The Lost and Sound

November 10, 2025

Every sound you’ve ever lost ends up somewhere.

In a forgotten room at the back of the Museum is a forgotten man named Tom. Tom used to conduct the Victoria Symphony, but after losing his hearing and retiring, he now works part-time at the museum’s help desk.

A figure fills the doorway. The Sound Warden is a strange fellow — all triangles and shadows, wearing a pointed hat, a thick wool coat, and oven mitts. Tom thinks he once knew the fellow’s name, but it’s rude to ask.

“Hello, again, sir. What have you brought me today?”

Wordlessly, the Sound Warden reaches into his coat and opens the palm of his oven mitt to the ceiling. Somewhere outside the room, a beer can opens with a hiss-crack-fizz.

“Interesting.”

The Sound Warden turns and glides out of the room.

Tom retrieves the Lost and Sound box from the back. It feels rather heavy. Rather than risk spilling a tidal wave of discordant sounds everywhere, he pulls out his stethoscope and listens.

It’s just as Tom feared. The Lost and Sound is full, and he’d have to evict something to make room. But what’s worth keeping? Was that a beercan from a father and son’s last fishing trip? Certainly he can’t get rid of the baby’s giggle or the humming wife doing the dishes or—

No. Tom’s lost enough of his own sounds throughout his life, and it’s been years since anyone else has heard him. He won’t just spill them out onto the floor and let them fade away. Today, Tom’s going to find one of them a new forever home.

♫♪♫

The upper floors have been taken over by interactive exhibits on the history of music. Songs from wildly different eras combine with wailing children and murmured phone calls to create a sonic natural disaster, and Tom is thankful, for once, for the low volume on his hearing aids.

Tom finds a mother and her son taking a time out together at the back of an exhibit.

“Sorry to bother you.” He holds up the Lost and Sound box. “Can I interest you in some crashing waves?”

The mother shakes her head, looking frantic, as her child tries to scramble free. “I used to know what it sounded like to be in control of my life. I don’t need more noise.”

To the security guard standing at the back, ignored and invisible, he offers thunderous applause.

“No thanks. If you’ve got it, I’d take a quiet thank you from someone who means it.”

To a sad looking man, he offers the sound of a city bus pulling away from the sidewalk.

“Urgh. That’s how she left me. If you’ve got it, I’d take the clink of someone starting a speech at a wedding?”

Turns out, no one wants a hand-me-down sound.

♫♪♫

As he turns a corner he sees a familiar figure stalking the halls. Tom follows for a few minutes. The Sound Warden glides through the crowd, with his hands and their oven mitts trailing behind him.

And in his wake, the guests are turning grey and muted, struck by some sort of malaise … He’s dredging their sounds!

“Hey!” Tom calls out.

For a moment the two stare at each other.

Then the Sound Warden bolts. Tom follows. Past bewildered visitors. Down a hall. Into a silent exhibit. Dead end. Panting, Tom whirls around. The Sound Warden is blocking the door, trapping Tom and his sounds with the bulk of his wool coat.

Tom roars, “I used to know your name. Did you steal that too?”

The Sound Warden throws open his wool coat.

Tom’s hearing aids scream a wall of white noise directly into his skull: buzzers and chainsaws and hydraulic presses and screeches and cawing birds and crying children.

Tom falls back, yells for help, but no sound comes out, and when he wheezes for breath no air comes back in. A hammer drives into his chest. He’s going to drown in this sludge of forgotten sounds, and his dying protests will wind up in someone else’s Lost and Sound box—

Of course!

As the Sound Warden looms over him, Tom grabs the Lost and Sound. Everything in the box will be lost—but if this is his last stand, then he’ll be damned if he dies listening to this modern crap. He points it at the Sound Warden and throws open the lid.

Cymbals and trumpets and banging drums and raving applause erupt from the box, harmonious and clear and beautiful. Classic.

The Sound Warden’s coat billows, swells out and out and out, jamming him stuck in the doorway until he detonates with a bang!

Tom collapses on his back, panting. Shredded wool floats around him. The sounds of everyday life flood back in. His heart is hammering. An onlooker rushes in, calls for help. A frantic mother and an impotent security guard and a lonely divorcee help him to a bench and then down to the first aid room to recover.

As his heart rate settles, he realizes he’s still clutching something in his hands. The Lost and Sound’s lid is missing, and almost certainly empty. He grabs his stethoscope and probes the inside, just in case, and hears a single, clear sound: the soft tac-tac of a baton on the stand, the breath before the first note.