3: Gabriel, the Success

​It’s funny how relative success is – how easily wealth and prosperity bend in one’s hands. Last week I was a penniless millennial, never hoping to own a house, happy enough to have enough food to last me another week.

Now I’m a timeless voidling, the sole ruler and custodian of all I see, and yet am urgently impressed by how a week’s worth of food isn’t going to be enough.

I’m trying a crude sort of echolocation to find out if there’s anything out in the void.
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I take my amp and aim it out of each window. Then I crank my electric guitar to 11 and let out a blast of distorted A minor into the darkness. It might just be the most metal thing I’ve ever done. 

Me, basically. (Photo by Matthew Kalapuch on Unsplash)

While I’m doing this, I aim a mic in the same direction. When I go around to all the windows and all the possible directions, I listen to the recordings on their maximum volume and compression, waiting for any hint of an echo.

I’ve heard that people who listen for a noise hard enough will start auditorily hallucinating that they hear it. So far that isn’t the case. I’ve got over 35 recordings – all the windows, each with several varying degrees of aim -  and I’m 24 recordings in. Still nothing.

But then –

No, I must be imagining it.

No, there – I can see it on the waveform, even!

To the East-northeast of me, there was a tiny, tiny, tiny something. Something so small it might be nothing. Might be a problem with the mic. Might be a little infidelity in the cable, or a vagary of the compression. Might be nothing.

But then, again –

It might just be something.

A faint hint of some uncertain presence here in the dark with me – it’s funny how relative success is.