This was the winter of 2106, the coldest winter that North America had seen in years. Snow fell gently from the gray Chicago skies, settling then melting on the heat-controlled cars and buildings. Snow had been falling constantly for five months, and temperatures were subzero. The city was quiet around this time, as shops were closing and people were returning from work. No one lingered on the streets; instead, they hurried quickly to their cars and back to their heated apartments. By six o’clock, Chicago was a ghost town – desolate, save for the workers who came out later to clear the snow that had piled up during the day. Even they did their work silently, so as not to disturb the quiet city.

Though quiet in the streets, people still lived relatively normally indoors. All apartment buildings had become uniform sometime in the past, with heating systems designed to combat the hard, long winters and a single television panel that was always turned on, relaying the news and nothing else from morning to night. There was usually no real news to report, and the broadcasts focused on recent arrests or deaths. When none of these were available to report, the news started to repeat itself until new information came in.

Eli Griffin closed his door as he did every day – loudly. It echoed in his mind as he stood inside his cramped, one-room apartment. He savored it. It was his favorite sound; it meant that the work-day was over, and he had nothing more to worry about. Eli dragged his feet across the floor, bumping his foot into his table or a chair whenever it came close. He did this on purpose, as it was something to concentrate on, and something that made noise. Other people, specifically his coworkers and neighbors, had grown up accustomed to a quiet atmosphere, but Eli surrounded himself with noise all the time. Since his childhood, he had realized that he was afraid of silence. Just going to church or taking a test in school was a major ordeal. He could never sit still and always had to make some kind of noise, even if he had to talk to himself.

Eli tried to adjust himself to a quiet life – he really did. He couldn’t function in silence. He talked loudly to himself, but his neighbors to the left and right complained that they could hear him through the thin walls. He tried tapping his feet, but the neighbor below him moaned that it was giving him a headache. Whenever it was silent, or he thought it was just too quiet, he started to panic, until he could make some other sound for him to focus on. As long as there was noise somewhere around him, he could manage.

Evening was the worst time of day for Eli. The television panel embedded in his wall was showing a man speaking - but there was no sound. After five o’clock, the words the man was saying scrolled across the bottom of the screen. People were expected to stay quiet. After a while, Eli finally managed to drag himself to bed, but getting to sleep was the hardest thing he ever had to do. He couldn’t lay there in silence - he had to have some kind of steady noise to focus on. He hummed softly. There was no tune; just a low buzz that allowed him to relax slightly and fall asleep.

It would be true to say that for Eli, every day was the same as the last. Every morning, the same routine; he woke up at the eighth hour, dressed in his work clothes, and ate the same meal, if you could call it a meal. It was a canned lump of substance which had been designed to satisfy a person’s nutritional needs for the entire day. It had no taste, but there was no need for it to have any taste. The sense of taste had been eliminated long ago.

Eli sat down at the small table between the solitary chair and the television panel, which was showing the same man from the night before, relaying the same news. Even though there was never anything new to report, most people watched the television anyway. Eli opened the can of tasteless material and ate it within minutes. When there were no tastes to focus on, eating went a lot faster. Humming a tune softly, Eli stepped into the hallway and looked into his mirror briefly. His eyes quickly traveled over his long, bony features and pointed nose, his straight black hair and light blue eyes. There was really no need for Eli to have a mirror, anyway; he never put much effort into looking good.

At nine forty-five AM, Eli left his home and waited outside for the city bus to stop. It was always crowded on the bus, as everyone was going to work at about the same time. Eli liked it on the bus; it was always noisy. He could listen to the bus rattling down the street at high speed, the muffled announcements over the loudspeaker, the conversation between the two women standing next to him, or all of them at once.

Ten minutes later, the bus screeched to a jarring stop in front of the Chicago public library. This was where Eli and several other people got out, and ascended the steep steps into the library. Eli greeted his coworkers genially and tried to start a conversation with one of them, but the man quickly excused himself and made a dash for the library doors. Eli was left naively wondering why his coworkers never wanted to talk to him, and concluded that they just wanted to get inside out of the cold.

As Eli and the few other men and women who worked with him entered the library, they parted, each going to their separate workplaces; Eli worked behind the counter, checking out books. He had never liked his job, and he would quit, if there was a chance of ever getting another job afterwards. His job had been assigned to him the day he turned eighteen, and he was expected to keep it for the rest of his life.

It was too quiet in the library - especially in the mornings, when people had just woken up and were still settling into the day. Eli tried to make conversation with those who didn’t shy away, but even they were half asleep and didn’t want to talk much. Then of course, when the workday really started, and people came into the library to read books, it had to be quiet.

Eli could have heard a pin drop, if there was one around to drop. It quickly made him nervous; he tapped his foot on the floor, tapped his fingers on the counter, anything he could do to make some noise. If he hadn’t been certain that no one knew of his paranoia, he would have guessed that he was assigned this job for the pure irony of it. When there were no library patrons around and nothing for him to do, he would retire into another room briefly, where the television was, to listen to the news for a while.

Presently, a petite, dark-haired woman poked her head into the room with the television. “Eli,” she squeaked. “You’re needed at the desk, sir. Someone wants to see you, sir.”

Eli nodded briskly, and asked, “Who is it? Do you know?” She shrugged and started to leave the room. Eli declared loudly, “I’ll be there in a moment,” as the girl closed the door. He didn’t expect patrons to arrive so soon after he came to work. Usually there were hardly any before eleven o’clock. He left the room, closing the door loudly behind him, and looked around to see who it was who needed him. The same small woman gestured towards a tall man in a dark suit. Eli couldn’t help noticing that he didn’t have any books in his hands.

“Can I help you, sir?” He asked, politely but loudly. The man didn’t speak for a while, but looked Eli over carefully. The man’s silence made Eli uneasy, and he repeated his question again, slightly louder. “Can I help you, sir?” He heard someone in another part of the library go “shh!”

The tall stranger finally spoke, unexpectedly quietly, still inspecting Eli through his dark glasses. “Are you Eli Griffin, librarian, aged 35?”

Eli nodded and said, “Yes, yes, that’s me, sir. What can I do for you?” He had a feeling this wouldn’t be the right time to go into his usual banter about the weather. The man turned to the dark-haired woman standing next to him and mumbled something that Eli couldn’t understand. “What was that? Is something wrong? Say, you’re not a policeman, are you? They don’t wear suits like that – nice suit, by the way. I met a policeman once…”

The man cut him off. “Silence.” When it was used that way, as a command, the word scared Eli. “I merely asked her to find a replacement librarian for today. You will be coming with us.” He suddenly grabbed Eli by the arm and pulled him from behind the counter towards the door, despite protesting from Eli. It happened so fast that Eli could hardly tell what was going on; before he knew it, the man had led him outside and into the back of a small vehicle. The last thing he felt was a needle in his arm and he fell asleep.

---

As he slowly regained consciousness, Eli opened his eyes and quickly closed them again against the brightness around him. In a few moments, he became aware of the rest of his body and tried to move one of his arms; his stomach twisted as he realized that he was strapped down to a table. His head was throbbing. Gradually, he became more aware of his surroundings. It was a white room that he had never seen before; lights shone on him, obscuring everything else. A moment later, he heard noises in the distance. He was able to focus on the sounds and decipher them as a conversation between two people, but he still couldn’t understand the words.

“We need him for these experiments…” An approaching male voice was saying. “You know this too, nurse. This may be a huge step towards our goal. Look, he’s coming around.” The lights above Eli’s head were turned off and he was able to open his eyes more and lift his head slightly. The man was now standing above him, with a woman standing next to him, both looking down at him curiously. Eli tried to speak, but found his throat completely dry. He felt something wet trickling down the side of his mouth, and his head was still pounding. He tried to swallow, and almost choked. His eyes watering in pain, he could blearily make out the nurse preparing another needle, and he closed his eyes.

When he woke up again, he was sitting up on the same table, and the pain in his head had disappeared. His legs were still strapped down and tied together, but he was free to move his arms, and he reached up to his face quickly. His lip was bleeding and his eye felt swollen, he assumed from his rough handling back at the library. The doctor and nurse had left.

Eli quickly looked down at the straps on his legs, and tugged on them slightly, but there was no way to undo them, and even if there was, he wouldn’t know where to go. Probably the safest option was to stay where he was.

Suddenly, Eli realized that he had been talking to himself since he woke up. He stopped now, and found that the room was absolutely silent. Silent. Eli tensed immediately, and started tapping his fingers on the table he was sitting on. Again he looked around the small, white room. It looked vaguely like a doctor’s office, but no doctor’s office he had ever seen was as clean as this one.

“I wonder why they want me here…” he spoke to himself. It allowed him to relax, hearing his own voice. It broke the silence and was comforting, in a way. “And what they meant by ‘experiments’. And why-“

He was cut off by the door opening. A tall man – the doctor, Eli supposed – walked in, wearing a clean white coat that matched the walls. “Eli,” he said, his voice deep and calming. “Eli Griffin?” Eli nodded, a faint, innocent smile on his face as though nothing was wrong. The nurse came in the door a moment later and shut it loudly behind her.

“Eli, I’m going to ask you a few questions, and I want you to answer them as honestly as possible. We will be able to tell if you are lying,” he added, with a serious look on his face. “Do you understand?” Eli nodded “yes” and opened his mouth to speak, but the man cut him off. “Good. Is it true that you have been diagnosed with paranoia and an intense phobia of silence?”

“Yes, that’s true.” Eli thought for a moment, and then continued. “It was when I was thirteen. My parents had noticed something… strange about me, the way I always talked to myself and how I wouldn’t sit still and be quiet in church and all that. That was before the churches were destroyed, of course – oh, way back in 2083. It was a nice church. I remember it had-“

He was interrupted again by the doctor. “Can you tell us what exactly made them decide to see a professional?”

“Oh yes, I remember now.” Eli smiled at the memories coming back to mind. “There was another boy I knew; I can’t recall his name – Jack, or something. He was the only one I ever told. I mean- told about how afraid I was when it was quiet. He thought I was dangerous – or something, I can’t remember – and he told my parents all these lies about me being dangerous and all.” Eli turned to the doctor, and looked at him curiously for a moment, as though something else had just come to mind.

“Eli…” the doctor said cautiously. “I remember that as well. It was me. My name is Jack Darson.” He had obviously expected a more dramatic response to this; instead, Eli just furrowed his brow and studied him suspiciously. Jack shook his head and started pacing around the small room, gathering his thoughts together.

“The thing you have to realize, Eli,” he said a little more loudly than before, “is that you are dangerous. You’re an outsider.” He was growing angrier by the minute. “Since that day that you confided in me, I’ve been watching you. Having other people watch you.”

“Wait just a –“ Eli tried to cut in, but he was once again spoken over by Jack.

“A peaceful society can’t afford to have paranoid freaks running around. You are no doubt aware of what we have been researching here for the past century, Eli,” Jack added. When Eli looked at him confusedly, he continued: “The five senses – the use of all of them to feel and see and – whatever else!” Jack turned suddenly and grabbed a syringe from the countertop. “But through careful research, we have been able to focus on each sense individually. We started with the easiest of the five, of course.” There was a mad gleam in his eye as Jack handed the nurse the needle for preparation. “Taste. That was simple. And as you know, starting with your generation, children are stripped of their taste buds when they are born. No more flavors. The world was down to four senses, four ways to communicate. The next one we tackled? Sound. Hearing. As far as we could see, there was no way to get rid of it.”

The nurse handed back the syringe, filled with an unidentifiable liquid. “This is why we need you, Eli. Your disorders, however strange, may prove useful to our studies on hearing. The operations will be painless.” Jack approached Eli, ignoring his feeble cries of protest, and grinning in self-satisfaction. The last thing Eli heard him say, before the needle pierced his arm, was “Don’t worry.”

Eli woke up only halfway. He was still in a dreamlike state, but he could tell vaguely where he was. It was a tiny room – no doors were visible, and there was no furniture of any kind. He sat on the floor, his legs no longer tied together. Gradually, Eli woke up completely, and then tensed as he realized that it was completely silent in the room. He tried to cry out, but no sound emerged from his throat. No sound. He was completely mute. Numb from shock, he clutched at his throat, trying to force a sound out.

So these were the experiments Jack was talking about, he thought.

It was too quiet. He started to tap his fingers on the cold, hard floor of the room. It was a sound, but not loud enough. Something seemed muffled about the sound in this room. He tapped his foot, then banged it on the ground. Sound. At least he could still hear. They hadn’t taken that away from him. He sat there, numb from shock, making any kind of noise he could. Whatever drugs Jack had administered to him came back, and he passed out.

He was surrounded by mirrors, but Eli wasn’t sure if this was real or a dream. He seemed to be drifting in between two worlds, looking at himself everywhere he turned. He reached out to one of the mirrors, but found his hand went right through it. He tried to make eye contact with himself in the mirror, but he kept looking away. He was drifting, floating in a world of identical imitations. Thousands of mirrors, dissolving into hundreds, dozens, and finally into a single mirror…

It was fixed on the wall across the room from where Eli sat, wrapped up in a straight-jacket, mute. There was no sound. The previous operation had been successful – Eli was now a deaf-mute, trapped in a room with no doors and no people. He had no choice but to sit and stare into the mirror. His body was wrapped so tightly that he couldn’t move a muscle. As he looked at himself in the mirror, he noticed that his face was gaunt and lined, and his eyes bulged. There were two large bandages covering his ears.

Silence surrounded him completely, washing over him like an ocean. There was no noise for him to focus on. It was too much for him to bear. Half-closing his eyes, he looked deeply into the mirror. Was he just hallucinating – or were there really shadows lurking behind him? He could almost feel them, creeping up his back and resting on his shoulders. He saw them, as they floated up his legs, twisting and spiraling. The shadows flitted across his face, and he could smell an almost rosy fragrance as they passed. The shadows covered his whole body, until they finally reached his eyes, seeming to ease them shut. Eli felt relieved, and he knew that now was the time to finally let go. It was like he was falling, forever falling into the shadows of silence.