Mediating The Static

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

Maybe that’s where I could send them. Just load ‘em all up in the individually sealed rooms of a rocket ship and shoot them into the sky to go where no one has gone before; their screams to never be heard here on earth again. I could program the video screens to play the original science fiction shows of the past in a continuous loop of star treks and space voyages and cartoon robots. They could watch all the captains and freakzoidians and jetsons interact in new and life affirming ways. For a change of pace, they could turn and view all these new worlds streak by the portholes while they munched their space snacks and sucked on pouches of Tang between screams.

Maybe if the only stimulus available was the ever happily-ever-after-ending fiction of early television serials, they could take a break from the screeching. They would be so enthralled they wouldn’t have any reason to see harm in their favorites being sponsored by advertising for gasoline, cigarettes, or alcohol. They might not even question how anyone could find it amusing to watch a man threaten to send his wife to the moon by punching her in the mouth and then not thinking it was ludicrous that they end the program laughing like loons at his ‘joke.’

Maybe the lack of pigmentation in the earliest of these broadcasts would challenge them enough to choke back a shriek as they ponder why a hundred years ago life seemed so ordinary. It might even prompt an internal debate about black and white seeming banal, but color evoking chaos. Funny how in these later years returning to filming without colorant became avant garde as if stripping the work to monochrome made the piece innovative and serious. I wonder still if any of them have the reasoning left to contemplate anything other than their own fear and confusion, let alone develop a theory of coloration equaling commotion.

Maybe. It’s the only word I can dredge up from the still lucid part of my Harvard Medical School educated brain. I am fatigued beyond anything I ever felt as a resident. I dumbly sit here in front of this screen displaying the latest statistics that dictate the pace of my life. The pitiful outcomes of all the experiments my team and I have been able to scrabble together have once again left me horrified to conclude that killing every, single, last, one, of these subjects would be kinder than prolonging their turmoil and grief. It is a bizarre dichotomy that The Static can bleed the thoughts and feelings of the defenseless human race but not allow the death of our bodies. It is the prime transgression for one of them to cause the functions of a physical body to cease, but in their lust for ultimate fulfillment they consume the inspirations and emotions of creative life and severely damage the functioning mind of those upon which they gorge.

The Static assured me, when they set me apart as Mediator, I could have anything I needed to resuscitate, rehabilitate, or heal the condition their partaking induces. If only I could assure myself that once the victims revived, they wouldn’t just be sent back into the entertainment centers to end up mindless and screaming again in some sick, endless cycle.

My greatest challenge is to discover whether it is the result of having no thoughts left to exercise the mind that causes this endless screaming or the aftershock of spending too much time in an anechoic chamber. When too long the eyes have nothing to see, and the ears have nothing to hear, the mind becomes confused by the lack of orienting input. When the only sound that can be perceived is a heartbeat, the mind recoils from sensory deprivation and cannot even function to command the body to stay upright. I greatly fear that it is a combination of both as once these crazed creatures are transported to my rehabilitation center, they receive stimulus for their senses, but the screaming continues ceaselessly until they collapse from exhaustion. Since early attempts to sedate them occasioned a few deaths, The Static prohibited their use.

Just how badly broken are they? Can they at least be calmed? These are the questions I would very much like answered but I need more information about this mind-milking they perform. Unfortunately, not a single victim has ever survived it with a coherent, expressible thought in their head, regardless of the duration. Moreover, The Static have no equivalent in our language to explain it. To demonstrate it for me would be to destroy me and they need me. I am Katie Jameson, MD, chosen one year ago as Mediator to The Static on the Day of Invasion, August 5, 2024.

If I can’t find a way to reverse the effects or at least stop the casualties from screaming until they die, The Static will have to face whatever the consequences are for causing their deaths. Judging by their reactions, it must be extremely unpleasant. Judging by their increasing agitation over my lack of progress, I am convinced that I am in some pretty big trouble.