Echoes of Silence

The next day the first news Lyric greeted Kai with was that the strange power outage was attributed to an overloading of the grid by a man named Tony Rosenthal. A scientist who was demonstrating his new invention at the Marcide Tech Expo. The news said he claimed to be able to send strong signals into space. For what purpose Kai did not know. Like everyone else, he knew the space colonies rumored to be on distant planets were nothing but a myth.

But those details weren’t really important to Kai. The emotions he felt that night consumed his thoughts for every waking minute. Every action, from eating breakfast to getting dressed to walking to school to saying hi to friends to listening to his teachers to squeezing through the crowded hallways to jotting down notes, felt like white noise. Daily motion faded into blank space. Nothing felt real after he knew what real felt like.

“Hey, Kai,” Ellen waved a hand in front of his face. “You there?”

He blinked twice. Once to focus his vision and once to regain his thoughts. School had already ended, he remembered. They were sitting in the innovation lab, and particles of sawdust and metallic flakes floated in the rays of afternoon sun streaming through the second-floor windows. “Yeah, what?”

“Grayson pulled up the data from the VR headset.” She glanced towards the slouching boy next to her.

“Oh. Uh, did you find anything interesting?” Kai asked as he leaned in to get a better look at Grayson’s screen.

Grayson turned the monitor around. “How’s this? Is this interesting enough for you?”

A graph with several lines, each a different color, trailed across the screen in a sinuous pattern. The peaks and troughs followed a stable trend until the very end when one of them spiked radically. Kai had seen similar graphs but never such a big shift. The graph was simply a modified form of electroencephalography or simply a way to track energy in different parts of the brain. Kai used it to make sure he tuned his neural symphonies correctly. The colors correspond to different parts of the brain, and of course, the colors weren’t standardized between various programs.

“This pink line,” Kai said, pointing at the screen. “The one that spikes up. What part of the brain is this?”

“The Amygdala,” Grayson responded as Ellen chewed her lip in confusion. “The part of the brain that processes emotions,” he added, and understanding flashed in Ellen’s eyes.

Kai stared at the line as if he was expecting to divine some revelation from it. “So when the lights went out. The woman in the headset panicked, and this happened.”

“It was a stressful situation. It’s not too unusual for something like this to happen,” Grayson responded.

“But this much? I’ve never seen anything close to this.” Kai was determined to not let Grayson brush this off.

“Maybe some electromagnetic wave from the power outage hit the device and caused it to malfunction,” Ellen suggested. Dead stares from Grayson and Kai settled on her, and she put her hands up to defend the statement. “It was just an idea. I know a whole lot less about this stuff than you guys.”

“Not likely,” Grayson murmured.

Kai tapped his fingers on the table, wondering if the graph would reveal anything else. “Are you sure you didn’t feel any different?”

“Maybe a little bit.” Grayson sighed at the question he had heard a million times since yesterday. “But nothing like what this graph is telling me.”

“You said you felt like your emotions were unrestrained, right, Kai?” Ellen asked. “Well, it makes sense to me if this Amygdalla thing was affected. This woman’s emotions must have been unrestrained too.

“Sure, but what does that have to do with the power outage?” Grayson insisted.

“Maybe there’s something keeping us all suppressed? Something that's regulating our emotions to make sure everything remains stable.” It felt like a weight off of Kai’s shoulders after speaking his suspicions out loud. He no longer felt as crazy for thinking it.

“But why? What’s the point of that?” Grayson said with his ever-present skepticism.

As Kai considered the question, his phone buzzed in his pocket. Pulling it out, he saw a new message at the top of his notifications. Opening the message, he was met with garbled text. The sender ID was just a string of numbers and letters. No one Kai recognized.

“What is it?” Ellen asked. “You look confused.”

“I just got this.” Kai put his phone on the table and turned it around for the two of them to see.

“Probably some spam message,” Ellen said, only giving the text a brief glance.

Grayson took a little longer to respond. Behind his eyes, Kai could tell he was thinking. “Send the message to me. I want to try something.”

“Sure,” Kai shrugged. He had no idea what Grayson had in mind, but he might as well give it a chance.

Once he sent the message, Grayson turned the monitor back towards himself and began typing away. After a few more minutes of silent concentration, along with Ellen and Kai exchanging confused glances, Grayson finally turned the monitor back around.

“I think I’ve figured it out.” A cocky grin spread across his face. “It’s a coded message. A tricky one too. Even when deciphering the original message, it comes out as an image code. Which you then need to convert back to text. Kai, look at the message I just sent you.”

Kai pulled out his phone and looked up at Grayson with disappointment. “It’s still gibberish.”

“It may look like it, but try sending that back to the original sender.” Grayson barely hid his impatient excitement as Kai sent the message.

Only seconds later another message appeared on Kai’s phone. This time it actually made sense. His eyes widened as he read it.

“So what does it say?” Ellen leaned in to try and get a look at Kai’s phone.

Kai turned his phone around.

The symphony went silent. Want to know why?

Coordinates followed the message, and Grayson was already rapidly typing them in. Once the location flashed on screen, he frowned. “Kai, you should ignore the message.”

“Why?” Kai reached for the screen and turned it around.

On the map for Meliora, the pinpoint rested on the very edge of the city, past the residential districts, further than the longest-reaching road, and even past the airport where June took lessons.

“Whoa, you could probably see the outside from there!” Ellen shouted giddy for adventure.

“And get radiation poisoning,” Grayson grumbled. “It’s too dangerous for any of us, and Kai isn’t going.”

Kai backed away from the computer and gave Grayson an incredulous look. “Who says I’m not going?”

Grayson sputtered, at a loss for words, “You're seriously not thinking..." I don’t even… I can’t even comprehend the stupidity!”

“Just think about it,” Kai said. “The power outage, the brain spikes, the feeling of suppression I’ve been telling you about. There have to be answers there.” He aggressively pointed at the screen.

“Maybe Kai has a point,” Ellen added as she glanced at the map again.

Grayson looked at them both with disbelief. “We don’t even know who sent the message.”

“And what better way to find out?” Kai took his phone off the table as Grayson eyed the message again.

“It’ll be fun! An adventure just like in the movies!”

Grayson glared at Ellen. “It won’t be like the movies. Kai’s going to get injured or worse, plus it's illegal to go that far.”

“And when has something being illegal been a problem for you?” Ellen shot back, and Grayson’s eyes widened in surprise. “Yeah, that's right. I know about your little tracking chip side business.”

“I don’t destroy the chips!”

“Semantics, and you know it.”

“I’m not making the decision right now,” Kai interrupted before the argument escalated. “I’ll take at least a day to consider it.”

“There’s nothing to consider,” Grayson said firmly.

“Oh, come off it.” Ellen roared up again. “The message was to him, so it’s his choice.”

Kai sighed, realizing how futile his effort was. He would just let the two of them tire each other out, or if things got really serious, their emotions would be suppressed. “I’ll see you two tomorrow.” He got up and began to walk out the door. Even halfway down the hallway, he could still hear them bickering.

“You seem puzzled. May I help?” Lyric asked as he floated above Kai sitting on his bed.

Kai jumped at Lyric’s sudden intrusion, and he quickly closed the strange message. “No. I’ve just been thinking about some stuff.” Taking a deep breath, he threw himself back onto his bed, landing with a cushioned thump.

After a moment of silence, Kai spoke up again. “I’m thinking about taking a long trip tomorrow.”

“I do not think that is wise since you have school tomorrow,” Lyric replied.

“It's just one day. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Lyric hesitated, and his light flashed. “Where is it you want to go?”

“I’ll send you the coordinates. I want you to plan an optimal route.” Kai tapped on his phone, and Lyric’s light flashed red, indicating he had received the message.

Lyric’s tone turned uncharacteristically serious. “I advise against this.”

“I had a feeling you would say that.” Kai pushed himself up into a sitting position on the side of his bed. “I know you're concerned, but plot the route anyway.”

“I cannot do that.”

“Why?” Kai’s voice jumped slightly in volume.

“Because it isn’t safe.”

“Do you know that? Have you been there?”

“One does not need to visit a place to know it is dangerous.”

Kai’s lip quivered as he tightened his jaw. “I don’t need your permission to go, nor do I need a planned route.”

This time Lyric didn’t respond. His light flashed again and then stopped.

“You're meant to ensure my safety, right?”

“Yes, and therefore I advise you not to go. Permit me to access your phone, and I can delete this dangerous message.”

“No,” Kai commanded with a rigid tone. His fists tightened, and then everything relaxed right as he was getting ready to stand up. The anger he felt was dulled. “I... I can’t even get angry at you.”

“Of course you can; you just did, my friend.” Lyric chimed in cheerfully. “Your heart rate increased, your muscles tensed, and the temperature of your body rose by a degree.”

“But that’s not real anger. It's no more real than the word. It’s subdued, brief, and an imitation.” His last words started to come out no more than a whimper. He was just tired. Tired of not knowing. Tired of trying to feel something that he couldn’t grasp.

The artificial skylight was already dimming, and shadows reached across Kai’s room. “I’m sorry I cannot aid you,” Lyric said.

“I understand.” Kai lay down and stared up at the blank ceiling. I can’t stay like this any longer. After what felt like an eternity in the silent night, Kai made up his mind. Tomorrow, with or without Lyric, I’m leaving.