The Hum. Ralph Anderson
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call, the text message, email, You Tube, news, Twitter, Facebook, My Space, Linkedin, Skype. Panic sets in if it’s been is too long. Disconnection causes withdrawal. The needle is in the car, on the streets, in the home, in school, at work, on the train, and on the plane. Here, there, everywhere with wifi hotspots, TV, Internet, Phone, computer, ipad, ipod, tablet, cell phone, smart phone, scanners, cameras, Bluetooth, cell tower, antenna, satellite dish, cable, GPS, speed cameras, stoplight cameras, security cameras, microphones, all feeding the Beast. There is no escape. The newest, the latest, the greatest. Gotta have one. Can’t be without. Gotta call. Gotta text. Buzz, ring, jingle, gotta answer. Walk and talk, sit and talk, drive and talk, wash and talk, piss and talk, crap and talk, eat and talk. Text, text, text, text…plugged in, turned on, thumbs flash over keyboards. AM, FM, AC, DC, ohms, watts, hertz, send, save, right click, left click, megabits, megabytes, pixels, hard drive, software, flash drive, finger swipe, finger tap, hit delete.
Power transmission lines buzz, snap and sizzle. Electricity pulses and surges through cables powering the modern world’s technology without which it would be back in the 19th century. Microwave cell towers send out their invisible, inaudible signals throughout the world keeping everyone connected and addicted.
5
Uuh. What is it? Why did I wake up? Do I have to pee? No. Lie still for a few minutes and try to sleep… What time is it?” Rolling over I slowly open my eyes to get a look at the time on the digital alarm clock on the night stand. Oh. 2:17. Damn! … OK sleep… What’s that? A motor of some kind. A generator? A transformer? Is it from a neighbor? A very low, deep pulsating hum. Aah! How annoying. Maybe this is why I can’t sleep. A neighbor must be running something. Do I hear it, or do I feel it? Or is it both? I can’t tell. Maybe it’s the air pump from the fish tank downstairs. But it could be a truck running its motor in the parking lot. I raise myself up on my left elbow and turn my head trying to determine the direction of the hum. I can’t tell. This is going to drive me crazy. It’s barely audible, like it’s coming from inside me. OK I better go look and see what it is or I won’t be able to sleep.
I click on a flashlight and quietly slip out of bed as to not disturb my wife and leave our third floor bedroom and head for the main floor carefully listening for the location of the hum. Nothing obvious yet. I stand still on each landing for a moment. Nothing. But the hum is still there. Reaching the living room where the fish tank is located I listen to the air pump. The sound is subdued and certainly not loud enough to be the hum. I move close to the common wall between us and our neighbor’s home and listen. Nothing again. But I still hear it… no I feel it. Or is it both.
OK, I’ll check outside. I am determined to find out where this hum is coming from. Maybe it’s from outside. I slip on my crocs open the front door and step outside and listen. The only sounds are crickets and croaking frogs. Not even an air conditioning heat pump is on at any of the town home units. Let’s check the parking lot. I walk to the end of the row of homes and turn the corner towards the parking lot. It is obvious that there are no cars or trucks running. The night is quiet. I turn and look at the tall microwave cell phone tower just 50 yards away. Could that be it? Oh well. I head home and back to bed.
Without my wife realizing it I slip back into bed, close my eyes and try to sleep. But there it is again. A deep, almost imperceptible low frequency, pulsating hum. Damn! It’s going to be a long night. I close my pillow over my ears but it doesn’t go away.
6
“The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race... For most people, there are exceptions; they take the path of least resistance. They'll take the easy way out, and giving up your car, your television set, your electricity, is not the path of least resistance for most people. As I see it, I don't think there is any controlled or planned way in which we can dismantle the industrial system. I think that the only way we will get rid of it is if it breaks down and collapses. The big problem is that people don't believe a revolution is possible, and it is not possible precisely because they do not believe it is possible. To a large extent I think the eco-anarchist movement is accomplishing a great deal, but I think they could do it better. The real revolutionaries should separate themselves from the reform. And I think that it would be good if a conscious effort was being made to get as many people as possible introduced to the wilderness. In a general way, I think what has to be done is not to try and convince or persuade the majority of people that we are right, as much as try to increase tensions in society to the point where things start to break down. To create a situation where people get uncomfortable enough that they’re going to rebel. So the question is how do you increase those tensions?”
-Ted Kaczynski from his anarcho-primitivist manifesto Industrial Society and Its Future
Working from his isolated cabin in the woods near Lincoln, Montana, Ted Kaczynski, AKA, the UNABOMBER, set off multiple bombs killing three and injuring eleven between May 25, 1978 and April 24, 1995.
A brilliant mathematician, Kaczynski earned a PhD with a specialty in geometric function theory. His thesis was entitled “Boundary Functions.”
Based on evidence provided by his brother David Kaczynski the FBI arrested Ted Kaczynski at his cabin on April 3, 1996. He is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at the federal Supermax facility in Florence, Colorado.
Kaczynski’s anarcho-primitivism is a philosophy which seeks to return the modern industrialized society to primitive hunter-gatherer subsistence by conscious deconstruction and managed decline of civilization with the abandonment of technology.
Nudge.
7
I feel my wife stirring in bed next to me. I turn to her and wait for her to open her eyes. “Morning.”
She smiles. “Hi. Sleep good?” She puts her arm around me.
“Not a wink.”
“Why not?”
“Some sound kept me awake all night. Did you hear it?”
“No. Uh huh. What was it?”
“I don’t know. I hear it now. Do you hear it? Be real quite and listen.”
She lies still for a few moments barely breathing. “No I don’t hear a thing.”
“Strange. I hear it right now very clearly. I got up in the middle of the night to see where it came from but couldn’t find anything. I even went outside but I couldn’t hear it out there. It’s like a very deep bass, low frequency hum. Almost imperceptible. Pulsating. Like a generator or something. I can even feel it through my body. It’s driving me nuts. Even with the pillow over my ears I can hear it. I wonder why you don’t hear it.”
“I don’t know?”
Time to get up. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe I’m hearing my own heart beat or the blood pulsing through my veins? Who knows? Maybe it’s my imagination. I just hope it doesn’t come back tomorrow.
8
“Do you two know why you two are here in my office?”
The teenage boys smirk, their heads hang down staring at the floor. There is a snicker from one of them. Tough guys. Wimps really. They are odd in a way that is hard to describe. Social misfits. Their hair is a bit long and unkempt. Zits blemish their sun deprived skin. Pale from hours and days spent in their basements playing video games. It is obvious that they have not bathed in several days. Body odor hits the principal’s nose causing him to lean back in his chair in an attempt to put as much distance between him and the boys as possible.
“You have created quite a reputation for yourselves... Many of the other students are afraid of you two. They say you intimidate them. That you act creepy around them. Whatever that means… Teachers have observed that you two tease the other kids and belittle them. Some students have come to me to say that they are afraid of you. And today you took another student’s books and threw them in the garbage. You ridiculed her and scared her…