Dear Linguist,

I can’t get this sound out of my head.

Ever since the last dream, I’ve been hearing this incessant sound all day and all night without end. In every activity I do, I can focus on nothing but the sound. The unearthly, periodic sound that goes on and on

and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on

and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on

and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on

and on and on and on and on and on and on and on

and on and on and on and on and on and on

and on and on and on and on and on

and on and on and on and on

and on and on and on

and on and on

and on

and on and I fear that it may not stop till the day I die.

It follows me wherever I go, like that faint ringing from before, barely audible, lurking somewhere underneath all the sounds around me. Sometimes I can drown it out by filling my environment with noise; I still know it’s there. I can feel it reverberating against the inner walls of my head, unisolable, but undeniably there.

Perhaps if you help me find a new perspective on the dream it will help me to ignore the sound once again.

This is not a place you want to be. The walls of the corridor are a sterile white and there is not a single blemish in any section of the wall. It’s painfully bright. The tone of the four-thousand-kelvin lights that stretch across the entire length of the corridor does nothing to ease the pain. It only intensifies it. There are no windows, but there are many doors, most of which are locked. No one comes in or out through them but still, you know there are people on the other side. A single bench breaks the monotony, situated right in the middle of the corridor, filling out the space on the wall between a door and a small, framed picture of a cat.

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This is the situation you find your character in. The character himself is an old man who sits on the side of the bench that’s closest to the door. The man, unlike their surroundings, moves constantly. Fidgeting, shuffling uncomfortably on the seat, occasionally standing up to walk and stare at the door before sitting down and continuing the whole cycle again. No one else walks past, and no other sound is heard throughout the whole space other than those made by the man,

and the rhythm of a faint, unlocatable sound.

At first, the sound is regular and steady. Marking out the seconds, one by one, without an error in tempo or in pitch. But as the dream progresses, very slowly, it begins to accelerate. An extra note gets added every few minutes, the note becomes two, then three, then four, and so on. As it gets faster the building also begins to shake visibly, but the man seems completely oblivious to it. He simply stares deep into the floor beneath him, his fingers restless almost as if pleading with the man to do something. But all it seems he can do is stay there, scratching his neck, squeezing his wrists, rubbing his eyes.

The sound continues to become faster, the shaking continues to intensify. The whole corridor seems to be trembling at each beat of the sound. It gets to the point where it feels like the building is at the epicentre of an earthquake. The picture swings off the wall and shatters against the edge of the bench, glass pieces flying across the floor towards the man’s feet, but still, he continues to fidget and stare, sometimes at the ground, sometimes at the door.

Then all of a sudden, a different sound echoes through the halls of the motionless corridor.

The doorknob turns and the door opens slowly. The shaking is gone. The sound is still there but is regular and steady once more. Nothing comes out through the door, so as he stands up, the man walks towards the door and peers in.

The sound stops.

That is the condition of the character at present.

There are only two other things that you should know about this dream. Things about what happened before and after its commencement that seemed quite unusual. Perhaps these will help with your interpretation.

One, going into the dream, I had felt strangely uneasy. Dreams don’t often affect me physically and yet I couldn’t help but feel quite anxious about this dream. I did not know what the dream was going to be about, or even that I was about to enter the dream, yet I could feel that something was not right about what was to come next. Now that I’m past the dream, I can conclude that I might have been justified in my worries.

Two, the last moments of silence I had was in the period between my exit from the dream and the cessation of the sound within the dream. As soon as I had fully exited the dream, I once again became painfully aware of the sound. Just like in the dream, it never went away, no matter where I went or what I did it would refuse to leave me and would stay hidden within the background of whatever else I could hear. Like white noise but more irregular and jarring, constantly ticking away at whatever pace it desired.

Now tell me Linguist, what does this mean? How can I stop this?