The Sound of Time

### The Sound of Time Not everyone gets excited about sound the way the team at Space Station Tacoma 451 does. A dozen or so in number, they might be the least glamorous group on a place better known for thrilling missions and space exploits. These folks were engineers, headphones glued and tuned into every hum, every echo of the floating abyss beyond the glass. Today, however, things were different. They'd found something remarkable. Luis Henson, the lead engineer, was the one to stumble on it first. At his station just past lunchtime, he'd noticed the usual static was shifting. The background noise, that low hum everyone was so used to... changed. "Hey, anyone else hearing this?" he asked, adjusting his headset and leaning closer to the panel. Yara, with a sharp sense of hearing, perked up. "I thought it was just me," she said, pausing her routine checks. They sang out like whispers, shuffled through like ghostly hands across old vinyl. They were sounds from other times. **Echoes of past and future.** The team gathered, heads together, pressing buttons, calling each other names, all funny, oddly excited. "Impossible," Luis muttered, mouth agape as everyone observed real-time echoes from times far removed from the present. "We’re tuning in to... another time." Now, for people whose lives revolved around sound on a space station, discovering new music from across time was the equivalent of a rock concert. But the euphoria was short-lived when these echoes began to reveal cryptic warnings. Some sounded like pleadings; others like cries of distress. -"Don't go beyond..." -"They will come in..." **Fear mixed with insight.** "So, what happens if we listen too hard?" Yara joked nervously, trying to lighten the mood. "Do we start... skipping, time-wise?" And as lighthearted as it seemed, there lay the crux of the mystery – catching the wrong frequency could unravel timelines. * "We have to be careful for a while," Luis advised. "Play it safe till we get someone else's ears on this." Yet curiosity's stronghold left someone restless. Kian, one of the younger sound engineers, started diving deeper past his instructed limits. Harmless, he thought, for research. But it spiraled. One day, within those secretive whispers, he found himself pulled into distortion—like threads of reality woven torn asunder. "Where am I?!" Kian's panic echoed in Yara's headset, a terrified voice disorienting the team. Luis jumped back to the console, eyes frantic—frequency absolutely out of bounds, time rifts swallowing on infinite loops. * "All of you, headphones off, now!" Luis barked with urgency. Seconds felt like hours. Lost to tangled whispering voids. * "Kian, remember what you learned! Tie it back!" Yara implored, "Recall your sound maps!" Through those edges barely visible, Kian willed his memory to bend frequencies back. A snap. Time stopped. Kian's voice dimmed into recognition, anxiety melted, ushered out by time waves stitching the fabric of 'now’ together again. Everyone breathed out relief, disbelief knitted across faces as eyes met eyes. "Okay... So note to self—time isn't a toy," Luis half-chuckled, half-sighed, emboldened where revelation lay. Anchored firmly in reality once more, yet with knowledge nestled softly within: sound—the warm, soft lull of notes; mysteries echoing beyond what senses can imagine. * "Let's get this mess cleared," Luis reminded, prepping for debrief. "And maybe pie later. Definitely pie." As everyone nodded along in agreement, they knew they'd uncovered a truth beyond time, privileging only those willing to listen... and restraint enough not to forget where one truly stood in the cosmic silence's dance remain.