The Stored Quiet

What it looks like, and what it does

A preserving jar with a rubber seal on a steel shelf, apparently empty. The dust around it lies in rings as if disturbed by breath. A paper tag on the lid, covered in hours and initials.

Passive. Takes whatever is said into it. Holds it. The air around the shelf is very slightly cooler.

What is known

The jar was found in the booth after a fire. Sound spoken into it does not come back. For forty years the cinema's staff let patrons whisper into it for a small fee: apologies, grievances, names.

It has never been opened. The usage log records each visit. Last spring the log stopped, and the lid, sealed for decades, was found a millimetre ajar.

What it can do

• Absorbs sound spoken into it without echo
• Retains it indefinitely

Where it stops

• Cannot be opened without releasing everything at once
• Will not accept sound made in anger; shouts bounce

An encounter

Ferreira cleaned the booth for the last time, found the jar and, at the end of a long evening, held it to her ear. It was not silent. It was the sound of a room that has just stopped talking. She put it back on the shelf and left the key in the door.

Lucia Ferreira, projectionist, Projection booth, the Regal cinema, Closing night

What is established, and what is only said

• established: Sound-level readings at the jar's mouth are below instrument noise floor under all conditions.
• rumor: That whispers can be heard by putting a glass to the lid at night.
• incomplete: The lid is now a millimetre open. No sound has been recorded leaving.

Still unresolved

The log shows 14,000 uses. Not one entry names a thing that was said.

Where it has been recorded

• The Regal (confirmed) — Recorded by Lucia Ferreira, projectionist.

Stories about it

• The Stored Quiet at the Regal (Entity story, 3 min) — The projectionist at a closed cinema in Calder finds a jar of absolute silence on the booth shelf, and each person who whispers into it leaves the jar a little heavier and the cinema a little more crowded with the sound of things that were never said.
• The Jar Was Cold (Entity story, 4 min) — On the Regal's last open night its projectionist cleans a shelf that has collected fourteen thousand whispers over forty years and finds the seal a millimetre ajar.

Connected entities

• The Understory — The Understory takes the pauses out of speech. The jar keeps what was said into the quiet.
• The Confessor Who Forgets — The jar keeps everything that was said into it. The Confessor keeps nothing. Parishes with one have not been found to have the other.