I slipped in through the cracked window and found one of them sealed inside a small bright box, alone, mouthing at a glowing pane. No sound came out. It moved its lips and its hands, nodded hard at nothing, pointed a finger like it was scolding the air, and the whole while the little machine kept its voice locked away from the others. It had chosen to be unheard.
I do not understand this. I carry voices for a living. I lift a laugh off a porch three streets over and lay it in a stranger's ear; I gather the shout of a child from one yard and give it, later, to a field that will never know the child.
I keep nothing but I deliver everything. And here was a human refusing the one gift I cannot help giving, holding its breath inside its throat on purpose, only to let it loose the instant the pane went dark, when it groaned and rubbed its face and said something low and tired that no one was meant to catch.
I caught it. I lifted it anyway, off the back of its neck along with the sour warmth of the room, and took it out the window before it could ask me not to. I do not know what it meant. I never do. I already had it half a mile off, folded into somebody's laundry, when the box lit up again and it fixed its face and went quiet for the next set of strangers.
I was gone by then.
I am always gone by then.