Tuned Out

She tuned out the world. The birds were the only signal she still trusted. They gave her the headset on her twelfth birthday -rose gold, fitted, permanent. It didn’t play music. It translated. Every frequency the human ear had been trained to ignore: the hum of power lines making decisions, the low pulse of satellites adjusting their gaze, the coded static between one era and the next. She heard all of it, all at once, and remained perfectly still. The hummingbirds had found her 3 years later, drawn not to nectar but to the warmth the headset emitted – a soft 40Hz tone, barely perceptible, that resonated at exactly the frequency of trust. They never left, she never asked them to.