Hum

She woke up, again, at 3am. That low level hum was in her head. This was the fourth night and she was tired of these five hour nights. She sat up, the street light dimly shining in the room, and plugged her ears with her fingers. No sound. She took her fingers out of her ears. The hum persisted.

So it wasn’t in her head. That was a relief. Well. It WAS in her head but her brain wasn’t the source. She plugged her ears again. Silence except for the quiet swoosh of blood rushing in her body. She unplugged them and the hum was gone. Two seconds later, there it was.

The police department had gotten it through the military surplus program. It came along with a bunch of military gear that went to the SWAT team but they were given it because of its crowd control capability. They were on a schedule. Every morning, between 3am and 4am, they set off the low frequency ultrasound. It would hum for anywhere between a few seconds and a few minutes, in a random pattern. It was supposed to keep the human mind dampened and docile by keeping the mind weary from the low level engagement. It worked well.

Early Monday mornings were programmed to be more persistent. It was found people worked more more diligently and didn’t call in sick, as much. It helped productivity but, more importantly, it kept people docile and controllable. The SWAT team hadn’t been deployed in over 6 months.

She knew this wasn’t normal. She felt it, literally and figuratively, in her core. She suspected the government, then felt silly for being paranoid. That’s the kind of thing you get put in a padded room for thinking. She shoved the thought away. As the hum persisted, she tried to see any pattern. She threw her thoughts back, trying to remember the last four days and realized the hum wasn’t throughout the day but only in the early morning. She noted that it varied in length and time for each and between each hum. She ruminated on the hum, but the only pattern she saw was that it happened early in the morning.

Sitting there, she found herself getting more annoyed but also feeling resigned to the day. She whipped off the blanket and got up. She wasn’t going to sleep, anymore, today.