Mr. Abernathy was not a remarkable man. He worked in the dusty basement archives of a small university library, cataloging donated books that nobody ever requested. He was quiet, meticulous, and entirely unexcitable.
Abernathy wore hearing aids. Without them, the world was muffled and distant. He had a specific setting he used—a slight static hiss that filtered out low-frequency background noise.
It was in this setting that he started hearing things. Not voices, but impressions. A crackle of static that predicted rain tomorrow afternoon. A sharp, high-pitched whine that told him which stocks would plummet by close of business. A gentle whoosh that indicated a student checking out a specific book would change their major.
He dismissed it as faulty electronics for weeks, until the stock market crashes he predicted actually happened, and the weather channel verified his rainy afternoons. The hearing aids weren't broken; they were tuning him into the subtle frequencies of causality.
One humid Tuesday, the static in his ears went wild. A screaming, dissonant noise that made him wince and clutch his head. It was centered on a new arrival: a sealed, metallic box donated from an old government research facility.
He couldn't use his hands to open it; the noise was too intense. The static was broadcasting a message of pure, unadulterated warning. This was a future he couldn't subtly adjust.
Abernathy pulled the box from the cart, ignoring the librarian who asked what he was doing. He ran outside, past the neat campus lawn, and threw the box into the university lake. The static in his ears immediately vanished, replaced by a calm, everyday hum.
He returned to the library, wet and shivering. He never told anyone what was in the box, or what future he had just silenced. He just went back to his quiet desk in the archives, thankful for the ordinary, peaceful sound of silence.
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