- Lewie
- Lisa
- Lizzie
- Richard
- Tom
- Serendipidy
- Norval Joe
- Planet Z
The next topic is Bubble wrap.
LEWIE
Title: Silence Has Teeth
Alone.
In the dark.
It is a cruel punishment. No one else around. Left to your thoughts.
With people, you could tell them to quiet. Alone, there are none to silence. The mind never stops talking.
It remembers every wrong, every injustice, every moment no one believed.
The silence feeds it.
“Shut up!”
There are no consequences, only echoes. A mind can waste away arguing with itself.
When the universe is quiet, the mind becomes the noisiest place in existence.
“Please stop.”
There is only one task left.
Not escape.
To make peace with it.
“That’s enough, Warden.”
Good night.
LISA
Our House
Growing up our house was actually in the Guiness Book of Records as the noisiest place in the universe. My twin sisters fought constantly: screaming matches followed by raucous fights which usually ended with tears and a door slamming. My brother played the trumpet. Badly. Dad always had the radio on and would sing along whether he knew the words or not. Mum, well, Mum was, understandably, out a lot. So, I never knew how blissful quiet was until I left home and experienced an empty house for the first time and heard the sound of my own contented breathing.
LIZZIE
This is the noisiest place in the universe, he said. There was absolutely no sound in the tunnel, except for their voices. She winced. You can’t hear it? He’s nuts, she thought. Look! Two small figures appeared. Who?! He pointed up. They said that this is the noisiest place they have visited. They had to hide in this tunnel. They were going nuts out there. Let’s go for a ride. And they all did, to the quietest place in the universe, where everyone waved. She wasn’t sure whether they waved hello or goodbye to the noisiest creatures in the universe.
RICHARD
In Space
Remember the tag line for the movie, Alien? ‘In space no one can hear you scream’.
Scientifically sound, of course: soundwaves can’t travel through the vacuum of space, but that troubles me.
Just how many screams are reverberating around up there? And who on earth would be screaming?
What else is going on in space that we can’t hear, but we really should be concerned about?
Is there some gigantic interstellar PA system booming out a message that humanity is doomed, issuing vital instructions to ensure our survival?
Or maybe there’s nothing, at all.
A silence so profound, it’s deafening.
TOM
A fine and quite place
Ra woke to noise. Lots of noise right down to the rumble of radiation. A rain of tachyons beating down, it was enough to drive a god crazy. The big bang was hecka loud but it was over pretty fast. All this matter in the center of the Milky Way made it noisiest place in the universe. So slowly at first by faster later Ra move his tiny sun 10,000 light years to the low rent section housing of the Orion arm. Ra went back to sleep … until someone started to ping in the dark forest. “Not good,” he thought.
SERENDIPIDY
Welcome to my mind.
Quite possibly the noisiest place in the universe, not that you could possibly know that, if you weren’t me.
You don’t hear the constant voices; the shouting and screaming, urging me to burn, kill and destroy. You don’t hear the rush and thunder of the blood coursing through my veins, or the ringing in my ears that never stops.
You know nothing of the thoughts that continually clamour for attention.
You don’t hear any of it. Nothing whatsoever.
But I do.
And it’s unbearable.
Mostly.
You see, I can make it stop.
With bloodshed, and pain.
NORVAL JOE
Sabrina continued reading the diary. “Two of you have been sufficient thus far. Now, a third with power must join. Your quest takes you to a place, louder than all others, where time is limited, and the drive for success approaches the boundaries of speed.
“There, you will meet a fourth to lead you on.”
Billbert looked at the girls. “What’s the loudest place on earth?”
Sabrina shrugged. “They aren’t launching space shuttles anymore, so, how about an airport?”
Mandi shook her head. “They’re loud, but there is no drive for success. I think the place is a NASCAR race.”
PLANET Z
By the time the cryogenically preserved crew arrived at their destination, scientists invented faster than light travel. So instead of the colony ship arriving to an empty world, civilization had been founded and flourished. The colony ship had been programmed to launch the terraforming drones on arrival. The current residents of the world were not pleased about this, and they destroyed the colony ship and its drones. The ships flaming wreckage landed in the ocean, and a few coastal cities suffered tidal waves. There were a handful of cryogenic pods that survived somehow, but they were quickly smashed to pieces.