Brian Larrimer strolled down the street as he did nearly every day, watching the people; looking at their faces and listening to them speak variations of Spanish, which were their native tongues. On the stairs in front of the brown stones men sat in their undershirts sipping beer, or soda made from molasses, while women gossiped as they split pea pods for the evening dinner. The adolescent boys played stickball, seeming oblivious to the painfully pretty girls who walked up and down the sidewalks in small groups, doing their level best to attract the boys attention yet not have it look so. For these girls Brian felt great sadness as he knew that the very beauty, which they spent so much time catering to, would be their most costly asset. In the end, for most of them, it would condemn them all too soon to a place on the stairs beside their mother where they would live out their lives while they raised their own babies, remembering but a few magic years. Children raising children.

He descended the three outer stairs that led to his apartment door, taking a moment to exchange greetings with the Hernandez and Barretto families. In this neighborhood, where skin tones ranged from light caramel to deep glistening cocoa, he had managed to have his blond hair and pale complexion accepted. That his muscular six foot four inch frame towered over most of them would account for some of this, and of course, being a cop didn't hurt. Most of his neighbors felt safer having him there.

Suzanne was waiting for him in the kitchen. A few weeks ago he had been a contented bachelor, living alone, and truly enjoying the sanctuary his four rooms afforded. Now, he could not imagine life without her. Ever so gently her presence had come to pervade his entire life, and he loved it. By thirty-two, Brian's good looks had provided him with a large selection of women to choose from, but he had preferred living alone. Of all the women he'd dated, only a few ever made it past the front door, and none had been there for more than a night. Now he had allocated a full closet and half his bureau to her, not to mention considerable 'mirror' time.

"You're early," she smiled as he set down the grocery bag. She wrapped her arms around his neck and allowed herself to be lifted for a hug and a kiss. When he gently set her back down she peered into the bag and asked, "Whacha got?"

"Tacos, tortillas and enchilada sauce?"

"Yeeecth!"

"Okay. How about mushrooms, sirloin tips, bean curd, pork rump and snow peas?"

"That's better," she said as she began emptying the bag. "What's that turn into?"

"Stir fried steak with hot and sour soup."

"Not bad, not bad. Do I get to sit and watch?"

"No way, lady. Today, to eat is to help," he replied as he easily lifted her by her shoulders and set her to one side. "The mushrooms need washing."

"I could invite myself to mom's," she said playfully.

"You hate your mom's cooking," he countered as he handed her the package.

"True. How much soap should I use?" She evaded the swipe at her derriere and went to the sink.

Across the river in New Jersey, Nevil Stoddard was just concluding his day with a final experiment. Nevil was in the specially designed 'silent room' at EMPECO's Newark laboratory. The room looked like an alien cave lined with sound absorbing pyramids that all pointed to the small center test area. At this point any sound emitted was all but totally absorbed. The room itself was mounted on vibration absorbing cushions and made up of four foot thick layers of insulation separated by low pressure air. It was, literally, the quietest place on earth. In fact, it was so much so that most who entered wore Walkman cassette and CD players to break up the unnerving silence. Those who did not invariably reported becoming aware of the sound of their own heartbeat. The corporate medical staff advised that anyone left in that room alone for any period of time would risk their sanity, and while Nevil put little stock in this, he never spent more than a dozen minutes there setting up his tests.

Several thousand miles to the east the United States Navy Vessel DSV-2 was gliding slowly above the Atlantic ocean floor at a depth of nearly two thousand feet, looking for the remains of a German submarine that had sunk eight decades earlier. Their quest was not for the submarine itself, but for its ballast. The Germans had used mercury, which was transferred fore and aft to control the attitude of their early submarines, and mercury was now in great demand.

For Captain Stanley Murray it was his third such mission in as many months, the previous two having proved great successes. He had quietly salvaged tons of the precious material, and done so with such secrecy that only a handful of the crew aboard their transport ship were aware of the real mission. The rest believed it was nothing more than testing of DSV-2's capabilities. The truth was, it was both.

He watched the display from the side-looking sonar screen intently as he directed the crew. He was close. The magnetometers indicated a large metallic body was within a few hundred meters. When they found it they could only hope the keel could be accessed for drilling and draining. He knew that, so far, they had been lucky.

"Target dead ahead," he announced into the microphone of his headset. "Reduce speed to one knot." The sonar screen showed the cigar shaped outline in the floor less than two hundred meters ahead of them, lying at a right angle to their path. When the distance closed to fifty meters he ordered the forward lamps up to full power and flicked on the outboard cameras. As soon as he saw the sub his heart sank. It was lying perfectly flat on its keel, and half buried. "Well," he said to his crew, "this one may take some doing. All stop. Release cable one. Power down as soon as we settle." There was a quiet pop as the locator buoy was released and began pulling its long line to the surface. Inside the cable was a thin communication line that would allow them to speak directly with their support ship. It would take some time for the buoy to surface and be located, so Murray and his crew took a moment to relax as DSV-2 came to rest on the ocean floor.

In his studio outside Detroit, rock star Evan Kline sat at the console of his Moog synthesizer laying down the sound track for the drums, one more time. A child prodigy on the classical piano, Evan had, several years back, found rock and roll a wonderful release for his limitless creativity, and the Moog the perfect tool. He spent hours finding new sounds to mix with complex rhythms; sounds never possible on any instrument. In the industry he was considered the most able at stretching the machine to its limits.

It was seven o'clock, Eastern Standard Time.

It came as a single sound, a tone, a note of splendid perfection that lasted exactly five seconds, more precisely than any existing device could have measured it. In the silent room Nevil Stoddard had just turned all his recording instruments on. The buoy of DSV-2 had just surfaced. Evan Kline had the volume up full on his replay, while Brian and Suzanne were taking their first taste of his hot and sour soup.

"Did you hear that?" Suzanne asked automatically, watching as Brian set his spoon down and went to the door. "I've never heard anything like that before. It was… Well, it was lovely. Where did it come from?"

"It sounded like it came from everywhere," Brian answered. Probably some new kind of campaigning or advertising, he thought to himself. In Manhattan nothing seemed beyond the reach of those people. When he opened the door he was only mildly surprised to see people spilling from all the buildings on the street and looking to the heavens. From one of the doors he spotted the face of a kid he knew was wanted for car theft, and momentarily gave arresting him a thought. With Suzanne at his heels he walked into the street and began talking with his neighbors. The kid spotted him and ran back inside.

"Did you get it?" Nevil Stoddard yelled to the soundmen he knew were listening.

"The tapes were rolling but none of the needles moved," replied a voice from a speaker.

"That's impossible," Stoddard yelled back. "It must have been sixty five decibels at least. Keep all but tape three rolling. I'll be right up." He walked quickly out of the silent room and up to the control center where a handful of engineers and technicians were already at work examining the equipment and graphs.

Nolan Rourk was the first to speak. "It wasn't recorded anywhere, Nevil. Not in the chamber, here in control, in the building, or even on the outside mikes."

"You heard it then?" Nevil asked them, and they all nodded. "Well if we all heard it then so should the damn machines. Playback tape three."

The entire staff listened to the sounds of Nevil setting the test equipment up; little clicks and bangs interspersed with the sound of feet treading lightly on the room's carpet. There was a period of total silence followed by Stoddard's voice yelling, "Did you get it?"

"That's impossible," Stoddard said flatly. "Playback all the damn tapes." For the next twenty minutes they listened to each of the tapes, all of which had recorded nothing.

In Detroit, Evan Kline was already trying to duplicate the sound he had heard on his Moog. Somehow, despite the fact that he was playing his tracks back at high volume into his earphones, the tone had reached his ears with a singular clarity. Evan was a master of sounds, and would spend the next two days trying to recreate what he had heard, unsuccessfully.

Aboard DSV-2, Captain Murray and his entire crew had also heard and wondered. As soon as the support vessel pulled in the buoy and connected to the communication line he reported what had happened. "We're getting reports on all satellite channels about this, Stan," Admiral Chuler informed him. "Seems like the whole damned world heard it."

"Does anybody up there have any ideas on how we managed to hear it under two thousand feet of water? I don't have the attenuation number in my head but for sure it's damn big," Murray said into his headset.

"Just for safety's sake, come on up until we get a handle on this, Stan," the admiral replied.

"Aye, Aye," Murray responded and removed the headset. "Full power. Blow ballasts. We're going home for the day."