The Invention of Sound

by Chuck Palahniuk

It takes as little as one jab or slash to trigger the screaming and bleeding. But so many more are required to make them stop.

When the scream played, she felt plugged into the eternal, as if she were channeling something from the next world. She’d created something immortal, worth more than money, a thing no bean counter could create. This was her power.

Like a fishhook, it sank barbs into the audience and became part of them. A parasite, this scream was.

But instead of her backbone, her nose had broken against the floor. Crushed sideways against the carpet, the cartilage had snapped with a crunch not unlike a dried crab claw.

A perfect sound effect wasted.

Every evening was a choice between reading a classic book or going out to an industry event. In brief: whether to spend her time with smart dead people or alive idiots.

Who better to pack the house with when a handful of local critics would be watching? The shared limbic high of so many people, it almost guaranteed a spate of good reviews. The human limbic system needed community to reach its peak highs and lows. But now home theaters and downloads meant more people, particularly cultural arbiters and people with disposable income, the early adopters, were cocooning alone. Watching alone, and wondering why films weren’t as funny or as scary or sad as they used to be.

Whether it was making a movie, frame by frame, or bodybuilding, it was only the results that most people saw. Or wanted to see. The actual labor was too deadening to watch.

the reporters were reporting whatever the people who owned the news told them to report.