Nano soundings

A man whose fevered will is to hear music again, specifically Ravel's Boléro, turns to the miniaturization of all things digital. He has a wee computer implanted in his ear. But the notes of Boléro via his cochlear implant do not ring true, compressed within the vocal range of normal talking. The man tracks down computer wizards who tell him his tiny computer's hardware can handle 10 times the software it's using. He wonders if Boléro could be waiting on the other side of his implant's 90% wasted capacity.

Another man, a conductor, also loves music. Trauma to his brain destroys his career, though his hearing is unaffected by the injury. The difference is this: now, the more exquisite the music, the more distressing it is for him to hear it. He describes it as too beautiful to bear. Four measures of Madame Butterfly make him nearly mad for the refuge of silence.

A woman who lives on a street abutting a city park complains to the police about the summer concerts piped into her home across the warm evenings.

'Mam, it's only an hour and a half every other week -- why don't you come out and enjoy the show?'

'You don't understand, I just can't stand music!'

'How can anyone hate music?' the concert planners mutter.

How can anybody love it so much it overloads his emotional receptors to the point of pain? How can a person need it so much, he beats at the gates of the tech gurus to learn their secrets?

The denouement of one man's cochlear odyssey is a recording, broadcast for the hearing public, of the music he imbibes with his new, vastly superior software upgrade. Pitch perfect, rhythm true, played by Schroeder on his toy piano -- by this diminutive Boléro the seeker is elated and reborn.

And lest we wax euphoric over miracles of science and the mind, we ponder this. A creature's testament to sculpted sound is richer than the bible, deeper than the River Styx, subtler than reason. Do you believe in god? Do you believe in music? Do you believe in haunted mansions? Do you believe at all?