Noise

By Draconias Galactica

2003 Draconias Galactica

About a week before the bombs hit, I was listining in on a debate about what civilization was. Don't ask me how I got into that situation, because I'm not really sure. It just happened as a result of boredom and a traffic jam. I hit the jam, and the next thing I knew I was in the middle of a philosophical debate.

Every day I go to a traffic jam. After I go from the traffic jam, I go to work. At work, I sit next to a printer and all day long, the damn thing's running. A universal constant is that somebody, somewhere will always need something in triplicate. Usually, they get the triplicates from my printer. I'm not even totally sure what I _do_ at work. I spell check documents from somebody, send them to somewhere, and get paid for it somehow. But all day long, that Goddamn printer is running.

On my way to the traffic jam before going home, I wound up in the middle of this debate. I'm at three places most of the time, my job, my house, and the parking lot somebody called a road for the hell of it that lies in between those two points. At work, there's a million keys being hit all the time, and that damn printer running all day long, never running out of paper, never stopping for a minute. At the traffic jam, there's cars honking at each other. Cars communicate in some sort of morse code. I can almost understand what they're saying. At home, the neighbor plays his stereo at a volume that should rock his building to its base. But somehow, the stereo doesn't explode from all the vibrations.

But at the traffic jam, there were three guys debating what civilization ment. The first guy thought it was a word used to explain why humans work at slave corporations and animals don't. The second guy said it was the advancment of creative practices. The third guy explained that guy 1 and 2 were idiots, and that civilization was just the large-scale traveling groups of the human animal. Guys 1 and 2 were in side by side lanes in front of me, and guy 3 was parked next to me. Just my luck, he asked me what I thought next.

Civilization?

"Yeah," he said. "What's it all about?"

I thought for a few seconds. The cars talked about gas prices and kamakazi flies. Construction workers a mile or two ahead took out their frustration on the pavement with jackhammers. Three different stereos played at volumes that should have torn the world asunder, or at least made somebody's small brains ooze out of their ears...ears...

Civilization's noise. Just a whole hell of a lot of noise.

That worked for them. They changed the topic to some boring political debate. Something about a bad road to have taken. And I sat there for about another hour, with my eardrums trying their hardest to commit seppuku.

I got home late. I don't think I've ever gotten home on time actually. My house is a shitty basement level apartment with no windows. You can block out the light of civilization, but you can't block out the noise. Lord knows that when we finnaly stop making noise, we might be able to hear ourselves think. Talk about a scarey concept. Who knows what might happen if we start to use our gray matter? Maybe true progress. Horrifying.

Somebody, somewhere probably wanted their orders in triplicate to nuke the world. For their records. They probably didn't want reasons. Reasons involve thinking, and thinking goes against society. If they were thinking, they would have realized the nuclear flames of the apocolypse would have wiped out the triplicated orders. Humanity too, but you have to have priorities.

No windows ment that there was practically no light from the outside. No light meant I didn't go blind. Basement level ment the nuclear winds just tore up the buildings above me. Good thing the nuclear lumberjack knocked down the trees away from my door, otherwise I never would have gotten out. No way to block out noise meant I should have gone deaf. But...there wasn't any noise. It was like a dream. Light bursted in like waterfalls from the cracks in my door. The world shook around me. But there wasn't any noise.

The bomb is the only way for civilization to actually think. Pathetic.

I would have run to my door, but I was too busy relishing the silence. I would have checked to see if others were alright, but that would probably involve making noise. Somebody, somewhere thought for once. Who am I to interupt his results with noise? So I went to sleep. Best damn nights sleep I ever had.

It's probably sick to be happy that billions of people died. But hey, I didn't know that many of them. The ones I did know, I wasn't too fond of anyways. All those billions of people ever did was advance civilization. The eternal quest to make more noise faster, louder, and from a smaller device. Glorious progress. Soon, we'll drown out the stars with our light! Maybe that'll teach them to respect us insignifigant peons! Eventually, we'll develop weapons more powerful than the predators! Our nuclear reactors and world wars will teach them who's the lord of the jungle! One day we'll drown out all the noises of nature, and replace them with our own noise! Who's the stronger one now?! Now say uncle!

But the point is, it was quiet the next day. I got up, and the first thing I noticed was this rediculous sound in my ears. Silence actually makes a noise. Or rather, it makes the absense of noise, which is a damn weird noise to make. I loved it from the first minute on. I must have stood still for an hour, relishing that sound. Running my hands through it. Breathing it in and out. When I started breathing it, I realized something, somewhere was on fire. Oh well, I had been in bed too long anyways. Time to evacuate the area. Please exit shitty basement level apartment in an orderly fashion.

After my little run from the burning smell, I walked straight out of town. The roads were actually clear for once. We should have elected the bomb mayor of our town. His methods are a bit questionable, but boy does he get results. This should make a drop in the crime rate too. Kill all the criminals, and who's going to commit a crime? Since we don't have any more criminals, we might as well burn the police while we're at it. Why not lay off the whole world?

I passed by a 'decomissioned' police car. It was the first car that was still on all 4 of its wheels. It probably would have been a hell of a lot easier on my legs to have taken it, but it also would have been a pain in the ass to my ears. I never used my legs enough anyways. So I passed it by, after taking the keys out of it. If I'm not going to fuck up my ears, somebody else somewhere sure as hell isn't going to get the chance to.

Outside the city, the firestorm had dried up most of the ground. It was getting dry. All the clouds had disapeared. The sun was about to melt the flesh off my neck, and then melt the rest of my neck. But my ears had never been happier. You have to have priorities.

If we had gotten rid of the noise sooner, maybe we wouldn't have been as anal. Wars, hatred, crappy movies, we could have gotten rid of them decades ago if we had just gotten a few good nights sleep. But no, every time I went to sleep, somebody just had to wake me up with their fucking NOISE! Every time I tried to go outside and enjoy nature, NOISE! Every time I tried to think, NOISE!!!

But now, everything's quiet. Everything's peacefull. Everything's the noise of another human being's shoes hitting the ground, throwing up dirt and crushing dying plants underneath. Oh well, it could have been worse. I guess I had to expect some noise to show up again eventually.

"Hey there, wait up!"

I did. You have no idea how loud the human voice is until everything is perfectly quiet, and the only noise out there is your own lungs doing their job. It could be worse, though. A few days from now, animals will probably show up again. A little human voice compared to that isn't that bad.

"See, this is why I shouldn't go drinking anymore. Every time I do, I pass out and completly miss the apocolypse!"

I would have laughed but a - it wasn't that funny, and b - that would have involved making noise. That didn't stop him from laughing. He laughed his ass off, and nearly my ears too. But this isn't that much. It'll get noisier when things stop being so dead. But still...why does he have to laugh so damn loud?!

"But it doesn't matter that much. Hell, somebody's probably already rearin' to start rebuilding this whole country! Then we can have the apocolypse all over again!"

...rebuild?

"Yeah, probably. Somebody was bound to have been prepared for this sort of thing. I'd bet that, within a year, things'll be back to normal. What do you think?"

Normal? Back to..._normal_?

"Minus the few billion corpses, I guess. As normal as things get around here, though. Maybe even better!"

Why the hell would anybody want to rebuild? We finally make some Goddamn progress in this world, and somebody wants to throw it all away?! Hell, even with all the dead people, there's still more than enough left to make noise. Why would they want to do that? What the hell is wrong with them?! WHY WOULD YOU POSSIBLY WANT THINGS TO GO BACK TO THE WAY THEY WERE!?!

"Uh, buddy? Are you okay?"

Rebuild, I asked.

"Yeah, rebuild. We can't just let the enemy win, huh?"

No. No we can't.

Faster than that idiot could act, I shoved him down onto the dirt. He didn't even have time to protest before I started kicking him in the chest. Rebuild? Three strong kicks to his stomach. Why should we rebuild? I moved on to his balls, giving him a few extra kicks there just for good measures. There's nothing worth rebuilding!! I moved up his chest again, and went for his head. This is the best things have ever been!!!

He was dead long before I stopped kicking him. I practically wore out my shoes on the bastard. But, at least he stopped talking. That wonderful noise came back to my ears. God I love that noise.

Somewhere, somebody wants to take the only good noise in the world away from me. They want those old noises. They want that printer going "err-ur-err-ur-err-ur", they want all those keys going "tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh", they want the cars and their fucking morse code language. We can't just let the enemy win, huh? Damn right. He had the wrong enemy though. Nobody can ever rebuild that nightmare of noise again. I'll see to that personally.