The first test

Lynn burrowed her face in her hands and let out a desperate sigh. She was onto something, she just knew it, but she had no clue what it was or in what direction to look. This disease, or phenomenon, or whatever it was, seemed to make no sense whatsoever.

It had all started a few weeks ago, when her friend Walter had called with a rather odd request. Apparently, he had suddenly started hearing things. Or rather, one thing: a continuous tone, always at the same pitch and the same volume, that would sometimes disappear for hours, and then suddenly come back.
‘Tinnitus’, Lynn had responded, almost without thinking.
‘I haven’t finished yet,’ Walter had replied.
He had visited his doctor, who had had the exact same response and told him nothing could be done about it. So Walter went back home and started googling some information. Coincidentally, he mentioned the topic to his neighbor a week later, and it turned out she had the exact same experience – it had even started on the exact same day.
‘That’s odd’.
‘It gets weirder. After discussing what a coincidence this was, we quickly found out we were not the only ones. We found seven other people within a week – just by asking colleagues and friends. Who knows how many more are out there.’
‘Wait, what? All of you started hearing the same sound at the same time?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘That’s pretty spooky.’
‘I know, right? And that’s when I thought that perhaps instead of a doctor, what we need is a scientist.’
‘So you called me.’
‘Exactly.’

Lynn ran Walter and the others through every test and scan she could think of. She asked for a fund from her research institute, published ads in every magazine and on social media looking for more ‘victims’, and then ran them through every test and scan too. It gave zero results. All she had now was a group of 127 people, men and women, from all ages and all walks of life, who had started to hear a tone in their heads on June 5th. They had no injuries, no brain damage, nothing else in common. It had to mean something, right? It couldn’t just be some crazy coincidence? But she had to admit that at the moment she was stuck.

Then, in a stroke of genius, she remembered Walter saying the sound woke him up every day at 5 AM. And hadn’t they mentioned that the sound would disappear sometime? Desperate for some sort of pattern, she asked her participants to keep a diary. And low and behold, she found a pattern, although not the pattern she had hoped for. The sound and absence of sound came in a twenty-four-hour cycle. Some people had similar cycles, some were completely unique, but all of them repeated on a daily basis.

By that time, the bloodhounds of the press had smelled that something was off. They had spoken to some of the victims of the mysterious condition and now swarmed around the research facility, begging for scraps of a story. Lynn had to wave them off like flies when she entered the building and walked straight into her office. One of her colleagues popped his head around the door.
‘O, hey Lynn? There’s someone here to see you about your new research.’
‘Is it the press again? Tell them we’ll give them answers when we have them.’
‘Not the press,’ said an unfamiliar voice.
Lynn turned around, startled, to find a sharply dressed stranger standing in her office. He wiped off some imaginary dust of his arm and gave her a fake smile. Lynn felt the hairs on her arm rise.
‘What? Who are you? How did you get through security?’
‘I’m sorry for the unusual introduction. You’re rather difficult to get through to and I really needed to speak with you. My name is Derek. Think of me as a colleague.’
‘You’re not my colleague. What do you want?’
‘True, but I’m a scientist, just like you. We’ve been following your recent work with great interest. You’ve made some wonderful progress, but we think that maybe neuroscience is not the field of research to look for answers.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you believe in extraterrestrial life?’

Two days later, Lynn was sitting uncomfortably in the waiting room of a heavily secured government research facility. It was much larger and shinier than her own. These people had money. Next to her sat Walter, equally nervous in this unfamiliar environment but more excited. Lynn had laughed off the offer at first, and after that she had gotten a little scared – that Derek guy with his smooth talk and slick moves really got on her nerves - but in the end her curiosity had gotten the better of her. She desperately wanted to figure it out now, and she had to admit she was stuck again. She had asked Walter for his opinion, and he had jumped at the opportunity. Maybe he liked the idea of aliens sending a message from space through his brain, or maybe he was just so fed up with the constant noise in his head that he grabbed any opportunity. Anyway, he had argued that more bright minds looking into the problem would enhance the chance of a solution. So she had called Derek, reluctantly, telling him she’d agree to meet him, under the condition she could bring Walter. She had no intention of meeting that creep anywhere alone. To her surprise, he had not protested but responded with “excellent”.

He greeted them with the same fancy suit and fake smile.
‘Welcome, welcome. You must be Walter. Good of you to come.’
He quickly explained the conditions under which they would work. Unlimited research budget, unlimited resources and a team of seven full-time professionals from different fields of research. These people were dedicated to get to the bottom of the situation. Lynn hesitated shortly when she saw the confidentiality statement, but Walter had already signed and besides, she did understand why working with messages from outer space required some secrecy.

They got to work the very next day. With the sounds labeled as a message instead of a defect in the brain and an entire team of researchers to work on the problem, Lynn had high hopes they would finally get somewhere. After three more weeks and multiple failed hypotheses however, Derek decided they needed more information.
‘We need to bring in the patients again for more testing. If it is indeed a message, we need to make sure we have every detail of it.’
Lynn shook her head.
‘I tried, but many of them got tired after so much testing without results. It will be very difficult to get all of them back together.’
‘You’ll be surprised what a large sum of money will do.’
He smiled his fake smile. That’s right, unlimited budget. So they got all the patients back in for more testing and more questions.
‘Can you tell me what the sound is like as precisely as possible?’ Derek asked.
‘Can you mimic it with your voice? Into the microphone please.’
The woman nodded compliantly and let out an ‘aaaaaaaaaaaaa’.
‘And it is always this exact same tone? It never changes?’
‘That is correct’.
Derek nodded contently when the recording was done. He nodded even more contently when he had recorded four more patients. Perplexed, Lynn stared at him.
‘Why didn’t I think of that?’
‘Because you’ve been focusing on the patients, not on the pattern.’
He gave her his fake smile. Maybe it wasn’t a fake smile after all, she thought. Maybe that was just how he smiled.

From that moment on, it finally got easier. They recorded every patient’s individual sound, matched them to their twenty-four-hour loop, overlaid all individual sounds and compressed the twenty-four-hour loop into a few minutes.
‘This might actually be it,’ Derek said when it was done. He nervously wiped the sleeves of his suit. They gathered the team around the computer and anxiously pressed the play button. When the recording was over, the entire team stared at the screen in disbelief.
‘What was that?’
‘It can’t be.’
‘It makes no sense.’
Derek looked around the room suspiciously, an annoyed look on his face.
‘Okay, who did that? That was not funny.’
They all shook their head vigorously. No one dared to pull a joke like this. Derek sighed.
‘Well, then I guess we have to start all over.’
So they did. They repeated the entire experiment twice, each time with the same result. And finally, Derek reluctantly decided it was time to inform the president of the research institute.

The room was filled with an exited buzz. Walter, who hadn’t heard the recording yet, sat next to Lynn and gave her a smile. Lynn was happy she had insisted on his presence and anxiously squeezed his hand. Derek waited until the buzz had quieted down and cleared his throat.
‘I… I have to warn you it might not be what you think,’ he said before he pressed play.
A melody filled the room. All the individual tones, with their different intervals and different pitches, combined together formed a song. When it was over, there was a long, uncomfortable silence. People stared at each other and at the computer that had played the recording, not knowing how to respond. The president was the first to speak.
‘Despacito? You tell me we get a message from space and it is fucking Despacito? Are you fucking kidding me?’
Derek shrugged uncomfortably.
‘No sir. We tested and re-tested. We were as surprised as you are, but this is what comes out.’
‘What the fuck is it supposed to mean?’
‘We don’t know yet. We don’t know where it comes from either. We’re still looking into it. But this does seem to be the answer.’
The president opened his mouth to speak, but then Walter interrupted.
‘It’s gone. The sound is gone.’

-x-x-x-x-

Xuihalk Hin observed the scene and leaned back in his chair, relieved. Finally. He had almost given up hope. They weren’t as intelligent as he had hoped in the beginning, but it was good enough. He’d even had to alter some of the aspects of the experiment, to make it easier. Make sure the subjects lived in the same area. Use a widely known melody. Get the melody to play in a twenty-four-hour loop, so that it was easier to find the pattern. But eventually, they had passed the first test. This was good, very good. Finding new life was good for an honorable mention, finding a somewhat developed civilization would get him at least a promotion and a raise. And perhaps he would even be able to start a trade – these creatures would make wonderful pets. Softly humming to himself, he started setting up the necessary reports and preparing the next set of tests.

Whoop, my first real post! I had planned to start with a story I wrote a few years ago, but then I saw this contest (https://steemit.com/twentyfourhourshortstory/@mctiller/writers-win-5-steem-the-june-26-twenty-four-hour-short-story-contest-a-man-driven-mad-by-a-ringing-in-his-ears-discovers-it-s-an) and I felt a sudden rush of inspiration so I decided to go for it. I don't think I've ever written a story in such a short time (or did a drawing in such a short time - I'm not really happy with it, but I don't have time for a better one so I decided to use it anyway). Let me know what you think!