Once upon a time, there lived someone who had a box full of twiddly bits, a jar full of round glowy things, and some copper wire, as well as things like chocolate and oranges and a broken television. Some of the twiddly bits were the kind that come in shiny packages with lots of papers and books in them, and are meant to be used by clever people who build things. But most of them were just twiddly bits from broken things that no one wanted any more.
Hilda wasn’t a clever person though. She could hardly dial a phone number without ending up in bed with cold feet and a runny nose. Not that she had any use for a phone any way. She was very very deaf, and very very alone (she still persisted with the telephone though). She lived all by herself in a little house on top of a hill, many many miles away from the nearest mailbox. The only visitors she ever had were the storks, who stopped to ask for directions to the homes of people who didn’t really want children anyway. Hilda couldn’t hear a word of what they said, so those people never got their children anyway.
One cold rainy February morning, as Hilda was preparing to wake up, something unexpected happened. There was a knock on the door. And then another knock. And then many more knocks. Followed by the window breaking, door being unlatched, two people hurrying inside and lighting a fire. But Hilda could hear nothing of this ruckus.
It had stopped raining by the time Hilda made her way downstairs to the biggest shock of her life. She nearly dropped her nose. Sitting on her favorite sitting-thing, right by her favorite window, were a man and a woman, arm in arm, with round white bits in their ears. Hilda had never seen anything quite like it.
They started to get up and introduce themselves. All Hilda heard was “Gew oyain isoya outade inne uwas illay olla sai”. And then she snatched the round white bits in their ears and put them in hers, and all she could hear was ticklish things. And then Hilda had an idea. She ran to her twiddle bits and her glowy things and her wires and devised a plan.
She locked the nice couple in the basement, with a book called “Down with the PetroDollar”, some nibbly bits, water and a bib. And then she hired a cat, and they began to work on her plan. They put together the twiddly bits and the glowy things and the wires with a cupful of broken television and some apple juice. They then put all of this into the oven, and set it to Not Too Hot. Hilda turned the timer on the oven halfway around, and then waited for the cat to jump in fright.
The soundlovemagicspacelive contraption was ready. Hilda took it, and the nice couple in her basement, and locked them in a box, marked it “For Space, from Hilda”, and sent it off with the cat.
Four thousand, seven hundred and eleven storks later, the box returned with only the soundlovemagicspacelive contraption in it. The contraption had listened to the love of the people in the vast quietness of space where sound is not allowed to go. It had listened, and it had arranged itself in neat little electromagnetic patterns. This is what they sounded like:
The air around your ears has never danced as beautifully as this before.
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Tags: ambient, electronica, fiction, prose
