George Aird

Dawn chorus

How could anyone bear it? Francis adopted her usual position in the centre of the bed. Foetal curl, forehead pressed deep into mattress, eyes sinking as far down into fathoms of black cotton as was possible.

Strange to think there were people out there who rallied against this kind of phenomenological abstraction. Who, when the noise came, welcomed it. Opened their bodies as you would a guest to your home.

There were people who worked, and fucked, and meditated and did yoga during the noise. Made plans specifically for that inevitable window of time that came each morning. Francis knew them. She lived with one of them. She was married to one of them.

She felt it beginning to fade. The final echoes, hard to explain. Prehensile. Something between a deep exhale and a punch in the gut.

Soon, her husband would be downstairs cataloguing his noise. Talking to strangers. Thrilled at the reflection of himself in their words.

There were lots of people like this, she reasoned, bringing herself up slowly back to consciousness.

Yes. There were lots of people like him, she said again, out loud this time though not to anyone in particular. Try as hard as she might, she could not understand them.

The demonstration began with a hollowed out plastic mannequin whose head was then slowly reconstituted out of its interior, lobal parts. An electoral map of primary colours, the doctor wedged the pieces into place as she spoke about primary auditory cortexes and sensory epithelia.

‘And this part,’ she said, wielding a palm-sized shape resembling an exotic fruit, ‘Topographically maps the stimuli from the cochlea. Or to put it another way, when I speak, this part of your brain does the listening.’

There was something accusatory in that, Francis thought. The doctor was tall and slim. She spoke in that kind of distanced, objective way that only doctors can when talking about the lives of others. As if the evidence of something breathing in front of them was purely incidental. All things there to be pieced together and solved. 

Beneath her white coat she wore expensive, plain clothes in monochrome palettes. A silver necklace with geometric links, off which hung a small, black sphere. Private healthcare was still the only option if you wanted the implant.

‘And you know this has to be  your decision,’ the doctor said. ‘There are no guarantees for early treatments like this, especially with something like the noise. Even removal of the implant has been shown —’

‘I’m sure.’

Francis found it interesting that even scientists were calling it the noise. Not auditory hallucinations. Not unexplained conscious phenomena. Not something Latin and italicised. The whole world had insisted on, not only this thing’s immediate right to exist and be heard, but to be granted a name. Though Francis had not encountered any that morning, she had read articles about protesters barricading the doors to private clinics offering the implant. 

‘I’m going to need you to sign some papers.’

‘Of course.’

‘And is there any family you’ll be bringing with you on the day?’

She thought of Ellis, torso folded on an acute angle over his laptop screen that morning. Researching the symbolism of different tonal soundscapes. He did not ask where she was going. She did not tell him.

‘No. It’s just me.’

Ellis was immediately taken by it all. This was before the men in Government blue shirts started appearing on the news at 6pm. Before those same men revealed that, while everyone heard the noise —  all of us, all at the same time every morning — early research indicated all noises were different. A new fingerprint. Something to separate us.

In those early days, Ellis spent hours on the computer. There was no work worth doing. The world shifted and turned on its heel, tried to figure itself out again. To regain the sense of normal that keeps everyone lurching in neatly predictable directions.

 In the evenings he recounted his favourite conspiracies while Francis watched the news.

‘Do you not think it all seems too calm?’ They were watching another interview with a head of surgery somewhere. Ellis’ knee wouldn’t keep still, as if whatever was building up inside him had long ago run out of room.

‘I think they’re just figuring it out.’

‘But they’re not telling us the important stuff. Like, what’s going on in the Southern States with fundamentalist religion. And why Silicon Valley have been developing neuro-audio imaging for years.’

‘We don’t know if any of that is true,’

‘Sure. But are you not interested?’

Francis changed the channel. ‘We should go on a walk,’ she said. She didn’t want to hear anymore. She couldn’t understand that phrase. Too calm. A world that was too normal. She liked how her life had once fit together. She was perfectly content with how the world sounded before all these new theories and complications.

Later, in bed, Ellis asked her to describe it. What hers sounded like. His voice desperate and hot, close to her ear.  It was like Ellis saw the noise as a clear aperture. An undistilled version of what people were. Something fundamental and important.

Every morning, when the noise came, Francis tried harder to stop its mycorrhizal creep. There was her, and there was this thing that took over her head, uninvited. The thing that was trying to reshape and monopolise everything she loved from the inside. Connect her to some wider, abstract plain.

As far as she could tell, everything was entirely separate.

In her gown, Francis staired at the ceiling panels trying to remember the name for the material. The texture reminded her of a cast she’d had fitted for a broken wrist when she was younger. How quietly proud she was upon her return to school. This outward symbol of a briefly exciting event that happened to her and only her.

The staff nurse performed some tests. Asked her whether she’d ever suffered seizures (she hadn’t) or migraines (she lied). They smoothed over her temples with antibacterial wipes and attached square patches with wires coming out either end. She was asked more questions.

Can you read this sentence for us?

Can you raise your hand each time you hear this noise?

Are you experiencing light sensitivity?

Is this comfortable?

Could you describe your experience of the noise?

She got changed behind the thin curtain partition while two nurses looked at their clipboards and monitors on the other side of the room. She caught sight of her body in a handheld mirror propped up on a shelf opposite.  Not all of her, just abstract shapes of skin. She thought about how, at home, Ellis always dressed facing the mirror directly. Not exactly looking at himself, but somewhere past. As if he was trying to gain admission to something, or understand worlds she was incapable of seeing.  

‘Oddly poetic the way you described your noise.’ The new doctor had thick rimmed glasses. A tightly shaved head and a symmetrical beard. When he smiled, you could see the naked musculature of his jaw. As if confidence was both a personality trait and something physical.  

‘I was trying to be specific.’

Outside, it was just beginning to rain. Ellis would be finishing up work now. She glanced down at her phone in between questions; there weren’t any messages.

‘You’re not going to diagnose my colour are you?’ she said eventually to move things along.  

‘No. But it interests me that’s what you’re worried about. Not the thing we’re putting in your head.’

‘One’s scientific,’ Francis said, watching the rain grow heavier outside. ‘The other is just what people say to each other.’  

‘I just don’t get it.’ Ellis was crunching on a piece of lettuce from his vegan taco (blue filling). He’d chosen the place. One of those increasingly popular gimmicks where all the menu items were split by noise colour. Rice noodles for white noise. Smørrebrød on ancient rye for black noise. Kimchi cheese on toast for red. And so on. The website promised an individualised, holistic culinary experience. She had considered telling him about the implant on the way over, but had quickly changed her mind.

‘It actually comes across as quite prejudiced. I’m not saying you are, it’s just…’ he continued. Francis gripped one of the table legs.

She was already in a bad headspace. They’d tended not to go out pre-1pm since the noise started, on account of how long it took her to feel human afterwards. She was like a diver rising to the surface, slowly, gently, the concept of brunch now somehow tantamount to internal pressure sickness.

On arrival, she had asked for a bread and butter basket and a coffee. The food was delivered by a nervous-looking teen with a somnambulant gait who’d placed the basket in a kind of neutral, central zone of the table. Not quite within her reach but not outside of it. A rejection of her rejection, she thought. There it sat, an arrogant, taupe fury of saturated fats and carbohydrates whose existence dared to be challenged.

She mangled some butter into one of the slices.

‘Can we drop it, I’m tired.’

‘Fine. But I’m just saying, everyone else has got over it. It’s not that big a deal.’

The night before, Francis had tried to initiate sex for the first time in weeks. She’d immediately regretted it. They hadn’t got very far and after a few minutes waiting for muscle memory to kick in, she’d abandoned hope and had a shower. When she came back into the room, Ellis was downstairs, presumably on his laptop again. It wasn’t even that she particularly wanted the sex itself. She just wanted that easy exit route out of her own head for a while.

She lay on Ellis’ side of the bed and let the sheets cool her down. He’d left his phone unlocked and she scrolled through some of his recent internet searches.

Things weren’t great right now, but Ellis was a sweet boy whose main failing had always been  that he saw most things too black and white. Francis was fairly confident (though had never told Ellis) that this was actually what made him most miserable. This unflinching willingness to categorise and isolate the world into tiny, digestible chunks. In order to feel something, it was like he needed to understand it, whereas she was the opposite. Most of the world terrified her; she didn’t need to go seeking out more experiences to find out who she was. She was perfectly happy understanding herself in opposition to just about everything else, excluding the small handful of people and things she chose to let in.  

The last search on Ellis’ phone read, blue relationship traits and matches.

Her chest tightened a little at the thought of him reading the articles. Thinking, maybe not even about their relationship, but hypothetical relationships with the kind of women who could give him clarity on what they were in this new, universal language that Francis just didn’t understand.

Ellis had often brought up the noise and colours during moments where, maybe in the past, they’d have talked about not having kids or trivial matters like paying the mortgage. She’d always brushed him off or changed the subject before they could get into it. The whole colour thing had started soon after the announcements that everyone’s noises were different. A desperate plea, she thought, towards some notion of universal experience. Not completely different, the various pop-science articles (and then books) argued, but part-way there. Personalities divisible into groups, hazily defined. She could see why this might be appealing. You were no longer alone when the noise arrived. There was a chance that you were hearing just one part of a wider chorus. Orchestral metaphors abounded. The problem was she just didn’t believe it enough to take it seriously.

In the restaurant, Ellis dissected the last of his lettuce leaves between his thumb and forefinger. Francis couldn’t help but notice the angles they were both sitting at; facing almost opposite directions, their legs pointed out from the side of the table like asynchronous oars from a boat. Through her own avoidance, they had never talked about her colour directly. Now, she was a little hurt that he hadn’t pressed her more.

She said his name. He looked up from the table. She remembered his eyes had always been pale silver like old money. She remembered the feeling of wanting to ask him everything, and then wanting to be silent and listen.

She had her own room. Everything was simple and beautiful, all pine and non-descript European forest. She thought if she spoke out loud whatever she asked for would be delivered, such was the overriding aesthetic of effortless functionality.

While she waited, she leafed through a glossy brochure of the clinic’s various available treatments. It was much of what she expected, handsome looking couples boasting faces of such mathematically impossible symmetry that you were almost distracted from the associated cost.

Earlier that week she’d told Ellis she was visiting a friend who’d agreed to cover for her in the unlikely event that he’d feel compelled to check. A steady stream of messages had arrived through the morning, which of course made her feel terrible, though it was too late now to do anything about it.  

She scanned the pages again. Words she’d seen before on posters and previous visits. There were two implants offered by the clinic. Noise cancellation, and noise assimilation. One to return you back to silence, and the other to alter your noise to match another individual of your choosing.

In the theatre, Francis watched as the various instruments were assembled just within her peripheral vision. When the doctor leaned over, she recognised him immediately, the right angles of his jaw still visible through the facemask. Eyebrows raised as if surprised to see her again.

‘And this is definitely what you want,’ she imagined him saying, as if he were about to style her hair rather than perform neurological surgery.  

When they asked her to count down from ten, she started slow, steady, deliberately paced gaps between the numbers. As the light faded she felt herself accelerating towards zero, feeling her body fall deeply into familiar fathoms of black.

George Aird is a writer based in the North West of England. His short fiction and poetry has appeared in The New Critique, The North Magazine, The Interpreter's House, Under the Radar Magazine, Birmingham Literary Journal, and The Lincoln Review among other publications. In 2019, his poetry was shortlisted for the Maírtin Crawford award. X / Twitter: G_Aird.

George wrote the following about ‘Dawn Chorus’:

I was interested in writing something about two people who have grown apart, and what the protagonist might consider to bring their relationship back together. It's a story about the tension between what you might be willing to change about yourself, and at what stage self-preservation becomes more important. Naturally in 2024, I've also accidentally written about COVID.