A WORLD WITHOUT SOUND

"Music, states of happiness, mythology, faces belabored by time, certain twilights and certain places try to tell us something, or have said something we should have missed, or are about to say something"

Jorge Luis Borges, "The Wall and the Books"

Buenos Aires, 1950

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Preface

Perhaps this story only came to me in a dream, but if so, then let dreams sometimes surpass us.

They say that in ancient India, there lived a poet who heard the music of flowers, and in China, a sage claimed that all that exists is merely the vibration of words that no one has ever spoken.

Both, as the chronicles assert, went blind at the end of their lives—perhaps from an excess of sound.

This is a story about a man who could hear in a world where no one knew what hearing was.

But, unlike the prophets, he did not begin to speak. He called for no followers, no gods, no revolution.

He did only one thing—he left behind a structure in which sound became light, and silence—a form of memory.

Whether such a man truly exists, I do not know.

Even if he existed, perhaps he has already ceased to be a man, just as old words cease to be letters and become poems that no one reads, but that still shine on their own.

And if you, reading this, one day raise your head to the sky and see a light that does not belong to the stars, perhaps you will understand why this story is worth reading—and why, perhaps, it was never written.

— An unknown compiler (perhaps a deaf librarian, or a hearing blind man, or simply a person who remembered music in a dream)

I. The One Who Hears in a World of Silence

No one remembered what a voice sounded like. It wasn't that it was forgotten—it was abandoned as something useless.

They say there was a time when people could hear. When the wind rustled, the fire crackled, and music stirred the soul like an invisible hand.

But those times had long become legend, like levitating monks and machines that drove themselves on the earth, no longer requiring human involvement.

Now, there was no sound at all.

Technology had erased it. First, with noise-canceling headphones. Then, through a system of genetic correction.

Then there was a war: loud, blind, monstrous. After it, only silence and a thirst for peace remained.

The world became soundless by its own choice.

People communicated with their eyes, facial expressions, gestures, and with a vibro-tablet—with anything but sound.

Even mouths gradually lost their speech function, becoming vestigial. The place of speech was taken by perfect visuality: a sign was purer than a word, silence—clearer than thunder.

Effectively, people lost the skills of hearing and speech and became deaf-mutes.

And only he could hear.

First, at night, he caught the sound of a falling raindrop. Then he felt the rustle of his own breath.

The sound in his ears was so unfamiliar to him that he covered his ears with his hands. But the sound did not disappear.

Now he could hear himself as well: he heard the beat of his heart, like a drum.

He screamed—and heard his own scream.

II. A Gift or a Curse

He told no one what had happened. At first, he thought he had been infected with some kind of virus.

Or perhaps it was a hallucination, or a nervous system malfunction. He sat up at night, clutching his temples, listening not only to the sounds inside his body but also to the breathing of the city.

He walked the streets and heard how his footsteps echoed, though the people around him were silent, as if they were statues.

They looked at him strangely: for no reason at all, he would suddenly turn around, flinching, as if he had been suddenly touched.

"Do you have tics?" a girl wrote on a tactile panel.

He didn't answer. Because he didn't know what to say.

Hearing wasn't a gift; it simply made him different.

He tried to research himself. Medical centers, archives, databases, museums—everywhere it was the same: the auditory system is genetically suppressed in the womb.

In the entire population. But in his analyses—a shocking anomaly: a fully functional mechanism for auditory perception, neuro-acoustic sensitivity. Everything was working.

It was as if his body had challenged the system.

He was diagnosed with: Auditory Schizophrenic Syndrome. Rare, considered extinct. His name was entered into the registry of deviations.

III. The First Experiment

In the library of artifacts, among the exhibits from ancient times, he found an old player. The device was called an "iPod," and it had a few files on it.

One was simply named: "Moonlight.mp3." He put on the headphones and pressed the Play button.

...And he wept. He couldn't distinguish the notes, but the feeling was as if someone were stroking his very soul.

With hands made of light, pain, other feelings and sensations, emotions, eternity.

He understood that this was music, something that had lived in the distant past and had disappeared.

His heart could not bear the intensity of the emotions: where did this beauty come from?

Why did it disappear? Why was it killed?

He didn't sleep for two nights, and then he went to the "academics of silence," instructors at the Technofaculty of Communications.

He asked them for twenty minutes of their time, saying he wanted to show them what speech looked like.

They agreed, and he plugged a cable into the projector. He showed them a waveform graph and moved to the next slide.

On the screen appeared the face of a person speaking, and next to it—a visualization of the sound.

— This is sound. — What do you feel? — Pressure. — Pain. — Panic.

One of the "academics" fainted. The rest, frightened, ran away. The alert system sounded an alarm: a prohibited sound-wave perceptual stimulus has been used.

He was kicked out, but they began to watch him, banning his access to the archives.

IV. Adaptation

He remained silent.

He learned not to listen in. He learned to walk more softly, to breathe more quietly. To pretend he was like everyone else.

He no longer listened to music, only rarely, and even then—in headphones, on the lowest volume.

Or in the bath, where the water dampened the vibrations. His room became a capsule.

He thought he was no longer a danger, that he had calmed their fear, until he met her.

She was standing in the square, painting a giant canvas. On it were lines, as if something was vibrating.

He approached, looked, and understood: she was painting sound, without knowing it.

He could clearly see on her canvas a hum, a splash, and a silence turning into a scream.

He wrote on his tablet:

"What is this?"

She answered:

"I don't know. It just comes to me."

He asked her on a date. The night before, he built a device: a simple capacitor, an acoustic amplifier, a phono-optical bridge.

When he "spoke"—the words became light. He spoke, and she saw flowers, different shapes, as if he were painting with words.

He said to her: "Hello."

She looked at him silently, and then she hugged him. And so they sat in silence.

He heard her breathing, and she saw his voice paint.

V. The Prophet

He no longer hid. He rented a studio and built a hall where everything was constructed from soft, vibration-absorbing panels.

Inside the hall, he installed a projector, his device, and a microphone. And he invited architects, linguists, medics, students.

All those who had ever "spoken" of how they "felt as if something were stirring outside."

He turned on the light.

"I am not alone. I can hear. And if you cannot hear, I will show you."

He ran the program. A dot appeared on the screen, then a wave, then a face, and behind it—a voice.

Not a word, but a voice. Then—warmth, texture, a tear.

Some of those present began to weep. One of them stood up and approached the microphone. "I…" But nothing came out.

Because he didn't know how to do it—how to speak.

The visitors left, and in the morning, others came: with an inspection, in uniform, with forms and documents.

They voiced accusations that made him feel once again that he was dangerous—to them.

Violation of the Sensory Integration Act, distribution of prohibited stimuli, creation of perceptual dispersion.

He could no longer speak, but he could hear them signing his sentence.

VI. The Choice

He sat in a cell made of noise-canceling glass. In it, one could hear neither breath, nor a rustle, nor even one's own heart.

Sound was extinguished—extinguished even within. The world wanted to erase him from the outside—and it had reached his core.

He couldn't scream—because he didn't know what a scream sounded like.

His vocal cords were as silent as everyone else's.

But unlike the others, he could hear what a plea would sound like, if it were possible.

And that was more terrifying than any prohibition. Here, people were not silent—they were incapable of making sounds.

There, behind the door, a trial was underway. It was a trial of the deaf-mute. They did not hear him and did not speak among themselves.

Everything happened in soundless contours—with signs.

Panels. Nods. Rhythmic flashes. He couldn't say anything—he had no voice.

But words lived in his mind, he knew how they sounded, and this made him mute not like everyone else, but consciously mute.

He knew he could—if only the world were not already forever silent.

He was a mute among the mute, only he knew that it was possible to speak.

Sound meant nothing to them. The legal language in a world of the deaf had long become a formality—a sequence of signs.

The issue was not his guilt, but his presence. He existed in the wrong mode, and this was unbearable.

He was given a choice. Formally—for humanitarian reasons. In reality—so that he would exclude himself.

He sat, and three doors appeared before him—in his mind.

 

🔒 The First Door: Sacrifice

If he agrees to the procedure, his hearing will be deactivated. He will remain here, be able to be with her, touch her hands, listen with his eyes—live a full life.

The price would be everything he had heard. The memories would fade, the music would disappear, but love—would remain.

He closed his eyes. He almost opened this door. Almost.

 

🔥 The Second Door: Rebellion

He could go out—with a bang. Create an underground network, distribute artifacts of sound.

He knew how to do it: microwave oscillations, synesthetic implants, coded vibrations in architecture.

He had seen how children froze when they felt rhythms. He knew he could awaken them.

But he also knew: society does not ask to be awakened. And he also knew: he himself was no messiah.

 

🌌 The Third Door: Exile

The silent path: to go where there are no networks, no systems, no speech, where sound remains with him—not as a weapon, not as a mission, but as the only thing that still belongs to him.

He remembered the first time he heard the rain, how music tore his chest apart from the inside, how she looked at his voice—as if it were light.

He didn't know where he would go. He only knew this: he would leave with silence—but not the kind that deafens, but the kind that is heard within—like the whisper of the heavens.

He opened his eyes. And chose.

He left not because they didn't listen to him, but because in this world, there was no longer an addressee for words.

He was not deaf—but he heard a language that no one else knew anymore. Not the language of words—but the language of sound.

The one that is impossible to speak when no one knows how to speak anymore.

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Epilogue

He left without saying a word. No one knew where. No one asked. This is how those who once began to hear disappear.

With his departure, a strange habit appeared in the city: before sleep, some would raise their heads to the sky.

And even at night—when there was no moon and the stars were hidden by fog—they saw a light.

It did not come from any lamps, nor from satellites, and it certainly was not reflected by the moon.

It was a different light—soft, inaudible, warm, as if someone were speaking to them very quietly, not with words, but with light.

Maybe it was him. Or maybe—it was no longer him, but the light he left behind, which now shone on its own.