A few years after the catastrophe, they reinvented sound for the silence, so if you were rich enough you could hear again. It worked by some sort of pressure manipulation within the walls of your skull, and although I\u2019m sure they could have come up with some elegant design for the devices the demand was so high they didn\u2019t really bother. Subsequently it looked like you were wearing suction cups on your ears, the sort of toilet plungers they have in old cartoons that I have no idea whether really existed or not.<\/p>\n
If I\u2019d been in charge, I\u2019d have made them look like seashells, iridescent surfaces flickering through visual equivalents to the simulated audio pulsations being forced through the wearer\u2019s skull. But anything can look cool when it signifies wealth and privilege, I suppose, and everyone wanted a pair. They were this year\u2019s hottest fad, even more popular than those hairy sweets everyone seems to like.<\/p>\n
For Christmas I bought our kids an hour at one of the sound booths, each of them taking turns while the others stroked their desserts and stared in awe and wonder at the expressions on their siblings\u2019 faces as the pressure undulations stimulated sections of their brain dormant since birth.<\/p>\n
Our hour was up before I got a chance to use them. On the way home, through eyes stinging with barely suppressed tears, I tapped out \u201cWhat was it like?\u201d They replied with several thumbs up, two love hearts, and fifty seven consecutive Ed Sheeran emojis.<\/p>\n
Now the tears flowed. They would not stop.<\/p>\n
__________<\/p>\n
Notes:<\/p>\n
1. Written on December 12, 2022<\/em> A few years after the catastrophe, they reinvented sound for the silence, so if you were rich enough you could hear again. It worked by some sort of pressure manipulation within the walls of your skull, and although I\u2019m sure they could have come up with some elegant design for the devices the demand was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[351,1438,1437],"class_list":["post-5053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-short-story-or-two","tag-stories","tag-the-capricorns","tag-the-new-sound"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5054,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5053\/revisions\/5054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n2. Song title taken from this song<\/a> that I used to love<\/em>
\n3. And still like quite a bit<\/em><\/p>\n__________<\/br>Support An Accumulation Of Things<\/a><\/h3>If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon<\/a> or my ko-fi<\/a>. <\/br><\/br>Patreon subscribers<\/a> get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.<\/br><\/br>(Ko-fi contributors<\/a> probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more). <\/br><\/br>Thank you!<\/i><\/br><\/br>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"