Mute (Muted Trilogy Book 1) by Nikita Spoke

Author:Nikita Spoke [Spoke, Nikita]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-05-12T05:00:00+00:00

***

They walked together from the parking lot to the food court entrance. The parking lot was fuller than she usually saw it, but she had always tried her best to avoid the mall on weekends. When they opened the doors, Jemma blinked repeatedly at the loud, cheery music playing over the speakers.

“It’s a little loud at first,” sent Jack, “but it sort of fades after a while. It was normal volume right after The Event, but then whoever controls the volume, they must’ve decided it was too quiet and cranked it up. It worked. People came here to get away from places that were too quiet. Then when people started using all the speaking apps, they turned it down again, but I had to walk back out after five minutes.”

“Yeah?” They were standing inside the doors, out of the way of foot traffic. Jemma scanned the room and settled on one of the empty tables against some sort of decorative pillar. As they sat, Jack continued.

“All the different electronic voices clashing, people turning up their devices to be heard over everyone else’s? Almost as soon as it started, it ended up with everybody having their phones or tablets at max volume, and it was just a cacophony of sound. A hum, okay, I can deal with, but that was too much noise. At some point between that visit and my next, they’d cranked the music up loud enough that nobody would try to type over it. Now that people can Talk, the volume doesn’t seem to matter.”

Jemma realized that he was right; despite the excessive volume over which they should be shouting, Jack was speaking at a normal, conversational level, and she could understand him fine.

“I haven’t found any studies or anything, so this is just a guess,” he sent, “but I think it’s because it uses a different part of your brain than the music. You can still hear while staring at the sun, so why not?”

She nodded, her thoughts slowed some by the music. She looked around the room again and noticed that almost nobody had come alone. People were in groups of two or three, most with expressions on their faces that clearly indicated they were Talking to somebody, some moving their lips, others not.

“Anyone who’s watching can probably tell we’re Talking,” she sent.

“That’s true.” He thought for a moment. “They’ll probably assume we’re dating, or maybe related. Hopefully not both.” He winked. “I highly doubt anybody will assume we started Talking before we knew each other well and that we can Talk over long distances.” When she didn’t immediately respond, he continued. “We can pull out our phones if you’d feel better about pretending to type.”

“I’m fine with people knowing we’re Talking. I mean, at least strangers and family. I’m not so sure at work, since there might be people who know we’ve not spent a significant amount of time together.”

“Are you planning to tell your family?” he sent.

She felt her cheeks heat. “I already did, actually.

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