, defecated there, though I really would wish not to deliberate the particularities of that topic, so let it rest in uncertainty and abeyance of thought.

This is how John lived and continued to live for some three months after his promotion to the third floor. Some saw him so infrequently that they started questioning if he had died in his lab, but the consistent return of empty plates assured them that either John was still alive, albeit not so well in his alcove, or that some other creature grew from whatever he was doing in that lab, consumed his food and returned it politely, which, all things considered, would have likely been an improvement. Let it not fail to be mentioned that John, despite his total isolation and unwavering focus on his personal enterprises, continued to do all the work given to him, and to the same satisfactory degree he had always completed it to, and this—combined with his fame and genius, of course—allowed him to have the whole of lab 3G, with room service, to himself, though none of his colleagues would have entered it anyway, on account of the leaking miasma one could smell crossing its door, as well as the aforementioned excretory conundrum.

At the end of those three months, however, something happened, and had anyone else been around to witness it, they would likely have been surprised, for John had left his putrid cave. After almost one hundred days of total isolation, the genius scientist, who in his solitude had become more of a Hyde if he was earlier a Jekyll, had ultimately been driven out of his desolation and back into the surrounding world. His eventual departure, which might be considered inevitable—for even the most peerless genius needs a crowd to sprinkle them with adulations—was not motivated by a desire to reconnect, or a longing for companionship, but this should probably go unmentioned, since John’s inveterate character is fixed in our minds by this point, and his soulless motives are second nature now to our deductions. No, it wasn’t desire, and since human action is a trichotomy of desired, necessary and involuntary action, and I can assure you too that John’s destitute spirit had not yet been debased to a level of insanity, and any temperament that could be attributed to such a phenomenon—of which there are still many, for no genius can truly house itself in the bounds of standard thought—could have just as well been attributed to John, before he had commenced his solitude, and no purpose he undertook was involuntary and random, we are left with only one option of the three in the trichotomy.

John, despite his own proclivity to persist in his decadent turmoil, was forced to leave his laboratory tomb and do what no other scientist or otherwise living being could do for him, since with his secret project he trusted no one, and his practices could even be mistaken for those of a mind suffering from paranoia, though I have already mentioned that such behaviour was ‘normal’ for John, and despite the vile aura that lingered ever by his side, and his back, and all around him, this was the same John that went into lab 3G three months prior, and from actions alone he was difficult to distinguish from that past personage. John had been working in an incessant, steadfast, tireless sweat, and the days were all melded together in his mind. In all his persistence, he had finally developed a product he believed would work for his ultimate project, and although it seems like I have skipped those procedures of the in-between—the sleepless nights, the weakening limbs, the disconnection of mind and body required to endure one’s own world of shit—including the numerous trial products, test outputs, primer runs, and all other preambles to a successful first output, I do not believe that writing such components on paper is relevant to the outcome, for the procedure was that which is consistent to all stories of success: he tried, he failed, the tried again, and so on till the day of his emergence after three months of testing, holding in his hand what he believed was a working solution born of his efforts.

Once John exited his lab, he was not finished, and had a final destination in mind. The fruit of his labours, his magnum opus, perhaps, was captured in a vial he was grasping in his hand: his hand a tomb, the vial its mummy. This is no surprise: John was a sound scientist, and every solution he concocted had its roots, bark, branches and leaves in sound theory, no matter its nature. This is not to say John could solve all the world’s problems with an asstalker, a couple sound components and a few hours—or in this case a few months—of his time; it is only to say that if John was running through the hallways outside lab 3G, onto the stairs of the second floor, and directly to the sound warehouse of AudiCo™ HQ, with any kind of solution in mind, as he was now, you can be certain this solution was based only on the concepts of sound theory, and nothing more extensive than that.

John navigated his way to the sound warehouse without running into anyone else. The hour in the outside world—the real world—was late, and all staff apart from a few guards had left for home to see their wives, husbands, children and books; none of which John noticed. He walked up to the warehouse door, typed in his name, badge number and password, and when the light above the door turned from red to green, he waited for the vault-like opening to reveal a gap large enough for his passing, where he could slip into the quarantine portion of the warehouse and meet another large, vault-like door, at which he had to re-enter his credentials from before. John entered them hastily, but only once the door behind him closed did the light above him change into the affirmative, to ensure no sound leaks escaped from the warehouse, where all the sounds were stored. Through this door John also slipped, and not for the first time in his career did he see the aisles upon aisles of vials of sounds, of gradient colours and misleading labels, a sight that beheld the sheer volume of work that all of AudiCo™ was doing, and only a fraction of it John’s. John almost admired it for a moment—this image, posted into countless books of sound theory John memorised from cover to cover, was a seed of wonder that, once planted into John’s mind, guided him along the path he was walking now, and to the realisation and contribution of the image before him. However, he did not stop to admire a thing, his wonder and feeling long gone, and instead brushed by the aisles to the destination that was his focus: the Scream Protocol control panel.

This control panel, introduced by the when they helped solve the universal gravity problem three months back, had a direct link to all speakers released by the extraterrestrials into every corner of the universe, which were currently being used to distribute the necessary screaming sounds to the places that needed them and did not provide their own. The workings and construction of this apparatus, though in their completeness unknown to anyone but the wisest of the had been briefly explained to an operational level to the humans, who were tasked with operating it in the absence of the who claimed to have done their part and didn’t wish to bear any further responsibility for a mistake they did not consider their own. Among these not-fully-informed humans was of course John, who had operated it in the past when it was first commissioned at the facility, and before he went into his not-so-dormant period of solitude.

John stood before the mechanical behemoth, with its plethora of shining buttons and glistening diodes, and like an engineer working his craft, pressed just those buttons that were required for his mission. The first, flashing from brown, to blue, then to brown again, served to open the hatch that contained the existing scream vial, as well as shut down automatically any components of the workings that would suffer interference when the scream vial wa removed, but not shut down the whole machine which would be near impossible for the humans to reboot without extraterrestrial assistance. John then proceeded to remove the vial—SA129-Q, a squirrel scream, must have been one of the stupid interns—and held it in his hand while he replaced it with the other vial, the one that had over three months’ work dedicated to it. Then, once the new vial was inserted, John pressed the button that was flashing from brown, to blue, to brown again, but a different one from that used ot open the hatch, as that one changed at a rate of 0.5hz, and this one changed with 0.6hz, a difference difficult to notice to the human eye—as can be expected from an extraterrestrial machine—but was of little bother to John, who despite his limited exposure to the machine at hand had already committed all the relevant buttons to muscle memory, and was functioning seemingly more off habit than calculation. This button closed the hatch back up and proceeded to notify the mechanism that a new sound was introduced, that it was not a scream, and many other omitted functions, before reinitialising those components that had been shut off when the old scream was removed.

All of this took a long time, and John, who after hundreds of hours of labour was prepared to bask in his immortal glory, stepped away from the machine, and, detaching himself from the toxic personality that had plagued him and vexed his colleagues for so long, decided to appreciate the marvellous wonder that was the sound warehouse, and he positioned himself in a manner that revealed a sizable portion of the aisles of vials before him. His admiration was not that which it had once been, his childish dream transformed into a cold reality, but even through his grey-tinted lenses of apathy, John was able to see and appreciate the work that had been done in this institution, and the part he played to contribute to this new era of human history; an era in which so much new, so much previously unimaginable, had been discovered, and his irremovable station at the middle of it all.

John started to walk down one of the aisles, glancing through the shelves of vials all of different colours and natures, organised by that cursed taxonomy department that placed PF-11624-A, the sound of birds chirping in a meadow, next to PF-11624-B, the undulating bellow of children trapped inside a burning orphanage. Though chaotic, the sounds were still organised to an extent—the previous example being a poor one, naturally. The kind sounds, like those of laughing babies of mellow nature, held their own aisle to themselves, while the less kind, more sever sounds—the ones that were, unfortunately, more frequent—were separated in the aisle next to them, including but not limited to, a variety of screams, such as the SA-130s that were most popular, as well as the sounds of breaking bones, coughing up blood, nails being dragged on a chalkboard and the popping of bubble wrap, which must have been particularly unpleasant for someone in the taxonomy department or it would not have been placed there among its peers.

Upon reaching the end of the unkind aisle, John found the section which, absent from the other aisles, extended beyond the length of the others, and was the experimental aisle, splashed with colours of red and orange to indicate its potential danger, unless absolutely necessary. This aisle, initially commissioned by the army to help bolster its claims of global superiority, consisted of sound-based chemical weapons, which unlike all other sounds resting in the sound warehouse, made almost no audible noise for those not wearing special apparatus, and just like the chemical weapons dispensed in the first and second world wards of the audial era, could be released to wreak immeasurable havoc on the bodies not only of enemies, but those of unfortunate innocents alike, and often—thanks to the properties of sound over gas—to a much more catastrophic extent. These sounds, due to their novelty, were not disallowed by any conventions, and were legal to the same capacity that murder is legal as long as it’s far enough away from home. These weapons, however, were not entirely comparable to those of the audial world wars, because despite being just as dangerous, their purpose was not to kill the targeted enemy outright, but rather to incapacitate them for a period of time the sound was active, and only through extensive exposure to the torturous noise could one eventually end up killed, although that was more a side effect rather than their purpose. When the experimental sounds were employed in an interrogative setting, there were other, non-harmful sounds that would ensure the interrogated individual would suffer a maximum degree of torture without expiring before providing the crucial information that was required of them. Among these was the aptly-named ∞-sound, which, when deployed at a specific intensity, was capable of revitalising and even immortalising an individual hanging on by the thinnest thread of life. It was not distributed widely on account of its difficulty to produce, and its morbid and niche purpose was its effective extent: where the warehouse stored thousands of vials of different sounds, there were only three vials of working ∞-sound known to exist, and these were held with all the other experimental sounds.

John, convinced the machine should be close to finished by that point, left the curiosity of the experimental aisle to return to witness his grand plan in action. He walked down the unkind aisle, reaching once more the labels of the various screams as he passed by. SA-130-F, SA-130-M, SA-129-Q… 

He stopped, and remembering that he was still holding the squirrel scream vial and seeing that it was not entirely exhausted, decided that there was plenty of time to see his grand plan in action, and in the meantime he would do the orderly thing and put the squirrel vial back in its place. As these particular scream vials were quite high up, John went over and grabbed a step ladder, which he swiftly ascended as he had many times before to put the vial back in place. However this time, be it as a result of the fatigue he felt after three months of insufficient sleep and overall poor living conditions, or something else, the moment John reached the highest step on the ladder and was about to replace the vial, a tsunami of nausea and weakness overwhelmed his body, and he could feel himself starting to fall. Desperate not to descend to the hard warehouse floor rapidly and crack his skull, he tightly grasped the iron trusses of the shelves in front of him, leaning towards them to help hold his balance. In his nauseated stupor, John fell onto the shelves with the whole weight of his body, and the shelf, which had been recently moved by maintenance staff, had not been fastened in place according to safety regulations, and could therefore not support John’s weight; and when John fell on top of it, he caused the entire shelf to tip over and fall too. The falling shelf hit the row of shelves in the next aisle, which hadn’t been fastened either—none of the shelves had—and this sequence caused all the shelves one-by-one to fall to the ground like dominoes, apart from the two or three rows of kind sounds that were behind John when he fell towards the unkind aisle, which were left untouched by his cataclysmic domino effect.

As each shelf tilted and fell to the ground, so did the vials of sound follow in suit, and in a symphony of shattering glass, each of the vials made contact with the cold metal floor and crashed, sending in an instant out into the air all the sounds it contained. 

A cacophony of screams deafened John, who could barely pick himself up after falling from such a height, but with the remainder of his wits he struggled to crawl his way back to the warehouse door, where he could release himself from the torturous urls his skull was melting within. 

John reached the door, but upon reaching it he found that the emergency override switch had been activated, trapping him inside the warehouse, either till the screams on the inside all subsided, or a third party from the outside manually opened the door. Knowing his best chance was salvation by the latter, John crawled over into view of one of the security cameras inside the warehouse, and just as he was about to start signing for help, the emergency sounds, all of which had crashed into the ground alongside almost everything else, started contorting and distorting his body in writhing pain, and the choir of screams was there to communicate his agony.

By this point, the emergency alarm in AudiCo™ HQ had been tripped, and the guards on duty, who had seen the breach coming from within the sound warehouse, called the closest living sound scientists, who had arrived on scene and stood watching the security footage John tried presenting for.

‘We have to open it up,’ one of the scientists said, watching John’s caricatured body twist in agony, ‘if we don’t open up he’s going to die in there.’

But just as he was about to go down and open the door for John, another scientist grabbed his arm and stopped him.

‘We can’t. If you let the experimental sounds outside of quarantine, there’s no telling what will happen. I know it’s difficult, but just let their effects pass, and when it’s safe we’ll open up and get him to a hospital.’

Not entirely satisfied, but listening to reason, the scientist complied, and quit his mission, but refused to watch the footage of John’s suffering, while a few others almost seemed to be enjoying it.

‘Shouldn’t have been such a prick,’ they were thinking to themselves. John’s mangled limbs seemed retribution for all his past indecencies.

Watching and not watching, the scientists attempted to wait out John’s few minutes of suffering, and their plans to rescue him would have come to fruition had at that very moment the universal machine not come to life, playing John’s custom sound everywhere for the whole world to hear. The scientists heard it, and wondered what it could be, till one of them carelessly placed her pen onto the table and it rolled off onto the floor.

Click

The whole room looked. They had heard the pen hitting the ground. Another scientist hit their fist onto a desk, as hard as they could, and they could hear the clamour of flesh on metal. Soon, the whole room was experimenting, and they could quickly deduce what John’s custom sound had done: it, by some unknown magic, had restored sound as it was known in the audial era. The room almost rejoiced, till they remembered that John was still stuck in that warehouse, still writhing, and they couldn’t fully celebrate till John was out and well, and they could celebrate yet another one of his monumental successes with him by their side.

But their plan didn’t seem to work. First minutes, then tens of minutes, then almost an hour passed, with the cacophony in the warehouse not ending and John still contorting in pain. The scientists didn’t understand. None of the experimental sounds were designed to last this long. What was happening?

Eventually, one of the scientists gasped, which everyone could now hear, and in a realisation of terror and horror, rushed up to the terminal that allowed indirect access to the console and working of the machine, so she could see what was going on inside the sound John had inserted into it. She investigated it swiftly, some others looking over her shoulder, and to their collective dismay, their worst expectations had been confirmed. The scientist, turning away from the computer to see the whole room, started to explain.

‘John’s sound—the sound John inserted…’ She struggled to collect her thoughts.

‘It contains a perpetuating agent,’ another picked up, who had been looking at the same screen, gathering the same results, ‘it’s not one we’ve tried before, not even in experimental samples, but John, in his damned genius, seems to have concocted a stable solution. It’s why we’re able to hear everything again. It resuscitates the sound everywhere, in perpetuity, allowing it to exist indefinitely like we thought it had in the past, but this time allowing an actual indefinite solution to the universal sound problem. It’s a clever combination, as you can check for yourselves, but it means…’ and here the other scientist choked.

‘It means the sounds in the warehouse will go on forever,’ finished the first scientist, who could not wipe the look of grief off her face since the dots connected in her head.

Her terror spread to everyone in the room. Even those who first enjoyed John’s suffering deemed eternal damnation a disproportionate punishment for his overall mild actions.

‘No,’ one of them said, ‘we can’t just leave him in there. I mean, just look at him. He’s in hell. He’s suffering. Nobody deserves that kind of punishment, not the worst of the worst. We have to help him.’

And the whole room agreed and were about to set out to free him, till one of them, the same scientist who had halted the rescue attempt the first time, blocked the door out of the observation room and said in a cold, objective manner.

‘If the solution does in fact contain the perpetuating agent, as some of us have claimed it does—I don’t know, I haven’t seen for myself—then any threat the experimental sounds could have been before is only amplified now. If those sounds leave that room and they spread across the world, we’re looking at—I don’t even know what to describe it as. Hell on Earth would be my best go, but I fear not even the most superlative terms can capture the sheer damage that would be caused by the experimental sounds, should they be released unto the world. I hate to say it, but we have to keep that door locked, and the best and safest solution would be to blockade the warehouse entirely, to ensure no one or no thing opens up this Pandora’s box in the future and unleashes Armageddon on Earth. It pains me to say it, but…’ and here, in the scientist’s adroit movements, a glimpse of compassion flashed for the martyr John, who no matter his past shortcomings did not deserve such agony.

‘I’m afraid we have to let John die in there,’ he concluded, and the room immediately collapsed in spirits, and gave out objecting cries.

‘We can’t just leave him in there,’ they signed, letting out grunts that meant to signal the same disapproval; but no matter how much they repeated the sentence they wanted to believe, each one of them knew the prudent words of the objective scientist were true, and after only minutes of strike, the room fell motionless with guilt.

The scientists, who felt it was their obligation to watch the pain and torture of their fallen comrade, whom they were leaving behind, watched and watched the footage of John, anticipating the moment it would all end; the writhing contortions would cease, his mouth would close, stopping the screams, and the unbeatable genius could rest in peace.

But even that was not afforded to them. They watched and watched, as John twisted and turned, bellowed and screamed, never to be heard, until one of the scientists, the same one who realised the perpetuity agent in John’s sound mixture, collapsed to her knees, and started weeping painful tears. The other scientists gathered around her, thinking she had had enough of watching the tortures, as all of them had, but the true reason for her tears was soon spread to all of them when, through shivering gestures of trembling arms, she signed off the epitaph on John’s tomb.

‘∞-sound.’

And they all immediately understood, and they joined her on the floor in mutual helplessness, while John, not fifty metres away, was condemned to eternal suffering, by his own mishap.

There is not much left to say apart from this, no more to add to make the ending of John’s story a happy one. The humans even reached out to the who too were experiencing the outcomes of John’s grandest experiment yet, but even for them any solution to the conundrum that was trapping the poor immortal was out of reach, and everyone concluded that John would have to remain there, hopefully only as long as some natural turn of events helped him perish, since death seemed the only possible salvation for him now.

But that was the story of John, the peerless genius who was born into a world without sound, and through almighty efforts that shifted the tides of fate ever in his favour, he manipulated knowledge and science—sound science—to do his bidding, and his magnum opus—his coup de grâce—was to leave the whole world with a second chance at living in a world with sound, despite their past mistakes, and where they could rejoice in becoming reacquainted with a beauty that had been lost, but would never again be taken for granted.

And John will never leave our hearts, or even our homes. Some say that when you put on a kettle to boil, you can even hear John’s writhing screams escaping from the pot for seconds before pouring your tea.

To John, the greatest of scientists who ever lived.

May he someday find peace.

24.IX.2021