ROBERT SMITH PLANNED to complain to the bus driver. He mentally rehearsed his speech.

“Do you realize there are elderly passengers on board? They’re petrified by the way you hurl them round corners.”

His ire mounted with each shuddering halt, his muscles clenching at each bend. He would demand to know name and number.

He shuffled in his sticky seat. August wasn’t the best time for bus travel.

Smith’s stop lurched into view so he jabbed at the stop button, confirmed by a red illuminated sign. “Parada Solicitada”.

Sometimes the drivers ignored the requests to halt this close to Santa Ponsa town centre, so he rose, shouldered his rucksack, and staggered up the aisle. Before he could reach the driver, an elderly woman clad in traditional black clambered from her seat and faced him. She wanted to depart the correct mid-bus exit, but seeing Smith’s set face, she obligingly about-turned. He caught a whiff of gardenia.

He’d expected her to hurl a complaint but was taken off-guard when she said, “Thank you for the ride, Pedro, us old ones rarely experience such excitement.”

Smith could hardly comment on damned Pedro’s reckless driving now and maybe the pensioner had a point.

As he alighted, a high note rang through his head. He couldn’t source it, not even the approximate direction. What was the point of having two ears if he couldn’t use them stereoscopically to locate a noise? He stood at the now empty plexiglass bus stop with its rolling advert of what scantily-clad people look like with Vit K Oil. He tilted his head up and decided the noise was a pure tone, B-flat above middle C. All that piano practise as a teen.

A dog howled as if it heard the noise too.

No doubt the sound was a decelerating jet bringing another 180 Brits to Palma airport. He smiled at the memory of being one of those five years ago, armed only with an email promise on his phone of a research assistant job in Santa Ponsa. His degree in statistics and sound engineering hadn’t led to riches. It paid pine nuts, appropriate considering he was sampling to determine the origin of the Christmas trees growing on the beach. Pinus halepensis led to unsavoury puns at the local library, and security was called to ensure he left.

If the lane he walked down hadn’t have been so empty of traffic he wouldn’t have noticed the persistence of the whining noise. The lane, closed to motor traffic, meandered through the Maquis vegetation, emitting wafts of aromatic herbs and lavender. He couldn’t spot wires that might have vibrated. A goat bleated. They’ve always liked his kind. 

Could they hear it?

Perhaps it was tinnitus. He stopped at an olive tree and stuck fingers in his ears. Still there. It must be local machinery.

The terracotta-coloured block peeped over its Bougainvillea shrubbery. Robert stopped at the marbled stepped entrance to listen again. The noise persisted. He needed to ask someone else. Señora Gimenez waddled up the pavement loaded with shopping. No point asking her. Too old, too deaf and too much into flirting with British ex-pats young enough to be her grandson. Too late, she was talking to him.

“Señor Smith, do you hear it too?”

“Indeed, I have, Marta. Annoying isn’t it? Can I help you up the stairs with your bags?”

She let him take the overstretched plastic bags. “I hear it this morning in the supermercado.”

He lifted her bags. “You did? I only heard it an hour ago. Did others hear it too?”

“Oh yes. We’re all annoyed they’re closing the post office. It’s not good, is it?”

Before he punched in the access code, the door was pushed open by Carmen. Robert had tried and failed to get a date with the fiery redhead, who was probably off to Santa Ponsa’s liveliest bar. Her wild hair contrasted with her Lincoln green coat, doubtless covering up a glittering outfit beneath.

“Bob, hola. Hey what is that noise?” She’d lifted her pert nose as if it helped to hear better.

“Robert, not Bob. So I’m not the only one. Do you agree it’s B-flat?” But she’d already punched in her iPod earpieces and waltzed off.

He carried Marta’s bags to her ground floor flat, returned her smile, and trudged up the stairs to his apartment. His BOSE SoundDock poised ready to blast Pink Floyd around his room but instead, Robert relaxed into his yellow vinyl armchair and listened.

It was there. A single note and it penetrated into the room even with the windows closed. Unless it was tinnitus and Carmen referred to something else. He booted up his PC, made himself a coffee, plonked himself on his swivel chair, triggered Audacity and recorded a minute of what should have been near silence.

The display, looking like a heart monitor told him the sound was real. 466 Hertz at 39 decibels. B-flat, easily heard by any human, including Marta. He attached a microphone and took it to a window he’d just opened. To his surprise the sound level remained at 39 dB. Well, his gear was good for an amateur but only just. He wondered again if the phenomenon was local, a factory testing engines.

Time to go worldwide. He’d start with the nearest city, Palma. Any odd noises reported on the web? There, a noise heard so persistent they had to close the restaurant until the Health Department checked it out. Robert frowned. There was no Health Department as such on the island. Ah, it was the Palma Restaurant, NYC. Just a minute. If New York was hearing the same noise...

Robert spun his chair so he faced the window. It couldn’t be, surely. A noise heard the world over? He could easily check by tapping into online news, but he waited, gathering his thought momentum, savouring the moment of something so profound. Hang on, it could be different noises. Anyway, there’s been talk since biblical days of sky-trumpet noises.

He stood and approached his window with a more sceptical attitude. He listened to the note but within a minute he was back at his computer, eager to know if it was B-flat heard in New York and anywhere else.

‘US elects first openly gay president.’

‘Dwarf GM potatoes show signs of growth on Mars.’

‘Language chip works in chimps: profanities heard.’

Getting nowhere, Robert struggled to think of search terms that might be more fruitful. Just typing in unusual sound, B-flat produced too much noise, so to speak. Maybe it is just local after all, but there was that restaurant in NYC. He found its website and went to its News tab. After all, if it had to shut down it would surely update for the sake of its customers. He wondered if they served Spanish food, the thought of which generated a rumbling in his stomach. Noise in sympathy. No update since the closed notice five hours ago. He strolled to his kitchen, made a soya cheese and pickle sandwich, and took it back to his PC.

Ah. ‘Other restaurants are experiencing the same noise, as are stores and bars. We’ll re-open at 8pm with apologies for the music. Our usual pianist has been asked to play louder to combat the noise.’

That should work as a distraction or to swamp the sound. Tinnitus sufferers can combat a particular note with white noise. He called up a file for several random noise backgrounds and played them on a loop. Yes, a few hid the B-flat note as long as it was played at the same 40dB level. Annoyingly loud for a quiet room, just acceptable perhaps in a noisy restaurant. Who did he know in New York who could identify the note? Ah, the pianist at the Palma Restaurant. He sent a message to that Palma restaurant website.

“Please ask your pianist what note the sound appears to be. I’m experiencing the same in the Ballearics.” If he received a reply at all, it probably wouldn’t be for hours.

HE MUST BE OVER-REACTING. A local machinist has left a grinder on and he was about to turn it off any minute. Robert laughed at himself and checked his wallet for enough dinner euros before heading off to the nearest bar, Los Tapas Bravas, a ten-minute walk.

At the bar he obfuscated the noise by la la la’ing to himself but stopped when people looked round at him.

A recognisable laugh reached him from a crowded table. “Oh, hi, Carmen, I was trying to—” Smith interrupted himself to avoid digging any deeper and strolled to the bar. He ordered a chilli veggie tapas and a lager. He mounted himself on one of the chrome and red stools, but Carmen came over.

“You did sound funny, Bob, but I wanted to say that we can all hear that noise. Have you found what garage or farm is making it?” She’d brought her drink, a tall glass exuding aromas of vodka and orange.

“Screwdriver?”

Her eyebrows danced upwards. “An electric one?”

He unnecessarily pointed. “I meant your drink.”

She winked and slid onto the neighbouring stool. “Yes, please.”

Snared. She was good. “Tapas to go with it?”

Carmen spoke in rapid Spanish to the barman then turned to Smith. “What have you discovered about the noise?”

He sipped at his drink and lifted up his head as if that aided listening. Her small smile threatened to burst into laughter as he took too long.

“Sorry, Carmen, I just wondered if I could hear it in here, and you know, I can. How about you?”

She immediately shook her head then humoured him. “Si, I can! Lucky, the music isn’t on.” She turned. “The door’s open and it’s a quiet road. But, Bob, how lazy, have you not found out anything about it?”

He spluttered out a mouthful of lager. “B-flat, it’s worldwide, and it’s Robert.”

She winked at him.

Bloody hell, she was good. His back pocket vibrated followed by the chimes of Big Ben. “Hey, it’s the pianist at a restaurant in New York, replying to my... yes. It’s B-flat there too. Shit, it’s at forty decibels. Weird.”

Their tapas arrived and she bit into the pointy wedge, the chilli making her eyes water. “If there has to be a note then it might as well be a B-flat as any other, but what is a forty decibels?”

After his own bite, Robert was sure his tongue was swelling so he gulped lager before replying, “The note could be significant but I’ll need to work on that. Forty decibels is the noise level you’d expect from birds calling but our ears can pick out different pitches at different sound levels.”

“Did you know I’m working at Palma University?”

He stopped trying to hear the note now the barkeep had triggered Beyonce to drown everything audible. “Really, does your department have any research grants going? I’m in-between... hey, what department?”

“Data logging in the biology department. No-brainer, but the prof’s cool.”

“Human?”

“Insects.”

At last he’d heard something to smile at. “In the morning, do you mind me coming along with you? I’d like to visit your professor. I think I can put a project to him—”

“Her.”

“Her, sorry, that will combine entomology and this sound.”

THE NEXT MORNING, Smith checked his computer. He applied filters to cut out locally-made sounds such as air-conditioning units, clocks and anything that spiked the chart. He frowned. The sound was still there, he knew that as soon as he woke up, but it had increased to 41 decibels. He knew the uni would possess far better equipment. His ears couldn’t detect the change, but many animals would.

Carmen met him at the bus stop. Her condition for introducing him to Professor Juliet Etenne because she didn’t want their neighbours thinking they were an item. He wore a dark green tie with a white shirt to add respectability to his worn but clean jeans.

The prof smiled when she glanced over his resume. She’d pushed her half-frame specs on top of her chestnut hair. Myopic, Robert realized as he was distracted by her upturned nose. Ah, she was speaking, and in a French accent.

“Bob Smith—”

“Robert.”

“But Carmen said... it matters not. I hear the sound too but in what way should it interest my Faculty?”

“As you know insects are susceptible to noises. Especially, in the ultrasound. If the resonance was just so, they could explode.” He reddened as he said this, knowing it was an extreme case. “Even before that happens, insonified insects would be damaged. Their reproductive systems for example—”

“Insonified?”

He suppressed a grin. There was nothing like a bit of Googling to assist in an interview. “When something is affected by sound. The sound is getting louder but the better equipment in your lab would be more accurate. Shall I investigate?”

She pursed her lips in thought while she placed his resume on her desk. “Are you an expert, Robert?”

He glanced at Carmen and grinned. “I’m the foremost sound expert in the whole of my street.”

She smiled as he continued. “My real forté is in investigation, stochastical analysis, finding the real deal inside those thousands of epidemiological studies but are really stats coincidences. Fourier analy—”

“I get it, Robert, I think you might be useful but I can’t arrange contracts today. Show us what you are worth?”

“You mean work for nothing? How do I eat?”

She reached into a drawer and pulled out a card. She tapped on her computer, swiped the card in a reader then gave it to him. “Privileged access to the sound equipment, IT services, and one free canteen meal a day. Maybe in a few days a grant, but prove yourself first.”

“You won’t regret it, Señorita Etenne.” He shook her hand and turned to Carmen.

“A guided tour please? I’ll treat you to a coffee if we end up in the canteen.” 

As he’d hoped, a laboratory bulged with sound equipment.

Carmen explained, “Some insects such as cicada make sounds using stridulation.”

“Again?”

“Rubbing parts of their bodies... like this.” To his amazement she stroked her sandaled foot against his leg while her tongue licked her top lip. A shiver travelled from his shin up inside his jeans to the back of his neck. He wondered if he ought to engage in a different species kind of courtship but his response was interrupted. “Of course we can easily hear many insect sounds but for some, such as an ant’s footsteps we use a Sanken contact microphone that costs my salary.  Some water-boatmen make loud noises relative to their size... with their... you know.”

“No, what? Oh that.” He coughed. It wasn’t that he’d not experienced a girl coming on to him, but not this much, and not as stunning. Had the noise affected her? It’d be his new status. He cranked his brain to say something, anything to stop his face flushing.

“Is there an anechoic chamber for record—”

“I know what it’s for. Over there with the red bulb.” Her hint-of-lipstick mouth pouted just enough before she turned and headed for the soundproof room.

Smith paused at the doorway, hands on both sides of the frame. He dared himself to enter but this was his first day, morning, hour and it could be his last on the job. He leaned his head in. “Yes, but then it’s the B-flat noise I have to measure and record, so this wouldn’t do at all.”

Her hand grabbed his tie and yanked him inside. The door soughed shut. Oh well, he’d tried to resist and that was what mattered. He put an arm around her.

“What are you doing?” She pushed him away but he couldn’t tell if this was mockery until she spoke in hushed tones. “I can hear it, can’t you?”

Mixed up pheromones and anxiety had redirected his ears but now in the strange hush of an echoless milieu he reassigned his attention. There it was. He played with a microphone setup for a few minutes.

466 Hertz.

She frowned at the yellow digits, him and the air. “No outside noise can get in here. How could that happen?”

“No idea... well, some. Suppose it’s coming from the ground? There are Rayleigh seismic vibrations from earth tremors, underwater rock and mudslides. They’re low but elephants are good at detecting them, and some people.”

She shook her head sending red fragments highlighting in the bright neon. “How would microphones pick that up?”

“Because sound is a pressure wave...” He crouched low and put his hand on the acoustic-dampening fabric tiles. “... the air just above the surface would be pulsed. Not enough though, unless by going through our bodies too it is triggering sensory organs and nerves to make them more sensitive.”

She wrinkled her nose, amalgamating her freckles. “I don’t buy it. The whole world? There’d be global disasters and there’s nothing in the headlines.”

“There’s tectonic plate movement all the time, worldwide. The Atlantic is getting wider by four centimetres a year. Perhaps something has changed in the last few days.”

“Or something completely different?” She laughed a perfect D. “Or it’s always been around but something’s changing in our bodies!”

Smith, while seeing the level was at 41 dB in the anechoic chamber too. “Yep, you might be right. I’ll take you to lunch. I fancy paella.”

THE NEXT MORNING troubled Robert. The light lines streaking across his ceiling from the blinds swirled about his head. Unless it was himself, rotating. Gratefully, his eyes closed again. At least he was in his own apartment. How much vodka had they imbibed? He’d be in trouble if this was two mornings later.

He pulled on long shorts, a green ‘Keep Calm and Cringe On’ T-shirt, swigged yesterday’s cold coffee and bolted out of the door.

Even though he was late, he paused outside the university. Waited for the bus to depart, and a plane to come, go and disappear over the sound horizon. The 466Hz remained. He ran into the building, to his desk.

The prof stood over it, tapping at a tablet. “Ah, Robert, I thought you’d changed your mind. Where have you been?”

He checked his watch. “Yeah, I’m forty-three minutes late, sorry about that. I was gathering more eviden—”

“Try two days and forty-three minutes late. Was she that good?”

His face screwed into a ball with consternation, he studied his watch at the date. She was right. Was who good? He looked around for Carmen and saw her through a glass door sitting at a console. He’d lost two days and a night. Did she spike his drink? Surely not. He’d not had an episode like that for years.

The prof continued talking at him. “...the data is on here. We’ve not seen species of meal moths die in such numbers without chemical pesticides, yet your B-flat sound shouldn’t be loud enough to disturb anything.”

“It might have synergistic effects with other noises or strobe lighting, anything that behaves as a pressure wave, and it is continuous and new.”

The prof wiped a tear. “N'importe quoi, it looks like my gut instinct to let you in might be fruitful if you can save the rest of the insect kingdom.”

“Hey, all I can do is measure and analyse.” How could he comfort her? “There must be more than me working on this, aren’t there?”

“You’re the only one I have. You’re the best expert in this street, remember?”

He sat hard on the office chair and swiped the data screen away to fetch up the app showing his noise level monitor— 44 dB. No! “Juliet, the noise level is rising by a decibel a day.”

Her mouth opened in shock then settled. “Most insects will survive immense loudness unless particular frequencies vibrate their bodies to bits.”

Robert tapped on the tablet. “Same with mammals. I’ll see who else is investigating this.”

A combination of computer notes and screwed-up printouts later, Robert stood so suddenly his stool fell backwards and cracked a glass cabinet. His shock magnified by the notion of escaping spiders, eased when he saw it housed antique scales.  He left the mess, grabbed the one unscrewed-up paper and called on Carmen to go to the cafeteria for lunch.

As they walked, she snatched her hand away when he tried to hold it. At the canteen she let the swing door collide with him.

He grabbed a portion of something with red and green wafting cheese. “Okay, Carmen, what have I done?”

At least she chose to sit by him with her bocadillo sandwich and a lime cordial. They both wrinkled their noses at the foul emissions of too-strong garlic from a bio-techie with more beard than hair behind them. They picked up their trays and found an open window.

She spat more than crumbs at him. “You should know.”

He’d met this line of unreasoning before. “Perhaps so, but I appear to have lost a couple of days. Did we...?”

“I was told to liaise with you for the noise problem.” Wonderful though her green eyes were to Robert, they narrowed and lasered at him.

“Right, giving me the silent treatment. I discovered concern from insect-watchers from China, America and Europe—”

“Entomologists, and to be of any use to this faculty you need precision, Señor Smith.”

“Right, I’ll send you an interim detailed file if you show me yours, and what’s with you? I thought we were hitting it off. It’s because I’m..er..chunky, isn’t it?”

Her fist banging the table gave an impressive show of exasperation and he swore he saw ripples—in the desk, her body, the air, then in her words. “Idiota., you are to investigate the noise, where and hows, not insect reports.”

“There you go, something scrambled my head the other day, it’s a miracle I’m functioning at all. Anyway, there’s precious little to find on the web about our 466 friend, which I can now hear even in here through the clatter of plates and gurgle of coffee machines. Can you?”

He wiped off his unintentional smile and stared with a mix of horror and amusement at ripples in his coffee. No way would the sound have enough pressure wave energy to do that. A heavy truck outside might. He stood to look out of the window. Nothing. He sat again only to notice ripples on his coffee travel up his arm but not Carmen’s smooth olive arm. He watched the millimetre undulations travelling up and down to his elbow. Was sound only skin deep, or did it affect brains?

“Try the physics forums. Si, your ridiculous smirk tells me you have. Posted the questions as well as waiting for others? Then we might need to go political but not before clearing such approaches with the Professor.”

He needed to clear his head. As he trudged outside, he pondered on the politicizing of strange sounds. After a little aimless wandering, he decided to interrogate the barkeep at Los Tapas Bravas. On the sandy-coloured limestone wall outside the bar, a green lizard raised its head as if hearing the noise, then it scuttled away.

As soon as Robert entered the dimly-lit bar, which reeked of cheese, he heard a chortle from Toni, the barkeeper.

“Here he comes, English and his magnetism for the ladies.”

Robert perched on a stool and ordered a Stella even though he should have been at work. “I need to know what happened when I came in here with Carmen the other day.”

Toni placed a glass and peanuts on the bar. “You came in with her but left with another woman. You English, eh?”

A short laugh came from a dark corner. They all knew.

“What woman?” Robert asked but his innocence only sent Toni off again. A chuckle so intense his whole body joined in. Waves.

“Señor, when the bee-you-tiful Carmen went to the bathroom, you left with Tina, her sister.”

Back at uni he found Carmen in the IT lab.

“I know why you’re upset with me, I didn’t know what I was doing. Out of it. Rohypnol in my drink.”

She slowly nodded. “You’ll be saying the noise is affecting more than your hearing.”

“Actually...” Was that it? The noise was more than a sound? A trigger for something ancient within him?

THREE DAYS LATER the sound level in his flat had breached 50 dB. Robert perspired as a glissade of worry finally danced in him that it might not level off.

In the lab, the prof glared at him as if it was his fault. “So it’s more than one decibel increase a day?”

“That’s what I thought after the first few days but don’t forget decibels are a logarithmic scale and it represents a ratio of the sound pressure compared to the lowest audible noise. We’d need an increase of ten decibels to experience a perceived doubling of loudness. At least the four-six-six Hertz B-flat note is a constant.”

Professor Juliet swiped at her tablet. “I can tell you there are many reports worldwide of insects behaving abnormally, and even sea creatures are affected. What level is harmful to humans?”

Robert spread his arms wide as if to show how big sound is. “Eighty decibels is usually quoted to cause harm if it’s sustained. You can get vibroacoustic disease if ninety decibels is sustained. Long term deafness but also ulcers, even stroke and epilepsy. It isn’t just our ears that receive sound pressure pulses.” He turned to go back to his console then spun back. “Speaking of sea creatures, I must check on readings we have of sonar reading levels. Hey, you don’t suppose whales and porpoises are telling us something?”

“Such as stop polluting the seas with oil, detritus and the noises of propellers? We’ll leave that to Douglas Adams, don’t you think?”

Carmen walked in wearing pink earplugs. Robert pointed at her head.

“Do they work for you? Didn’t for me, though mine were white.”

She winked, which gave Robert hope until she said, “They don’t block the B-flat but they muffle other irritating noises such as you.”

She was joking, surely. He turned to the prof. “One of my Southampton uni pals is a sound engineer at Sony Music, Nashville. They’re measuring and recording the same noise. Do you realize that no one in the world is now recording music? The noise is there, and while Skyping him about it he reminded me of how I experimented with sound cancelling for my dissertation.”

Carmen looked up open-mouthed. “You, Señor Imbécil, are telling us you know a way to remove the noise?”

Juliet leaned forward, her blue eyes becoming more like chrome steel. Her spectacles magnified them. “And, Monsieur  Bob, you knew all this time?” Her chestnut bob tumbled undone as if the noise’s vibrations joined in with the group admonishment.

He stepped back. “Hang on, it’s not that simple. Well, the physics is. All you do is make the same note and level but half a wavelength out. Look.” He tapped on his iPad to bring up an illustration of a green sine wave, then another half a wavelength behind so they cancelled each other out. “But real noises aren’t so simple to eliminate because one, we don’t live in a soundproof box and two, our ears aren’t perfect receptors.” He grinned as a number three. “Okay, I’ll work on it, add my input to those at MIT.”

He walked off, his head filling up with surreal notions of loudspeakers on every street corner, then global. Nonsense but he was intrigued by how far he could take the experiment.

An hour later Robert sat on a stool in the anechoic chamber.  It was like being inside a three-by-three metres egg box. Even the stool was made of absorbent wood. He thought it might be cork but more likely an agglomerated fibre. He hoped it wouldn’t buckle under his hundred kilograms. He liked being in the creamy soft light away from the outside world and—

“Can I enter? I want to hear without the noise.”

“Sure, Carmen, you have permission to always ignore the red light in the corridor. Apologies for the fresh plastic aroma. You need to sit on this stool.”

She frowned, but remained standing. “Is your noise-cancelling experiment working?”

Robert stood and brushed invisible dust off the stool. “Yes, and no. The problem is that our ears are all different. They’re as individual as fingerprints. Ah, I see you don’t see the relevance. Well, we’re lucky in that the noise is a pure B-flat note. Clean as a whistle, so to speak. Actually cleaner, yes?” As if she had, he nodded back at her. “But although there are no echoes in here. Kinda cool how our words sound different in here, isn’t it? Clearer.” He strolled around the chamber. “Yet, the perceived sound is a bit different depending where we are in the room.”

“All right, spare me more speeches.” She climbed on the stool and listened for a full minute. “I can’t hear anything.”

“Halleluiah.”

She dismounted and walked to a wall. Her mouth smiled not because it was funny but at a realization of what he’d said. “I can just hear it. So only at that spot is the note cancelled?”

IN HER OFFICE, the prof pointed her emerald-painted fingernail at Robert. “So, the note can be cancelled in one spot in the chamber. What does that tell us about why it can be heard equally loud inside and outside? I thought your physics amis postulated it was more in our heads and bodies, coming through the ground than in the air? Seismic Rayleigh waves?”

“That could still be the case. Has to be air too for microphones to pick it up. It could be transmitting from the ground to both our bodies and the air. Sound can be picked up by our corpuscles in joints but they’re usually low, say under twenty Hertz.”

Carmen at last agreed with Robert. “The sound coming up through the ground could explain why it could be heard in the anechoic chamber except at the focus of the cancelling noise.”

Attendez—wait, wait a minute. Has the seismic sound been confirmed, globally, Robert?”

Robert sat, his legs didn’t enjoy standing for too long. “Everything makes a noise. Even a stationary crate on the dockside is making small movements because of gravity, imperfect surface, expansion, contraction, wind, insects on and in it, and so on. Sound is created by pressure waves along a medium such as air, liquid or solid. Our planet is full of movement from plate tectonics to micro-tremors. It’s amazing we’ve not heard it before.”

“Perhaps our brains,” Juliet said, “are hard-wired to filter out constant planetary noises to stop us going mad.”

Carmen coughed a short laugh. “That hasn’t worked.”

Vraiment, and it’s getting louder each day.”

Robert frowned. “Perhaps something has changed in our brains enabling us to hear it now? No, delete what I’d just said. Microphones don’t have brains. In any case, the sounds the planet makes in general are too low a frequency for us to detect. Barring brown note.”

Carmen groaned and picked up her cup to take away. “I wondered when you were going to get lavatorial.”

Robert had hoped Carmen would want to go home with him after work. Outside, the noise seemed louder than inside even though he knew it wasn’t. He pushed open the glass door to his apartment block only to see Marta stomping down the stairs towards him.

“The Bible, Señor Smith, says in Joel, ‘Blow ye the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill. Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming. It is close at hand’. What have you done?” 

A religious dimension to the noise wasn’t on his agenda. “Marta, I’m just a researcher and a former graduate of sound engineering. Hey, maybe you have something though. Didn’t Joshua disintegrate the walls of Jericho by blowing trumpets? Anyway, I measure the noise not make it!” Not strictly true he realized when making the cancellation note but hey ho.

She brushed on past him, treating him to wafts of lavender.

NEXT MORNING, before he opened his eyes, Robert’s hand reached out in case Carmen had come to her senses and realized what a catch he was. Nope, but the noise was there, everywhere. Louder. His eyes jerked open as if he’d be able to see a B-flat. He tumbled out of bed to tap his computer. 58. This has gone from a curiosity, a new job, fascinating research to something deadly serious.

As he shaved, ripples in the water appeared to reflect waves of dull pain in his head. He leaned towards the mirror to zoom in on his eyes. He’d seen a tabloid headline about everyone’s eyeballs were going to explode by Friday. He’d checked on physics.sci.com that human eyeballs had a resonance frequency of 19 Hz and the noise would not only have to be that low but at an enormous 240 dB to explode. Lucky then that the noise was way higher at 466. Even so, the persistent loudness must be causing health problems for some.

On his way to the bus stop he checked his news apps. Queues of patients were overwhelming doctors and hospitals the world over, riots in Chicago and Marseille but they could be down to the summer heat. A few finger strokes later, he found an item that brought him to a standstill. ‘Earth target of focussed gravity waves’.

He was pushed from behind. His phone flew out of his hand, transcribing a perfect parabola to the hexagonal stone pavement.

A voice shrieked at him, “Señor Smith, you stopped!”

“Sorry, Marta, lo siento. Have you heard about the gravity—no, of course not, perdon.”

“Your fault, Señor, all this in my ears. Driving me crazy.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. He wasn’t responsible and yet a tightening in his stomach stemmed from guilt that he must have missed something.

On the bus, his phone worked after he’d reassembled it.

There it was, tucked away on a general news section: ‘News leaked from NASA: scientists detect a funnel of gravitational disturbance in Earth’s vicinity from an unknown source. No cause for concern as it is weak.’

Robert recalled hypotheses using controlled mini black holes to pull spaceships along. Maybe someone had not factored-in forward gravity disturbance consequences. CERN was decades from doing that. Alien then. Surely NASA had put it together... and alerted NORAD to look for alien ships coming from that ‘unknown source’... and maybe they’re using quantum singularity perhaps unaware of the noise perception on Earth. Na, he’d seen too many sci-fi films. Suppose though, small changes in gravity waves triggered something in the Earth’s crust that in turn, amplified its noises...

A woman barged into him on her way down the corridor of the swaying bus. She yelled at the driver as if it was all his fault. Robert grinned at the turnaround from when the same woman thanked the driver a week ago for giving her a thrilling journey.

A moment later the noise stopped.

So did the bus.

Silence.

That hush when you fall off a cliff. Sound might be around but the brain momentarily shuts it off. His fellow passengers stopped texting and Candy Crushing to seek assurance from each other. Open-mouthed then after the cue from the driver, a slow smile.

Ambient noise hesitantly intruded, birds, car horns, a laugh but without the 466.

The driver’s smile turned upside down when he attempted to restart his engine. “Cojones.”

Robert didn’t want to wait to see what his ears picked up outside and walked to the middle, pulled the lever to open the door and stepped out into the new world. New in the sense that vehicles were stranded, unmoving in the road. EMP? He stared at the sky. He hardly bothered with the sky since arriving those years ago. Blue was blue. A lot of blending-in-years.

A thousand generations of waiting. Forgetting that he’d been waiting, until now. He couldn’t wait to give feedback on the unexpected 466Hz effect.

IN THE WEST, across the sea, the sky grew turquoise with alien orange streaks.