The Long Note C.B. HEINEMANN
Nobody could pin down the precise moment that the sound began to chew its way into the consciousness of every man, woman, and child on the planet. People in every time zone noticed it at approximately the same time wherever they lived— about an hour before dawn—leading self-proclaimed experts to announce that it began in one place and worked its way around the globe. Most claimed that it sounded like a flute playing a long, low note that never ended. Some thought that it sounded more like a bowed violin, while others insisted that it was similar to an electric guitar holding a sustained note. People with anxious personalities assumed that it was coming from inside their own heads until repeatedly assured that everyone else could hear it too. Even the deaf community felt a low but insistent vibration. That note filled the air in noisy, pollution-choked cities, hovered over icy mountain glaciers, bent and curled its way through labyrinthine medieval quarters in European towns, disturbed remote African villages on the plains of the Sudan and in the deep forests of the Congo, alarmed Eskimo hunting parties on the frozen edges of the Arctic, and awakened drowsy passengers on Amazon river boats. Even the crews of cargo ships far out at sea frantically checked their equipment to find the source of that sound. The note stayed with people in their homes, offices, farms, factories, workshops, schools, playgrounds, prisons, and shops. Musicians around the globe agreed that it was an F sharp, but could provide no further insight. Everyone complained, 92
Jessica Zheng
Berkeley Fiction Review
93
