Noise in the Night
One day it was just there, a deafening, booming, continuous noise. No matter where I went I couldn’t escape it.
I woke in the morning because of an earsplitting, crackling noise. It was so loud I felt like my ear drums were going to rupture. I covered my ears with the pillow, and it only slightly muffled the sound. The sun was just rising and the reddish-orange clouds moved slowly over the horizon. Birds were chilling on the telephone lines outside my window and I assumed that the chickens were going nuts, but nothing overtook the crackling sound.
After getting dressed I found my noise-canceling earpods and the earmuffs from the back of my closet and again, the muffling worked a bit. I could walk around without getting an extreme headache. This insanity, no one else seemed to notice. Walking down the street everyone seemed to be acting normally, at least no one was crying out and holding their ears. I’ve never been one for talking to people on the street, but on a day like that, I stole my courage. The conversation repeated itself several times.
Taking off my earmuffs (ouch) and yelling “Hello! Do you know what that noise is?!”
We both looked around and they yelled, “What are you talking about?! What noise, the chickens?!”
“Not the chickens, I can’t even hear the chickens! That low rumbling, crackling noise! It’s so loud, how can you not know what I’m talking about?!
They looked at me with a confused and almost disgusted look, and their voice dropped in volume. I couldn’t hear their reply, but based on them waving me off and walking away I take it as not good. Feeling even worse I put my earbuds and muffs back on, which was a relief, and walked the rest of the way to work.
There were plenty of people in the office that day and I had plenty of people to ask and who would invariably stare at me like a crazy person or at least with concern and write down on a notepad that I should go to the hospital. I’m glad that I hadn’t taken off the muffs, it made the noise a lower gurgle even though it was still clearly hearable.
The hospital staff was no different. They had no clue what I was talking about, but they ran the gamut of tests and couldn’t find anything wrong with me, only prescribing headache medication. Walking back to work, I figured the rest of my life would be in earmuffs, but I needed a heat break so I took a day and went to the beach. I couldn’t wear the muffs or buds in the water, but luckily the water also acted as a muffle from the sound. I could actually hear the natural sounds of the ocean, the constant popping from animals living in the reefs.
Since I could muffle it by going underwater, I finally figured out that the noise must be coming through the atmosphere, so maybe I could escape further underground. I’m just a normal person, I don’t have access to a bomb shelter. So, I decided to travel somewhere with caves that run deep underground. After a quick search online I found that the deepest human-explored cave in the US is Tears of the Turtle Cave in Montana. Luckily, I did have some savings, so I booked a ticket on one of the first flights out.
Wearing my protection earbuds the whole time did seem alright. The noise was a bit louder than the engine, but wasn’t painful, at least with the buds in. Upon landing, full ear protection went back on and I took a bus to the caves. While it worked a bit I couldn’t stay in the caves for long and was escorted out when security found me huddled in a small side cave. My theory was correct, and I was from the sky. Who could help me now?
I flew back home, and with time to think on the plane I thought that maybe astronomers might be able to share some answers.
I emailed the local university astronomy professor and set up a meeting. Of course, I couldn’t hear a word they tried to directly tell me, so the professor showed me to their computer and did speech-to-text while pulling up generic photos to provide possible explanations. After a long conversation, it seemed like the source of the noise was the sun. It’s the sun? How can I hear the sun? Sound doesn’t travel through the vacuum, at least that’s how I understood physics. I barely understood any of it, much less than the way the laws of physics seem to have worked. But the astronomers and physics experts explained that the sun’s fusion was always able to be heard, but the sound is weeded out as background noise, like when you can’t feel your clothes after wearing them constantly.
That is definitely not how I would’ve understood it. With all the constant multiverse movies, I wonder if that's where I am now, an alternate universe, in which the physics are just different. Over time I hope I’ll get used to the noise, cause it looks like I’m stuck here now.
