The Stormcock Community

The Silent Heart Part I

A short story in three parts of one man's awakening.

He was born into a panorama of noise, a throbbing, pulsating sound of hospital equipment and a cacophony of vibrating air that pervaded every sinew of his being; discordant and inharmonious but sometimes comforting and soothing, swathed in soft cotton and suckling the warm fluid of his mother's supple breast.  He listened to the beating sound of her heart slowly pounding and allowed his own to beat in a subtle syncopation until the circadian rhythm lulled him slowly into a steady state of unconscious being.

21 Years Later

The ticking of a distant clock gradually insisted itself into his awareness, the escapement mechanism empowered by the kinetic energy of a tightly coiled steel spring driving the mechanical precision of ratchet and claw transforming pressure into rotational energy, finely calibrated and tuned to the planetary rotation.  The seconds marched on as he drifted and ebbed until at last he beached on the shore of a conscious new day.  This was the day.  Despite all the obstacles and barriers thrown in his path he had forged ahead on his own and today would start his chosen research into anechoic effects within a chamber so silent that no sound could enter or leave it.  The thrill of the prospect filled his mind and excited him to the point of bursting.  He rose and showered to remove the last vestiges of sleep from his world and quickly dressed, careful to wear only soft fabrics and quiet shoes.  Downing the remaining contents of an almost emptied carton of pure orange juice, he pushed his bicycle through his hallway and out into the bustling morning street, closing the door behind him.

It was just a short ride to the University research centre and he was early enough to avoid the traffic gridlock that marked each congested city weekday but the air was still full of sounds and vibrations from people and vehicles, overhead aircraft thundered towards the airport, trains clattered their way over the steel railed tracks and every now and again shouts from voices would ring clear; a clipped and shrill fragment of song or a jibe from the construction sites along his route.

The sound of his tyres on the tarmac road surface hummed as he sped towards the tall concrete building that was his destination. He parked his bike in the allotted rack and passed through security without speaking to the officer who simply casually waved him through to the corridor where the elevators lined both sides.  He pressed the down button and waited until the steel doors parted almost silently and entered the glass lined rectilinear box.  After pressing "7" on the control panel, the doors closed and he felt the rapid descent to the deepest part of the building within which his project was constructed.

Emerging from the lift into a dimly lit corridor, he barely noticed the concrete walls and painted floor but headed straight for the secured double doors that led to the imperious underground engineering hall.  After presenting the keycard to the inductive coupled card reader adjacent to the door he perceived the dull clunk of the servo-assisted door bolts as they receded into their chambers and he pushed against the heavy steel plates as they swung inward to reveal the vast and cavernous interior of Research Hall 7.  He walked forward onto the landing as the doors swung closed behind him and gazed at the object of his ambitions a shining silver sphere, some twenty feet below, suspended and floating in a huge magnetic field with no visible means of support or suspension.

Descending the stairs to a landing which ran around the inside walls of the hall about ten feet above the floor level, he turned and walked across an aluminium gantry that projected towards the centre of the sphere and stopped just a few inches short of it.  In the side of the sphere facing him was a rectangular hole large enough to step through with ease and the interior was lined with grey foam wedge shapes to trap sound and a platform in the centre with rubber compound flooring.  He almost felt the energy of the magnetic field as it held the sphere in its centre without physical attachment. Once inside, reaching up he swung close the door panel to seal the entrance, touching a switch panel as he did to illuminate the chamber in a dim fluorescent glow.  The platform supported a chair, a small bed and a table with several electronic instruments and a laptop computer on which a number of LEDs blinked. 

Sitting down on the chair, he pressed the power button on the laptop and the screen suddenly illuminated, noiselessly displaying the control interfaces of his experiment.  The solid state data storage avoided completely the noise of electromechanical click and whirr and quietly presented the conditions inside the sphere in a numerical array of data and graphics.  Pressing the "Start" button he navigated to his program group and opened a console window that displayed only a prompt in white letters on a black background.  He typed an instruction which brought a dialogue to the display and a single button marked "Begin Sequence".  He pressed the spacebar, got up from the chair and walked over to the bed and lay down.  As he lay flat on his back facing the foam lining above him, he was only aware of his own sounds.  Everything was designed to be as noiseless as possible and all he could hear was the sound of his own breathing and even the surge of his blood coursing through his veins to the pulse of his own heartbeat.

Incarcerated in his tomb, he never heard the sirens roar, nor the whistle as the ultrasonic pulse bombs fell, nor the sonic booms as they emitted their deadly energy and destroyed all living tissue that vaporised in an instant.  Cocooned in his bubble, he heard no screams, felt no pain, witnessed no despair, endured no suffering and saw nothing. Neither did he hear or see the heavy rain that followed, washing clear all the tiny droplets of human existence.

A little after two hours had elapsed he arose and drank some mineral water from a plastic bottle he had brought with him and glanced at the digital watch on his wrist.  He knew that the sequence would be complete in just under five hours and decided to eat some of the food he had prepared for his mid-day meal. This took less time than he anticipated and being somewhat bored, he started to read a book that he had been lent to him by a colleague, called The Passions of Great Fortune.  Not so much a story but a collection of poems and stories with some descriptions by the author of a life well travelled as well as a remarkable collection of photographs taken by various photographers at different stages of the man's life. His attention waxed and waned until he turned the 92^nd page and began reading The Lord’s Prayer…