The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (Wayfarers, #4)

by Becky Chambers

Her implant registered the instantaneous hiss of water being pumped through hot metal, and continued to let her know that the sound was present. She sat with that feeling for a few seconds, then did something she almost never did when away from the Mav Bre: she reached up to her forehead, and shut off her implant. Pei had received implant and talkbox both when she was small, and it had been so long since she’d known life without them that turning the processor off was always jarring at first. She felt like when she’d reached for her locked-up gun two days prior – startled by the absence of something that wasn’t actually part of her but always came along for the ride. After a few seconds, the weirdness wore off, and Pei allowed herself to be cradled by silence. Not silence in the way that other species spoke of silence. When hearing species said silence, they meant I can hear nothing but the wind and the leaves, or No one is speaking, but the sounds of the city are still present. That wasn’t true silence. Real silence. Her species’ natural state. The only time Pei realised how tiring it was for her brain to constantly process a type of input it wasn’t built for was when she made the decision to shut it out.