Every day Chad would get up, and every day Chad would go to work. Day in. Day out. The routine was the same - never altered, never changed. 30 minutes to get ready. 20 minutes to get to the tram station, and 20 more to get to his stop. 7 minutes to walk to work. Then it was 4 hours of answering phones, answering emails, and reviewing the progress of various projects over which he had no control. Following 1 hour for lunch was four more hours of customer complaints, coworker complaints, and the mindless drivel spewed forth by middle management, pretending they understood what upper management had told them.
He heard none of it, or rather, he processed none of it. From the moment his clock radio went off in the morning all he heard was a low, steady, droning buzz. When someone would speak to him, he heard the unintelligible wah-wah of Charlie Brown's teacher, and when he answered, his words were a sharp rise in the static hiss. He knew what he would be trying to say, but to him his speech sounded as though it were being delivered by a serpentus ex machina. What those he spoke to heard, he could only guess, but as it always seemed to satisfy them, so he had put it out of his mind.
Thus followed the way of his days - the warbling drone of people and radios, televisions and telephones, and his static hiss-screech replies. But at night, when he was asleep, it was different.
7 minutes back to the tram stop, and a 23 minute ride back (the late afternoon tram was always slower), with 3 minutes to grab a hot-dog from the local street meat vendor, and then a 20 minute walk home. 11hours and 10 minutes total to get to this point, the reason he put up with everything else.
Locking his front door, he would leave his coat on a peg by the door, his shoes in the hall, and his pants hung next to the pantry. The shirt would go into the wash pile, and stumbling the final few steps, he would slip into bed. The droning static that had been steadily building into a dull roar all day long, would begin to subside the closer he got to his bedroom, and would cease the moment Chad closed his eyes and his head hit the pillow.
With the abruptness of a thunderclap he would find himself falling head first through an endless clear, black sky, both observer and the observed, a smile creasing his face as his ears drank in the musical silence of the night. The twinkling of the stars that surrounded him were a ten part photonic fugue that tickled his eardrums with the absence of their sound.
Forever he would fall like this, reveling in the crystal clarity of the multi-tonal silence, until finally he would plunging into the icy waters of a cosmic ocean. Kicking hard, he would breach the surface and gasp for a lung full of air - each action accompanied by a splash the was felt, seen, but never heard. Braced by the chill of the water, Chad would float on his back, grinning toward the heavens he had just fallen from, the heavens that were the sky that were the ocean that were the sky.
Thus, he would lay there, carried by the pantomiming waves, and caressed by the soundless murmur of the wind, until at last the tide would beach him on an endless shore. Rising, he would be greeted by his waiting friends with shouts so mighty with joy that their absence would stagger him until waiting arms could steady him.
They would all speak then, of how their days had gone, and things they had accomplished while awake. Never saying a word, their lips would move and their eyes would smile. Laughs were frequent, and a particularly amusing anecdote would cause gales of unuttered laughter to boom across the sand.
Gradually, the gathering would split up with knots of people drifting out, their unuttered conversations to keep private. Even these groupings would dwindle out by ones and by twos until finally ,Chad would find himself once more alone, staring into the infinite sky.
Slowly, he would close his eyes, smile still on his face, as the sky would begin to imperceptibly brighten, until once fully closed, they were open. Then he would shut off his alarm, and start his day again.
