The Phoenix

Ella trailed behind him as he walked slowly up some metal stairs to a raised platform that seemed to be his personal lab-space. Opening a drawer in his desk, Dix removed a small box. Grinning like a schoolboy, he pressed it into Ella’s hand.

Ella turned the box over curiously. ‘What is it?’

‘Something I’ve been working on for the past two years,’ Dix said excitedly, ‘ever since Redmayne decided it was time to make contact with you. They’re a bit of a gimmick,’ he admitted, ‘but I hope they’ll be a useful tool to get you started, on the auditory side at least. That’s where you seem to be getting the strongest signals so far.’

Redmayne. It was the second time in the last forty-eight hours that Ella had heard that name, but her questions receded in the face of the professor’s endearingly childlike joy. ‘Open it! Open it!’ Dix squawked, squirming with anticipation like a small child with a full bladder.

The box slid open, like a packet of matches. Inside, nestled in a bed of Styrofoam were what looked like a pair of hearing aids.

‘Put them on,’ instructed Dix.

Ella tried.

‘No, no, not like that. Inside the lobe. Here, let me.’ Gently he inserted the tiny devices into each of Ella’s ears. ‘Comfortable?’

She nodded.

‘Good. Now, hang on a tick.’ Turning his back to Ella, Dix began tapping something into an iPad. Ella started and clutched her head as a wave of sound, voices and static and loud, tuneless beeps exploded inside her skull. Leaning over gingerly, Dix turned a small dial on each of her earpieces. As if by magic, the wave receded, and only two voices were audible, both as clear as day.

‘That’s incredible!’ said Ella.

It was just how Gabriel’s voice had sounded last night when she’d tried to leave, and that evening at her hotel in Paradise Valley. It was as if all the other transmissions had been switched off, somehow, and only a single, crystal-clear channel remained.

‘How did you do that?’ she asked Dix.

He put a finger to his lips, watching her eagerly. ‘Just listen.’

Ella did. Both the voices she heard now were male. At first she wasn’t sure what they were talking about, but eventually a pattern emerged. Coordinates and wind speeds and … was it tides?

She looked up at Dix. ‘The coast guard?’

‘Bingo!’ he clapped his hands excitedly. ‘Marvelous, marvelous. Very good, Ella. That’s exactly what we’d hoped for. Right, take them out.’

Ella did as she was asked, handing over the hearing aids. ‘So, what are these? How do they work?’

The old man grinned. ‘They’re very simple filters. Eventually, you’ll learn how to do this yourself, organically. There’s a technique I’ll teach you, similar to mindfulness if you’ve ever heard of that? It’s not complicated but it does require practice. Once you’ve got the knack, you’ll be able to turn down certain signals and turn up others, by yourself. But until you’ve mastered it, these will help. I must say, I’m delighted they seem to work so well!’ He beamed, clearly gratified with his handiwork.

Ella sat silently for a moment, processing this information.

‘What would happen if you put these in your ears?’ she asked him.

‘Nothing,’ Dix confirmed. ‘I have nothing to filter. No data inputs. You, on the other hand, have rather more than you can handle. Hence your headaches.’

‘Can these switch the noise – data – off completely? Like a mute button?’

‘No. They’re not sophisticated enough for that. To mute the signals you’re receiving completely, at the moment we have to use an external firewall. We block all data at Camp Hope as a matter of course, for security reasons. When you heard the medley of sounds earlier, it was because I’d temporarily disabled the firewall to allow them to reach you. So we could run the test.’

‘So, I’ll always hear some voices? No matter what?’ Ella looked crestfallen.

‘I didn’t say that,’ Dix smiled. ‘These earpieces aren’t capable of shutting down your brain’s receiving capability. But you can do it. You can do it with visual stimuli as well. I’ll teach you how.’

‘Really?’

‘Really,’ he said firmly. ‘Your brain is probably the most sophisticated machine I’ll ever have the privilege to work with, Ella. We don’t know everything about it yet. But we do know it can do incredible things.’

Again, Ella took a moment to digest this before resuming her questions.

‘If someone else were to know how this thing in my brain works – like you do – would they be able to transmit to me directly? So they would come through louder, not just as background noise?’