legends · 4 min read ·
The Anechoic Chamber
A technician sits in an anechoic chamber and hears a voice at his left shoulder that is learning his name.
**Acoustics Laboratory — Internal Incident Report 22/09**
**Facility:** Anechoic test chamber B (wedge-lined, 0.08 s decay, ambient noise floor −9 dBA).
**Reporting technician:** P. Nwosu.
**Subject:** Test subject discomfort during long-duration exposure study.
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**Background.** The study was commissioned by an outside firm to assess how long a person can remain in total acoustic isolation before reporting perceptual disturbance. Subjects sit in a chair at the centre of the chamber on a wire-mesh floor, with the door shut and the lights dimmed to 5 lux. Duration to be self-terminated by the subject by pressing a call button. Prior to this study the longest recorded stay was 47 minutes.
**Subject 14 (Ms. T. Ferrars, 34).** Entered the chamber at 10:02. Reported feeling well at 10:15, 10:30 and 10:45. At 11:05 pressed the call button and requested to leave.
On exit, Ms. Ferrars was pale. Asked to describe the experience, she said that in the first twenty minutes she heard her heartbeat and her breathing. Then, in the fortieth, her blood moving. A high thin whine she assumed was her nervous system. Then, around fifty minutes, she heard a voice.
I asked her to describe the voice. She said it was "a woman, quite near." Quite near, she said, at the left shoulder, speaking at the volume you use in a library. It did not say anything she could understand. It was saying something in a language that was almost one she knew.
**Technician's note.** The chamber has no loudspeaker. The microphone array was recording throughout. The array trace for the period 10:52 to 11:05 shows nothing above the noise floor.
**Subject 15 (Mr. L. Barton, 51).** Entered at 13:20. Remained for 74 minutes. Pressed call button. On exit, shaking, he said he'd heard a man's voice reciting numbers.
**Subject 16.** Left after 9 minutes without explanation. Did not wish to be interviewed.
**Subject 17.** Remained 112 minutes, a record. On exit, calm. She said that the voice had not frightened her. She said it was patient, and that it kept repeating one phrase until she understood. She said the phrase was: "You are not alone in the quiet."
**Further.** In all four subjects the same observation: the voice was always close to the left ear, and always at the same volume as the listener's own breathing. Subject 17 said she could hear it breathe.
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**Second page. Handwritten, in the margin of the report, in a different pen.**
*I have been in the chamber myself. I did it alone on Friday after everyone left. I'm the technician. I thought, I'll just see.*
*I set the timer for ten minutes. I sat in the chair. I turned off the light.*
*At four minutes I heard my heart. At six, a long cool whine. At eight, nothing. I mean nothing. There's a quiet that is a lack and a quiet that is a presence, and at eight minutes the quiet became a presence. I felt it settle against me like a coat.*
*At ten minutes the timer should have gone. I felt for the call button, which should be at my right hand. It was not there. The wire floor under my feet felt different. Smoother.*
*I don't know how long I sat. It was a long time. A voice came, at my left shoulder, quite near. It was the most gentle voice I have ever heard, and it was saying my name. Correctly. With the correct vowel sounds, the ones my own family don't use.*
*It said: Patience. You have been very good all week. Sit a little longer.*
*I tried to say something. My mouth moved, and no sound came. I don't think there was a sound to come. It was as if the chamber had taken the sound out of the world, and was keeping it for itself.*
*Then the lights came on. Idris, the cleaner, was in the door with a bucket, and his face. He said, "Mr. Nwosu, are you all right?" I said I'd been in ten minutes. He said I had been in for fourteen hours. It was Saturday night.*
*I'm writing this at my desk. I have been able to hear nothing at all since I came out, no radio, no traffic, no phone. Not deafness. The doctors say the ears are in order. The sounds simply aren't getting to me. They go round, as if I'm not there.*
*Only one thing gets through. At the left shoulder. Quite near. The voice. It's still talking, and I'm beginning to understand the language.*