#anechoic

Anechoi nods, walking over to the couch - the only piece of furniture still in its rightful place - and dropping her bag there, performing the daily prayer that nothing explodes in it. Well, VAL says after a second, we’re not dead. So it worked. I’ll pass on your thanks to the god of explosives, whoever they might be.

I’m sure they know who we are, at least. Not that explosives have been too much in use recently. Her clients tend to think it too…obvious that foul play was involved, and now they all want software hacks. Intimidation’s gone out of style.

Talya clambers up out of the panel, placing her tools neatly back into their holders and trying to brush some of the dust from her hands. “Right,” she signs, failing miserably to keep the excitement from her movements. “You’ll like this. Have a favorite song?”

“What?”

“One you like the name of, or associate with something good. Just…any song. Pick one.”

She’s never even thought about it. The only hint of a song she can remember even picking up is when the building next door played theirs too loud-  she gathered from Talya’s relentless complaining - and she could feel the drums through the walls. “I - don’t know. You pick one.”

With a theatrical, exaggerated sigh - a slump of the shoulders and a pleading look - she turns back to the computer. Audio bars flash on the screen, spiking up and down, until she presses another key and they stop. “Right, right. So…I was trying to link together a system, and I need you to tell me if it works. Oh-” She holds up a warning finger- “the lights are normal.”

Another press of the key and a song begins to play.

She can’t hear it, but she doesn’t need to. Each panel shakes with the beat of the song, the vibrations pulsing through her shoes. On the ceiling, a series of colored panels lights in sequence with what she guesses are the notes of the song-

The melody, VAL says.

Like I’d ever need to know that. She can’t hear it, but she can envision it, whether the notes fall like raindrops or rise in a staircase pattern, or simply cycle around themselves. Half the song below and half the song above. “So?” Talya asks, exaggerating the question in glee, “you like it?”

“Beautiful,” she signs back without even looking. “It’s…amazing. I don’t - I can’t thank you.”

“You can.” She taps the computer and the song changes, the beat changing to one she knows, one they always wrote out in the stories. One-two-three; one-two-three; one-two-three; one-two-three. The panels above change in step, colors rising to a bright, clear crystalline white with the tune. A waltz.