An impenetrable blanket of thick cloud and filthy smog hides the beauty of the clear, star lit
sky from citizens down on the ground. Mere mortals fighting for scraps, surviving, existing,
not living. You wouldn’t call this living. The official state channel blares out toneless,
monotonous, relentless sounds from battered speakers that hang off from every lamp post. On
the hour, every hour, a booming voice hammers out the latest statements from the Office of
the High Chancellor, praising the endless successes of the regime, detailing the severe
punishments inflicted on those unfortunate souls who dared to oppose it.
For months now, the Chancellor’s troops have been on high alert on the Citadel’s dirty,
cramped streets. People go missing in the night, husbands, wives, mothers and fathers
snatched from the sidewalks, taken from stinking alleyways, arrested at dimly lit street food
cafe. They are thrown into interrogation rooms, questioned endlessly, relentlessly. But the
people stay silent, stubborn traitors regusing to give up a name whispered more and more in
the darkness.,.
Somewhere from deep within the city slums a signal emerges, broken at first, barely audible,
crackle and static distorting the sounds. The Listener turns the dial on the clapped out radio,
the needle making its way across the broadcast frequencies, the music dipping in and out.
Then suddenly, the crackle clears, the white noise gives way. It is the sound of The Open
World... the sound of Trilane.
