What would you do if presented with a task of infinite importance?

Gerald Timmins had never given the question much thought, now it was all he thought about.

Gerald pulled in to the parking lot a half hour early without a reason to be, he wasn't particularly eager or motivated by fear of being late. There would be no one there to notice whether he was or not, but early...Early could mean that Dr. Folta, Kevin he had said to call him, could still be pulling his data from ATHENA, the low orbit satellite swarm that was currently the most powerful radio telescope in existence, well, with some addendums, it was certainly the best for picking up low frequencies between 30 and 240 MHz, but it had several advantages over its ground based compatriots for the bands in the waterhole as well. The waterhole was a sweetspot on a cosmic scale. A quiet band of the electromagnetic spectrum between 1420 and 1662 MHz, so called because this is precisely the range the hydroxyl radical and hydrogen radiate at. These two molecules combine to form water, and interstellar gas is full of them, acting as a natural filter absorbing these frequencies and leaving the band quiet, a prime target for searching for little green men, but more realistically, and more pertinent to Gerald's work, finding discernible data about our universe and the bodies in it. It is also apparently a play on words as different species gather around watering holes. Speaking of...

Gerald didn't particularly mind Kevin, but Kevin had been inviting Gerald to attend one of his game nights populated by colleagues, their partners, their partners' friends, their partners friends' third cousins twice removed and whatever other extroverts Kevin could rope in for the six months they had shared a workspace, at least he presumed, Gerald had never attended, but Kevin kept telling him all about it anyway. Gerald realized that labelling a group of board game players populated mostly by radio astronomers "extroverts" was straining the definition, but everything was relative.

Gerald grabbed the mostly untouched mug of coffee he brought to work with him every shift. He'd microwave it a half dozen times before remembering it long enough to finish and fill it with the significantly better coffee the kitchen stocked. Popping the trunk, Gerald grabbed an army green duffel bag and matching backpack, setting off for the door and making it nearly half way before running back to grab his coffee from the roof of the car. The bags were heavy, packed with

living supplies as well as excess electronics equipment only Gerald used, but his wiry frame was used to the weight, he hated being unprepared.

Gerald's salvation was heralded by the silence of the monitoring room, unbroken save for the high whine of electronics most his age couldn't hear. A sticky note left on his keyboard was the only sign Kevin had been here at all, much less lived here for 48 hours.

"Happy hunting Ger! We missed you at the last game night! Hope to see you at the next one, or swing by the house anytime, Sophia's dying to meet you."

Kevin wasn't a bad guy really, Gerald just preferred to keep his own company. A lot of it had to do with Gerald's reasons for working as a radio telescope technician. The world could be so loud, everyone said so much, and expected Gerald to add to their muchness, but Gerald only felt like Gerald when it was quiet.

Gerald preferred to listen to the stars.

The stars, or rather the waves of energy between them that made up so much of existence, were out there, saying so much too, everything there was to say or hear really, reflected in the background radiation of the universe, but while people needed you to hear them and respond in realtime, the stars required nothing at all of you. They didn't care if you listened or not, they simply whispered their secrets across the vast expanses of the cosmos daring you to puzzle out their message, you could take as long as you like, and they would wait patiently, hundreds of years for your response. This felt more Gerald's speed.

Gerald wasn't a total misanthrope, he had a cat, and a fish. That these weren't human connections was not lost on him.

Spinning up the drives and pulling a pair of cushy headphones out of the defunct military issue backpack that had been his mother's, Gerald refreshed the signal to the connected satellites and ground-based radio telescopes that made up the brain and body of ATHENA, loaded up his project list and watched the digital representation of them reconfiguring. The process would take a little less than twenty minutes, time to microwave the coffee he hadn't touched.

******

Gerald found a pot of coffee already brewed in the kitchen, it was fresh and

untouched and obviously for him. In the mini-fridge he found a selection of microwave meals and sugary sodas, and on the counter microwaveable cups of noodles, chicken or shrimp. Kevin. Gerald would have to make an effort, he sighed, but supplemented his coffee with a cup of noodles, promising himself to consume them both this time, it was not unusual for him to forget to eat on these long shifts.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 2

The reconfiguration complete, his satellites began receiving radio waves in the desired bands for Gerald's work.

The headphones weren't necessary of course, they were purely for his enjoyment. Contrary to hollywood representations, radio astronomy involves very little listening, sound waves don't travel through a vacuum. No explosions, no pew pew laser sounds, all very boring. Now we can convince radio waves to carry information that we convert into sound waves, or radio stations would be out of business, and we can even convert the cosmic background radiation of the universe into sound waves, it just sounds like, well, static. Static so random in fact, that it could be used as a Random Bit Generator, an effectively infinite supply of truly random one-time values of arbitrary length, or even in generating a random key matrix for a Vernam cipher.

But Gerald liked listening to the static, after all this wasn't just any static, this was his static, from his part of the sky!

Gerald was technically part of a team, but they were each selecting their own locations, radio bands, and data processing techniques with significant autonomy, which for Gerald was key. Gerald was hunting for planets orbiting mighty little red dwarfs. When planets move through the immense magnetic fields of a red dwarf they act like enormous bicycle dynamos, creating powerful auroras, and with that, radio emission.

Gerald liked to imagine when he listened to the random static generated by his conversion application that he could hear or maybe just feel the difference between his red dwarf static, and other static, that he could learn a candidate's voice over time, like today's, a red dwarf with an especially sweet voice that seemed to hum questions he would never understand, but this was just wishful thinking, human brains made patterns out of everything, and really Gerald just liked to drown out the world.

Gerald checked the initial readouts, the useful data that wasn't infinitely random white noise, pink actually, this noise really felt pink, then leaned back with his eyes closed and listened until sleep took him. He would be like this off and on, more on than off for the next 48 hours, in that time the imaging software would make remarkable progress in forming a cohesive image of Gerald's distant new friend, but it would be months before he had the kind of million second exposure images he needed.

******

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 3

Gerald dreamt he heard the sound of trumpets, brassy and triumphant. He dreamt he flew through a dark vacuum over glowing cities made of light, thrumming in time with his motion, turning with him as he twisted to better see them. Their crystalline forms looked more like growth patterns than human construction. Something about the patterns was familiar, the growth of trees maybe, or lichtenberg figures, the bizarre fractal lines that lightning left on human skin, that was closer, but these were living and breathing somehow, and the colors, there was something about the colors, something terrible and beautiful, or maybe terribly beautiful, but it frightened him nonetheless. That was it. Gerald was certain now, why, they were glowing colors his eyes had never seen.

Gerald awoke with a jolt. Soup. It would be cold, how long had he been asleep. Not as long as he'd thought because it was still quite warm, which was good because he was uncommonly ravenous. Gerald's wiry frame perhaps owed two parts to his genetics, but one to his general disinterest in food. This pattern held true for his paleness, general disinterest in all things sun left him with little opportunity to tan even if his skin hadn't been as disinterested in such things as he was, his copper hair and pale blue eyes were purely genetic however.

Gerald finished the cup of soup in a hurry, scraping the tiny noodle fragments and remnants of rehydrated chives and carrot from the styrofoam bottom with the spoon, then he woke up the desktop with a wiggle of the mouse to check on the progress. The time. Eight hours, it had been eight hours.

"What?"

Gerald looked at the cup of soup with scrunch faced derision and snorted an exhale that was half scoff half laugh. It didn't answer him. It had sure seemed hot, apparently he was hungrier than he thought. The satellites were doing their thing that required very little human babysitting, gradually moving position and accumulating data. Gerald checked his phone, three texts from Kevin, and a reminder to buy cat food at the end of his shift. Right. He had emptied the bag into two bowls to make sure she'd have enough while he was gone, and the same for her water. He remembered to eat regularly because he had to feed her, so really who was taking care of whom? Gerald almost ignored the texts from Kevin before pulling up the chat as he stumbled into the kitchen, his eyes still hadn't adjusted to the bright lights after an unexpected full night's "nap".

"Hey amigo, left you some grub in the

kitchen, dig in man cause me and Violet are on a diet. Get

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 4

rid of that stuff before I come back or I'm not responsible

for my actions."

"Dude! I know it's not star static but check

out this song!"

"Oh, after your shift, saturday, game night at my

house, wanna swing by? Joiiiin us."

The texts were liberally peppered with laughing emoji, and a gif of a hooded cult from some cartoon following the last text.

Gerald didn't remember why he'd gone to the kitchen, but now that he was here he surprised himself by putting another meal in the microwave, a fettuccine Alfredo. He was intimately familiar with tv dinners but hadn't eaten them since he was a latchkey military brat constantly moving.

He surprised himself a second time by quickly messaging Kevin back.

"I'll be there. What time? Thanks for the food."

He received a reply almost instantaneously.

"Really? Rock on! 6PM, be there or be square.

The gang'll be thrilled, you're gonna love it. I'll send

you my address again. Listen to the song."

The microwave was acting up, producing a louder hum than it should.

Gerald ate ravenously again, these tasted better than he remembered, then he did his routine of stretches and bodyweight exercises. He loved to hike, escape the noise and light of the cities with a telescope of the optical variety, which were heavy even on the amateur hobbyist end, and stare up at the sky. That meant staying in hiking shape.

Then Gerald went to work, headphones on, interpreting the data he now had and using it to optimally reposition the satellites.

After another ten straight hours of staring at screens, looking over charts and studies for future targets, the most local star had come back up and begun its descent again casting a New Mexico orange and pink sunset glow into the remote office through the few small windows.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 5

Gerald really felt like there was something special about this target. Maybe the uncommonly pleasant pink noise was influencing him, he swore he could almost hear a rhythm to it, but the data did look encouraging as well. Major magnetic field even for a red dwarf, and a highly encouraging swirling cloud of activity that would gradually become more clear. It had the nebulous swirl of grand potential.

With nothing of his own left to do, Gerald spent a few hours analyzing and inputting the data from Kevin's last readouts, this was part of their routine. Kevin insisted that Gerald saw things he didn't, but Gerald was pretty sure Kevin just got bored too easily. In exchange Kevin handled the scheduling and covered for Gerald at pointless meetings and grant dinners.

Gerald made it to his cot this time, but barely, passing out as he listened to the comforting wall of background noise.

Flowing through speckled tubes of pink and blue, surrounded by trees of light endlessly branching out with branches off of branches but never reaching each other.

The trumpets again, the same at first, but they grew louder and louder until that was all Gerald could hear, then into that cacophony came another sound, a heavily synthesized tone that sounded like three voices grafted into one, no, more natural than that, three voices growing together, twisting around each other like trees sharing a root system.

The voices rose, they hummed a tune that sounded more than familiar. It sounded like home, nostalgia, he felt the voices coiling around him in red and green and gold, lighting up the background of his mind with a warm glow as they twisted around him, pulling him with them as they flew, four swirling comets streaking through the golden vacuum of his mind. At first the melody was simply notes, but Gerald felt a jolt in his chest when he realized he could understand them, not words at first, only meaning. With each note they flew past memories of his life, not just the big highlights but every small joy and triumph, moments he had forgotten, peeling open his first candy bar all by himself, tiny pink fingers pulling open a wrapper and smelling chocolate and palm oil, biting in to coconut and almond. Then he was sipping tomato soup, warm and creamy and salty out of a thermos with a woman he didn't recognize but he knew was his mother as they hiked and toddled up a forested path. The smell of pine, and soup, and her. That he still remembered.

Love Sorrow

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 6

Sorrow

Love

Hope

Pain

Compassion

Violence

Forgiveness

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Again and again he felt these concepts in his head repeated in slow methodical

vibrato notes, patient, and loving. Each repetition summoned another memory, not linear, but somehow each memory felt right, coloring both the one before it and the one to come.

"And then" The two notes were the same, but he could hear it now, as if words. That wasn't everything, but that was a kernel that held everything, a key to a cypher he could only feel. With a popping flash the golden glow exploded into the blackest black before filling with an ever growing field of bright white stars popping in his vision like the white specks of illuminated dust on an old film negative and disappearing just as quickly. Gerald heard himself inhale, and the sound was higher pitched than he expected, and somehow cold. Only then did he feel the hand on his shoulder, it was warm, and it was big, he knew that hand, and he felt a stifled sob immediately contract his face.

He turned from the telescope his tiny body had been staring into for hours,

feeling the air resist him as he spun like he was underwater and saw his father's face

through tear filled eyes, fat tears forming globular telescopic lenses that magnified

but also distorted his father's image, just as memories do.

"And then"

Wiping away tears with a child's hands he stared at his father as long and hard as he could. He hadn't been able to remember this face in years. The edges of his vision were hazy like a dream, but a pinpoint hole in the center of his vision was so clear he was certain his real life eyes were open, awake, and staring right at his father's stubbly face.

"And then"

He heard the notes again, and with it he knew. "No!"

He screamed as he watched his father pulled away into the stars, here and gone as quickly as the white pops of dust on the black film had been.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 7

"No" he whispered quietly to himself through contractions of pain as he sunk to the ground amongst a nest of camping supplies slumped next to an army green duffel bag bigger than him.

"And then"

He could hear the empathy and understanding in the tone now, the steady patience, the knowing, sorrow for him and with him, how could he not hear it before, the notes knew what was coming, swirling close around him as he suffered. He didn't want empathy. He wanted it to stop.

The notes kept going, the voices kept swirling, louder and louder, brighter and brighter, god it was so bright!

"And then"

Gerald jerked awake with a violent kick that almost knocked his chair over and pulled off his headphones. He was still breathing heavy, panting, for just a moment he didn't know where he was, he thought he smelled pine, and he had heard a voice. Saying something, what was it?

"And then" he said this time.

Wait, what? Why was he in his chair, no wonder it was so ungodly bright. His eyes hadn't adjusted to the harsh fluorescent lights because he should be in his cot. He was in his cot. Sleepwalking? He must have. As he tried to orient his bleary eyes he realized he'd been crying, objects in the room ringed in colorful halos.

A voice. He had heard a voice. Voices? With a shaking hand he reached for the headphones...Only static.

******

An hour later not only had Gerald's vision not cleared, but a forming

headache had become a migraine. The first he'd had in his life. His father had gotten them frequently so he knew how debilitating they could be. Flipping off all of the lights, he hobbled back to the cot he never should have left and tried to sleep.

Squinting and rubbing his eyes several times didn't make the light go away even with his arm covered.

"yup, migraine. First time At 35, oook. What do I do? Mmmph painkillers."

After another sixty seconds of groaning and squeezing his head he finally pushed himself into a seated position. The wave of nausea hit with such sudden intensity he didn't know what to do at first, or maybe that was the head fog.

"Oh no, nope nope."

Gerald barely made it to his knees in front of the toilet before heaving violently, undoing all of Kevin's hard work and filling the toilet with noodles.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 8

The thought struck him that he was essentially a pasta strainer now. Which was funny right up until a noodle ended up in his sinuses instead of the bowl.

Half an hour later he had turned off every light in the squat building and found a stash of acetaminophen as well as sunglasses he was pretty sure were Kevin's, in a drawer.

Swearing off sleep or his headphones Gerald spent the next several hours staring at data that he had to read and reread a dozen times through eyes that were still blurry before getting the system ready for the next person on the team, Kelly, a smart, polite introvert that Gerald had never shared more than a few sentences with, but they shared nods of solidarity when they saw each other. Silence was a shared language.

As Gerald was escaping into the glaring sun, Kelly caught him at the exit remarking only on "how dark it is in here."

Gerald mumbled something about a migraine and made for home. The drive was unpleasant even with sunglasses and acetaminophen, but at least it was short. He had chosen the small second story apartment specifically for its proximity, and its acceptance of cats.

When he opened the door Frig was there to greet him, thick tail swishing. His fish Theseus however was not. The layabout.

Frig's plaintive trills filled his ears, the sounds not unwelcome despite the fading headache.

"Hello? Do you exist? Is there anyone out there? ET phone home."

Gerald woke with a start. This was becoming a habit. He was going to get himself checked for narcolepsy, or a brain tumor, even if he did hate being examined.

Pulling up his phone he saw a string of texts and emojis from Kevin.

"Hello? Do you exist? Is there anyone out

there? ET phone home."

Deja vu, he could swear he had seen that already, or heard it. Maybe he had half woken up and forgotten it.

Oh shit. Game night.

5:35

He could make it on time if he left now.

Out the door and in the car before he could talk himself out of it Gerald

marveled at how unlike him this all was. It wasn't like him to say yes at all, ever, it was even less like him to not be cripplingly anxious now that he thought about it,

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 9

but then it wasn't like him to fall unconscious and hear voices either, so whatever, you took the good with the insane. He laughed to himself, out loud in the car. Another plus, his headache was completely gone. He noticed he was still

wearing the sunglasses, wasn't sure when he had put them on, but he actually felt fantastic. Very un-Gerald. He would take it up with himself when he got home.

Ack. He's a guest. He should...bring something. 5:47, there was a grocery store less than a mile from the house apparently. What to get.

"Those are a little boring don't you think?" Said a voice alarmingly close to his left shoulder but decidedly not in his head.

Gerald was indeed holding a box of plain low sodium crackers.

"What would you get for a bunch of strangers at a game night? I don't socialize or care much about food, except for the last two days which is another story, and I don't know what people eat at parties." Gerald blurted, surprising himself, and presumably the person who had spoken to him.

She had dark purple and teal hair so vibrant it seemed to be glowing and blue eyes that were likewise unnaturally vibrant and they were wide with amusement for a moment before she narrowed them conspiratorially.

"That depends. Game night huh? Is it going to be full of blowhards and an obnoxiously extroverted host that's been nagging you for ages?"

"Yes!"

She nodded as if diagnosing a grave illness before handing him two bags of kanji covered "seafood flavor" chips.

"Take two of these and call me in the morning. Trust me. Anyone who doesn't love them isn't worth your time. Oh, and chocolate wine, aisle 3. It's better than it sounds."

With that she walked away. Gerald had no idea if she was right, but he wasn't fool enough to look a gift decision in the mouth.

******

The driveway and sidewalk leading up to the house was full of cars bedecked in

various scifi and fantasy stickers. "Well, I think it's the right place."

Gerald was greeted at the door by Kevin and Violet. He had met Kevin's wife

once before, when she'd had to pick Kevin up due to a dead alternator. Gerald found himself smiling and making greetings without the usual

discomfort. Kevin seemed jubilant, and Violet seemed genuinely glad to see him again. She was a physician of some kind. He thought he liked her better than Kevin.

"Hello?" He wasn't sure who said that.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 10

Inside, the party was in full swing. It was only 6:03, but old friends arrive early he supposed.

Gerald held up the wine and chips victoriously.

"I brought snacks!"

"No!" They nearly unanimously shouted.

Gerald looked around with bugged eyes, searching for the faux pas he'd

committed. "How?!"

"No freaking way man!"

"What?!"

"How did you do it?!"

The group shouted over each other, bursting into a combination of laughter

and mock horror that was nevertheless convincing.

Gerald heard a positively exultant cackle coming down the hallway before

seeing it's owner lurch into the room and grab the chips and wine from him. "Snack man! Those are for me, thank you!" Crowed the speaker through a

cheshire grin.

She faced the crowd and bowed, asymmetric purple and teal hair falling into

her face with the bow.

"Every time its her turn to make the snack trip she buys these abominations

with our money. So we finally banned them." Kevin broke in.

"I said I wouldn't buy them anymore. I didn't say he wouldn't."

"We underestimated her." Said curly haired blonde man, maybe Josh? They

never overlapped schedules.

"She's a sociopath." Said Amir, who he did know distantly from college, he

painted miniature warriors and creatures, he built and programmed little spidery robots in his free time and was largely responsible for keeping the equipment functioning and troubleshooting connectivity issues with the satellites, and that was all Gerald knew.

"So you're Sophia I take it?" Gerald said, realizing.

"Oh my god, you didn't know?!" Sophia's eyes widened in surprise.

Gerald shook his head with a snort.

"Wow, you're very forward with strangers, Gerald." Raising an eyebrow in mock

reproach.

"Wait what?!" Kevin choke-laughed out. Gerald turned beet red, but smiled.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 11

"Sociopath, got it." Gerald said nodding.

She mimed being shot in the chest, but grinned and sat down with the rest of the group with the snacks that were apparently just hers.

Gerald sat down next to her, this was a weird set up, everyone was on the floor, surrounded by a square of couches, Gerald thought he had seen things like this in retro magazines, a conversation pit? He hoped the conversation was optional. Between them was a board of grey squares that looked like stone, with cardboard walls in places and...meticulously painted miniature figures. Amir's?

"Is this a Roleplaying game?" Gerald said casually, refusing to betray any discomfort with such a social game.

"Yep! But don't worry, we're doing a one off, so it'll be easy to dive right in." Kevin said cheerfully.

To be fair, Gerald had never asked. All of his behavior had been strange lately. He had even made jokes.

Gerald looked back at Sophia, and nearly jumped back as he saw literal glowing words plastered over her face, really they were hovering in space and seemed to be following his vision, burned into his retinas.

"Can you hear this, Gerald?" It was rendered in an almost unintelligible scrawl of individual pixels of light...colored light. That color. Gerald realized with an unsuppressed gasp that he had never, ever, seen that color in his life. He couldn't begin to describe it, it was just, that color, the other one he had never seen.

"Are those prescription or? Oh! My sunglasses, smooth."

Gerald realized all at once he was staring, and that he was still wearing sunglasses inside, and that they were hers apparently?

"Yours? I thought they were Kevin's." Gerald stammered in a daze as Sophia gently plucked them off of him.

"Nope, he's just a mooch that lacks taste, and these are my CAT4 sunglasses. I wear them at raves, and he wears them snowboarding in Taos. I'm surprised you could even see us in here. Talk about commitment to a bit." She said with genuine admiration.

As she removed the glasses Gerald found himself absolutely blinded, he tried to close his eyes, but they started watering immediately.

"Oh dude, sorry, give your eyes a moment to adjust, that's why you're not supposed to wear these things indoors I think."

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 12

With his eyes closed the words were still there, though blurry and now awash in a sea of colors he had never seen before in his life.

"Sorry, may I use your restroom for a moment?" Gerald said through a squint.

"Of course man, here I'll show you, first door on the left." Kevin led him down the hall.

Gerald clasped his hands over his eyes the instant the door was closed. That was darker, a little, but the "darkness" was still the brightest thing he had seen in his life. He would have said it was white, but that wasn't the color, it was, so many colors, none of which he had names for, and in the center, still the words.

"Can you hear this, Gerald?"

Carefully Gerald whispered. "Seeing it actually, but yes. Hello?"

The script reconfigured itself one pixel at the time, if pieces of the letters

shaped like tiny hexagons could be called pixels.

"Rapture. Joy. Miracle. Salvation. Impossible made possible. Hello. Hello. We are here. We exist. What are you? Where are you? We do not understand "seeing" please clarify."

Gerald decided to try just thinking his response this time.

"Wow. Um that's a lot. Hello. Again. Who is we? Who are you? How am I seeing this? Umm seeing is perceiving a narrow spectrum of electromagnetic waves and the matter it interacts with using sensory organs I have, called eyes. I am a human being, a sentient living organism. I am on earth. A planet where things live. Orbiting a star, in a galaxy of stars, in a vast universe. Specifically I am in a coworker's bathroom very concerned that I am experiencing some form of schizophrenia or maybe a brain tumor. Please advise. Yours truly, Gerald Timmins."

Gerald did not expect a reply, or really any logical consistency. He didn't think hallucinatory experiences were known for that, but it wasn't like he hadn't imagined first contacts taking a hundred, a thousand different forms. What astronomer hadn't? Though he supposed his propensity for those particular flights of fancy did probably predispose him to this particular hallucination. After all, the likelihood of making contact with "any" intelligent species had to be unbelievably low, if any others existed to begin with. The distances were so vast, the sub-lightspeed limitation was a nail in the coffin for most extra-solar travel, and if there were anyone nearby enough to communicate with, why the radio silence? It would take just over four years for a light speed message to reach Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to Sol. That ruled out a realtime conversation, much less one like this. Still, he'd be damned if he was going to screw it up.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 13

The tiny hexagons swirled and shifted again.

"Joy. Confusion. Wonder. Fascination. We believe we are receiving you, but much of what we have heard we do not understand. You are Gerald, a Timmins, a name and family. We understand this. We understand you fear you are mentally discordant with reality. You are not. We had feared that we were unsound until we succeeded in contacting you. This was an unlikelihood. How can we help you hear us better?"

Well, that was pretty realtime.

What do I say? Are they hearing all of my thoughts? Hopefully not, it's a mess in there. Why am I seeing this instead of hearing it? Am I supposed to be hearing it? Gerald thought.

"We are hearing you. We do not understand the question. In our awareness all existence is energy, vibration, waves, no? What is matter? What is the distinction between seeing and hearing?"

Well, that answered that.

"Yes, but in our awareness we have a thing we call matter, it is interchangeable with energy, but distinct, it is the thing that does most of the vibrating in response to or as a reflection of energy I suppose. Not my area of expertise. We have different senses, evolved abilities to perceive different wavelengths of energy, but not all of them, just narrow bands." Gerald thought intentionally.

"We hear. You use different senses for different notes. These are the wrong notes. What are the right notes?"

Gerald was ready to look it up, but he knew this actually.

"Umm I "see" something like 400 to 790 terahertz. I "hear" only 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz, but too high is very uncomfortable. I don't know if these measurements could possibly make any sense to you."

"Your words are our words. We have built a dictionary, some terms do not translate."

A long pause, Gerald realized how long he had been in the bathroom. He flushed the toilet to simulate normalcy and prepared to leave, his eyes had adjusted slightly, he began uncovering them gradually.

"Hello?"

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 14

He heard it this time. Clear, but synthesized and sounding like three voices blended together.

"Oh my god. I've heard you before. Asleep. I was asleep and you were talking to me. That worked by the way."

"Success. Satisfaction. Building a dictionary, learning your song while you learned ours. We could not hear you very well then, you are much clearer now."

"You alright in there? You fall in?"

"Hold on. Please wait." Gerald quickly thought.

"We will wait." He heard in response.

"Oh my god, Dad jokes Kevin? Not even dad said that. Sorry Snackman, this

is what I live with all the time." Sophie yelled through the door.

"Uh, be right out. Just caught up responding to a work thing. Can I borrow

those shades actually? I think I have a migraine starting." Gerald reluctantly opened the door.

"Oh man, is it Dr. Keller? Guy's the worst, he never sleeps. Tell him it's your weekend, you're off the clock broheim. He needs a life." Kevin chirped, dripping with brotherly empathy. Gerald felt he was finding it easier to read Kevin's musical, effusive tones that he had found overwhelming.

Sophie did hand him the sunglasses, looking a bit relieved that his behavior made sense, but mostly concerned as they walked back to the party.

"Hey Vi, can we get Ger here some painkillers, he's got a migraine coming on. Totally just say something next time man, I get them too." Sophia said with empathy as genuine as her brother's. Maybe not so much of a sociopath.

"Sure thing, what's your poison?"

"Oh uh, anything you've got. I'm kind of new to them."

"You're a noob huh? Whoa, alright, welcome to the party freshie." Sophia

laughed cruelly. Nope, sociopath.

"I'm just saying, the whole wizard-sorcerer split is stupid. It should be a spectrum, just because you have innate magical talent doesn't mean you never study the methodology." Maybe-Josh was ranting.

"Right, but their magic comes from completely different sources. That's the point. Sorcerers have magic in their blood or whatever, Wizards are just learning and manipulating the innate laws of the universe like we do, only in their universe those laws are magic, Jake." Responded Amir.

Crap, Maybe-Josh was Jake. Now he'd have to get used to that.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 15

"Mmmm, I'm not so sure. If the laws of their universe are magic, then aren't sorcerers doing the same thing, but intuitively? I don't see why someone couldn't be a hybrid." Shot in Violet while handing Gerald four ibuprofen, more than he'd taken in his life, and a cold soda.

"Yeah, but multi-classing totally bones you." Jake said solemnly. They all seemed to settle on consensus there as Gerald sat.

"Ok moment of truth Snackman, try these. Tell me they're not the best thing you've ever tasted." Gerald turned to see a bag of chips where Sophie's face had been. He was dizzy and everything was still unbearably bright, but he found his way into the bag and pulled out a couple large chips that smelled like herbs and well, seafood, shrimp maybe?

He chewed boldly.

"May we ask how long we should wait?"

Gerald could hardly believe he had forgotten for a moment.

"Umm, can you wait a few hours? Is that possible? I don't think I can focus on

talking to you and all of these other strangers, and if I leave now it would be odd, rude, suspicious."

Gerald also thought, but tried not to focus on, that if he was having a mental break as he still suspected it would really complicate his life for his colleagues to find out and commit him.

"We will wait."

"Well?" Sophia intoned with a rising lilt.

Gerald saw that the entire room was now staring at him.

"These are, without a doubt, the best chips I have ever tasted." Gerald said

gravely.

The entire room burst into an uproar of complaints. Jake not Josh threw a

pillow at Sophia as she pumped her fists triumphantly.

Gerald grinned, delighted with himself, though he wasn't in control of his

tastebuds, and he hadn't lied. He was still very nervous, but he had never felt so comfortable around people in his life, at least not since he was very young, and he didn't think it was just the choice of company, though Kevin's group was obviously a very close and welcoming bunch.

"Should I try the chocolate wine too?"

"Oh no migraine noobie, alcohol would probably be the worst thing for you right now. In fact are you sure you can hang? We could get you home or find you a dark room to wait it out if you prefer?"

Gerald considered. He could go home, talk to the alien race (if that's what they were) that likely signaled his impending mental breakdown, and be free from

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 16

the crippling social anxiety and overwhelming stimulus of a large group of strangers. Crippling social anxiety and stimulus he... didn't feel. No. He, could do this. Wanted to do this.

"I'm ok, great actually. So, how do we play?" Gerald found himself asking.

Over the next several hours Gerald found himself laughing, talking about himself, his work, which thankfully did not seem to bore the room, why he loved hiking, and the stars, though he felt he was leaving some things out there, and asking Amir and Jake about their lives. Amir really was an incredible engineer, he had founded an engineering summer camp for kids, and he was funny. Jake was, well, he pretty much had Jake right, he was a frat boy that somehow had the cognitive faculties necessary to become a radio astronomer, he and Kevin had a lot in common, though neither seemed possessed of the toxic or narcissistic qualities he had come to associate with loud boisterous men. Gerald did not realize until the end of the night that Jake and Amir were a couple. Violet was the de facto party leader, apparently both in the game and out of it, but she was patient, and knew everyone's freshly made character sheets and what they could do better than they did.

Against the urging of the others Gerald had chosen something complicated. A ranger like character that dealt with traps and puzzles and the like, both because he wanted to be useful, and because it sounded the most like hiking to him. Sophia. Sophia was a musician of some sort, though Gerald hadn't managed to ask more about that. Sophia was harder to talk to because she was somehow more self- assured and passionate than Kevin, while simultaneously being significantly more interesting to Gerald, and she also seemed to be studying him like he was a canary. Either planning to eat him, or waiting to see if he passed out in the coal mine. She was a barbarian with an enormous axe.

By the end of the night the intrepid adventurers had slain a necromancer and their army of oozing shamblers, and escaped the dungeon, and Gerald had made several new friends, or at least, friendly acquaintances. Technically Jake had sworn his undying allegiance after Gerald saved him from a particularly nasty trap his sorcerer/wizard hybrid (yes really) had stumbled into.

Sophia was without a doubt the kindest sociopath Gerald had ever met. She was obviously brilliant, though he still didn't know what she did, based on the others' inside jokes it was something to do with computers and music, singularly bold, funny, she had guided him through a migraine he didn't have all night, and she had saved him from certain death with an axe flailing hail mary while she was nearly dead herself. He knew that last one wasn't technically real and he had been in no actual danger, but it felt real as an undead horde was descending on his poor

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 17

dwarf rogue. Oh and she had fended off the very real threat of Kevin and Jake dragging him skiing.

Gerald probably wouldn't be seeing Sophia again, or the others, aside from work. The thought of getting roped into all of the inherent social entanglements, being counted on to be around, becoming attached to these people...sent spikes of anxiety into Gerald's core, social entanglements would only lead to Gerald disappointing them, or more of the panic attacks he hadn't had in years. Besides, despite their patience he must have seemed like a freak disappearing into the bathroom, wearing sunglasses inside, and occasionally being distracted by space aliens. No, this was a one time occurrence owing to a strange brain quirk from an alien tumor, he decided, still, it had been fun.

He took Sophia's advice to heart on the drive home. It may not be a migraine, but everything was getting progressively brighter even through the shades she told him to "just get back to her the next time he sees her." Nausea, bright auras around objects, sensitivity to light and sound, maybe it was just an uber migraine...or a tumor.

Inside, Gerald fed Frig and Theseus, wrote down a note to call a neurologist, well, actually he just wrote the word TUMOR really big, and underlined it three times, but he knew what it meant, and stuck it to the fridge. As Gerald laid down in his single bed it sounded like he was trying to sleep in a busy airport, and even with his eyes closed and the shades on everything was more a light "not purple" color rather than the black-ish he was accustomed to in a pitch black room.

"What is a tumor?"

Gerald jumped.

"Jesus!"

"Sorry, I wasn't sure I'd hear you again."

"We waited, but we no longer heard the other's frequencies. We hoped this was acceptable."

"Yes. I'm alone. Tired, but alone. It's ok. I have some questions for you actually."

"We too have questions."

"Fair. Alright, how about we take turns, you get a question, I get a question." "We accept."

"Ok, you go first."

"Please describe your universe, the nature of your existence, and your purpose."

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 18

"Wow, diving right in. Those are very open ended, also you cheated, that's more like three. Well, the nature of our existence, and our purpose have the same answer--I don't know. We exist, we live, then we die. That's it. As for the universe, well, we exist in several states of matter, powered by energy. Which are interchangeable, but not always easily. We are on a planet, a chunk of matter that is very big to us but very small in the universe. It orbits a star. Stars are burning balls of matter that are constantly converting tons of matter to energy. This gives our planet the energy the life on it needs to survive. In turn our sun orbits the center of the Milky Way, a galaxy of stars, something like 100 million of them, and in turn we've found over 200 billion galaxies. So there's a lot of it. Oh and we think it was built through a process of incredibly rapid inflation we call the Big Bang, and also that it all started as an infinitely dense and small singularity. Though that last part is contentious because it comes from an earlier model called general relativity and doesn't take into account quantum mechanics. I feel like this is too much information. Does this make any sense? How can you even understand me, are you a scientist, I'm Gerald but you always say "we."

"You cheated as well."

Gerald didn't know how he could read the emotive properties of a synthesized collection of voices, but he could. That was a joke. He laughed.

"You caught me. I think we're both a little excited." Gerald wondered if this could be genuine contact, what questions would he ask to determine the difference? What was the Turing test for extraterrestrials vs. a tumor? Or was that more of a Voight-Kampff test? What if the tumor believed it was aliens. Do tumors dream of cancerous sheep?

"We will answer. We understand much of what you say. We too have a concept of a non- existence, a great pause before the song began. We understand you because you sent a response to our signals. So we sent more messages to establish a connection. Once the connection was established we began to learn to harmonize with you. You harmonized with us as well. We find our notes in your song, and compose a response out of these notes. We are everything. Many of our species study the mathematical nature of existence. Scientist. Many of us study existence in other ways. We say we because we are many. Trillions now. No member of our species is not here listening,

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 19

joining our song. There is nothing more important."

Gerald was mortified. He wanted to vomit, and not from the constant tangle of swirling lights of impossible colors. He had just put an entire species. Trillions of intelligent beings, on hold. For hours. Really nailing first contact, Gerald.

Gerald wanted to write on a notepad, but honestly he didn't want to open his eyes and be blinded. His eyelids, sunglasses, and a pillow over his face hadn't made the world seem any less bright than someone shining a flashlight in his closed eyes. Clearing his head he decided to work with what he had. His mental workspace had always been better than average anyway.

Priorities.

"Maybe let's keep it to three questions at a time then. I have an inkling, but, where are you located? Are you orbiting a red dwarf star? If I picture things does that help you? If I imagine a star chart can you see this now?" Gerald did so, attempting to envision the poor imaging they had of his recent candidate.

"We do not understand location, or red dwarf star. We hear your bright notes, but they are unfamiliar to us."

Notes. Song. Hearing. Their culture seemed structured around sound. Could they lack a sense of vision? Of course they could. Though they did seem to be confirming his visual imagery was picked up somehow. Was it possible they weren't connected to his red dwarf at all? A coincidence? That's one cosmic coincidence.

He needed to approach this differently. Wheels turning, Gerald said. "Your turn."

"Is your species technologically advanced? Are you peaceful? Can you help us?"

Oh, they had changed tactics, much more organized, efficient. They had read his mind. Oh, of course they had. Right.

"It is hard to compare our advancement. You are the first other species we have encountered. We are still struggling to survive on our planet. We have built complex and powerful systems and tools, but we are destroying our home in the process, and our tools and systems are inefficient, wasting energy and resources, but we are progressing quickly. Some of us are peaceful. Some of us are not very peaceful. My species is...discordant. We fight over resources and ideology, but we are working to progress beyond that as well. I don't know if we can help you. But many of my species would try."

This time he was hearing their hummed responses as he spoke. Emotional commentary in realtime as if someone had musically scored his response like a film.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 20

"We do not understand why your species would fight over resources. We believe this to be infinite, but we regret your suffering. Perhaps this is a species difference. Comparison is difficult in many ways. We understand discord. Our species was once discordant. Ask your questions."

"What is important to your species, what do you value? Do you have bodies? You know, forms with separate parts? Tools for different tasks?" Gerald tried to visualize these concepts as he thought. Then the big one. "What kind of help do you need?"

Gerald didn't hear words this time, this was more like his dreams. Tones, and images, and feelings.

Joy

Love

Together

Harmony

Stories

Explore

Grow

Live.

A tonal shift and then Gerald felt himself flowing and moving, dancing around a world of sound and color at an incredible speed, melding with countless other beings that were all interconnected and overlapping in layers without space between. He felt himself as one of a seemingly endless number of vibrating strings in an enormous blanket of music. Then he felt his thought and his voice become action, shape reality, build new strings, new notes, new vibrations, some with the spark of life, others with the subtler chorus of objects or structures perhaps?

Then Gerald heard what he was beginning to understand as a separate

'paragraph', thought? a 'tonal shift' again. The answer to his final question.

End

Sorrow

Fear

Desperation

Hope

"Oh my God. Your world is ending." Gerald blurted out.

"Yes"

"I've been assuming things all wrong. You don't have physical bodies do you, mass, matter. Are you even from our universe? How would you know I guess if your experience is that different. How did you contact us?" Gerald felt woefully ill

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 21

prepared to address interaction between multiverses which as far as he knew was likely impossible or impractically minimal.

"That is only two questions, and please define mass, matter. You still have not. We do not understand this in Gerald Song."

Gerald Song. Hmm.

"Umm right, you like structure, I suppose you would." Gerald ran his hands through his curled hair and realized he hadn't showered in...days?

"Well uh, Mass, or Matter. Mass is just a measurement of matter. Matter is a "thing" that fills space. Physical space. God, this is hard. Ok you have energy, which is I think everything you know, and then energy can become kind of still, solid, frozen, but not completely, and we call this matter. It's what my species is made of, and nearly everything on our planet. The observable universe for us is made up of this matter interacting with energy, and everything is vibrating, but it is a thing vibrating. And as for my last question. Why is your world ending?"

"Some of our experts do hypothesize that it would be possible to trap a song, and that it would solidify into a "thing" that does the vibrating, but if so this is thus far theoretical to us." We have also hypothesized that there could be other worlds, universes, completely outside the scope of the fabric of our universe. We did not believe discernible communication would be possible, but when we exhausted all other options, we unified our voices in one song to make the attempt. Our universe is ending because it is very old. It is becoming...Still, losing its ability to sing, its chords becoming tighter.

Gerald could see and feel and hear a great complexity of alien mathematics and science being conveyed as supporting harmony as he heard the main message, like a cosmic powerpoint. Ugh. That was a pretty mundane way to describe first contact.

"The nature of our universe, as you described yours. Our known universe is made up of gradations of vibration. The smaller and faster the oscillation being measured the shorter the segment it can exist on and be defined within, our entire species history is an infinitesimal piece of the song that began long before we existed, we are but one note.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 22

The final note if there is nothing we can do to prevent it."

The weight of that hit Gerald as heavy and as cold as an avalanche. Heat death, or something similar. Their universe was so old that entropy was coming for them. Unbelievable, and no wonder they had had time to unite as a species, he figured humans might need even longer than that.

Well, I guess it doesn't matter if I might be crazy, you can't risk a species of trillions right? But then, what did he matter, what could he do about heat death, what could his whole species do? What could they figure out that this species hadn't in what, trillions of years?

Ok. Well maybe he didn't need to be the one to figure that out...

"Oh crap. I just realized I skipped you. You let me skip you. Your turn." Gerald was lost in thought, mind racing, but coming up empty like he didn't eat before the race. Oh god he was so hungry, how had he not noticed.

"One question will suffice. You said your home is being destroyed. Is your universe ending as well?"

"Oh no, no our universe will be perfectly hospitable for trillions of years at least we think. It's just our home planet, which is a tiny piece of the universe." Gerald pushed himself out of bed as he spoke by sheer force of will, and eyes still closed and swirling with color, navigated his way to the refrigerator and opened it. Ugh. Old Gerald had not appreciated food properly. He emptied a container of cheap deli meat into his mouth, and chugged a full container of apple juice in gasping gulps before he even realized what he was doing. Still ravenous. A block of cheese that probably would have gone bad with his appetite as it had been. That'll have to do.

Gerald rolled back the plastic that still clung to the block of sharp cheddar, starting to devour it before realizing he had no idea how he had known it was there, he hadn't remembered it. He just knew it was there. Hmm.

"Mmm, besides if we were as 'harmonious' as your species that wouldn't be a problem. So I've been thinking. I don't know how to help you, but I'm just one person, maybe if we could prove you existed, maybe we could find people, the right people who could help you. Or that you could teach how to help you. Mobilize resourc--"

"You are the right person."

"Me? Why? I can't even mobilize myself to the grocery store most days, and now I don't even think I can see, not to make sense of anything. Do you know why exactly that is by the way? Did you do this?"

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 23

"We do not know why you cannot 'see' We did not do this. But you are damaged. How did you hear our song?"

"Yes. I know. I think I'm blind. I'm just in shock and trying not to think about it." And as Gerald thought it he knew it was true and as a pang of terror struck him in the gut, he redoubled his efforts to ignore that terror by focusing on their problem instead of his own.

"Hear your song? Receive your signal? I was just sitting at my desk, listening to static. But that's... Oh god. You're a song. I...I think I know where you are. I think we're in the same universe. At least kind of, though not for most practical purposes. See to us, that static is just cosmic background radiation. To us the energy is extremely uniform and random. But I think your universe might be encoded in its

differences."

"This would align with our growing awareness that our universe was interacting with something yet invisible to us. How does this help us?"

"I'm not sure it does yet, but it brings us closer together. It's a start. I need to get to the office."

"You are broken."

"Yes, yes, I know!" He pulled off the sheet he had tied over his face, removed the sunglasses that were smushed into his face, and opened his eyes.

The last coherent thing Gerald heard for more than two days was.

"Not your eyes."

******

If everything before this was a flashlight in his eyes, this was a neon sign being injected into his veins...on the sun. Somewhere in a far off corner of his mind Gerald felt his body writhing and seizing, choking for air, he felt his heart stopping, or maybe beating so fast he couldn't tell it was moving at all. Every cell of Gerald was vibrating, and every sense was hearing, tasting, smelling, and seeing every cell doing so. Every second of existence in this state was so overwhelming it took up a year of space in his memory. He couldn't stand another moment, he just wanted to pass out, needed to pass out, but he couldn't, or maybe he already had, who knows. Mercifully, Gerald ceased to exist, the radio astronomer formerly known as Gerald was now just an unimportant memory in a shining sea of color and pain.

An eternity later, another Gerald in another world sat up, white spots on black popping in front of his face as the sky came into view. He felt the old wooden rowboat beneath him gently sway as he rose and looked out upon crystalline seas. In the distance, shimmering towers of infinite color spread out and up into the sky,

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 24

growing like the bizarre Mandelbrot fractals he had seen before in another life, when he had first heard the song. What song? What he? He couldn't recall.

He turned his attention to the boat and realized he was not alone. A man with a stubbly face sat staring at him.

"I don't know why, but I miss you terribly." The man who was once Gerald found himself saying to a face he didn't recognize. As he spoke, he saw the waves of sound as they left him dancing on the air.

The man smiled. "You are wounded." But the voice was not one, but many.

"You left when you didn't have to, and I couldn't follow. You didn't have to go." He found himself saying this, and remembering as he did.

"I know... I was in pain, and I couldn't hold on any longer, and then I couldn't come back. I'm so sorry." The man spoke softly.

His name was Gerald Timmins, he was a person. Or once was. And this, this was his father. Edward. Only Gerald had never gotten to call him that. That was a name that had been cut from the vine before it had reached maturity, and as he thought that, he looked up with a gasp to see one growing wing of an enormous crystalline tower crumble off into the sea, the tower withering at the joint. He remembered it all in a wave. Gerald had only just progressed to "dad" before his father had... taken his own life.

Gerald's mother had died not two years before. She had been the most powerful protector, a wise and loving aegis against a world not designed for people like Gerald, or his gentle, quiet father, a man plagued by migraines, phobias, anxiety, and profound depression, but also a man filled with knowledge of the stars, with the magic power to create hope for others even when he couldn't find it himself, and every last way to make a grilled cheese sandwich.

His father could navigate by the stars like he was speaking to them. He had always said that he had studied every star in the galaxy, and chosen her. She was his star. His father had lost that spark of hope when Gerald's mother died, and Gerald couldn't help him find it, no matter how many stars he searched. He hadn't been fast enough, he hadn't looked hard enough, he had been distracted, and now he could never bring that spark back to him.

Gerald had been spending the night with his friend Kyle that night, Gerald's first sleepover, and Gerald had been nailing it. Gerald made grilled cheese all by himself, with some help reaching the stove, and it was a great success. He hadn't felt it, hadn't heard anything different, no disturbance in the force. People always said they could sense something when someone they loved was in danger, or gone, but Gerald hadn't felt a thing. He just couldn't wait to tell dad that he had cooked, and that Kyle didn't know where Sirius was even a little bit.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 25

"Listen son. We don't have long. Everything that remains of my song is in you Gerald. I exist as an enormous collection of memories, ideas, hopes, dreams, opinions, and grilled cheese, in your mind, your brain, in your very genes. You listened to my song every day, and the song of me lives within your genes, within your every cell. You are the authority on me, and the enormous supercomputer of your mind has the cypher key to reconstruct me. You always had your mother's song too, you didn't have to find it out there in the stars, she left it with me in you. I was just too broken to hear it, and I'm so sorry son. You know I am, or I couldn't be saying it to you now. You were always enough, and I wish I hadn't left you. If I could, I would have stayed every last second listening to your song. But I. Hear. You. Now. And soon, everyone will. Reconstruct."

There wasn't a meaningful shift that pulled Gerald into the land of the living, his father didn't hug him goodbye and tell him it was time to go. No sudden capsizing of the boat. Though Gerald did find himself half asleep, dreaming of those things, imagining his father's voice echoing some meaningful advice he couldn't quite hear, or a sudden thunder clap, intermixed with dreamy images of the swirling comets and the voices. He found himself wondering if the last few days had all been a dream and he was going to wake up at his desk with his headphones on listening to that pink static. He could almost hear it filling his head like a rainstorm. Another thunder clap. Gerald definitely heard that one, and another. Gerald jolted upright completely disoriented, but feeling alright. Good actually, rested, if stiff, and his mouth was unbelievably dry and almost sealed to itself.

Gerald furrowed his brow and opened his eyes.

To his amazement, he could see, though it wasn't the sight Gerald expected. For one, he had no walls, no that wasn't right, they were there, just transparent, almost like glass. Several objects in the small flat were the same, most jarringly, the floor, as he looked down and fell back in a panic. Other objects in the room like his phone, computer, and router were awfully bright but not unbearably so as everything had been before, just bright like incandescent lightbulbs.

At first he thought the walls themselves were flowing, but a flash of lightning made him realize that was rain. He was watching the rain through the walls. The air outside was filled with coruscating fields of light, but not so disorienting as before, he knew objectively the stimulus must be vast, but it felt like being a child on an alien planet themepark ride, everything was too wonderful and interesting to be exhausting, at least yet. He was beginning to be able to make sense of the new colors too he realized. Wifi had its own colors for 2.4 and 5 GHz respectively. Bluetooth, GPS, even the ground itself had a soft glow, and the night sky being flooded with electromagnetic radiation was a perpetual aurora.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 26

There was so much to see that Gerald hadn't been paying attention to how much his hearing had changed. He hadn't noticed the growing pressure and constant noise until he had awoken without it. In its place, the world was filled with tones, like guitar chords being struck all around him, but all somehow harmonious, or at least, they made sense somehow, and overlaid over all of it was the song. The constant song of his people from another world. His people he realized, because he had decided they were. He heard them properly now. No words, because words were not their language, but he understood them perfectly.

Love, joy, peace, together, live, sing, gratitude.

"I'm awake friends. He thought in song.

"I'm alright and I think I know what to do next."

Gerald had intended to check his phone, but a text came in the next moment.

He didn't have to read it. He could hear it, see it, sense it being received.

"Hey man, covering for you at the meeting,

are you alive? Getting worried."

He scrolled through his texts, grabbing his sunglasses for comfort. It wasn't unbearable but still, the connectivity was a little brighter than the makers probably would have intended for whatever Gerald was. Two texts from Kevin: the one he

had just received, and one from three days ago.

"Hey man, here's Sophia's number, I gave her yours but

she said that was 'stupid and rude because I didn't ask for

your consent first so she wasn't going to message you, but

to give you hers.'"

Jesus. He had been unconscious for three days? The empty pit in his stomach and simultaneous need to void his bowels confirmed this.

Following the proper order of operations he took care of his body's needs while formulating his next move...Hmm, Kevin, who he needed, was in a meeting. Gerald powered up his laptop and downloaded the most recent recordings of

his favorite pink noise, listened to make sure he could hear it. There it was, the song, so clear Gerald couldn't imagine having not heard it. He grabbed a several minute snippet and sent it to Kevin.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 27

"I'm alive. Very alive. When you get out of

the meeting, listen to this right away, for as long as you

can stand and tell me what you think."

Gerald found he couldn't stomach waiting around, an entire species was on the brink of extinction. Maybe he didn't need Kevin after all...

Gerald typed out the number Kevin had texted him.

"Sophia? You're a musician right?"

"Snacks! What gives. I told you to call me."

"You did?"

"Take two and call me in the morning."

"Fair. I've never been good at following

doctors' orders. You home right now? I have a song I want

to show you."

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours..."

Gerald showed up at the the door to Kevin's house with an armful of seafood flavored chips and chocolate wine. He may have gone overboard, but he was still ravenous, and he owed her three days worth.

"Wow. I've made a monster, come on in." ******

Sophia's room was very different from the rest of the house. The walls had each been painted differently, one a warm variegation of orange and red with a textured glaze that made it look like lava flow with a flying motorcycle, demons, and tombstones. Another was pitch black with a white streak split by a prism. Gerald realized the walls were renditions of album covers. The other two walls were hard to interpret because of the sheer height and breadth of the piles of audio equipment from different eras.

"Are these yours?" Gerald was careful to point to the walls and not the piles.

"Yeah, Kevin almost shit himself, but Vi liked it, so he liked it. He tries very hard to be normal."

"I can relate."

"Really? You snacks? You don't seem the type."

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 28

"I guess before the last few days I was trying more for invisible than normal."

"Guess that's not your superpower then, all Kevin and Amir and Jake talk about is how smarty smart you are, well, that and other things. Like how sad you always seem."

"You're...Honest. I didn't know they paid much attention to me at all, I help with their research when I can, but they do the same for me, or, they would. All Kevin talks about to me is coming to game night, and you."

"Eh, people say too many fake things. Wait, me? What the hell does he say about me?" Sophia rounded on him, clearly displeased, embarrassed or both.

"Well uh, just things like how brilliant you are, or how talented you are. I know you're some kind of musician? And this or that funny thing you said, and also that you're 'dying to meet me?'" Now Gerald was embarrassed.

"Wow."

"Yeah."

"Jesus is that why you called? Kevin has always had a tendency to talk out his

ass, but that's especially bad even for him. Well sorry Snacks, don't flatter yourself... What did you want me to hear? Unless that was just a pick up line thanks to my married incel brother trying to play matchmaker."

Got it. Kevin was a moron. Gerald was mortified, why had he even brought it up.

"No I really have something, or at least I think I do, but I don't really know how best to play it, um, and I had Kevin listen to it and he didn't hear anything, so, I'm not sure it's anything." Gerald stammered out.

"Ok, what do you have it on?" Sophia hopped into her spinning office chair and powered on a powerful looking desktop with two screens. The startup screen looked custom. The screen filled with retro 80's moving graphics as she navigated through an operating system that Gerald likewise didn't recognize.

Gerald held up his laptop and phone.

"Send it to me, speakers will be shit on those."

She grabbed his phone before he could, navigated to his texts with Kevin, and

forwarded it to herself. It was playing in moments. When she heard it was static she didn't skip a beat, she just plugged in two sets of cables and handed Gerald a pair of cushy headphones before sliding on her own pair.

They listened like that in still contemplation for just over ten minutes as Gerald listened to the song, and Sophia listened to, presumably static.

A few moments after it ended she slid the headphones on to her neck. "Ok, what do you hear?" She said in an even tone that betrayed little. "You just hear static right?"

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 29

"Well, yeah, it sounds like background radiation, very nice background radiation though, almost melodic. I'd go to sleep to it maybe. Is it astronomically significant, is this part of your work?"

"It's more of a side project, but yes, very significant. If you were going to try and find something in that, a pattern, information in the noise, how would you go about it?"

Sliding to her desk, typing and clicking as she talked. "Well, I'd probably start with a BOF bag of frames approach, depending on what I was looking for. That's great for urban environments but terrible for polyphonics. For space? Background radiation? I don't know, probably use an algorithm to try and isolate repeating acoustical patterns, but isn't that stuff inherently random?"

She played several snippets as she worked, but they all sounded like static to her and worse to Gerald, the whole thing was the song really, the pattern was incomprehensible in size and removing pieces randomly didn't make it any more clear.

"Well yes and no. But what if we try just isolating the pieces I think I can hear, and then seeing if it makes any more sense." Gerald offered.

"Ok let's try it."

Several hours of this led to nothing but futility, Gerald could still hear the song but at times it almost lost all meaning he had heard it bastardized in so many ways, and it was still just pretty static to her.

"Food break, you like Chinese?" Sophia announced.

"I don't know. I wasn't much for food until recently."

"Ok, that's unacceptable. I'm ordering everything ever now."

As Sophia ordered Gerald began moving pieces of the static clips around

arbitrarily, he was blind to what she couldn't hear. He noticed another sound file on her desktop and clicked.

A song started playing in his headphones. Not The song, but the song that played was startling and piercing in its beauty. It too sounded heavily synthesized. Though presumably the more earthly sort, and the rhythm, patterns, and vibrating notes would have been stunning to Gerald even before his transition. He could hear so much emotion and meaning in them that it Reminded him of the song, only faster and with all of the compositional complexity of any classical piece.

"Is this yours?"

"It's not finished." The coldest response he had heard from her. "Sorry...So is this what you do? You make electronic music?"

"I do, I used to, yeah."

"Used to?"

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 30

"Yeah, I had a hard time for a while, parsing reality, and staying stable, and working on my music felt like it was making it worse, or at least my habits around it, so when I got things under control I kind of just stopped."

"Well, if it doesn't make you happy it's not worth it, but your work is beautiful, people would love this."

"They did." Sophia chuckled wryly, holding up a finger as she tapped some keys on the computer. The screen rapidly switched to something much darker and more colorful, with a giant name burned into the desktop background: "NYX"

An upload page for the major streaming services was open, displaying dozens of songs by "NYX" each with millions of listens. with the top song exceeding 3 BILLION streams.

"Jesus. You're Nyx? I think even I've heard of you, and I don't listen to music" Gerald laughed at himself out loud.

"Well, didn't use to."

"How can you not listen to music?"

"How can you stop making it when you're obviously a legend?" Gerald saw

the last song released was over three years ago. He meant it innocently, but realized immediately it sounded wrong in his head, he felt the song leave his voice as he said it, like the song went left and he went right.

"I'm sorry, that was rude. You told me why. I'm really not used to communicating. I think being awake to life has been too painful for me for a long time, and music makes you feel things maybe you don't want to feel. My parents loved music, every day was filled with it. Gerald was fidgeting with the headphones as he spoke, and found himself rocking side to side in rhythm with his anxiety, but as he spoke he felt in tune again.

"My mother died when I was young, she was wrapping up a military career, and, that, well it didn't go that way. Then my father committed suicide a little less than two years after that. I guess I've been trying to find something ever since, but I didn't know what, and life felt like a distraction, but now I think my search was probably the distraction, and life was the, well, life. The thing I was searching for."

Sophia was quiet for a long time before speaking, nodding to herself in a slow rhythm long after Gerald was done speaking.

"I understand you. I'm so sorry you lost your parents Gerald. I'm glad you're living now, and hopefully not in the psychotic break way, but if you are, we'll help brace you. They taught us not to use the crazy word, though I never thought of it as an insult, maybe because I've always known something about it." Sophia softened as she spoke, and Gerald thought she was going to take the headphones away as she reached out, but instead she simply placed her hand on his. The touch

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 31

brought with it an electric shock and a flash of pink and blue in his vision which he tried to ignore as she continued.

"I don't think I'm crazy, I think the totality of existence is just so profound. Like the truth of it. The core reality that we can't begin to grasp and hold on to. And I just feel like I've felt so much of that profundity every second of my life and I can't stop feeling it and I just felt so tired, all the time, but also so restless, like I needed to do something or say something, but I didn't know what. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't wake up, I couldn't connect, I just felt alone, all the time alone. I just kept thinking about all of the heartbeats I've had, and the ones I have left. Of the friends I'd lost, losing our parents. Losing myself, or selves. It felt like being thrown around and pulled under by a riptide that never ends and lets you up just long enough to get a breath before it pulls you back under. I don't think that's wrong, I think it's a valid way to see existence, it's just an awful one and I wanted it to stop, but I couldn't find another reality and stay there. So for awhile I thought that nowhere must be better than where I was, and basically I tried to make that happen...a few times."

Now it was Gerald's turn to nod solemnly. He felt her pain so sharply he felt a catch in breath, but rather than try to make it stop as he once would have, he gently squeezed the hand she had reached out to him instead, and cleared his throat.

"How, umm, I guess, how did you get here then? Presuming you don't feel that way anymore?"

"Tethers." She said mysteriously as if it would be her sole answer, before grinning and continuing.

"Tethers. Family. Real family, the same people you'd want to be there with you in your last moment, turns out you should be spending as many of your not-last moments with them as possible. Food, joy, love, peace, sunrises and sunsets and new places and all of that corny shit. Sex, tetherball, that one sounds like a joke, but no, it's fricking amazing when you really hit that thing in the sweet spot and it goes flying like a comet, glorious. Oh, and the last one. Purpose. You have to care about something and believe you have a chance to do something about it, or believe you me, eventually no amount of crab rangoons will fill the void. I'm still working on that one, that's why I'm here."

Gerald thought about this for a long time, taking it in. He had been without these tethers for a very long time and he had a feeling he had been closer to the dangers Sophia survived than he had realized.

"I think I might have found that last one, for me, but I'm still working on the others." He finally whispered.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 32

"In there? In this sound?" Sophia furrowed her brow seriously.

"I think so, yes. But Kevin can't hear it, and you can't hear it, I'm not sure how many years it took me to understand it, maybe my whole life. Maybe it's just a tumor." Gerald felt so tired as he felt the weight of a trillion voices that had chosen the wrong messenger.

"Screw Kevin, forget about Kevin... I mean, he's my brother and I love him, but there's a lot he's oblivious to. So this is on brand for him. Oh, and I was not "dying to meet you" for Chrissakes. Gross. No no, not you gross. This is just something he does, he finds people he thinks are pitiful and he tries to save them, and since I came to live with him I've been on the top of his list. So he thinks, Oh gee, these two are both defective, let me shove them together. And you're not, you're not defective." She grew more and more emphatic as she spoke, and Gerald wasn't sure if this was a good rant or a bad rant, but he found he loved watching her hands move as she spoke.

"You're brilliant. You're friggen brilliant and you should know that...What I 'may' have done was read your doctoral thesis on applying acoustical analysis techniques to electromagnetic data to improve imaging resolution when they were all pouring over it at game night, and then said 'This guy seems way smarter than you Kevin, you should invite him to game night so we stop dying, if you're so into him' because I wanted to meet you."

"You read my thesis?" Gerald was stunned, partially by her sheer energy, but mostly by the revelation.

"I did, it's all they could talk about. You must know Amir and Kevin are the reason they hired you on to the project right? Your thesis is the framework for Amir's software that makes the project possible. Do you get many jobs you never apply for?"

"I did not know, I guess there are a lot of things I was oblivious to. I should be nicer to Kevin."

"Please don't, I'll never hear the end of it if his ego gets any bigger, but...please do."

"...You read my thesis?"

"Yup."

"I don't even think my examination committee read it, they barely made me

defend it, but I wasn't gonna call their bluff, it was pretty dry."

"I thought is was incredible, and...dry, and probably over their heads. And I

want to hear what you hear Gerald, so bad. Whatever you've found, it's obviously brought you here, and it's not wrong, I don't know if we can hear it, maybe it's just for you, I don't know. But I want to."

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 33

"Sing it."

Gerald heard, saw, felt the voices speaking to him, he had been hearing the song all night, but like the background noise of life, like being in a room with a trillion friends all having their own quiet conversations. This was being sung directly to him, and with it came an impulse to comply.

"I'm really not much of a singer. I don't think I could sing a universe." He thought-sang.

"Not alone. No one does much of anything alone. We will sing together. You are ready." They chimed.

"Now?"

"Now."

So Gerald just began singing. He didn't know what note to sing, he just let out air and let his vocal chords start vibrating and took it from there, trying to match what he heard and felt and saw. As he did, his voice sounded very synthesized to him, and to have several tones at once, all supporting and twisting around each other, a chorus of one.

Sophia was so still Gerald worried that he sounded like a normal, probably off-key drunk at a Karaoke bar, but after a few moments she came to enough to type several things on the computer and start recording. Then she sat back and closed her eyes. In moments the rising and falling of her chest had shifted to show she had fallen into a deep sleep.

And as she slept Gerald sat down beside her, hopping back up to turn off every light source, and continued to sing.

What felt like no time at all must have been much longer as Gerald watched the sun rise before he felt right about stopping and fell silent.

Sophia opened her eyes groggily a few moments later, Gerald must have thrown a blanket over her at some point.

She stood, nearly falling, and shaking, stopped the recording.

A long silence that was not very silent to Gerald filled the room before she spoke.

"How did you do that?"

"It wasn't really just me. What did you hear?"

"Is that what you heard? What you were trying to get me to hear? There

weren't words, but I heard it, I understood it, some of it. Then I must have fallen asleep. God it's bright in here."

"Oh! I meant to return these to you anyway." Gerald reached into his pocket retrieving her sunglasses.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 34

"You need to tell me everything right now, or I'm calling someone to take me in, because I just had a very weird experience, and I still feel very weird Gerald. But also, not bad weird...What do you mean not just you?"

So Gerald told her. Everything.

Some parts said, others sung with the voice of trillions of inhabitants of another world.

"Show me."

"Ok, ok."

Sophia held both of their cellphones now, squinting in a dark room as she

texted one phone from the other.

"Radio waves aren't omnidirectional, hold them close."

"Hey dweeb, if you can read this I'm gonna smack you in the forehe-"

"No don't"

But he caught her hand with his eyes closed. His eyelids didn't meaningfully

block his vision anymore. He wasn't even sure he used his eyes to see most of the frequencies he interpreted as vision.

"So we have to do something. Like now. How long do we have?" She said this with a gravity that made him feel sane for the first time since this all began, maybe the first time in decades.

"The differences in the concept of time makes it very fuzzy, but basically we're out. Days? Hours? They're watching their universe fade out of existence around them."

"What then, how do we fix it?"

"Their universe? I don't think we do. But I might have another idea. So to be clear, you believe me?"

"I know what I heard."

A loud bang.

"Jesus, what time is it? Vi must be locked out. She works the night shift."

Sophia started towards the door.

"Actually her hands are just full, she's fumbling with her keys"

"Did you just Superman the walls?"

"No way. Superman emits x-rays from his eyes, which is stupid, most walls are

just kinda transparent to radio waves which I guess I see, or my cells perceive and my brain processes visually? Not sure."

A sheepish Sophia and Gerald opened the door to Violet standing with arms full of white plastic bags.

"CHINESE!" They said in unison.

"You ordered Chinese at 7 in the morning?"

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 35

"Last night ac--" Sophia elbowed Gerald and smiled innocently, but it was too late.

"I see, well I'm eating some. That's my tax for playing delivery service."

The three of them sat quietly and awkwardly eating microwaved Chinese food, Sophia especially ravenously, when Gerald broke the silence.

"I think you're wrong about the crab rangoons." "Hmm?"

"I think enough of these could fill any void." "So what have you two been up to?"

"Work" -- "A song"

"Working on a song" they said in unison.

"Ooook. Well that's awesome Sophia, I didn't think you worked with anyone

else, and Gerald I didn't know you were musical, I guess I shouldn't be surprised." Sophia was going to answer, but then her face turned green and white mottled and she ran to the bathroom. The sounds of her throwing up were all that filled the

silence between Violet and Gerald as they both nodded with pursed lips.

Sophia returned walking as casually as if she had not just puked her guts out,

but she was wobbly, making her look a bit Jack Sparrowish.

"You ok?" Vi said through a furrowed brow.

"Migraine" -- "Migraine" they said in unison. And Gerald heard the people of

the song say the same thing with an amused tone.

"Should we let her hear it?" Sophia thought.

And Gerald heard her.

"Not yet. I was pretty incapacitated for days. I'm sorry, I hope it's not like that

for you, but we don't even know what this is doing to us, not exactly."

"...Did I just hear you in my head?" Sophia gasped into his brain.

"Oh, yes, that's new I guess. I just heard you in the song and responded." "Gonna need a moment with that."

"Fair."

"She's a doctor"

"Sorry?"

"Vi" Sophia clarified.

"Maybe she could figure out what's different, might be the fastest way to show

her, not show her show her, but convince her there's something to see. Show her you're a cyborg or something and then get her to do a CT scan or something." Sophia's thoughts came at Gerald faster and faster, then silence as he watched her pass out.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 36

Vi and Gerald both moved to catch her, bumping heads but managing to cradle her fall.

"What the hell? Get my car keys. Countertop. Nope scratch that. I'll get 'em. Carry her."

******

Rushing out the door and carefully laying Sophia in the backseat, Violet was a

stream of questions.

"Did you guys ingest anything? Other than crab rangoon and lo mein? Any

controlled substances? Any alcohol, medications? You see her take anything? Anything at all?"

"No."

"Could she have snuck off and taken anything, did you have any time apart?" Oh, right. This looked bad. Her history, and she didn't know Gerald knew. He

wasn't sure how to make this look better, without first making it look worse. "Bandaid" Gerald said, nodding.

"What?"

"Nothing. Listen, I'm certain she didn't take anything, and I know about her

history with self harm. That's not what's going on. I assure you."

"Wow, ok. How long were you there?"

"All night. All that happened is she listened to a song, an alien song, it's

changing her, and that process can be pretty rough if it's anything like mine." Silence.

"I can see, well, perceive and process radio waves, definitely microwaves in the Bluetooth, wifi range, and I'm pretty sure a bunch of the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum, maybe all of it, I really haven't had time to test it out yet."

Silence.

"There's a taser in the glovebox, is it pink? Colors are weird for me now, a bunch of papers, I can't read them, gosh that might be hard now, an epi pen, and dice, tons of ten and twenty sided dice."

A very slow, calm voice betrayed a readiness for violence to Gerald's multi- tonal ears.

"So what you're telling me Gerald is that you've broken into my car, or Sophia let you in it, and you're not attached to reality."

"Oh, no, I see it now. That comes off more stalker than cyborg. Cyborg is so wrong, now she's got me saying it. Umm hold up, don't hit me, it's easily falsifiable. You're the doctor. Think of a way, and then if you're not convinced, commit me. After you make sure Sophia's ok."

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 37

"Alright. If I understand you correctly. You say you can see, pardon me perceive, the electromagnetic spectrum. So that you can see through objects? Is that the claim?"

"That's just the start of it, but yes."

"Starts are good places to begin. Well, Mr. Timmins we have about a minute and a half until we reach the hospital, at which point I will probably convince the security staff, that listens to me more willingly than they should, to restrain you."

"It'll shave almost a minute if you take Girard to Frontier, there's an accident on Lomas."

"...GPS" Gerald mumbled sheepishly.

Violet lifted her phone from her lap to see the crash report.

"Any history with close-up magic or mentalism Gerald?"

"No."

"Well I do have...what's in my pockets?"

"Nothing that I can see."

"Correct, I hate having things in my pockets. I feel them the whole time. What

do you have in your pockets?"

Gerald went to reach for his jacket pockets on reflex.

"Ah ah ah. Mind powers only great and powerful Oz."

"Oh right."

"...A pink paperclip? When did you."

"It's purple. So is the taser...you've bought yourself a few minutes. Follow me.

Stay close and be invisible."

"Not my superpower I've been told."

In a flurry they pulled up to the ambulance line and Violet started giving

orders, and as threatened, everyone listened, though none were given to restrain him.

After they quickly ruled out Violet's immediate concerns, like substance ingestion, stroke, and heart attack, they got her in a hospital bed, and Gerald turned the lights off, Violet, Dr. Sivalingam as Gerald now knew her, did indeed order a CT scan.

"Umm, I really don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not?"

"Well, if she's anything like me, that's gonna be...overwhelming. Do me

instead."

"Turn your back and read that eye chart." She blurted out in a monotone.

Apparently the tests were afoot.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 38

"I honestly can't, everything is quite blurry, I think it's getting better, but I can see so far, and so many layers it's like trying to see an individual layer of an onion."

"But you can see GPS"

"That's actually more of a physical sensation, it's hard to describe." "Fine. Blurred vision, difficulty communicating and a concussion.

Congratulations Dr. Timmins, you're now my patient. Let's get a look at that brain of yours."

"I don't have a concussion."

"If you've hurt Nyx in any way, you might bump your head on your way into the machine." Dr. Sivalingam said this too calmly to be anything but another threat.

"Fair" Gerald stammered and followed, glancing back at the unconscious Sophia but not wanting to test the limits of the Hippocratic oath.

******

"You ready?"

"This is probably a bad idea."

"Here we go."

Gerald fell silent as the machine began working. Two quiet minutes later Gerald

suddenly grew very loud, rocking back and forth.

The loud howls filled the room on both sides of the glass and Dr. Sivalingam shut

down the machine.

Gerald kept laughing, loud raucous howls.

"Are you alright? What the hell is so funny?!"

"It's just, I just, I just placed it." He gasped through laughs.

"I've had this taste in my mouth for days. X-rays...taste like blueberries!"

"Well...I believe you. Maybe not aliens, but...would you like to take a look at your

brain?"

"Oh I already did. That was a weird sensation too."

"Well assuming you don't know much about neurology, there are a lot of structures

present that don't belong there."

"Yes. I remember watching them grow in my dreams and they belong there." "Gerald?" The voice was quiet and desperate and filled with song.

"Sophia?" He said out loud as well as in song.

"Is she alright?" Violet responded immediately to his alarmed non sequitur.

"I know what to do Gerald. We don't have long. Hurry. Home."

Gerald realized why the voice was so quiet now, it wasn't because Sophia was weak,

the song was weak. Fading. How had he forgotten how little time they had. Foolish. When they found Sophia she had tied a sheet around her eyes and was shambling

out of her room following the walls with her hands frantically.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 39

"Home. Now. Now."

"Oh god what's wrong with her."

"Part of the process. It's ok. Everything is too bright. Colors she's never seen. Worse

than you can imagine."

"Idea. Go, get her to the car. I'll meet you there." Violet tossed her keys and Gerald

grabbed them without turning to look.

******

Laying in the back seat with pilfered lead blankets over her body Sophia intermittently moaned, and spoke in song, her voice slipping into tri-tone synthesizer intermittently. This had the dual effect of terrifying Violet and also convincing her that either alien entities were indeed in play, or the insanity was contagious. Gerald explained the people of the song's dilemma as she drove as best he could, and she intermittently smacked the wheel, shaking her head and mumbling that they should be in the damned hospital, but she didn't turn around.

As they approached the house Sophia sat up, becoming lucid-ish again.

"Shouldn't be awake yet. Feels like crap. But we're out of time. Told me everything they could. Fast as possible, told me you knew the rest. Put together. Tada."

"I don't know what I know. What they need. They're quiet now." Gerald felt panicked but tried to sound calm.

"This is insane. I'm calling Kevin." Violet grabbed her phone.

"No. Look, I know Kevin thinks I'm defective, but you have to trust me Vi, we need you. I need you. Ow, head." Sophia groaned out.

"What? Kevin doesn't think you're defective jackass...He idolizes you. That's why he's been trying to drag the two of you to together, he's convinced you're both smarter than he is, and he never knew how else to help you. When you tried to go where he couldn't follow you terrified him in a way I couldn't make better, and I wanted to flay you alive. But he's smarter than he knows, he loves me, he brings people together. So if this looks anything like him hurting again I'm out." As she ranted Violet drove faster and faster before slamming the brakes in the driveway.

"You're right. Bring together. Yes. Promise. Just get me inside. My computer."

"You can't see!" But they didn't delay, Gerald going under one shoulder, Violet under the other.

"Sight unimportant. Time. Guide me Vi."

And when Sophia spoke her voice came in tri-tonal surround stereo from Gerald's throat and every speaker in the house, several of which blew themselves out in the process.

As they placed Sophia in her chair she had become Nyx before her body hit the cushion and began typing in a flurry. Whether she could operate her machine blind before, Gerald didn't know, but he guessed she always could.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 40

Waveforms began appearing in the audio processing program faster than Gerald had ever seen any human move before, if that's still what they were.

"Snacks, sing. Now."

Gerald sang as if the wind was being pulled through him, with one thing echoing in his mind...Reconstruct.

He was certain every cell began vibrating in time with his throat.

Violet's vision swirled with a stream of alien colors not quite matching her namesake emanating outward from the two of them, and growing brighter between Nyx and Gerald. A cord of light connecting them, vibrating in harmony.

"Violet. Listen closely. There are three of us. Three representatives of humanity. But Snacks and I are biased. The final say is yours."

The screen now displayed the most popular streaming music application on earth, Nyx's platform with billions of monthly listens, and a large Upload button.

"No time?"

"No time. Trillions of lives."

Violet acted without another moment's hesitation before her vision left her. The album was every song the same. It was covered in warning labels, tagged

explicit. Dangerous. Do not listen while operating heavy machinery or vehicles. Will cause hallucinations, vomiting, and hunger. You will never be the same.

An alien species numbering in the trillions is in the most absolute distress. The end of their universe is imminent, a realm existing as pure information in the cosmic background radiation of our universe. We can only save their species by merging with them. Their new universe will exist in the connections between the billions of human minds. Any who will listen may join in the song. Do not listen if you are not ready. We come in peace.

Despite the warnings, or perhaps bolstered by them, within minutes the listens numbered in the millions, within days, billions, and as the voices rose in song a new humanity faced a new dawn with new eyes.

Kevin came home with a splitting headache, having ignored Nyx's warning labels. He was his sister's biggest fan and he had already texted Jake and Amir. So much for gradual. Gerald spent the next few days babysitting as they mostly slept and ate the comfort food he kept flowing. Gerald was happy to play Renfield to Nyx's Dracula after saving the world together. Their next game night was attended by trillions, but not by Gerald and Sophia, who insisted on going to his place so she could teach him personally about some of the other tethers he had been missing out on.

/ Do You Hear What I Hear / 41