Masking Threshold (2021) Movie Script
1
[background noise]
-I just wish it wasn't so loud.
It seems to work.
Check, check.
Clip-on mic works,
recording device and the room
mic too.
Good.
I finally re-organized my
workshop
into a makeshift lab.
Just a couple of shots of the
room
so you can have a better
understanding
of the spatial situation.
The room is located
in my place of residence in
Apopka,
Central Florida
at the house that I rent.
I've set up several tripods
and fixed a self-made camera
mount
over my desk.
This should make
recording the experiments
that I have been conducting
over the next several days
easier.
I intend to better understand
and cure my hearing impairment.
That horrible sound
that's pestering me.
It obliterated my personal life,
it stopped me from finishing my
PhD,
it forced me to do a bullshit Ijob
just to make ends meet.
I even had to give away Clippy,
my cat.
I miss that old rascal.
Enough.
Let this be a record of my
experiments
as I search for a cure.
After all this time,
I've concluded that no one else
is going to help me.
I have to find answers myself.
The miserable have no medicine
but hope.
The first occurrence
of the sound three years ago
on September 16th, 2016
was accompanied by a visual
component.
I briefly saw something
out of the ordinary,
an effect that never returned.
However, during a recent visit
to the FamiLAB hackerspace
over in Longwood,
I borrowed a $20 clip-on macro
lens
for smartphones from Doug
Cranach.
I realized that optical
magnification
is the perfect way to detect
and,
hopefully,
document visual occurrences,
but Cranach's clip-on
is just not good enough,
so I got a Canon MP-E
65-millimeter lens
off Craigslist
and bought
a Laowa 24 millimeter probe lens
over at Best Buy in Altamonte
Springs.
We'll mount them
onto my Blackmagic camera.
It's a very powerful combo
for my specific needs.
Once this reference video
is edited
and additional voiceover
commentary
is added,
I'll release it on YouTube in
high-def
along with other details of my
research.
This is crucial.
What is the real difference
between near fumbling in the
dark
and true progress?
Evidence.
Every alchemist discovers for
himself
that drinking mercury is bad,
that it causes paralysis,
even the sensation of bugs
crawling under your skin,
but scientists have to discover
the effects only once
because they share their
findings,
thus making them testable,
falsifiable.
Starting documentation
with a simple hypothesis,
different objects alter the
sound I hear,
but how and why?
This cotton shirt is of the same
material
as the shirt I'm wearing right
now,
which is also the shirt I wore
when the effect first occurred.
[sighs]
I can detect no changes in the
sound.
For the next stage,
a different material.
This one is a polyester blend.
Yes, yes,
the sound has changed.
It's subtle with the pitch
lowered.
The sound also changed
when I set the cloth down.
Let me see.
Yes, when I touch the cloth,
there is a shift.
Am I disrupting the source in
some way?
When the sound first occurred,
it used to be a dull hum,
so quiet I could pretend it
wasn't there.
I very rarely hear it like that
anymore.
I've come to think of it
as my personal base level,
the sound of silence.
To be clear,
I know there is no such thing as
silence.
There can never be an empty
space
or an empty time.
There's always something
around that interferes.
As John Cage says,
try as we may to make a silence,
we cannot.
Even if you completely seal
yourself
off from noise.
For example,
in an anechoic chamber
that completely absorbs
reflections,
you always hear two sounds.
One high and one low.
The high one
is your nervous system in
operation.
The low,
your blood in circulation.
I don't really care
about hypothetical extremes,
not at all.
My problem is far from
philosophical.
Continuing.
My sound of silence,
which seems to include the
textiles
I'm wearing,
dominates again when I'm going
to the other side of the room.
Does that mean the sound
emanates
from the object itself
or is my presence a factor?
If only I could record
the sound in isolation.
No one else has been able to
hear it.
I've suffered from tinnitus
for three years now
and I have yet to find a person
who believes me.
My doctors are,
to present the results
of my root cause analysis,
idiots.
My first otologist was quick to
confirm
that I have tinnitus,
but he rejected
the quality of my tinnitus.
All the other doctors after him
did as well.
I know the mechanisms
of subjective tinnitus are
obscure,
but the professional ineptitude
I had to endure is breathtaking.
Basically,
tinnitus is the hearing of a
sound
that has no external source.
Trauma to the inner ear can
cause it,
which was not the case for me.
My assumption
is that increased neural
activity
in my brainstem caused mine,
resulting in overexcited nerve
cells.
Half of my private library
is medical journals and books.
Michael J. Epstein's
and Christian Rainer Heller's
2017 paper,
Retrocochlear Damage,
Auditory Brainstem Responses,
and Oral Processing Disorders,
was very encouraging.
Not to forget
J. C. Roach's brilliant analysis
of binaural isochronic
audio and synchronicity.
I learned all that one
can about my condition.
It's better than whining
in a self-help group
at the goddamn community center.
Tinnitus has no cure,
and most people get used to it
over time.
A 1987 study of the MRC
Institute
of Hearing Research
in Nottingham found that 10% of
adults
have had tinnitus
for longer than five minutes,
but only 0.5% of adults
have tinnitus that affects their
ability
to lead a normal life.
I'm part of this group.
And my tinnitus is unusual.
It's complex.
I've seen countless doctors
since it began
here in the Orlando area
and up in Burlington,
Vermont at UVM.
I spent my entire inheritance,
all the money from grandpa,
on medical bills.
No help, nada, zilch.
I got lucky,
despite my misfortune,
I didn't have to go into debt
paying for nothing.
It's not directly related to my
case,
but the AJM published a study
that 42.4% of all cancer
patients in the US
deplete their life savings
by the second year of treatment.
Our medical system is broken,
and not only financially.
Just recently,
a guy in New York found out
that he had been misdiagnosed
for 15 years.
What the doctors had identified
as a beer belly
was actually a 30-pound tumor
growing in his stomach.
I won't allow these quacks
to victimize me.
They gave up and sent me
to behavioral therapy.
Bullshit.
Many people die at 25
and aren't even buried until
they're 75.
I want a chance at a normal
life.
My mother called.
Awkward experience as always.
She had more moronic health
advice
for me.
"Quit smoking and gluten.
Use essential oils and ginkgo.
Ginkgo this, ginkgo that.
Worse, her new boyfriend
does Chinese acupuncture
and wants to meet me.
He's a relapsing alcoholic.
Why the fuck
do they let him work with
needles?
It feels necessary to make a
statement
just to frame my quest and to
separate me
from the gazillion wackos out
there.
I believe,
the methods of natural science
and science alone
describe the world as it is,
independent of perspective.
Superstition, religion,
and irrationalism should be
countered,
criticized, uncovered.
For those who believe in God,
most big questions are already
answered.
For those of us who don't,
the answers are more
challenging.
We have to discover the true
mystery,
not flee into mythopoeic
speculation.
Just look what religion brought
us.
Suffering,
suffering,
suffering,
suffering, and more suffering.
As Ryan Finnigan puts it:
Humans are long beyond the stage
of needing fairy tales
to explain the world.
Anybody who wants to tell me
they know the secret of the
universe
is a liar or a fool,
and certainly not worth
listening to.
It's necessary to eliminate
the psychological and spiritual
dimensions of experience.
Only this leads to salvation,
and in my case,
I sincerely hope it results
in concrete and secular
salvation.
The return of silence.
Silence is nonexistent for me.
Even when I sleep,
the sound disturbs me.
It slowly drowns my thoughts,
my--
for lack of a better term -soul.
I used to be so open.
I was always an introvert,
yes,
but I was doing so many cool
projects
with friends.
After coming out,
I was active
in the gay community on campus.
That was around the time
the horrible mass shooting
at the Pulse Gay Club happened.
50 people died.
A third were shot in the head,
turning their brains into
atomized mist.
Folks I knew.
Friends.
The founder of the club, John,
died in 1991 from AIDS.
The club was named
for his pulse to live on.
Changed my opinion on guns
completely.
Yet, not even this tragedy
stopped me from being hopeful,
from engaging, from fighting,
from celebrating our lives,
my life.
Now I'm a recluse,
and my libido is nil.
Sound spreads through
my being monstrously
like the growth
of a festering malignancy.
In this room, it's erratic,
a quiet hum with intermittent
discordant buzzing.
In other environments, it's
different.
Usually, people either
experience
monotone tinnitus
or narrowband noise tinnitus.
My doctors already measured
loudness,
mixing-point, masking threshold.
In most cases,
the tinnitus loudness
is equivalent to a sound
that is 5 to 15 decibels above
threshold,
and the tinnitus pitch
or frequency range
is between 5 kilohertz
[5 kilohertz sound]
and 10 kilohertz.
[10 kilohertz sound]
Not in my case.
My tinnitus changes.
Adapts.
The doctors don't believe me
though.
The last one told me that we
suffer more
in imagination than in reality.
That's what I pay for.
[sighs]
Sometimes a GIF says
more than a 1,000 words.
The equipment I need for my
experiments,
my laptop, my camera gear, et
cetera,
it doesn't change the sound.
It was my first hypothesis
that machinery might be a
factor,
considering the assumed origins
of my condition
at the university,
but that proved fruitless.
Inorganic matter does not affect
it.
Processed organic matter, like
paper,
a table,
pencils,
shaving cream,
cigarettes,
aspirin,
and naproxen
seem to be neutral too.
Although, fabrics and certain
foods
like candy corn are an
exception.
Candy corn sounds clattery
and yogurt sounds strangely
fractalized.
Maybe there is a connection
to Andy Zmolek's research.
[doorbell rings]
Oh.
Bharat, one of my sysadmin
colleagues
at the company,
came to visit,
brought me some beer.
[scoffs] What a hipster.
Pia Colada Gose.
It's a disturbance
and I will certainly not consume
neurotoxins,
but still nice of him.
Most of my coworkers are
probably happy
I took a few days off.
All of them think
I'm a hypochondriac weirdo.
Whenever I'm around people,
the sound intensifies
until I feel
as though my head might explode.
I used to play fun games with my
friends.
[chuckles]
This one always made me laugh.
It's so sick.
I used to have an annual pass
for Disney World.
Oh god, I love it so much.
Music, smiling faces.
It feels like another life.
The more people,
the worse the sound becomes.
At work,
my emergency reaction is to flee
to the basement server rooms,
where nobody is,
pretending to trace cables
to ESXi boxes or other baloney,
but that's not going to work
forever.
Listening to music became
impossible.
It's hard to describe,
but music feels distant,
hollow,
burnt.
If I can prove my condition,
or better yet,
understand its nature,
then people must believe me.
Each human body is made of
100 trillion cellular robots.
That's all there is.
There is a positivistic level
to my problem.
My goal is to prove
this is not my imagination.
I've introduced more objects,
some sound-neutral, some not,
measuring and grouping them.
I want to see if I can detect a
pattern.
Size and weight doesn't seem
to be a key factor,
but the sound changes depending
on where I am
and what I'm doing.
That, I'm convinced,
is the key to solving this
mystery.
My assumption is that everything
in the room with me
contributes to the sound.
The sound of silence gives me
a baseline from which to work.
Every time I bring a new object
into the room,
the sound changes.
Whenever I remove one,
the sound it introduced
vanishes.
By introducing and removing
objects
in a controlled fashion,
I found the proof
to support my speculation.
I've ordered the objects
into several categories
based on the patterns I've
detected.
Inorganic non-aqueous solvents,
like ammonium chloride,
do not alter the sound.
Endothermic.
Organic liquids cause
a particular change in the
sound,
all similar in pitch,
but not identical.
Decided to drink only hot water,
decaf black tea,
and oat milk as they appear
to be sound-neutral.
As for C5H4N4O3,
I urinated into a glass
and I could hear a difference.
Boiling organic liquids,
for example, my pee,
creates no changes.
I'm no chemist.
I studied physics,
so it's hard for me to find
distinctions.
I need to read up on it.
First,
I need to get rid of all this.
Tradition is just peer pressure
from dead people.
Looking at things from a new
perspective,
seeing them in an unconventional
way
was always one of my virtues.
Like the simple observation,
the bottled water companies
don't produce water,
they produce plastic bottles.
My goal must be to use
unconventional
yet solid approaches in my
search.
[phone ringing]
That was Brianna.
She's in HR.
Seems I stayed away a day
longer than requested,
but she called afterward.
Says a lot about my importance
to the company.
I'll request a few more days,
my boss doesn't care.
Too friendly.
Leadership skills of a squirrel.
I'm feeling dizzy all day.
Dealing with these sound
patterns
drains me.
I took a long hot shower this
morning.
Remembered an old Irish legend
that my grandpa told me
one Christmas morning when I was
nine.
The Ulster King,
Conchobar was hit
with a slingshot in battle.
the projectile was a ball
made of the brain
of Leinster king Mesgegra,
hardened with lime.
The brain ball got stuck
so deep in Conchobar's brain
that his physicians
were unable to remove it.
They patched up the wound,
stitched a golden hair net to
his scalp,
and told the king he would
survive
so long as he did not over-exert
himself.
Seven reasonably peaceful years
later,
Conchobar was told of the death
of Christ
and becomes so angry
that the brain ball bursts
from his skull and he dies.
The moral of the story was,
as I proudly proclaimed,
that you could live happy
even with some other guy's brain
stuck in your head
as long as you ignore Jesus.
Grandpa gave me
a good old Irish Catholic slap
in the face and ordered me
to go to my room
and sort all my Lego bricks by
color.
The patterns are becoming
familiar
as I study them.
I'm not sure visual changes
actually occur,
but it helps me anticipate the
sound.
Like mosquitoes buzzing in a
room.
Once you hear it,
it forces you to pay attention.
You can't unhear it.
I started processing some of my
data
with automated scripts.
No matter what I'm doing,
I start questioning it
searching for a pattern,
waiting,
listening.
[mosquito buzzing]
My thought was always that
darkness
is to space what silence is to
sound.
Maybe I'm mistaken.
My therapists were always
worried
about me,
they implied I might hurt
myself.
Of course not.
That's just an extravagant act
of self-pity.
Not me.
I can conquer this,
but how can I convince them?
Pondering about observer effect.
The mere observation of a
phenomenon
inevitably changes the
phenomenon.
This is highly challenging
because,
obviously,
I am the only observer
and I am changing it
by the mere fact of existing.
How do I stop myself from
unconsciously
changing my behavior
to support my assumptions?
My research will not end up
as epistemological roadkill.
Maybe I could
[doorbell rings]
What?
Blessing in disguise.
Got a visit from my new
neighbor, Dana.
This is the place I rent,
and she lives here
on the other side of the street.
I see her now and then.
She wanted to borrow coffee.
Endured small talk,
then asked her to wrap random
objects
from around my place
in opaque shopping bags
while I was waiting outside.
Sounds socially awkward,
but she complied.
Now I have 10 random objects
in opaque shopping bags.
[chuckles]
This creates an opportunity
to execute a blind experiment.
Trying to sense auditory
patterns
without knowing what object
I'm dealing with.
Okay,
Okay, interesting.
The rustling sound
of the bags is distressing,
but yes,
I hear the sound of the objects.
I can perceive them.
It'll give my research
additional validity in peer
review.
The last few days
have been disheartening.
In pain.
Naproxen intake.
I wrote out my research
and submitted it to Hagendorfer,
my current otologist,
and two researchers at Cornell
who study resonance
and vibration patterns.
With this set of data,
they will beg me to do
a proper clinical study with
them.
[chuckles]
I can picture their faces,
writing their grant
applications.
[chuckles]
People are irritating yet
fascinating.
When I'm with another person,
the sound is mysterious.
It doesn't fit the patterns
I've seen so far.
What causes the changes?
Does the human body have a
sound,
or does it vary by person?
Does hair produce
a change different from eyes?
Hell, do all 79 organs,
if we include the mesentery,
have a unique sound?
I began this project because
I wanted to secure peace of
mind,
but now I see this could be
important
to humanity as a whole.
It is my moral duty to succeed,
for me,
for you,
for us.
Mother called again.
More motivational slogans.
More ginkgo.
Mind doesn't understand,
it worships or fears.
The Ancient Greeks believed
their gods
lived on top of a climbable
hill,
and no one ever checked.
Got an answer.
Hagendorfer referred me
to another therapist.
Some psychiatrist over in
Casselberry.
Called him.
Blabbered something about
misophonia,
and he wants me to take benzos.
Really?
Tranquilizers?
Absolutely not.
Benzodiazepine use
for subjective tinnitus
does not have a robust evidence
base.
Jufas and Wood,
Journal of Laryngology &
Otology,
July 2015.
The Cornell researchers just
sent me
some dumb standard reply.
Not even sure they finished
reading it.
They're being offered
the chance of a lifetime.
A truly significant discovery!
We could publish!
[glasses breaking]
Do they think I lost my mind?
[chuckles]
The problem is that I can't lose
my mind.
It's inescapable.
It is a testament to my will
that I don't give in,
that I don't medicate in some
meth motel,
my teeth in ruins,
my skin like moldy bark,
my hollow eyes like a mollusk.
I'm alone.
My debilitation cost me
my first serious relationship
because my partner couldn't
handle
my emotional distress.
He blamed it on my psyche too.
He chose not to believe me.
That fuckin coward broke my
heart.
I know that no amount of belief
makes something a fact.
If I'm going to convince the
world,
I need undeniable proof.
I've decided
to switch to a different
experiment.
It is time to replicate the
conditions
of September 16th, 2016.
I've changed the setup to mirror
the lab desk at UCF physics
I was working on
that fateful day three years
ago.
I even called Al-Wathiq,
my old professor,
to ask him to recreate the
setting.
He was reluctant,
but some friendly fellows at
FamiLAB
in Longwood helped me borrow
equipment.
All that remains
is to repeat the experiment.
I'm a nerd through and through.
Not necessarily in the way
that I enjoy discussions,
whether it's canon that Klingons
have two dicks or not,
it's about a mindset,
a positive obsessiveness.
I always took meticulous notes
in college
and saved everything.
Some are here up on the
cupboard,
but most of it is in my mother's
attic.
This past weekend,
I took a car trip there,
and noise grating on me the
entire time,
becoming less tolerable by the
minute.
Mother forced gingko on me,
but her acupuncturist boyfriend
wasn't there.
Small mercies.
It turns out, by the way,
his main job is dishwashing
at an Olive Garden.
I guess he'll poke me
with unlimited breadsticks.
[chuckles]
Anyways,
I retrieved my notes from the
attic,
so I know exactly
which frequencies I tried.
Here's the Voltcraft frequency
generator,
and the test setup using
an old speaker and salt
crystals.
Now, performing the steps
exactly
as I did three years ago,
starting with 155 hertz.
[155 hertz sound]
Nothing has changed.
Back then,
when I hit the fifth frequency
cycle,
I observed a visual distortion
of my surroundings,
like the world was dipped
in a bad Instagram filter.
High contrast, red echoes,
dark particles, jittery halos.
I noticed it on the fabric of my
shirt,
but it lasted
for only two or three seconds.
Then a hum started up in my ears
like someone plugged me
into a faulty audio channel,
and this hum persisted
even when I turn the equipment
off.
Today, however, nothing
happened.
It's frustrating.
[buzzing sound]
Did I set something in motion?
Did the incident alter my
physiognomy?
If that's the case then,
I need someone else
who might respond in the same
way.
Although I hate to inflict
this misery upon another person.
[sighs]
It's the only way we can find
answers.
I need to give it to someone.
[humming sound]
Dana will be joining me today.
I met her when putting trash
outside.
She keeps talking to me
and seems to be interested.
I don't reciprocate, of course,
but I took advantage
to make her sit through the
experiment.
[humming sound]
You hear that?
-Besides the metal plate
vibrating, no.
-You're not hearing any humming?
It's all around us.
-No.
I don't hear it.
-No,
but there's no way.
You have to be hearing it.
[humming sound]
-Nothing?
-No.
-Failure on all levels.
I realized I might have been
a factor of disruption.
Dana needs to be in the lab
alone.
I'll have to play out my charm
to convince her to return.
[humming sound] Good.
Dana thinks that she failed,
so she is highly motivated.
This time,
I walked her through the
experiment steps
multiple times
so she can conduct it alone.
I'm recording everything though.
[humming sound]
-Dana,
how did you do this time?
-Well,
-Did you hear it?
-No.
-Did you follow all the steps
I laid out the way I told you to
do it?
-Dude, there was nothing.
-How about visual effects?
Like red particles, halos,
anything
You ...noticing ...on your shirt
anything at all?
-No.
What are you trying to--
-Leave now.
-Okay.
-You're done.
-There's no need to scream.
-[growls]
I was certain it would work.
Well, if life gives you
lemonade,
inspect it closely, it might be
piss.
I'm so tired.
Took a deliberate overdose
of [sighs] 100 milligrams of
melatonin.
Dreamt a dinosaur squished me
and used me as lube.
[sighs]
My brain chemistry
has a sick kind of humor.
After I thought everything over,
I realize the experiment's
flawed.
It's a dead end.
There is no way for me
to really reproduce all the
variables.
Was it pure chance that my
problems
started during the experiment?
An uncountable number of
students
have had to perform
that same experiment over the
years.
It's standard.
I didn't put my head
in a particle accelerator,
dammit.
What am I missing?
Done with delivery pizza.
Need to minimize human
interaction.
Switching
to Soylent meal-replacement
powder.
One delivery per month.
[scoffs]
My dad was an odd bird.
Once,
I asked him to tell me a scary
story,
and he looked at me and said,
with his deep voice,
"Son, today I took a dump,
and as I looked down at my poop,
I asked myself:
Is that corn?
Spooky thing is,
I haven't eaten corn in years."
Curtain falls.
Applause.
My dad.
Turned out he had Schistosoma,
parasitic flatworms.
Two months later, he was dead,
but not from the parasites,
just cancer.
Part of the problem
is I struggle to describe
what I'm hearing.
Words can only do so much,
so I used software
to replicate the sounds.
Listen.
Yes, this is fairly close to the
one
I call the sound of silence.
Now, I want you to hear what it
sounds
when I walk around in my house
[low buzzing sound]
-and onto the street.
[unsettling sound]
This is my world.
I am sharing this recording
online.
Setting up cheese and bread
for future studies.
Sprinkling water over them
and sealing them in Tupperware.
I need them ripe.
My audio upload's gotten
a lot of comments.
Read them all.
Weak shit.
Mother sent a message.
She glued crystals
to her car's steering wheel
for positive energy.
Nothing says positive energy
like adding shrapnel to your
airbag.
I can't deal with her shit
anymore.
Blocking her.
I needed to buy a new
toothbrush,
decided to drive to Winn-Dixie.
Disturbing experience.
It's crowded.
I aborted halfway.
Dental hygiene is a secondary
concern
in my life right now.
If necessary,
I'll shop via Amazon.
[scoffs]
Did you know that the founder of
Amazon
originally wanted
to call his company Cadabra,
as in abracadabra?
He scrapped the idea
after someone misheard it as
Cadaver.
How does life itself influence
the sound?
Let's start as basic as it gets,
cyanobacteria.
Blue-green algae.
Fascinating.
It's got arthrospira,
the main organism in Spirulina.
Asked Dana to buy me
a bottle at Whole Foods.
[scoffs]
My mother would be so proud.
Being in a crowd makes the sound
almost unbearable.
Idea, how much no algae do I
need
before I can mimic that and find
out
if it's just amplification or,
[phone ringing]
My boss is calling.
He was friendly
but more tense than usual,
[sighs] but I can't go back now.
Impossible.
Where was I?
Oh yes, the algae.
[sighs]
There is a hum that reminds me
of when I'm around other people.
Is it the sound of life?
No,
but algae are such basic
organisms.
I'm surrounded by myriads
of one-celled organisms.
[buzzing sound]
The first self-replicating
molecule
that emerged from chemical soup
four billion years ago
set us on a course of copying
that led to us.
We are that which copies.
Without it, we would be gone.
Copying is the thing
that distinguishes dumb matter
from life.
Evolution is often portrayed
as a ladder of progress,
leading toward bigger, faster,
and smarter organisms,
the assumption being that
evolution
drives organisms
to gain complexity and
ultimately
become more like humans.
I'm not sure about that.
I think evolution
is driven toward
diversification.
Life is constrained
to a simple starting point,
bacteria.
Any diversity resulting
from this simple start
has a skewed distribution
and moves in the direction
of higher complexity.
99% of living beings on this
planet
are single-celled organisms.
Multicellular life
is a statistical anomaly.
[humming sound]
It's a small world after all.
Do I hear all of them?
All the single cells around me?
What about small but complex
organisms?
I read that dozens of mites
live on every hair on my face,
quietly gorging themselves
on my natural oils.
Not even mentioning all the
critters
that live inside me.
My dad used to say,
life isn't a battle between good
and bad,
but between bad and worse.
I started growing algae in my
bathtub.
Aiming at 165 pounds.
Not the best smell,
but it's the closest I've found
to mirror the changes
when I'm with one person.
Heavily constipated.
Possible side-effect of Soylent.
Bristol stool chart type 1.
I've introduced plant life,
lush specimen from outside.
The upside of pretty much
living in a swamp.
At a population level,
species seek to maximize their
numbers
by exploiting and bending
to their will the
vulnerabilities
of other organisms in the niche.
Professor Al-Wathiq told us
in his biophysics class
that we could say that plants
are actually farming us
by giving us oxygen daily
until we all eventually
decompose
so that they can consume us.
Plants have the hum I've come
to associate with living things,
but it's not the same as the
algae.
Trying to focus and listen.
I'll be able to tell if any
plants
are in a room
merely by how the sound changes.
When I began these experiments,
multiple objects in a room
caused an indistinguishable
blending.
Now, I can hear the differences
and pick out the sounds of each
item.
Every sound alarms.
I'm exhausted but very
optimistic.
Here,
a bamboo plant I got at IKEA.
it's been sitting in my living
room
for some time.
A dead plant has distinct
differences
from a living plant.
It's another unsettling sound.
The sound lacks the element
that has in common with algae
and people.
That is indeed the sound of
life.
When does it change?
It's time for the next step.
Yes, yes, there's a change.
Plants don't necessarily die
when we chop them up,
but there is a change.
I read that the smell of
fresh-cut grass
I like so much
is a chemical distress signal.
It's the smell of terror and
death.
It must be comparable
to what I'm hearing now.
The onset of death.
Constipation persists.
Try to drain the bathtub.
The algae clogged it.
That hair from the drain?
Guess it's sponge baths in the
kitchen
for now.
Switching to fungi.
Getting back to the cheese and
bread
I set up
for maximum fungal grow.
Fungi always intrigued me.
The largest known living
organism
is a mushroom.
It's 2400-years-old
and covers over 2000 acres.
mold on the International Space
Station
survives 200 times
the radiation that would kill a
human.
Fungi are separate
from plants and animals.
I can hear the difference
clearly.
The fungus has a sound of its
own.
How long will it take
before I can detect differences
between individuals species?
Meanwhile, my online ventures
remain less fruitful
than I hoped.
Some trolls have even started
to bombard me with bad memes.
Condescending Willy Wonka my
hairy ass.
Urgh.
They can keep laughing at me.
It reflects their bigotry,
their ignorance.
People like to tell the funny
story
that NASA invested millions
into creating a ballpoint pen
that could write in zero
gravity.
The Soviets, the story goes,
just used a pencil.
Boom. Shh. Rimshot.
The fact is NASA never invested
money
in a pen.
After a fire broke out in the
Apollo 1
incinerating the three
astronauts,
burning plastic sticking to
their skin,
eating away their flesh,
turning them into toxic ash
and blackened bones,
neither Americans nor Russians
wanted flammable material
aboard a spacecraft
and certainly nothing
that contained graphite.
The last laugh is on the
knowing.
No exception.
Introducing lichen has opened up
a new avenue of thought.
I've been fascinated
by lichen all my life.
Lichen is the perfect answer
to harsh environments.
Pure efficiency.
It's a symbiosis of two
organisms,
algae, and fungus.
I expected the lichen
to have a mix of sounds,
but the lichen has a unique
sound.
Can the relationship
between the organisms affect the
sound?
The pitch changes
are close to each other.
It's as if they know
they could become lichen.
Do algae and fungi recognize
each other?
I'm on the brink of a major
discovery.
Not just about my condition,
but about life itself.
My research opens up
a new world of possibilities
I hadn't even considered.
(dog barks outside)
Dana got a new dog.
Yaps like hell.
I can't focus.
It took humans only 10,000 years
to turn a wolf into,
essentially, a rat.
I've begun researching
how to soundproof my walls.
I even visited an online
soundproofing community
and explained my situation.
Ignoramuses.
Seems the only way to get
the right answer on the internet
is to post the wrong answer.
I hate it,
but I need to visit the infernal
chaos
of Home Depot.
[background noise]
Reality denied...
comes back...
to haunt.
That was a painful process,
but at last,
I managed to block out the
outside world.
I put my mattress for my
labyrinth
so I can sleep here now.
Did you know the Simpsons
has been on so long,
Bart should now be Homer's age?
Will try my masturbation
to rebalance my cortisol levels.
We'll take notes in an Excel
spreadsheet.
The sound seems sharper now.
I feel like I could understand
it
if I concentrated enough.
Stranger,
that's made it harder to fall
asleep.
The sound is always present
but my isolation makes it
even more noticeable.
At night it's just me the sound
and its countless changes
pulling me from my rest.
I feel the need to adjust
myself,
to harden myself against the
barrage.
It helps.
I can make out the subtlest
changes now.
It's almost like a conversation.
Oh my God,
I know it sounds crazy.
Why would cells need to speak
to one another
beyond the chemical exchange
defined by genetics?
Yet, with the silence around me
I can feel it.
It's clearer all the time.
The sound changes on its own.
[door bell]
-Leave, now.
-My dad have a violent temper
and his tour in Iraq
made it worse.
With both of his legs and
two-thirds
of his penis missing,
the only upside was he couldn't
catch me.
He became a marksman at throwing
things,
and it shows.
I hid a lot, in books, in tree
houses,
in our basement.
More or less successful,
but I think I can finally
embrace it.
I exist in agreement
with all the weird turmoil
and destruction
that is part of being alive.
I'm home.
Home isn't where you're born.
It's where all your attempts
to escape cease.
Need to move on to a higher life
form.
Pogonomyrmex barbatus.
Florida harvester ants.
Found a bunch on my porch
near the kitchen.
Feisty creatures.
Building a little jail for them.
Ants communicate with each other
on a chemical level.
They belong to a hive mind
and perform tasks
in accordance with it.
That must be reflected in the
sound.
The hum of life is there,
but different.
As the ants move, the sound
changes.
A tiny hum here,
a soft alteration of pitch
there,
yet I can't see any connections
with what the ants are doing.
They're obviously in distress,
fighting against the sticky
tape,
yet they're struggling alone,
no way to inform the hive mind.
Could I see a pattern if I
understood
the will of the hive mind?
Observing them up close is
difficult.
They keep moving.
Why can't they stay still?
I'm too tired for this.
Sleep is a little slice of
death,
but I can't help craving it.
I've observed these jittery,
feculent insects long enough.
[screeching]
I'm so happy
that that horrible screech
faded,
that it isn't permanent.
For a moment, I thought I might
go insane.
Something isn't right.
The sound has changed.
It makes my hair stand on end.
I feel very uncomfortable, on
edge,
but I need to keep going.
I need more ants.
I turned off the air
conditioning
and started leaving food
on the kitchen floor and in
here.
94 Fahrenheit,
34.4 Celsius outside.
Perfect.
It should attract them.
Good, fresh specimens.
Trying to analyze what was going
on.
First,
I could hear the same change as
I did
when I cut up the plant.
The hum of life transitions
into the sound of death.
What was that screeching sound?
My hypothesis is that the other
ants
reacted systemically.
When I killed the ant in front
of them
their sounds changed
in response to its death.
Nothing like that happened
with the plants,
but plants aren't aware
in the same way insects are.
It also explains the change in
the ants.
Those that witnessed the death,
did they recognize me
as the other ants killer?
That can't be.
I must be like a God to them
and there is no way
they can recognize me.
It's like the ants didn't know
but the sound did.
Whatever it is,
it is not tinnitus.
This is a triumph.
I'm making a note here.
Huge success.
Reading my next report.
The scientists have to realize,
I couldn't imagine something
on this scale.
How could I dream this up?
I'm down to two hours of sleep a
day.
A horrible screech in my skull
keeps me in between worlds.
[door bell]
Again?
What do they want this time?
I told my neighbors not to
bother me.
Why did they keep disturbing me?
It can't smell that bad.
It took me some effort,
but I managed to digitally
recreate
that horrible screech.
[screeching]
The sound builds up.
That's it.
That's the sound that haunts me.
[screeching]
The sound
as the ants witnessed the
killing.
I'll share this online.
Invisible things are the only
reality.
Tried to catch geckos outside.
Too fast.
Slugs are easier.
We'll attract them
with Bharat's hipster beer
overnight.
Success.
Florida has only a few species
that are native,
but give me an invasive slug
from Europe any old day.
Come on, Christopher Columbus.
Why is there no relationship
between the slug's actions and
the sound?
Still, some patterns exist.
The shifting from life to death
is the most obvious,
but I've noticed more
more than one creature together
also causes a change
and the combination matters.
Two slugs together sound
different
than a slug and an ant.
Witnesses to a death suffer
a permanent change.
Forget my earlier panic,
the sound responded to the act
itself.
This isn't something to fear,
but the proof I need.
Suppose scientists
take a group of organisms
into an isolated room
and kill one of them.
Then, they bring me two groups,
one that was present for the
slaughter
and one that was not.
When I tell them definitively,
which ones witnessed the death,
they'll know I'm not making this
up.
It won't end there either.
This could be revolutionary
for the world.
Imagine how crime investigations
might change
once you can tell if someone
has witnessed death or not.
Will I be able to help sick
people?
Will I be able to really
accomplish
what all new-age charlatans
out there claim they can?
I might be getting ahead of
myself.
I don't fully understand how
this works.
These slugs are a variety of
ages.
Is it the sound of death
building up
in the slug's body as it ages?
As it age itself?
Amid all the snarky replies,
someone online finally wants to
help.
His YouTube name is Lance,
Lance Liebenfels.
He replied to my latest video
and says
he thinks he knows what's going
on.
He wants more samples to
compare.
Have I finally found
someone else like me?
Just one thing I need to do,
for the sake of knowledge.
I don't have a choice.
The change in the ants,
I only tested it with them.
I need the slug to die slow
so it gives me time to observe.
The slug suffers,
definitely.
More salt
[grunts].
Yes, the same sound.
It's the same eldritch sound
[grunts].
My previous experiment confirmed
it.
The sound was the same
as when I killed the ant.
We will keep a slug alive in the
cup
just to be safe
and I'll put the rest in the
freezer.
[door bell]
Not now,
I can't have any distractions
now.
At least,
I've taken the first step.
Death has a detectable,
repeatable sound.
Although there seems to be a
difference
in the quality of death.
One thing that keeps me going
is Liebenfels,
my online ally.
He's a weird fellow,
but he makes me laugh.
I connect with him.
He doesn't call me "Florida
Man".
The first time
I was confronted with death
was when I was 11 or 12.
I visited my grandparents
in North Carolina.
They were some true,
boiled goober peas-eating
Southern farmers.
Grandpa took me to the barn
and caught one of his chickens.
He held it and told me to kill
it.
Some weird rite of passage.
I think he wanted me to break
its neck
with my hands.
Instead,
I took the little plastic water
pistol
I had in my pocket
and began to hit its head with
it.
The chicken stared at me.
Although it knew the end was
near,
its eyes were full of absolute
disdain and pity.
I have never ever seen a being
look at me that way.
"What the hell are you doing?
You are a complete idiot."
Grandpa ended it quickly with a
snap.
This bird can help me
further select the changes.
Little by little,
the patterns emerge.
Back to the pet store.
Stressful.
New bird.
I poisoned this one with Draino,
slowly every one hour.
I predicted the time of death,
I heard the end approaching.
[sound]
This is enough,
birds are expensive.
Turning the remains
of the bird into charcoal,
filtering it.
I can hear patterns.
I can see patterns.
I can hear the essence
of the bird's demise.
I've compiled my notes
and evidence into a new file.
This time with an offer
to demonstrate my skills
and any way the experts deem
necessary.
Whether it's judging age,
predicting illness,
or identifying which organisms
have witness to death.
The real question is,
do I still want to cure?
Or would it be better
to see this as a gift?
This could revolutionize
criminal investigations,
the medical world.
The possibilities are endless.
I did it.
I really did it.
Persistence, it's part of my
DNA,
part of being human.
Ancestrally,
we are persistence hunters.
We're almost entirely hairless,
which means better heat
dissipation.
We have a lot of sweat glands.
The way we walk on our two legs
is just a succession of
controlled falls.
Gravity does half the work,
and as a result,
we use up fewer calories.
Imagine being an antelope.
Picture yourself 100 millennia
ago,
somewhere in the African steppe.
Sun burns down.
You're just hanging around
in the shade of a bush
doing your grazing thing,
when you see in the distance,
strange-looking predator.
He's walking on two legs, so
he's slow.
As he gets closer,
you run off, and you assume you
escaped.
Most predators give up
after a short while,
but this predator is different.
Here he is again, so you flee,
and after some time
you see him approach again.
He returns, and returns, and
returns,
and you run, and run, and run.
You're getting hot, so you need
to stop,
but he just keeps coming.
You're tired, exhausted.
You're a fast creature
but not for very long.
After a while you reach your
limits.
Eventually,
you just lay there out of
energy,
overheated, panting.
This ridiculous hairless ape
with his crazy staring eyes
gets closer and closer,
eventually just jogging over to
you.
Something bites in your
skin,opening it.
Your awareness melts away
with each drop of blood.
He diminishes,
he gorges on your precious
proteins,
wallowing in your organs.
It's part of us.
We do not stop.
We do not give up.
I do not give up.
Civilization is a thin layer of
ice
over a deep ocean of chaos.
It's 84 Fahrenheit,
28 Celsius inside my house.
As obtaining more ants is
unnecessary,
I tried to restart the air
conditioning.
There's a technical malfunction.
Temperatures above 26 Celsius
usually trigger an avoidance
response
in humans,
strangely, not in my case.
I'm sweating heavily
but feel no excessive discomfort
besides skin irritation.
Harvesting biomatter.
Maybe some more.
In the US Southwest,
there's a gas station chain
with a green dinosaur as a
mascot.
I always found this remarkably
honest.
Look at our whole
industrial civilization,
look at last century's
rapid population growth.
All our cheap and abundant
fossil fuels,
all our fertilizers, all our
medicine,
and plastic,
it is made out of beings
that lived millions of years
ago.
Our entire way of life
is based on harvesting
an unimaginable amount of death.
Death...
energy...
might be the key
to understanding my ability.
A new reply
from Liebenfels has arrived.
Let's see what he has to say.
"After looking over everything
you've told me
and comparing it to my notes,
I've reached the conclusion that
this is,
without a doubt,
the work of the Queer Lizard
People."
What?
This is what he comes back with?
Is he trolling me?
I will report you as abusive!
Asshole!
Dozed off for five minutes.
I had a very vivid dream.
It consisted largely of plunges
through abysmal realms
of inexplicably colored twilight
and jarringly symphonic
cacophonies.
All of a sudden,
I was home in our living room.
My dad was there in his
wheelchair.
He's friendly,
talking about his coming
grandchild.
I realized that I was pregnant.
It was a good feeling.
I couldn't wait any longer
to be a mother,
so I grabbed a knife
to rip the baby from my stomach.
I have to get back
to the very core of this.
I need to trust my perception.
Oh, look.
Gromphadorhina portentosa.
Extraordinary.
Good to hear.
[chuckles]
In general,
it seems the sound
is getting more and more dense.
Each subtle change has a meaning
to me,
but do they interact with each
other?
So many sounds have meanings.
So many patterns I can detect.
Sometimes it seems as though
it's a language of its own.
Can I learn it?
Haven't slept at all.
Imagine trying to sleep
while people chatter near you.
Their voices are just quiet
enough
that you can't understand.
As you find yourself
concentrating,
trying to hear...
It would be less disturbing
if you knew what they were
saying.
It is a language.
The more I work,
the clearer it becomes.
Still garbled, but not as bad,
like a radio frequency that's
off.
I need to masturbate
at more regular intervals.
The side effects
include vertigo and vomiting.
What's that?
[whispering]
[phone ring]
Oh, my boss.
I won't answer it.
Answers bring me peace.
Objects brought together
cause variations.
Organisms cause greater
variations,
but it isn't conscious.
Happened to objects...
...not conscious.
Of course,
the organisms aren't talking,
their cells are.
Every cell in the universe
engaged
in communication with every
other cell.
This is bigger than anything
I ever imagined before.
No wonder it's difficult
to be around people
with all those cells talking
to one another at the same time.
[sighs]
Email from HR.
Fired.
A relief.
We are not alone.
The universe is talking.
Something is out there in the
emptiness,
in every void we think we see.
Why was humanity excluded?
Should we be happy that we were?
The cells know the language.
The cells react to the
conversation.
How beautiful.
My hair's part of it?
Listen to the sound change.
Oh, never mind.
You can't hear.
I should have realized this long
ago,
my body is a part of the sound.
The sound of silence, I called
it.
It's not silence.
Not at all.
My cells talk to one another.
That is the sound of silence!
What are they saying?
Why can't we understand them?
Are they planning something?
My blood does it too.
All blood must do it.
My blood talks to the cells
around it constantly.
What is it saying right now?
Do they know I've learned the
secret?
What if they want it kept a
secret?
[door bell]
What is the matter with my
soundproofing?
Fascinating.
[laughs]
Don't worry.
Maybe our exclusion is not
intentional.
Maybe it's for the best.
I'm a perfect example.
Look how the sound has affected
me,
tormented me from the first day.
The more I came to understand
it,
the more it preyed on my mind.
The universe is not harmonious.
You know that by looking out the
window.
Maybe I'm looking at it the
wrong way.
Maybe perceiving is the problem.
Our nervous systems filter
our sensory input.
Animal consciousness,
and that includes human
consciousness,
can only take so much.
It was trained over eons,
mutation by mutation to accept
only what it can handle.
This creates a bearable universe
for us
in which we can live like fruit
flies.
We are born, grow,
maybe procreate, and die.
Our brain helps us fulfill these
tasks.
Makes it possible for us
to live in this universe
that is so much more than what
we know
by filtering out
the unknown depths and horrors.
Keeping us safe in a reality
where we can live oblivious
to what is in and around us.
But I tapped into it like a worm
crawling onto a highway.
Lack of sleep is getting to me,
giving me thoughts
that can't possibly be true.
If only I could shut out the
sound.
If only I could stop listening.
A Vice article cited my
research.
Top 10 Weirdest
Nutjob Conspiracy Theories.
Who is conspiring against whom?
This is an entire new cosmology,
for fuck sake.
Don't they get it?
I hate Vice.
It's journalistic cancer.
No, no.
It's not even journalism,
it's just cancer.
Decision.
No sleeping.
(dog barks)
Intolerable disturbance.
We're made of starstuff,
but so is dogshit.
Will they ever talk to me?
(dog whimpers)
Yes.
Maybe they will tell me
everything's okay,
perhaps they will tell me how to
stop it.
[burning noise]
What is so special about dying?
The total depletion of ATP,
the chemical that provides
energy
to the cells.
[door bell rings]
-No, someone's here again.
-Hello, are you home?
-I need to concentrate.
-Hello?
-Once I understand,
everything will be all right.
-Hey,
the front door was unlocked.
I brought you some dinner.
Pebbles?
-Dedication is the glue of life.
-Oh, my God!
Oh my God!
[screams]
[scuffle]
-Shh,
I can help you hold back your
tears.
Where are the trash bags?
I need absolute concentration
to listen to her essence.
Remember it.
She brought me
a homemade burrito.
Gender role still force women
to emphasize that stuff.
How sad.
We all need to explore new
spheres
of possibility.
They help us understand.
Nothing makes it stop.
How can I work
when they're always talking?
It's too much.
It's just too much.
Wish I didn't know.
There's a reason we aren't aware
of this conversation.
Conversation.
Conversation?
Maybe I was too optimistic, too
nave.
This is no conversation.
No cosmic chitchat hippie
bullshit.
It must be something deeper.
Maybe what I can hear,
what I called a conversation
is an immune response to
something.
It's my body's response
to some form of intrusion,
subdual, one that started three
years ago.
[door bell rings]
-Hey? Are you home?
[screams]
-It is nice of my mother to drop
by.
Just between us,
well,
she could have given me a heads
up.
Ah, the conversation.
Yes, yes, it's something else.
I can hear a form of cellular
distress.
Be quiet mother.
Something is out there...
...in there... all around.
I can feel it.
This being lurking,
just beyond my comprehension.
The cells are hurting.
They respond to an outside
force.
And the force...
something vast and powerful,
far from our own realm, lurking
out
in that indescribable void
among the dimensions.
Does it feast on me?
Feast on all of us?
Yes.
I'm not even a worm compared to
it.
It is like a giant sea creature
and I'm merely a bacterium
that got in his path.
It's all around me.
Absorbing me, changing me.
I can hear it all.
Am I as delusional as Liebenfels
and all the other trolls out
there?
I am without knowledge or luster
or name.
All I can focus on is this
sound.
This hideous sound it's
emanating.
Amazon delivery guy.
You remind me of my dad.
It might be preposterous of me,
but maybe I was chosen.
Yes!
That explains everything.
Chosen by a being older
than space and time.
Are my experiments
a kind of sacrifice to it?
Is that why I needed to go so
far
to understand?
Does it enjoy me killing?
Am I pleasing it?
Did it make me, slowly over the
years,
become what I am?
From that very first moment in
the lab,
did I summon it?
Did it know this day, today,
would eventually come?
I need to upload my remaining
findings
for all to understand.
I need to come to terms with my
place
in the universe.
A place that it gave me
and the sacrifice it demands.
Is it God?
I don't know...
but it is my god.
What does it want?
What is it asking me to do?
Leap of courage?
Leap of faith?
What offering
will make this imbalance end?
How can I empty space and time?
I finally understand.
That last and final moment is
yours.
That agony is your triumph.
[gun cocking]
I just wish it wasn't so loud.
[gunshot]
[silence]
[silence]
[silence]
[silence]
-Geez, what's with the AC?
-They're working on it.
We should get hazard pay.
What do you think
about this reference file case?
-Reference what?
-Reference file case.
It's high priority for the
chief.
-Huh?
-Yes, the 1087 two days ago
on West 8th Street.
-Yes.
A block over
from Lighthouse of Deliverance.
From what the neighbors said,
it sounds pretty cut and dry.
-It gave me the creeps.
-Why have they been calling it
the reference file case anyway?
-Because of the video files.
That's what the guy named it.
I'm getting coffee.
You want any?
-Oh, sure.
While you're at it,
get me some Boston creams?
-Yes, sure.
[clicking]
[screaming]
-Oh, wow.
-You're going to watch it?
No spoilers,
start from the beginning.
[background noise]
-I just wish it wasn't so loud.
It seems to work.
Check, check.
Clip-on mic works,
recording device and the room
mic too.
Good.
I finally re-organized my
workshop
into a makeshift lab.
Just a couple of shots of the
room
so you can have a better
understanding
of the spatial situation.
The room is located
in my place of residence in
Apopka,
Central Florida
at the house that I rent.
I've set up several tripods
and fixed a self-made camera
mount
over my desk.
This should make
recording the experiments
that I have been conducting
over the next several days
easier.
I intend to better understand
and cure my hearing impairment.
That horrible sound
that's pestering me.
It obliterated my personal life,
it stopped me from finishing my
PhD,
it forced me to do a bullshit Ijob
just to make ends meet.
I even had to give away Clippy,
my cat.
I miss that old rascal.
Enough.
Let this be a record of my
experiments
as I search for a cure.
After all this time,
I've concluded that no one else
is going to help me.
I have to find answers myself.
The miserable have no medicine
but hope.
The first occurrence
of the sound three years ago
on September 16th, 2016
was accompanied by a visual
component.
I briefly saw something
out of the ordinary,
an effect that never returned.
However, during a recent visit
to the FamiLAB hackerspace
over in Longwood,
I borrowed a $20 clip-on macro
lens
for smartphones from Doug
Cranach.
I realized that optical
magnification
is the perfect way to detect
and,
hopefully,
document visual occurrences,
but Cranach's clip-on
is just not good enough,
so I got a Canon MP-E
65-millimeter lens
off Craigslist
and bought
a Laowa 24 millimeter probe lens
over at Best Buy in Altamonte
Springs.
We'll mount them
onto my Blackmagic camera.
It's a very powerful combo
for my specific needs.
Once this reference video
is edited
and additional voiceover
commentary
is added,
I'll release it on YouTube in
high-def
along with other details of my
research.
This is crucial.
What is the real difference
between near fumbling in the
dark
and true progress?
Evidence.
Every alchemist discovers for
himself
that drinking mercury is bad,
that it causes paralysis,
even the sensation of bugs
crawling under your skin,
but scientists have to discover
the effects only once
because they share their
findings,
thus making them testable,
falsifiable.
Starting documentation
with a simple hypothesis,
different objects alter the
sound I hear,
but how and why?
This cotton shirt is of the same
material
as the shirt I'm wearing right
now,
which is also the shirt I wore
when the effect first occurred.
[sighs]
I can detect no changes in the
sound.
For the next stage,
a different material.
This one is a polyester blend.
Yes, yes,
the sound has changed.
It's subtle with the pitch
lowered.
The sound also changed
when I set the cloth down.
Let me see.
Yes, when I touch the cloth,
there is a shift.
Am I disrupting the source in
some way?
When the sound first occurred,
it used to be a dull hum,
so quiet I could pretend it
wasn't there.
I very rarely hear it like that
anymore.
I've come to think of it
as my personal base level,
the sound of silence.
To be clear,
I know there is no such thing as
silence.
There can never be an empty
space
or an empty time.
There's always something
around that interferes.
As John Cage says,
try as we may to make a silence,
we cannot.
Even if you completely seal
yourself
off from noise.
For example,
in an anechoic chamber
that completely absorbs
reflections,
you always hear two sounds.
One high and one low.
The high one
is your nervous system in
operation.
The low,
your blood in circulation.
I don't really care
about hypothetical extremes,
not at all.
My problem is far from
philosophical.
Continuing.
My sound of silence,
which seems to include the
textiles
I'm wearing,
dominates again when I'm going
to the other side of the room.
Does that mean the sound
emanates
from the object itself
or is my presence a factor?
If only I could record
the sound in isolation.
No one else has been able to
hear it.
I've suffered from tinnitus
for three years now
and I have yet to find a person
who believes me.
My doctors are,
to present the results
of my root cause analysis,
idiots.
My first otologist was quick to
confirm
that I have tinnitus,
but he rejected
the quality of my tinnitus.
All the other doctors after him
did as well.
I know the mechanisms
of subjective tinnitus are
obscure,
but the professional ineptitude
I had to endure is breathtaking.
Basically,
tinnitus is the hearing of a
sound
that has no external source.
Trauma to the inner ear can
cause it,
which was not the case for me.
My assumption
is that increased neural
activity
in my brainstem caused mine,
resulting in overexcited nerve
cells.
Half of my private library
is medical journals and books.
Michael J. Epstein's
and Christian Rainer Heller's
2017 paper,
Retrocochlear Damage,
Auditory Brainstem Responses,
and Oral Processing Disorders,
was very encouraging.
Not to forget
J. C. Roach's brilliant analysis
of binaural isochronic
audio and synchronicity.
I learned all that one
can about my condition.
It's better than whining
in a self-help group
at the goddamn community center.
Tinnitus has no cure,
and most people get used to it
over time.
A 1987 study of the MRC
Institute
of Hearing Research
in Nottingham found that 10% of
adults
have had tinnitus
for longer than five minutes,
but only 0.5% of adults
have tinnitus that affects their
ability
to lead a normal life.
I'm part of this group.
And my tinnitus is unusual.
It's complex.
I've seen countless doctors
since it began
here in the Orlando area
and up in Burlington,
Vermont at UVM.
I spent my entire inheritance,
all the money from grandpa,
on medical bills.
No help, nada, zilch.
I got lucky,
despite my misfortune,
I didn't have to go into debt
paying for nothing.
It's not directly related to my
case,
but the AJM published a study
that 42.4% of all cancer
patients in the US
deplete their life savings
by the second year of treatment.
Our medical system is broken,
and not only financially.
Just recently,
a guy in New York found out
that he had been misdiagnosed
for 15 years.
What the doctors had identified
as a beer belly
was actually a 30-pound tumor
growing in his stomach.
I won't allow these quacks
to victimize me.
They gave up and sent me
to behavioral therapy.
Bullshit.
Many people die at 25
and aren't even buried until
they're 75.
I want a chance at a normal
life.
My mother called.
Awkward experience as always.
She had more moronic health
advice
for me.
"Quit smoking and gluten.
Use essential oils and ginkgo.
Ginkgo this, ginkgo that.
Worse, her new boyfriend
does Chinese acupuncture
and wants to meet me.
He's a relapsing alcoholic.
Why the fuck
do they let him work with
needles?
It feels necessary to make a
statement
just to frame my quest and to
separate me
from the gazillion wackos out
there.
I believe,
the methods of natural science
and science alone
describe the world as it is,
independent of perspective.
Superstition, religion,
and irrationalism should be
countered,
criticized, uncovered.
For those who believe in God,
most big questions are already
answered.
For those of us who don't,
the answers are more
challenging.
We have to discover the true
mystery,
not flee into mythopoeic
speculation.
Just look what religion brought
us.
Suffering,
suffering,
suffering,
suffering, and more suffering.
As Ryan Finnigan puts it:
Humans are long beyond the stage
of needing fairy tales
to explain the world.
Anybody who wants to tell me
they know the secret of the
universe
is a liar or a fool,
and certainly not worth
listening to.
It's necessary to eliminate
the psychological and spiritual
dimensions of experience.
Only this leads to salvation,
and in my case,
I sincerely hope it results
in concrete and secular
salvation.
The return of silence.
Silence is nonexistent for me.
Even when I sleep,
the sound disturbs me.
It slowly drowns my thoughts,
my--
for lack of a better term -soul.
I used to be so open.
I was always an introvert,
yes,
but I was doing so many cool
projects
with friends.
After coming out,
I was active
in the gay community on campus.
That was around the time
the horrible mass shooting
at the Pulse Gay Club happened.
50 people died.
A third were shot in the head,
turning their brains into
atomized mist.
Folks I knew.
Friends.
The founder of the club, John,
died in 1991 from AIDS.
The club was named
for his pulse to live on.
Changed my opinion on guns
completely.
Yet, not even this tragedy
stopped me from being hopeful,
from engaging, from fighting,
from celebrating our lives,
my life.
Now I'm a recluse,
and my libido is nil.
Sound spreads through
my being monstrously
like the growth
of a festering malignancy.
In this room, it's erratic,
a quiet hum with intermittent
discordant buzzing.
In other environments, it's
different.
Usually, people either
experience
monotone tinnitus
or narrowband noise tinnitus.
My doctors already measured
loudness,
mixing-point, masking threshold.
In most cases,
the tinnitus loudness
is equivalent to a sound
that is 5 to 15 decibels above
threshold,
and the tinnitus pitch
or frequency range
is between 5 kilohertz
[5 kilohertz sound]
and 10 kilohertz.
[10 kilohertz sound]
Not in my case.
My tinnitus changes.
Adapts.
The doctors don't believe me
though.
The last one told me that we
suffer more
in imagination than in reality.
That's what I pay for.
[sighs]
Sometimes a GIF says
more than a 1,000 words.
The equipment I need for my
experiments,
my laptop, my camera gear, et
cetera,
it doesn't change the sound.
It was my first hypothesis
that machinery might be a
factor,
considering the assumed origins
of my condition
at the university,
but that proved fruitless.
Inorganic matter does not affect
it.
Processed organic matter, like
paper,
a table,
pencils,
shaving cream,
cigarettes,
aspirin,
and naproxen
seem to be neutral too.
Although, fabrics and certain
foods
like candy corn are an
exception.
Candy corn sounds clattery
and yogurt sounds strangely
fractalized.
Maybe there is a connection
to Andy Zmolek's research.
[doorbell rings]
Oh.
Bharat, one of my sysadmin
colleagues
at the company,
came to visit,
brought me some beer.
[scoffs] What a hipster.
Pia Colada Gose.
It's a disturbance
and I will certainly not consume
neurotoxins,
but still nice of him.
Most of my coworkers are
probably happy
I took a few days off.
All of them think
I'm a hypochondriac weirdo.
Whenever I'm around people,
the sound intensifies
until I feel
as though my head might explode.
I used to play fun games with my
friends.
[chuckles]
This one always made me laugh.
It's so sick.
I used to have an annual pass
for Disney World.
Oh god, I love it so much.
Music, smiling faces.
It feels like another life.
The more people,
the worse the sound becomes.
At work,
my emergency reaction is to flee
to the basement server rooms,
where nobody is,
pretending to trace cables
to ESXi boxes or other baloney,
but that's not going to work
forever.
Listening to music became
impossible.
It's hard to describe,
but music feels distant,
hollow,
burnt.
If I can prove my condition,
or better yet,
understand its nature,
then people must believe me.
Each human body is made of
100 trillion cellular robots.
That's all there is.
There is a positivistic level
to my problem.
My goal is to prove
this is not my imagination.
I've introduced more objects,
some sound-neutral, some not,
measuring and grouping them.
I want to see if I can detect a
pattern.
Size and weight doesn't seem
to be a key factor,
but the sound changes depending
on where I am
and what I'm doing.
That, I'm convinced,
is the key to solving this
mystery.
My assumption is that everything
in the room with me
contributes to the sound.
The sound of silence gives me
a baseline from which to work.
Every time I bring a new object
into the room,
the sound changes.
Whenever I remove one,
the sound it introduced
vanishes.
By introducing and removing
objects
in a controlled fashion,
I found the proof
to support my speculation.
I've ordered the objects
into several categories
based on the patterns I've
detected.
Inorganic non-aqueous solvents,
like ammonium chloride,
do not alter the sound.
Endothermic.
Organic liquids cause
a particular change in the
sound,
all similar in pitch,
but not identical.
Decided to drink only hot water,
decaf black tea,
and oat milk as they appear
to be sound-neutral.
As for C5H4N4O3,
I urinated into a glass
and I could hear a difference.
Boiling organic liquids,
for example, my pee,
creates no changes.
I'm no chemist.
I studied physics,
so it's hard for me to find
distinctions.
I need to read up on it.
First,
I need to get rid of all this.
Tradition is just peer pressure
from dead people.
Looking at things from a new
perspective,
seeing them in an unconventional
way
was always one of my virtues.
Like the simple observation,
the bottled water companies
don't produce water,
they produce plastic bottles.
My goal must be to use
unconventional
yet solid approaches in my
search.
[phone ringing]
That was Brianna.
She's in HR.
Seems I stayed away a day
longer than requested,
but she called afterward.
Says a lot about my importance
to the company.
I'll request a few more days,
my boss doesn't care.
Too friendly.
Leadership skills of a squirrel.
I'm feeling dizzy all day.
Dealing with these sound
patterns
drains me.
I took a long hot shower this
morning.
Remembered an old Irish legend
that my grandpa told me
one Christmas morning when I was
nine.
The Ulster King,
Conchobar was hit
with a slingshot in battle.
the projectile was a ball
made of the brain
of Leinster king Mesgegra,
hardened with lime.
The brain ball got stuck
so deep in Conchobar's brain
that his physicians
were unable to remove it.
They patched up the wound,
stitched a golden hair net to
his scalp,
and told the king he would
survive
so long as he did not over-exert
himself.
Seven reasonably peaceful years
later,
Conchobar was told of the death
of Christ
and becomes so angry
that the brain ball bursts
from his skull and he dies.
The moral of the story was,
as I proudly proclaimed,
that you could live happy
even with some other guy's brain
stuck in your head
as long as you ignore Jesus.
Grandpa gave me
a good old Irish Catholic slap
in the face and ordered me
to go to my room
and sort all my Lego bricks by
color.
The patterns are becoming
familiar
as I study them.
I'm not sure visual changes
actually occur,
but it helps me anticipate the
sound.
Like mosquitoes buzzing in a
room.
Once you hear it,
it forces you to pay attention.
You can't unhear it.
I started processing some of my
data
with automated scripts.
No matter what I'm doing,
I start questioning it
searching for a pattern,
waiting,
listening.
[mosquito buzzing]
My thought was always that
darkness
is to space what silence is to
sound.
Maybe I'm mistaken.
My therapists were always
worried
about me,
they implied I might hurt
myself.
Of course not.
That's just an extravagant act
of self-pity.
Not me.
I can conquer this,
but how can I convince them?
Pondering about observer effect.
The mere observation of a
phenomenon
inevitably changes the
phenomenon.
This is highly challenging
because,
obviously,
I am the only observer
and I am changing it
by the mere fact of existing.
How do I stop myself from
unconsciously
changing my behavior
to support my assumptions?
My research will not end up
as epistemological roadkill.
Maybe I could
[doorbell rings]
What?
Blessing in disguise.
Got a visit from my new
neighbor, Dana.
This is the place I rent,
and she lives here
on the other side of the street.
I see her now and then.
She wanted to borrow coffee.
Endured small talk,
then asked her to wrap random
objects
from around my place
in opaque shopping bags
while I was waiting outside.
Sounds socially awkward,
but she complied.
Now I have 10 random objects
in opaque shopping bags.
[chuckles]
This creates an opportunity
to execute a blind experiment.
Trying to sense auditory
patterns
without knowing what object
I'm dealing with.
Okay,
Okay, interesting.
The rustling sound
of the bags is distressing,
but yes,
I hear the sound of the objects.
I can perceive them.
It'll give my research
additional validity in peer
review.
The last few days
have been disheartening.
In pain.
Naproxen intake.
I wrote out my research
and submitted it to Hagendorfer,
my current otologist,
and two researchers at Cornell
who study resonance
and vibration patterns.
With this set of data,
they will beg me to do
a proper clinical study with
them.
[chuckles]
I can picture their faces,
writing their grant
applications.
[chuckles]
People are irritating yet
fascinating.
When I'm with another person,
the sound is mysterious.
It doesn't fit the patterns
I've seen so far.
What causes the changes?
Does the human body have a
sound,
or does it vary by person?
Does hair produce
a change different from eyes?
Hell, do all 79 organs,
if we include the mesentery,
have a unique sound?
I began this project because
I wanted to secure peace of
mind,
but now I see this could be
important
to humanity as a whole.
It is my moral duty to succeed,
for me,
for you,
for us.
Mother called again.
More motivational slogans.
More ginkgo.
Mind doesn't understand,
it worships or fears.
The Ancient Greeks believed
their gods
lived on top of a climbable
hill,
and no one ever checked.
Got an answer.
Hagendorfer referred me
to another therapist.
Some psychiatrist over in
Casselberry.
Called him.
Blabbered something about
misophonia,
and he wants me to take benzos.
Really?
Tranquilizers?
Absolutely not.
Benzodiazepine use
for subjective tinnitus
does not have a robust evidence
base.
Jufas and Wood,
Journal of Laryngology &
Otology,
July 2015.
The Cornell researchers just
sent me
some dumb standard reply.
Not even sure they finished
reading it.
They're being offered
the chance of a lifetime.
A truly significant discovery!
We could publish!
[glasses breaking]
Do they think I lost my mind?
[chuckles]
The problem is that I can't lose
my mind.
It's inescapable.
It is a testament to my will
that I don't give in,
that I don't medicate in some
meth motel,
my teeth in ruins,
my skin like moldy bark,
my hollow eyes like a mollusk.
I'm alone.
My debilitation cost me
my first serious relationship
because my partner couldn't
handle
my emotional distress.
He blamed it on my psyche too.
He chose not to believe me.
That fuckin coward broke my
heart.
I know that no amount of belief
makes something a fact.
If I'm going to convince the
world,
I need undeniable proof.
I've decided
to switch to a different
experiment.
It is time to replicate the
conditions
of September 16th, 2016.
I've changed the setup to mirror
the lab desk at UCF physics
I was working on
that fateful day three years
ago.
I even called Al-Wathiq,
my old professor,
to ask him to recreate the
setting.
He was reluctant,
but some friendly fellows at
FamiLAB
in Longwood helped me borrow
equipment.
All that remains
is to repeat the experiment.
I'm a nerd through and through.
Not necessarily in the way
that I enjoy discussions,
whether it's canon that Klingons
have two dicks or not,
it's about a mindset,
a positive obsessiveness.
I always took meticulous notes
in college
and saved everything.
Some are here up on the
cupboard,
but most of it is in my mother's
attic.
This past weekend,
I took a car trip there,
and noise grating on me the
entire time,
becoming less tolerable by the
minute.
Mother forced gingko on me,
but her acupuncturist boyfriend
wasn't there.
Small mercies.
It turns out, by the way,
his main job is dishwashing
at an Olive Garden.
I guess he'll poke me
with unlimited breadsticks.
[chuckles]
Anyways,
I retrieved my notes from the
attic,
so I know exactly
which frequencies I tried.
Here's the Voltcraft frequency
generator,
and the test setup using
an old speaker and salt
crystals.
Now, performing the steps
exactly
as I did three years ago,
starting with 155 hertz.
[155 hertz sound]
Nothing has changed.
Back then,
when I hit the fifth frequency
cycle,
I observed a visual distortion
of my surroundings,
like the world was dipped
in a bad Instagram filter.
High contrast, red echoes,
dark particles, jittery halos.
I noticed it on the fabric of my
shirt,
but it lasted
for only two or three seconds.
Then a hum started up in my ears
like someone plugged me
into a faulty audio channel,
and this hum persisted
even when I turn the equipment
off.
Today, however, nothing
happened.
It's frustrating.
[buzzing sound]
Did I set something in motion?
Did the incident alter my
physiognomy?
If that's the case then,
I need someone else
who might respond in the same
way.
Although I hate to inflict
this misery upon another person.
[sighs]
It's the only way we can find
answers.
I need to give it to someone.
[humming sound]
Dana will be joining me today.
I met her when putting trash
outside.
She keeps talking to me
and seems to be interested.
I don't reciprocate, of course,
but I took advantage
to make her sit through the
experiment.
[humming sound]
You hear that?
-Besides the metal plate
vibrating, no.
-You're not hearing any humming?
It's all around us.
-No.
I don't hear it.
-No,
but there's no way.
You have to be hearing it.
[humming sound]
-Nothing?
-No.
-Failure on all levels.
I realized I might have been
a factor of disruption.
Dana needs to be in the lab
alone.
I'll have to play out my charm
to convince her to return.
[humming sound] Good.
Dana thinks that she failed,
so she is highly motivated.
This time,
I walked her through the
experiment steps
multiple times
so she can conduct it alone.
I'm recording everything though.
[humming sound]
-Dana,
how did you do this time?
-Well,
-Did you hear it?
-No.
-Did you follow all the steps
I laid out the way I told you to
do it?
-Dude, there was nothing.
-How about visual effects?
Like red particles, halos,
anything
You ...noticing ...on your shirt
anything at all?
-No.
What are you trying to--
-Leave now.
-Okay.
-You're done.
-There's no need to scream.
-[growls]
I was certain it would work.
Well, if life gives you
lemonade,
inspect it closely, it might be
piss.
I'm so tired.
Took a deliberate overdose
of [sighs] 100 milligrams of
melatonin.
Dreamt a dinosaur squished me
and used me as lube.
[sighs]
My brain chemistry
has a sick kind of humor.
After I thought everything over,
I realize the experiment's
flawed.
It's a dead end.
There is no way for me
to really reproduce all the
variables.
Was it pure chance that my
problems
started during the experiment?
An uncountable number of
students
have had to perform
that same experiment over the
years.
It's standard.
I didn't put my head
in a particle accelerator,
dammit.
What am I missing?
Done with delivery pizza.
Need to minimize human
interaction.
Switching
to Soylent meal-replacement
powder.
One delivery per month.
[scoffs]
My dad was an odd bird.
Once,
I asked him to tell me a scary
story,
and he looked at me and said,
with his deep voice,
"Son, today I took a dump,
and as I looked down at my poop,
I asked myself:
Is that corn?
Spooky thing is,
I haven't eaten corn in years."
Curtain falls.
Applause.
My dad.
Turned out he had Schistosoma,
parasitic flatworms.
Two months later, he was dead,
but not from the parasites,
just cancer.
Part of the problem
is I struggle to describe
what I'm hearing.
Words can only do so much,
so I used software
to replicate the sounds.
Listen.
Yes, this is fairly close to the
one
I call the sound of silence.
Now, I want you to hear what it
sounds
when I walk around in my house
[low buzzing sound]
-and onto the street.
[unsettling sound]
This is my world.
I am sharing this recording
online.
Setting up cheese and bread
for future studies.
Sprinkling water over them
and sealing them in Tupperware.
I need them ripe.
My audio upload's gotten
a lot of comments.
Read them all.
Weak shit.
Mother sent a message.
She glued crystals
to her car's steering wheel
for positive energy.
Nothing says positive energy
like adding shrapnel to your
airbag.
I can't deal with her shit
anymore.
Blocking her.
I needed to buy a new
toothbrush,
decided to drive to Winn-Dixie.
Disturbing experience.
It's crowded.
I aborted halfway.
Dental hygiene is a secondary
concern
in my life right now.
If necessary,
I'll shop via Amazon.
[scoffs]
Did you know that the founder of
Amazon
originally wanted
to call his company Cadabra,
as in abracadabra?
He scrapped the idea
after someone misheard it as
Cadaver.
How does life itself influence
the sound?
Let's start as basic as it gets,
cyanobacteria.
Blue-green algae.
Fascinating.
It's got arthrospira,
the main organism in Spirulina.
Asked Dana to buy me
a bottle at Whole Foods.
[scoffs]
My mother would be so proud.
Being in a crowd makes the sound
almost unbearable.
Idea, how much no algae do I
need
before I can mimic that and find
out
if it's just amplification or,
[phone ringing]
My boss is calling.
He was friendly
but more tense than usual,
[sighs] but I can't go back now.
Impossible.
Where was I?
Oh yes, the algae.
[sighs]
There is a hum that reminds me
of when I'm around other people.
Is it the sound of life?
No,
but algae are such basic
organisms.
I'm surrounded by myriads
of one-celled organisms.
[buzzing sound]
The first self-replicating
molecule
that emerged from chemical soup
four billion years ago
set us on a course of copying
that led to us.
We are that which copies.
Without it, we would be gone.
Copying is the thing
that distinguishes dumb matter
from life.
Evolution is often portrayed
as a ladder of progress,
leading toward bigger, faster,
and smarter organisms,
the assumption being that
evolution
drives organisms
to gain complexity and
ultimately
become more like humans.
I'm not sure about that.
I think evolution
is driven toward
diversification.
Life is constrained
to a simple starting point,
bacteria.
Any diversity resulting
from this simple start
has a skewed distribution
and moves in the direction
of higher complexity.
99% of living beings on this
planet
are single-celled organisms.
Multicellular life
is a statistical anomaly.
[humming sound]
It's a small world after all.
Do I hear all of them?
All the single cells around me?
What about small but complex
organisms?
I read that dozens of mites
live on every hair on my face,
quietly gorging themselves
on my natural oils.
Not even mentioning all the
critters
that live inside me.
My dad used to say,
life isn't a battle between good
and bad,
but between bad and worse.
I started growing algae in my
bathtub.
Aiming at 165 pounds.
Not the best smell,
but it's the closest I've found
to mirror the changes
when I'm with one person.
Heavily constipated.
Possible side-effect of Soylent.
Bristol stool chart type 1.
I've introduced plant life,
lush specimen from outside.
The upside of pretty much
living in a swamp.
At a population level,
species seek to maximize their
numbers
by exploiting and bending
to their will the
vulnerabilities
of other organisms in the niche.
Professor Al-Wathiq told us
in his biophysics class
that we could say that plants
are actually farming us
by giving us oxygen daily
until we all eventually
decompose
so that they can consume us.
Plants have the hum I've come
to associate with living things,
but it's not the same as the
algae.
Trying to focus and listen.
I'll be able to tell if any
plants
are in a room
merely by how the sound changes.
When I began these experiments,
multiple objects in a room
caused an indistinguishable
blending.
Now, I can hear the differences
and pick out the sounds of each
item.
Every sound alarms.
I'm exhausted but very
optimistic.
Here,
a bamboo plant I got at IKEA.
it's been sitting in my living
room
for some time.
A dead plant has distinct
differences
from a living plant.
It's another unsettling sound.
The sound lacks the element
that has in common with algae
and people.
That is indeed the sound of
life.
When does it change?
It's time for the next step.
Yes, yes, there's a change.
Plants don't necessarily die
when we chop them up,
but there is a change.
I read that the smell of
fresh-cut grass
I like so much
is a chemical distress signal.
It's the smell of terror and
death.
It must be comparable
to what I'm hearing now.
The onset of death.
Constipation persists.
Try to drain the bathtub.
The algae clogged it.
That hair from the drain?
Guess it's sponge baths in the
kitchen
for now.
Switching to fungi.
Getting back to the cheese and
bread
I set up
for maximum fungal grow.
Fungi always intrigued me.
The largest known living
organism
is a mushroom.
It's 2400-years-old
and covers over 2000 acres.
mold on the International Space
Station
survives 200 times
the radiation that would kill a
human.
Fungi are separate
from plants and animals.
I can hear the difference
clearly.
The fungus has a sound of its
own.
How long will it take
before I can detect differences
between individuals species?
Meanwhile, my online ventures
remain less fruitful
than I hoped.
Some trolls have even started
to bombard me with bad memes.
Condescending Willy Wonka my
hairy ass.
Urgh.
They can keep laughing at me.
It reflects their bigotry,
their ignorance.
People like to tell the funny
story
that NASA invested millions
into creating a ballpoint pen
that could write in zero
gravity.
The Soviets, the story goes,
just used a pencil.
Boom. Shh. Rimshot.
The fact is NASA never invested
money
in a pen.
After a fire broke out in the
Apollo 1
incinerating the three
astronauts,
burning plastic sticking to
their skin,
eating away their flesh,
turning them into toxic ash
and blackened bones,
neither Americans nor Russians
wanted flammable material
aboard a spacecraft
and certainly nothing
that contained graphite.
The last laugh is on the
knowing.
No exception.
Introducing lichen has opened up
a new avenue of thought.
I've been fascinated
by lichen all my life.
Lichen is the perfect answer
to harsh environments.
Pure efficiency.
It's a symbiosis of two
organisms,
algae, and fungus.
I expected the lichen
to have a mix of sounds,
but the lichen has a unique
sound.
Can the relationship
between the organisms affect the
sound?
The pitch changes
are close to each other.
It's as if they know
they could become lichen.
Do algae and fungi recognize
each other?
I'm on the brink of a major
discovery.
Not just about my condition,
but about life itself.
My research opens up
a new world of possibilities
I hadn't even considered.
(dog barks outside)
Dana got a new dog.
Yaps like hell.
I can't focus.
It took humans only 10,000 years
to turn a wolf into,
essentially, a rat.
I've begun researching
how to soundproof my walls.
I even visited an online
soundproofing community
and explained my situation.
Ignoramuses.
Seems the only way to get
the right answer on the internet
is to post the wrong answer.
I hate it,
but I need to visit the infernal
chaos
of Home Depot.
[background noise]
Reality denied...
comes back...
to haunt.
That was a painful process,
but at last,
I managed to block out the
outside world.
I put my mattress for my
labyrinth
so I can sleep here now.
Did you know the Simpsons
has been on so long,
Bart should now be Homer's age?
Will try my masturbation
to rebalance my cortisol levels.
We'll take notes in an Excel
spreadsheet.
The sound seems sharper now.
I feel like I could understand
it
if I concentrated enough.
Stranger,
that's made it harder to fall
asleep.
The sound is always present
but my isolation makes it
even more noticeable.
At night it's just me the sound
and its countless changes
pulling me from my rest.
I feel the need to adjust
myself,
to harden myself against the
barrage.
It helps.
I can make out the subtlest
changes now.
It's almost like a conversation.
Oh my God,
I know it sounds crazy.
Why would cells need to speak
to one another
beyond the chemical exchange
defined by genetics?
Yet, with the silence around me
I can feel it.
It's clearer all the time.
The sound changes on its own.
[door bell]
-Leave, now.
-My dad have a violent temper
and his tour in Iraq
made it worse.
With both of his legs and
two-thirds
of his penis missing,
the only upside was he couldn't
catch me.
He became a marksman at throwing
things,
and it shows.
I hid a lot, in books, in tree
houses,
in our basement.
More or less successful,
but I think I can finally
embrace it.
I exist in agreement
with all the weird turmoil
and destruction
that is part of being alive.
I'm home.
Home isn't where you're born.
It's where all your attempts
to escape cease.
Need to move on to a higher life
form.
Pogonomyrmex barbatus.
Florida harvester ants.
Found a bunch on my porch
near the kitchen.
Feisty creatures.
Building a little jail for them.
Ants communicate with each other
on a chemical level.
They belong to a hive mind
and perform tasks
in accordance with it.
That must be reflected in the
sound.
The hum of life is there,
but different.
As the ants move, the sound
changes.
A tiny hum here,
a soft alteration of pitch
there,
yet I can't see any connections
with what the ants are doing.
They're obviously in distress,
fighting against the sticky
tape,
yet they're struggling alone,
no way to inform the hive mind.
Could I see a pattern if I
understood
the will of the hive mind?
Observing them up close is
difficult.
They keep moving.
Why can't they stay still?
I'm too tired for this.
Sleep is a little slice of
death,
but I can't help craving it.
I've observed these jittery,
feculent insects long enough.
[screeching]
I'm so happy
that that horrible screech
faded,
that it isn't permanent.
For a moment, I thought I might
go insane.
Something isn't right.
The sound has changed.
It makes my hair stand on end.
I feel very uncomfortable, on
edge,
but I need to keep going.
I need more ants.
I turned off the air
conditioning
and started leaving food
on the kitchen floor and in
here.
94 Fahrenheit,
34.4 Celsius outside.
Perfect.
It should attract them.
Good, fresh specimens.
Trying to analyze what was going
on.
First,
I could hear the same change as
I did
when I cut up the plant.
The hum of life transitions
into the sound of death.
What was that screeching sound?
My hypothesis is that the other
ants
reacted systemically.
When I killed the ant in front
of them
their sounds changed
in response to its death.
Nothing like that happened
with the plants,
but plants aren't aware
in the same way insects are.
It also explains the change in
the ants.
Those that witnessed the death,
did they recognize me
as the other ants killer?
That can't be.
I must be like a God to them
and there is no way
they can recognize me.
It's like the ants didn't know
but the sound did.
Whatever it is,
it is not tinnitus.
This is a triumph.
I'm making a note here.
Huge success.
Reading my next report.
The scientists have to realize,
I couldn't imagine something
on this scale.
How could I dream this up?
I'm down to two hours of sleep a
day.
A horrible screech in my skull
keeps me in between worlds.
[door bell]
Again?
What do they want this time?
I told my neighbors not to
bother me.
Why did they keep disturbing me?
It can't smell that bad.
It took me some effort,
but I managed to digitally
recreate
that horrible screech.
[screeching]
The sound builds up.
That's it.
That's the sound that haunts me.
[screeching]
The sound
as the ants witnessed the
killing.
I'll share this online.
Invisible things are the only
reality.
Tried to catch geckos outside.
Too fast.
Slugs are easier.
We'll attract them
with Bharat's hipster beer
overnight.
Success.
Florida has only a few species
that are native,
but give me an invasive slug
from Europe any old day.
Come on, Christopher Columbus.
Why is there no relationship
between the slug's actions and
the sound?
Still, some patterns exist.
The shifting from life to death
is the most obvious,
but I've noticed more
more than one creature together
also causes a change
and the combination matters.
Two slugs together sound
different
than a slug and an ant.
Witnesses to a death suffer
a permanent change.
Forget my earlier panic,
the sound responded to the act
itself.
This isn't something to fear,
but the proof I need.
Suppose scientists
take a group of organisms
into an isolated room
and kill one of them.
Then, they bring me two groups,
one that was present for the
slaughter
and one that was not.
When I tell them definitively,
which ones witnessed the death,
they'll know I'm not making this
up.
It won't end there either.
This could be revolutionary
for the world.
Imagine how crime investigations
might change
once you can tell if someone
has witnessed death or not.
Will I be able to help sick
people?
Will I be able to really
accomplish
what all new-age charlatans
out there claim they can?
I might be getting ahead of
myself.
I don't fully understand how
this works.
These slugs are a variety of
ages.
Is it the sound of death
building up
in the slug's body as it ages?
As it age itself?
Amid all the snarky replies,
someone online finally wants to
help.
His YouTube name is Lance,
Lance Liebenfels.
He replied to my latest video
and says
he thinks he knows what's going
on.
He wants more samples to
compare.
Have I finally found
someone else like me?
Just one thing I need to do,
for the sake of knowledge.
I don't have a choice.
The change in the ants,
I only tested it with them.
I need the slug to die slow
so it gives me time to observe.
The slug suffers,
definitely.
More salt
[grunts].
Yes, the same sound.
It's the same eldritch sound
[grunts].
My previous experiment confirmed
it.
The sound was the same
as when I killed the ant.
We will keep a slug alive in the
cup
just to be safe
and I'll put the rest in the
freezer.
[door bell]
Not now,
I can't have any distractions
now.
At least,
I've taken the first step.
Death has a detectable,
repeatable sound.
Although there seems to be a
difference
in the quality of death.
One thing that keeps me going
is Liebenfels,
my online ally.
He's a weird fellow,
but he makes me laugh.
I connect with him.
He doesn't call me "Florida
Man".
The first time
I was confronted with death
was when I was 11 or 12.
I visited my grandparents
in North Carolina.
They were some true,
boiled goober peas-eating
Southern farmers.
Grandpa took me to the barn
and caught one of his chickens.
He held it and told me to kill
it.
Some weird rite of passage.
I think he wanted me to break
its neck
with my hands.
Instead,
I took the little plastic water
pistol
I had in my pocket
and began to hit its head with
it.
The chicken stared at me.
Although it knew the end was
near,
its eyes were full of absolute
disdain and pity.
I have never ever seen a being
look at me that way.
"What the hell are you doing?
You are a complete idiot."
Grandpa ended it quickly with a
snap.
This bird can help me
further select the changes.
Little by little,
the patterns emerge.
Back to the pet store.
Stressful.
New bird.
I poisoned this one with Draino,
slowly every one hour.
I predicted the time of death,
I heard the end approaching.
[sound]
This is enough,
birds are expensive.
Turning the remains
of the bird into charcoal,
filtering it.
I can hear patterns.
I can see patterns.
I can hear the essence
of the bird's demise.
I've compiled my notes
and evidence into a new file.
This time with an offer
to demonstrate my skills
and any way the experts deem
necessary.
Whether it's judging age,
predicting illness,
or identifying which organisms
have witness to death.
The real question is,
do I still want to cure?
Or would it be better
to see this as a gift?
This could revolutionize
criminal investigations,
the medical world.
The possibilities are endless.
I did it.
I really did it.
Persistence, it's part of my
DNA,
part of being human.
Ancestrally,
we are persistence hunters.
We're almost entirely hairless,
which means better heat
dissipation.
We have a lot of sweat glands.
The way we walk on our two legs
is just a succession of
controlled falls.
Gravity does half the work,
and as a result,
we use up fewer calories.
Imagine being an antelope.
Picture yourself 100 millennia
ago,
somewhere in the African steppe.
Sun burns down.
You're just hanging around
in the shade of a bush
doing your grazing thing,
when you see in the distance,
strange-looking predator.
He's walking on two legs, so
he's slow.
As he gets closer,
you run off, and you assume you
escaped.
Most predators give up
after a short while,
but this predator is different.
Here he is again, so you flee,
and after some time
you see him approach again.
He returns, and returns, and
returns,
and you run, and run, and run.
You're getting hot, so you need
to stop,
but he just keeps coming.
You're tired, exhausted.
You're a fast creature
but not for very long.
After a while you reach your
limits.
Eventually,
you just lay there out of
energy,
overheated, panting.
This ridiculous hairless ape
with his crazy staring eyes
gets closer and closer,
eventually just jogging over to
you.
Something bites in your
skin,opening it.
Your awareness melts away
with each drop of blood.
He diminishes,
he gorges on your precious
proteins,
wallowing in your organs.
It's part of us.
We do not stop.
We do not give up.
I do not give up.
Civilization is a thin layer of
ice
over a deep ocean of chaos.
It's 84 Fahrenheit,
28 Celsius inside my house.
As obtaining more ants is
unnecessary,
I tried to restart the air
conditioning.
There's a technical malfunction.
Temperatures above 26 Celsius
usually trigger an avoidance
response
in humans,
strangely, not in my case.
I'm sweating heavily
but feel no excessive discomfort
besides skin irritation.
Harvesting biomatter.
Maybe some more.
In the US Southwest,
there's a gas station chain
with a green dinosaur as a
mascot.
I always found this remarkably
honest.
Look at our whole
industrial civilization,
look at last century's
rapid population growth.
All our cheap and abundant
fossil fuels,
all our fertilizers, all our
medicine,
and plastic,
it is made out of beings
that lived millions of years
ago.
Our entire way of life
is based on harvesting
an unimaginable amount of death.
Death...
energy...
might be the key
to understanding my ability.
A new reply
from Liebenfels has arrived.
Let's see what he has to say.
"After looking over everything
you've told me
and comparing it to my notes,
I've reached the conclusion that
this is,
without a doubt,
the work of the Queer Lizard
People."
What?
This is what he comes back with?
Is he trolling me?
I will report you as abusive!
Asshole!
Dozed off for five minutes.
I had a very vivid dream.
It consisted largely of plunges
through abysmal realms
of inexplicably colored twilight
and jarringly symphonic
cacophonies.
All of a sudden,
I was home in our living room.
My dad was there in his
wheelchair.
He's friendly,
talking about his coming
grandchild.
I realized that I was pregnant.
It was a good feeling.
I couldn't wait any longer
to be a mother,
so I grabbed a knife
to rip the baby from my stomach.
I have to get back
to the very core of this.
I need to trust my perception.
Oh, look.
Gromphadorhina portentosa.
Extraordinary.
Good to hear.
[chuckles]
In general,
it seems the sound
is getting more and more dense.
Each subtle change has a meaning
to me,
but do they interact with each
other?
So many sounds have meanings.
So many patterns I can detect.
Sometimes it seems as though
it's a language of its own.
Can I learn it?
Haven't slept at all.
Imagine trying to sleep
while people chatter near you.
Their voices are just quiet
enough
that you can't understand.
As you find yourself
concentrating,
trying to hear...
It would be less disturbing
if you knew what they were
saying.
It is a language.
The more I work,
the clearer it becomes.
Still garbled, but not as bad,
like a radio frequency that's
off.
I need to masturbate
at more regular intervals.
The side effects
include vertigo and vomiting.
What's that?
[whispering]
[phone ring]
Oh, my boss.
I won't answer it.
Answers bring me peace.
Objects brought together
cause variations.
Organisms cause greater
variations,
but it isn't conscious.
Happened to objects...
...not conscious.
Of course,
the organisms aren't talking,
their cells are.
Every cell in the universe
engaged
in communication with every
other cell.
This is bigger than anything
I ever imagined before.
No wonder it's difficult
to be around people
with all those cells talking
to one another at the same time.
[sighs]
Email from HR.
Fired.
A relief.
We are not alone.
The universe is talking.
Something is out there in the
emptiness,
in every void we think we see.
Why was humanity excluded?
Should we be happy that we were?
The cells know the language.
The cells react to the
conversation.
How beautiful.
My hair's part of it?
Listen to the sound change.
Oh, never mind.
You can't hear.
I should have realized this long
ago,
my body is a part of the sound.
The sound of silence, I called
it.
It's not silence.
Not at all.
My cells talk to one another.
That is the sound of silence!
What are they saying?
Why can't we understand them?
Are they planning something?
My blood does it too.
All blood must do it.
My blood talks to the cells
around it constantly.
What is it saying right now?
Do they know I've learned the
secret?
What if they want it kept a
secret?
[door bell]
What is the matter with my
soundproofing?
Fascinating.
[laughs]
Don't worry.
Maybe our exclusion is not
intentional.
Maybe it's for the best.
I'm a perfect example.
Look how the sound has affected
me,
tormented me from the first day.
The more I came to understand
it,
the more it preyed on my mind.
The universe is not harmonious.
You know that by looking out the
window.
Maybe I'm looking at it the
wrong way.
Maybe perceiving is the problem.
Our nervous systems filter
our sensory input.
Animal consciousness,
and that includes human
consciousness,
can only take so much.
It was trained over eons,
mutation by mutation to accept
only what it can handle.
This creates a bearable universe
for us
in which we can live like fruit
flies.
We are born, grow,
maybe procreate, and die.
Our brain helps us fulfill these
tasks.
Makes it possible for us
to live in this universe
that is so much more than what
we know
by filtering out
the unknown depths and horrors.
Keeping us safe in a reality
where we can live oblivious
to what is in and around us.
But I tapped into it like a worm
crawling onto a highway.
Lack of sleep is getting to me,
giving me thoughts
that can't possibly be true.
If only I could shut out the
sound.
If only I could stop listening.
A Vice article cited my
research.
Top 10 Weirdest
Nutjob Conspiracy Theories.
Who is conspiring against whom?
This is an entire new cosmology,
for fuck sake.
Don't they get it?
I hate Vice.
It's journalistic cancer.
No, no.
It's not even journalism,
it's just cancer.
Decision.
No sleeping.
(dog barks)
Intolerable disturbance.
We're made of starstuff,
but so is dogshit.
Will they ever talk to me?
(dog whimpers)
Yes.
Maybe they will tell me
everything's okay,
perhaps they will tell me how to
stop it.
[burning noise]
What is so special about dying?
The total depletion of ATP,
the chemical that provides
energy
to the cells.
[door bell rings]
-No, someone's here again.
-Hello, are you home?
-I need to concentrate.
-Hello?
-Once I understand,
everything will be all right.
-Hey,
the front door was unlocked.
I brought you some dinner.
Pebbles?
-Dedication is the glue of life.
-Oh, my God!
Oh my God!
[screams]
[scuffle]
-Shh,
I can help you hold back your
tears.
Where are the trash bags?
I need absolute concentration
to listen to her essence.
Remember it.
She brought me
a homemade burrito.
Gender role still force women
to emphasize that stuff.
How sad.
We all need to explore new
spheres
of possibility.
They help us understand.
Nothing makes it stop.
How can I work
when they're always talking?
It's too much.
It's just too much.
Wish I didn't know.
There's a reason we aren't aware
of this conversation.
Conversation.
Conversation?
Maybe I was too optimistic, too
nave.
This is no conversation.
No cosmic chitchat hippie
bullshit.
It must be something deeper.
Maybe what I can hear,
what I called a conversation
is an immune response to
something.
It's my body's response
to some form of intrusion,
subdual, one that started three
years ago.
[door bell rings]
-Hey? Are you home?
[screams]
-It is nice of my mother to drop
by.
Just between us,
well,
she could have given me a heads
up.
Ah, the conversation.
Yes, yes, it's something else.
I can hear a form of cellular
distress.
Be quiet mother.
Something is out there...
...in there... all around.
I can feel it.
This being lurking,
just beyond my comprehension.
The cells are hurting.
They respond to an outside
force.
And the force...
something vast and powerful,
far from our own realm, lurking
out
in that indescribable void
among the dimensions.
Does it feast on me?
Feast on all of us?
Yes.
I'm not even a worm compared to
it.
It is like a giant sea creature
and I'm merely a bacterium
that got in his path.
It's all around me.
Absorbing me, changing me.
I can hear it all.
Am I as delusional as Liebenfels
and all the other trolls out
there?
I am without knowledge or luster
or name.
All I can focus on is this
sound.
This hideous sound it's
emanating.
Amazon delivery guy.
You remind me of my dad.
It might be preposterous of me,
but maybe I was chosen.
Yes!
That explains everything.
Chosen by a being older
than space and time.
Are my experiments
a kind of sacrifice to it?
Is that why I needed to go so
far
to understand?
Does it enjoy me killing?
Am I pleasing it?
Did it make me, slowly over the
years,
become what I am?
From that very first moment in
the lab,
did I summon it?
Did it know this day, today,
would eventually come?
I need to upload my remaining
findings
for all to understand.
I need to come to terms with my
place
in the universe.
A place that it gave me
and the sacrifice it demands.
Is it God?
I don't know...
but it is my god.
What does it want?
What is it asking me to do?
Leap of courage?
Leap of faith?
What offering
will make this imbalance end?
How can I empty space and time?
I finally understand.
That last and final moment is
yours.
That agony is your triumph.
[gun cocking]
I just wish it wasn't so loud.
[gunshot]
[silence]
[silence]
[silence]
[silence]
-Geez, what's with the AC?
-They're working on it.
We should get hazard pay.
What do you think
about this reference file case?
-Reference what?
-Reference file case.
It's high priority for the
chief.
-Huh?
-Yes, the 1087 two days ago
on West 8th Street.
-Yes.
A block over
from Lighthouse of Deliverance.
From what the neighbors said,
it sounds pretty cut and dry.
-It gave me the creeps.
-Why have they been calling it
the reference file case anyway?
-Because of the video files.
That's what the guy named it.
I'm getting coffee.
You want any?
-Oh, sure.
While you're at it,
get me some Boston creams?
-Yes, sure.
[clicking]
[screaming]
-Oh, wow.
-You're going to watch it?
No spoilers,
start from the beginning.