“Oh, it’s quite straightforward.” Mr. Constantine gestured at the box resting on his knee. “There’s a transmitter at the front to pick up any sounds—with a dial for fine-tuning. There’s an amplifier inside. And then everything is directed up to my earpiece.”
He took hold of a handle jutting out of the side of the box.
“I just have to wind this every hour or so…” He rotated the handle several times. “And there we are! Amplified sound without distortion.”
Mr. Constantine made to stand up. “And the aid has a carrying strap so I can take it wherever I like. In fact, it is my intention to go and sit in the park and listen to the sounds of nature and my fellow man.”
Mrs. Constantine looked at her husband a little doubtfully as he struggled to his feet. “It does look somewhat bulky, dear.”
“Oh, I am sure I will cope,” said Mr. Constantine—though he was breathing rather heavily when he finally made it to an upright position.
Indeed it wasn’t long before Mr. Constantine regretted having taken the new aid for a walk.
He paused on the pavement and whistled for a hansom.
“King’s Park, my good man.”
Once he was settled in his seat, Mr. Constantine took the opportunity to listen to the sounds around him. The rhythm of the horse’s hooves. The clacking of the wheels.
And the driver muttering to himself.
“Daft old sod. Not surprised he has to take a cab. Looks like he’s on his last legs.”
Mr. Constantine’s eyebrows rose very high.
When he alighted, he gave the driver a very hard stare and pointedly did not give him a tip.
However, there was a greengrocer’s just by the park and so to ease his annoyance, Mr. Constantine decided to pop in and buy himself an apple.
He found himself soon cheering up again. The produce was fresh and appealing, and the young male assistant was polite. And best of all, despite the assistant being softly spoken Mr. Constantine found he could hear him perfectly.
So perfectly, he managed to hear what the boy said under his breath as he left the shop.
“An apple won’t go far. Looks like a square meal wouldn’t hurt. Scrawny bugger.”
Mr. Constantine fumed.
Without looking back, he stomped off towards the park, where he found himself a bench, sat down with the amplifying box next to him and attempted to regain his composure.
It truly was a lovely day. He breathed deeply, and shook his head. It was ridiculous to allow a few unpleasant remarks to upset him.
After a while he sighed and smiled, and he began to take his ease.
But even in the park it appeared he couldn’t escape offensive comments.
“Will you look at that haircut…”
“Glad I don’t have that nose…”
“Bless him—should he be out on his own..?”
Mr. Constantine looked up with a start and stared at the passers-by.
And as the comments continued to come, he began to realise something.
He was hearing these impolite people even though their mouths were not moving. He was not just hearing voices. He was hearing thoughts too. The ones on the tip of the tongue perhaps—that had been translated into language but not actually spoken.
Mr. Constantine was shaken.
As quickly as he was able, he left the park and took a cab back to his home—trying to ignore the driver’s critique of his sartorial choices as he went.
Once home he explained the situation to his wife.
“Oh, great heavens,” Mrs. Constantine put a hand to her mouth. “How awful!”
Mr. Constantine stared at her. “You believe me?”
Mrs. Constantine looked back at him puzzled. “Of course I do, dear. I know you’re an honourable man.”
“But don’t you want to test me to be on the safe side?” said Mr. Constantine.
His wife shook her head in bemusement. “If you insist...”
Mr. Constantine nodded firmly. “Think of a sentence and I will listen for it.”
Mrs. Constantine closed her eyes and furrowed her brow.
Mr. Constantine listened attentively. He frowned. “Concentrate a little harder, dearest.”
Mrs. Constantine screwed her face up.
Mr. Constantine threw up a hand. “No, nothing!”
Mrs. Constantine opened her eyes. “Perhaps you could try adjusting the settings on your device.”
Mrs. Constantine resumed her pose of concentration, and Mr. Constantine rotated the dial on the hearing aid.
His eyes abruptly went wide.
“Yes, I’ve got it! It’s… kedgeree for breakfast tomorrow!”
Mr. Constantine paused. “But how odd that I should hear your thoughts at a different frequency to those strangers.”
Mrs. Constantine opened her eyes again. “Perhaps it’s because I am not a stranger, dear. Perhaps it’s because I am someone in close sympathy with you.”
She held up a finger. “And maybe we could use this to your advantage… We could add a series of filters to the amplifier, so you can choose what you hear and who you hear.”
“That’s a wonderful idea, my love!” Mr. Constantine narrowed his eyes. “I certainly don’t want to hear what every dunderhead thinks of me every time I step out in public.”
Mrs. Constantine smiled. “We shall look into it together.”
It took several more months to make the adaptations. But when they were done, the Constantines decided to hold a dinner party—both to celebrate, and also to test their new improved model.
Their friends and neighbours were most interested in the mechanics of the device, and Mr. Constantine was delighted to find he could hear everyone clearly without hearing their innermost thoughts as well.
He would have declared it a complete success but that he seemed to be having difficulties hearing Mr. Allonby, the husband of his wife’s friend Mabel.
However, as he watched Allonby talking to Mrs. Constantine the penny finally dropped.
His wife’s tight smile; Allonby’s corresponding patronising smirk… Mr. Constantine managed to lipread a little, and nodded to himself. Allonby was attempting to explain the workings of the filters to the woman who had done half of the work on them.
Mr. Constantine shook his head and discreetly adjusted the dial.
He really should have guessed he simply needed to move it from the Friends Only setting to the one that included Impertinent Fools.
Professor Drake’s Discovery
by
Kimber Camacho
Loose rock rolled down the slope away from the legs of Professor Drake’s prototype as he came to a halt at the top of the trail leading down toward the caverns. Releasing the clamp on the control chamber which would allow it to remain level, regardless of the angle of ascent or descent, he took a lusty breath of fresh air, unable not to smile in anticipation. Sun filtered through the trees in long shafts of butter yellow that touched his faded green khaki vest and battered old “lucky” hat with bright fingers, glinting off of the salt-and-pepper hair in the braid that hung down his back, almost to his shoulder blades. It might not be wise testing his machine alone, but if it was to fail, he would not be forced to bear the pity and/or mockery of a fellow inventor or—worse—someone who didn’t understand science at all. If…no, no, must stick to positive thinking… When his machine was a success, he could always make another test run with a witness.
Turning his attention down-slope, Drake traced the possible pathways with dark blue eyes that were still pretty sharp after 55 years. The last 25 of those years he had spent focusing those eyes on editing papers, reading documents and studying outlines on white-washed walls and messy chalk-dusted slates when the university dragged their feet on ordering new screens for the latest model electric bifractal projectors, all while spearing hesitant students in the back row of the classroom with a stern glare. Nights, he’d spent in his converted garage, further taxing his sight on schemata and obscure researc
h on the university’s evolving Galvanic Reticulum for Informational Transmission—or “GRIT” amongst those eager to embrace frivolous acronyms. Granted, he’d been forced to give in and purchase magnifying spectacles for reading in the last decade, since he was now spending far more time looking at cathode displays—the university actually allowed students to turn in their reports and theses on magnetic disk these days—but he still felt sharp and “with it”, not falling back on his hard-won tenure or leaning solely on the comfort of what had always been to carry him through these latter days of his teaching career.
Always, since his own days at university, his plan had been to one day make something not only brilliant, but useful. It took him the better part of a decade to decide upon what, but once he made up his mind, he’d been working toward his goal in all of his free time. Now that he’d spent the years improving his skills and his knowledge, as well as saving for materials and tooling, he was ready to move on with the next stage of his life.
Now, retirement was a serious consideration and he was taking this hiatus to decide if the realization of his decades-long project would actually be all that he’d hoped and dreamed, as well as garnering him the funding for bigger and better. If it all panned out, if he could make a name for himself, then he would hardly want to deal with months and months of steady university curriculum taking the lion’s share of his time and resources; however, he had a good ten or twenty more years in him as an educator, which would include a regular salary. Professor Murphy Drake knew very well that dreams of something rare could be far more interesting than the actuality of a steady diet, but all those noble notions didn’t keep the lights on or the mortgage paid; it was hard to be much of a noble inventor when living in a shipping crate on the outskirts of town, and certainly not conducive to getting any work done.
Deciding upon his path, dismissing his random woolgathering and uncertainties, he nodded to himself firmly. Taking a long pull of water from his canteen, Drake then slid it into a pocket made of netting, affixed to the inside of the control chamber without being in the way of anything important. Refreshed, he grasped the controls and started toward the cave opening, the easiest of several which all led to an underground network of caverns that stretched for miles under the hills of the nature preserve.
Drake enjoyed spelunking in the usual fashion as well, along with occasional trips consisting of a nice few days of wandering in the semi-wilderness, followed by the idle study back in his basement lab of any interesting plant or insect specimens he chanced to gather along the way. However, he had long imagined going deeper and farther than most casual spelunkers could manage, as well as investigating what were sure to be even more interesting things he’d find deeper and farther, too. With his electrically driven explorer, he would achieve his goals of exploration and discovery, as well as recognition.
Most of these trips were a combination or random juggle of nature trek, camping excursion, spelunking, and/or sample-gathering of interesting fungi, as well as the occasional lichen. Generally, Drake stuck a pin in the map of his portion of the state and planned a trip. But in this instance, he needed a place not too travelled, and yet not too secluded or off the beaten track, either. He didn’t expect to have trouble, but he was wise enough to know that didn’t stop it from happening. So, he was mostly just testing his invention, rather than having any expectation of finding anything in particular.
Professor Drake grumbled to himself at the sight of all the detritus left behind by other visitors to the area. He was glad to have acquired an extra pouch to hold things when he’d bought lunch at the mercantile near the entrance of the nature preserve. He’d meant it for the delights he might find in the cavern system, but here it was, already half-full of other people’s rubbish that he had been dutifully collecting to throw away properly when he headed back to his own camp at dusk.
The merchant at the general store, which had been his last stop in “civilization”, had sold him some prunes, dried beans and hard tack, as well as telling him to keep an eye out if he was down near the river or the caves nearby. Some amblers had supposedly gone missing a month or so ago and the locals asked anyone going into the area to let someone in authority know if they saw any sign of them. This had almost put Drake off of camping in the area—finding a dead body was not something he had any interest in doing—it was always some “unsuspecting camper” who found them, right? His hesitancy was easily dismissed, however, and he had quite forgotten about the matter by the second day of his leisurely “vacation”.
He reached the cave entrance, which was hung with ivy and furred on its inner curves with mossy clumps and patches. It was noticeably cooler and dimmer here, sheltered from the cheery morning light—perhaps from most of the daylight—by the denser undergrowth, trees, and the craggy overhang of weathered granite above. Peering upward in the shadow of that overhang, he guessed that only some late afternoon sun might have any chance at all of poking a bright tendril down into this area. It would be intriguing to see what sort of things had come to live in this dim and cool place.
Despite the lack of direct sunlight, there was adequate ambient light by which to see, as well as a wide enough entrance for him to walk upright into the cave, ensuring his machine stepped carefully over a few random stones and irregularities with ease. Nearly a dozen feet inside, he found a fairly neat ring of blackened stones with a little pile of ashes and charcoaled bits of wood; someone had built a fire here somewhat recently. Nodding a little, his orderly soul content that obvious effort had been taken by whoever had camped here to make a safe fire, he crouched down with only a slight creak of one knee, deducing that the fire had burnt out or been put out with water, since there was no sand atop the ashes. Frowning, he thought that there had likely been no water, either, since the ashes looked undisturbed by even that much weight—some of the branches that must have acted as fuel had been transformed into strange ash and charcoal sculptures of themselves. Touching one dusky grey and black tube lightly with his fingertip, he was not surprised to see it fall to bits. No, water thrown upon it would not have left these burnt ends intact like this.
Shrugging, he rose, dusting off his finger upon his tan khaki hiking trousers as he looked around him, studying the cave walls and ceiling curiously. Ambling further in and back, he studied some moss, lichen, and even a few fungal growths with unsurprised satisfaction. Mostly what he expected to find in the region, nothing out of the ordinary, and certainly interesting if not of any special note, it was still pleasant to test his memory upon these unexceptional finds.
When the ambient light from the entrance grew too weak, he pulled out his acetylene gas headlamp and brought forth bright yellow-white light with the toggle of a switch. The sandy ground had grown muddier as he had gone inward and was now a wide channel within the upward sloping walls of stone, striated and irregular, shaped only by nature here with no intervention of human tools. Drake saw the imprints of those feet that had trod here before him in the mud. Frowning, wondering if it had been youths looking for a place to cavort, he went a little more cautiously, not wanting any disgusting surprises. He had found more than one remnant of such disreputable pursuits in the caves he had explored; what was it about caves that seemed to bring out the primitive letch in some where it brought out the intrepid explorer in others?
A faint sound other than his own careful steps and the clanks of his machine’s echoed within the subtly downward-sloping cavern and Drake turned to face the way he had come, pausing his invention and straining to listen. Perhaps a bird disturbing a branch near the entrance, he thought, or a squirrel or cave rat coming out to scrabble about now that he had passed by. It did not repeat, so after a minute, he dismissed it and turned around again, only to see a small streak of greenish-yellow glow on one cavern wall. Blinking, he turned his headlamp’s beam upon the spot and saw only the irregular crenellations common to some fungal growths against the rough rock wall. Flicking the headlamp off, once his eyes adjusted, left an even brighter
glow to what he had taken as common lichen or even rhizomorphs. This coloration was unprecedented, however, and he bent closer, feeling a sudden spark of excitement.
Could he have found some new thing? Something not seen before, like the “Armillaria ostoyae” or honey mushroom that had been discovered a few years back in Switzerland. Minding his steps, only peripherally noting the darker recess that expanded off to his left and inward where his path would have taken him otherwise, Drake fished out his spectacles, just to be sure, his hand not quite shaking with tamped-down excitement. Perching them upon his nose, he leaned in and studied the strange clump.
Pulling out a red cedar pencil from another vest pocket, he lightly prodded the outermost edge of the irregular bumpy mass of glowing lumps; it gave way in a sticky gooey mess at the first touch. Shifting his feet, feeling a faint sense of déjà vu that would not quite turn into a memory, the toe of his hiking boot touched something that rolled away and met an outcropping of stone with a metallic clunk.
Professor Drake turned to his right, flicked the headlamp beam on once again, to play over the object and reveal the brightly colored label that identified the former contents of the tin.
“Turkish delight?” Drake growled in shock He peered more closely at the tin. “Amaze Your Friends with the Sultan’s Glorious Glowing Sweets.” Turning back to his “discovery” with new eyes, he sneered at what he had moments before been viewing with such an expectant thrill. “Clumps of glow-in-the-dark Turkish delight. Preposterous!”
A few more words of quite objectionable dialog burst from him as the humiliation of his own folly washed over him, leaving him angry and frustrated. What an idiot he had been, despite degrees and awards—a silly old fool. Snatching up the discarded tin, he forcefully stuffed it in with the rest of the rubbish in the pouch tied to the side of his machine.
His inner “intrepid explorer” having thus stomped off in a huff, he was left with no more will to explore this particular cave, nor even further test his prototype. Marching back out along his inward trail, his nearly forgotten machine trailing dutifully behind, Professor Drake left the cave in a bit of a huff of his own.
Phantasmical Contraptions & Other Errors Page 15
