The Zone of Silence
This is Day 4 of the “Twelve Days of Sci-Fi”. You’ll get a free story each day. You can also get a discount on sci-fi stories for next year.
Bolt slouched against a wall on the corner of the block with his Null-Wave headphones around his neck. They were custom-made in his garage, made from random metals he could scavenge and exposed wires still hung out from the microcontroller.
Around them, Phobos City hummed with an upper-class vibe. Monorails rushed by on elevated tracks, people laughed from a nearby rooftop café, and even the trees seemed to be in a sickeningly pristine order.
Their lip curled at the thought of productivity. Everything was pre-programmed. Nothing could be left for serendipity. They had a very different philosophy: take what you need, make what you want, you don't owe this gilded cage anything. That's why they built the Null-Wave, a private joke for a world that thought it had an answer for everything.
Flicking a switch on their right earcup, Bolt activated the primary field. The entire world around them went silent. It was as if they didn't exist at all. The Null-Wave went beyond simple noise cancellation, it created a tight, localized acoustic dead zone. Sounds with about a meter of space would be struck by the noise emitter to dampen them to nothing before Bolt could hear. Additionally, any sound produced in that small bubble would stay in there. It was a personal pocket dimension where there was absolute silence.
They pushed off the wall and glanced back. Their boots left a scuff mark on the glass. They smirked and headed towards Helios Plaza.
Visually, the plaza was full of solarpunk artistry, but all of it was planned by the central arts committee. There were polychromatic solar sails overhead and a koi pond full of rainbow LEDs. Children played with solar-powered drones that moved overhead like dragonflies. To Bolt, this was the perfect place for a little chaos.
They swept their head back and forth, looking at all the families and tourists in the plaza until they spotted one particular woman holding a fancy, expensive-looking phone in her hands. She was the kind of yuppie affluence Bolt blamed for ruining the city's authenticity. She had a shawl around her shoulders whose patterns subtly shifted in the sunlight. Around her neck was a string of pearls.
Bolt gave her the name Karen in their mind, the kind of name for a woman who was rich yet naive.
Pushing through a group of students admiring a statue, Bolt walked casually at a slow speed in order to intersect with Elara's own movements. They did their best to seem like a fly on the wall, not worthy of being noticed. Karen was immersed in her phone, barely even looking up to see where she was going.
When Bolt got close enough to her, casting a shadow over her phone, she finally saw them. There was a quick frown, an instinctive reaction to seeing Bolt's punk attire. She tried to switch that to a casual smile before turning towards a man near the digital bulletin board.
"Excuse me sir," she tried to get his attention. "Do you know if the monorail to the Ordora Beach is on schedule?"
The man didn't twitch. He kept tapping at the board, oblivious.
"Excuse me?" she grew crossed.
He remained immersed in the board. Others strolled by and Karen watched their lips moving. They were clearly in conversation, but from her perspective it was like watching a silent movie. Bolt smirked as they watched the confusion clouding her features. She was inside his Null-Wave bubble now. The confusion then turned to fear. Her eyes darted around.
Bolt took another step towards her, getting uncomfortably close to her.
"They can't hear you," Bolt said with a casual cruelty. "Nobody can. It's just the two of us now."
Karen's eyes widened as she grew more terrified. She turned around and took several quick, anxious breaths.
"That's a very nice phone in your hands," Bolt said, continuing to speak in a chilling whisper. "And the glowing rocks around your neck... I'd like them."
Bolt's eyes, dark and unreadable, met Karen's.
"Don't make a fuss. There's no point in it. If you just do this fast it'll be over sooner."
Tears welled in Karen's eyes but she didn't let out any loud sobs. It wouldn't have done anything. She shook her head and her hands gripped the phone even tighter. She took a haphazard step backwards but Bolt followed so that she would stay in the dead zone.
To any casual observer, the scene may have seemed strange. But since she couldn't be heard, it would have seemed like some avant garde mime performance. That assumed if anyone noticed amidst the other distractions of the plaza.
"Look, I don't have all day. Neither do you if you want this incident to stay... private," Bolt growled.
They reached out but Karen pulled the phone closer to her chest.
Bolt's hand shot out and wrestled the phone from her hand. She let out a silent gasp. Bolt's other hand reached for her throat. She recoiled but their fingers were always unclasping the pearls. The delicate chain came lose.
Bolt pocketed the phone into a deep coat pocket and held up the necklace for a moment, watching it filter through the sunlight. It looked even more beautiful knowing it was a spoil of war.
Karen, meanwhile, was frozen and continued to cry. Her hands had clenched into fists at her sides, completely helpless.
Bolt gave her one final taunt before turning and walking away. They didn't want to run and draw attention, just move with intention towards the nearest monorail station. Each step got them further away from Karen and the safety margin. After about ten paces they reached the staircase and merged into the crowd of pedestrians.
They flicked off the Null-Waves.
The world's sound crashed into their head.
Karen too was suddenly overwhelmed by sound. The whooshing of the monorail and the myriad of conversations all rushed into her ears. And she too joined the cacophony.
"Help! I've been robbed!"
Her piercing scream got everyone's attention. Heads turned. Conversations stopped. Even the man staring at the bulletin board jumped with surprise. They looked at the tears running down her face and the vague direction she was pointing. They might have seen Bolt retreating up the stairs, but they had already gotten too far to be stopped.
"My phone! My necklace! It's them!" Karen was hoarse.
A few people tried to comfort her while others looked for security drones that had already detected Karen's alarm and were approaching.
Karen gasped out a description of the person, of the silent thief with the green hair and the big headphones, but they had already disappeared. They had already slipped onto the monorail and tucked the Null-Waves into their bag. Now they were just one more face in the crowd.