Fluorescent Hum

Testimony

“It never goes quiet. By the time you notice it, you’ve been listening to it for hours.”

The fluorescent hum is the base sound of Level 0. A low, continuous bed over which distant events occur from time to time. Wanderers hear it the moment they arrive, forget it after an hour and miss it when it is gone.

What it sounds like

It is a loop of about four seconds with the lamp ballast at 120 Hz, the mains at 60 Hz and a high hiss between 2 and 6 kHz. You hear it everywhere and there is no source to walk toward, because eight sources spread it across the whole world, always between one and seven meters from you.

Distant events

Every 35 to 110 seconds something sounds between 14 and 26 meters away, a piece of furniture being dragged or a door. Against the hum they stand out like lights going off. There is no way to know what causes them.

How to survive

Learn to hear beneath the hum. It is the only thing that will tell you that you are not alone.
A distant event is only a clue. If it sounds again in the same place, it stops being one.
If you stop hearing it, don’t check with your eyes. Stop first.
The hum helps cover your own footsteps. See footsteps on carpet and footstep echo.

What people say

In a zone blackout the hum goes completely silent. They call it the silence of the fuses. See environmental events.
The hum of a stabilized chunk drops a semitone, they say. See Stabilization.
The pitch changes when something gets close, some believe.

Mentioned in

P-004 · PhenomenaChunk DisplacementEvery chunk has its own countdown and, when it runs out, the place is rewritten. Anyone who doesn't anchor their shelter loses everything with it.L-001 · LevelsLevel 0: yellow officesEndless offices of damp carpet and humming fluorescents. Every wanderer wakes here, and nobody leaves by the way they came in.P-013 · PhenomenaStabilizationMetal, circuits and batteries on a workbench so a piece of the labyrinth stops moving. Only the anchor pins it down completely.P-015 · PhenomenaEnvironmental EventsA lamp that bursts, a zone blackout, fuses that come back. Level 0 changes even if nobody touches it.O-017 · ObjectsFloor NotesPapers on the carpet, sometimes pinned. A sentence from someone who had time to write before disappearing.P-019 · PhenomenaGreat HallsHalls 48 to 96 meters across where the ceiling disappears. They are the only relief from the corridors and the only place where you feel small.P-026 · PhenomenaManila RoomA small room of manila damask and dim orange light, with an entrance gap of barely 0.6 m. A place where tension drops.S-007 · SublevelsGreen HotelA wide old-hotel corridor in the middle of the offices. Well kept, quiet, and unsettling for exactly that reason.E-003 · EntitiesCrawlerThe frailest of the legacy records, with thirty health points in the reports. Its name suggests something dragging itself along the floor.E-019 · EntitiesShadowThe third of the legacy records, with forty health points. By its name it would be the creature of the dark, but no one has seen it.P-008 · PhenomenaFootstep EchoFootsteps that follow you a few meters back and stop two steps late. In Level 0.1 you never see anything.S-001 · SublevelsArchway RowA row of openings between pilasters on a half wall that organizes the room without dividing it. You see through it and you can’t hop over it.