On the brink of falling out of bed, Cooper slept in fits, waking once in a while to sense the sustained movement of the air. He feared that if he didn’t deploy his feelers for it, the air could cease all operations. Subsequently, it would condense into an ethereal pillow, and suffocate him in his bunk.

  “Go away!” Cooper rolled back from the edge, legs hanging sloppily off the bed frame.

  He had dreamed that not only was the sadistic pillow pressing forcefully upon his face, but also venting itself down his nose and mouth, presumably to recondense inside his body and kill him that way. In the meantime, he still breathed, since the air filled his lungs.

  With a jolt, Cooper woke to his own convulsive snoring drowned in music at the window. He assimilated it, deep and rumbling orchestral timbres overlaid with rhythmic chanting in bass.

  His head sloshed thick with sludge, but the sound scoured his cerebral essence. If the heat blared shrill chaos, the music cooled in harmony. A latent energy surged through his limbs. He leaped off the bed, landing light.

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  Cooper brushed his teeth in the shower. The pouring rain cleared his mind. Cobwebs collected over sleepless nights collapsed in the stream.

  He anticipated a thunderstorm, a booming, flashing release from the heatwave with the orchestra hacking madly alongside. He could hear the score still, in the interstices of the current. The chant conducted his toothbrush. Full of power and aura, it radiated, vaguely profound. Cooper snatched at the words, but couldn’t catch them in the static.

  The music filled the monotony of his morning routine. It rose and fell in volume. Cooper saw his neighbors hearing it too. Nate gestured at his ear as he sizzled bacon across the lightwell. Two stories below, a mop of purple hair poked out its kitchen window, swung all ways, and retreated with a slam of the sash.

  The stunning girl from the attic skipped down the fire escape she used as a staircase. Cooper nodded, shy. She smiled and jerked her thumb towards the street. They had flirted for weeks now.

  On the street, operators flowed to work. The city buzzed, hummed, whirred, zipped, in swarming locomotion. Today, eyeballs rolled skywards, look by look, to pinpoint that surround sound.