The Sounds of Silence

(rescued from G+, Nov. 13, 2012)


The lab assistant was trying to get my attention.  She kept waving at me from the door in my peripheral vision.  I was ignoring her because I was busy.  I needed to send out the department budgets and I'd already been interrupted at least ten times this week.

I kept my wrists firmly on the transducer feeds; sweet vibrations of sadness and despair flowed into my wrists from the Bose pads.  Mozart's K.626 was my favourite for really focusing and getting a lot of bureaucratic work done.

A rubbing on my elbow alerted me that she was sitting on one of my chairs.  The proximity sensor on my desk was set to alert me and I wished I had thought to turn it off.  I pushed the lock button on the keyboard and hit the table so that the floor shook.  I looked over at her to confirm that my message of frustration was obvious but instead she looked back at me eagerly.

"Oh great, thanks for your time, I need a minute," she motioned.

"Please hurry, I'm quite busy," I replied.  The last "busy" was quick, so fast it brushed the hair on my forehead.

"Quite right," she signed hurriedly.  "We've been running experiments on the hyper-animate human stem cells responding to dense air level waveforms in transductionally..."

I waved violently.  "Really, I don't have time for all this right now.  Please summarise it for me or send me an email."  I tipped my fingers and touched my chin, "Please."

She waved back.  "No, no, it's important.  The cells seem to respond to the waveforms and produce signals that could be use to import sense data in controlled environments."

I raised my hand.  "That's not what we're researching here.  You are supposed to look at high density atmospheric tests to support healing and recovery rates for diseases.  The atmosphere on earth is too thin to support sounds; otherwise we'd have developed ears by now.  I've already spent too much time on this going back and forth," my fingers walked the distance between us in the air, forward, backward, "and I need to get back to important business."

She nodded.  She knew, but continued, "There are some evolutionary records in the fossils which support the existence of a more dense atmosphere and even possible wavy knobs..."  She trailed off in confusion and screwed up her face.  She tried again, "Vaccuum others..." she signed.  "Perforce cautions?"

"Ears," I waved in that obscure word, and shook my head sadly, dramatically.  "No such thing."

"Ok, thanks," she waved and nodded.

Now where was I on that goddamned budget line item?  I put my wrists back on the Bose pad and tried to focus.