Marcus didn't deal in solid objects; he collected the sounds things left behind. His workshop was a silent space in the heart of the noisy city, lined with acoustic jars and soundproofed display cases. His most prized possession was the echo of a 1920s jazz club closing for the last time.
He had a new assignment: locate the last verifiable recording, or echo, of a dodo bird's call.
His search led him to a forgotten archive deep beneath the Natural History Museum. The air was dry and smelled of dust and formaldehyde. He wore a special headset designed to filter the mundane noise of modern existence and amplify the auditory ghosts.
He spent weeks listening to silence. He heard the echoes of explorers’ footsteps from a century ago, the murmur of ancient curators, the rattle of a specific tea cup, but no dodo.
On the last day of his allowed access, despair began to set in. He sat on a dusty crate of uncataloged specimens, defeated. He pulled off his headphones and rubbed his eyes.
That's when he heard it: a faint, low coo-coo-coo. It wasn't in his headphones. It was physical, vibrating from the crate he was sitting on. The sound wasn't an echo of the air; it was trapped within the wood itself, a faint physical memory of the bird that had been packaged inside centuries ago.
Marcus carefully removed his sound jar from his pack and pressed the open mouth of the glass against the wood. The faint sound migrated, a tiny wave of forgotten history transferring from the crate into the capture device. The jar sealed itself with a soft pop.
He left the museum a different man. The dodo wasn't extinct, not entirely. It was just quiet, waiting for someone to listen.
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