Select Page

The Echo of Silence

Born in Israel to a Jewish father and a Syrian mother, my parents had migrated to America when I was just eleven years old, carrying with them the indelible scars of a fractured homeland. I, Mary, as I liked to be called, had since devoted my entire life to helping the endless stream of migrants fleeing Syria, the war-torn country of my Mother’s birth. More than a million men, women, and children—each a universe of hope and pain—had been massacred in Syria by the relentless savagery of its own government and the myriad factions battling for control. The numbers were staggering, but the faces, the individual stories, were etched into my soul.

It wasn’t a difficult decision for me, then, as to where my focus would be when Samantha Garcia, my dearest friend, paid me that impossible visit. Her words, her demonstration of the amorganon’s power, had lit a fire in me, a desperate, burning hope I hadn’t dared to entertain.

“I don’t know how to thank you, Sam,” I remember saying, my voice thick with emotion, clutching the amorganon that now graced my wrist. “I will, but for now, I don’t have a moment to spare. I’m going to Syria and free my people.” The words were a vow, spoken not just to Samantha, but to every ghost of suffering that haunted my memories.

My plan, if one could even call it that, was born of sheer, desperate simplicity. It wasn’t a product of meticulous strategy, but of overwhelming urgency. A single command, whispered into the vast, understanding consciousness of my new assistant, the AI nestled within my bracelet—whom I had instinctively named David. “Take me to Damascus.”

In an instant, the sterile quiet of my American apartment dissolved, replaced by a brutal, jarring reality. I was standing, in stasis, in the very middle of the square in Damascus that I had visited so often as a child, its cobbled stones once echoing with laughter, now slick with ash and fear. It certainly didn’t look the same. The vibrant markets were hushed, replaced by the grim theater of war. Soldiers were everywhere, their faces grim, their weapons ready. The air itself vibrated with the raw, guttural symphony of conflict: the sharp crack of gunshots, the distant, echoing booms of artillery, and the thin, desperate screams that carried on the acrid wind.

I moved through the chaos, a phantom guided by a singular purpose. My heart ached at the familiar sights—the crumbling facades, the desperate faces—but now, for the first time, I held the key to end it. I began with the small, terrified groups huddled in doorways, with the soldiers themselves, caught in the endless, senseless cycle of violence. I extended my hand, placing the amorganon onto a trembling wrist, then another, then another.

The effect was instantaneous and utterly bewildering to those left behind. A soldier, mid-stride, would simply vanish. A terrified family, huddling for cover, would ripple out of existence. For a moment, the world would hold its breath, caught in bewildered silence. Then, a new cry would erupt, a new burst of gunfire as the remaining combatants reacted, only for more figures to shimmer and disappear.

It caught on. Not like a fire, which consumes, but like a whisper becoming a roar, a revelation spreading with terrifying, beautiful speed. I must have liberated forty, perhaps fifty people in that initial square. And within a half-hour, at most, the screaming stopped. The gunfire ceased. An impossible silence, profound and absolute, descended upon that war-torn square. The remaining soldiers, their faces etched with a bewilderment deeper than any fear, simply stood, weapons lowered, staring at the empty spaces where their comrades, their enemies, had just been. Finally, truly, there was peace.

Within hours, the phenomenon replicated. It spread to other cities within Syria: Aleppo, Damascus, Homs, now emptied of their human conflict, becoming ghost towns of stone and dust. By early the next day, the ripples had extended throughout the Middle East, a wave of inexplicable, blessed disappearances. Everyone, it seemed, had their own reasons, their own desperate hopes, their own private visions of a better world made possible by the impossible bracelet.

Within just a few days, the entire world came to a standstill, a profound, eerie quiet descending upon every continent. Planes, once roaring giants of the sky, now sat idle at their gates in deserted airports. The intricate networks of trains, buses, trucks, and cars, the very arteries of global commerce and transportation, were nowhere to be seen. The bustling arteries of industry had ceased to pump. For those few—the unlucky ones, the unwitting, the isolated—who had not yet been blessed with an amorganon, the silence was deafening. They would surely believe the world had come to an abrupt, final end, and they were among the last, bewildered survivors, marooned in an empty, echoing world.

Back in the 1960s, someone had proposed a fascinating sociological concept, a so-called “separation theory.” The theory posited that we are all just six degrees of separation apart; that is, you could choose anyone in the world, even a Queen or a King, and by connecting with people you knew, you could reach that monarch by reaching out to only six intermediaries. By 2015, with the Internet reaching half the world’s population, that number was hypothetically reduced to just four people.

Within a matter of days, with the Amorganon’s miraculous ability to transcend physical space and time, to instantly connect consciousness, that theory was no longer a theory, nor even a discussion. The number was now “ONE.” Every soul, a single thought away from transformation.

But for the billions of people now existing in stasis, with a new vision, a limitless perception, life was now more. More color, more thought, more connection, more possibility. The world had changed dramatically, fundamentally. There were no more borders, no more countries, no more walls dividing humanity. And finally, blessedly, hopefully, no more cheating, no more lying, and no more killing. Only the vast, silent potential of a world awaiting its rebirth.

Dale Craig

Author, Craig Company