The worst day was when the IUs were distributed through the underground market, but we didn’t know it yet. They were dropped on every front door of every street, enclosed in an unmarked silver box. In a world where nothing was free, finally something was.
From that moment, there was never any silence. You could accidentally catch someone concentrating on a last-minute grocery list, intrude on a secret you weren’t supposed to know, catch glimpses of your sleeping neighbor’s dreams leaking through a shared wall.
Sitting at the nape of our necks, they seemed as impermanent as hair clips. We all thought you could just take the damn things off. For a while, rich with the desire of knowing, nobody wanted to. Eventually, when the IU’s transmissions fused with sound frequencies in the air, nobody could, unless you wanted your brain to short circuit.
Last night, the grocery store was bombed, and for a moment I thought there was silence. I looked out the window, through a slit in the blinds. Across the street there were flames. Looking back into my apartment, the room lit up and flickered. The silence did not last for very long, but I swear I heard it.