Camilo Gomez’s anthology Noise Floor explores human curiosity, learning, innovation, progress, and knowledge in all of its many forms.
Sometimes the results are for the betterment of the individual and society and sometimes the stories end on a sour, pessimistic, or bittersweet note. But the situations often involve a protagonist discovering a problem, a discrepancy in the usual flow, or just a simple idle question of what if something happens, why it happens, and how it could be changed. In a way the stories are the scientific method told in narrative form.
Full disclosure: Gomez's introduction reveals that the book was partially inspired by and with conversational assistance from an AI program. Yes, there are some serious real concerns about AI’s involvement in the arts. It's a controversial issue and it is disconcerting towards human writers, artists, musicians, and other creators over where it will lead.
These are not unreasonable concerns and I myself share them, especially the fear that one day I may not be able to tell the difference between a human and an AI author. I also share them even though I confess that I have used AI when it comes to writing unpublished fanfiction back stories and additional scenarios.
However, I will say that in this particular situation with this particular anthology and this particular theme, it kind of works. This is an anthology about innovation, invention, scientific curiosity, and fears and anxieties about technology and progress. It makes sense to use it to comment on, criticize, and at times satirize the tools that simultaneously move us forward but also hold us back.
The best stories are:
“Thermopylae Time”
Nathan Carey, a dying chronobiologist, is interested in how time moves differently for those who are at the point of death.
It's an interesting theory and Nathan asks some provocative questions. How can someone with a brain tumor feel like they have had an entire afternoon of thought and observations in only eleven minutes? Does time work differently when faced with one's own mortality? Is it different if the death is sudden (like in an accident or in wartime) or long-term (like after an illness)?
Nathan searches through case studies, historical accounts, and his own memory and observations to come up with his conclusions. The experiences themselves are very revealing.
A composer uses this expanded time to complete her magnum opus. King Leonidas foresaw his own death with his 300 man Spartan Army but still managed to put up a resolute force against Xerxes’ Persian Army.
Despite or because of their physical decline, they transcended their thoughts, emotions, and mindsets into the work that outlived them. Nathan is faced with that situation as well.
What will outlive him? What will his final moments be like? What will his legacy be? How will he face that uncertain time when he thinks in days,the clock on the wall shows only minutes, and his body stops for good? These are questions that haunt him as he reaches the end.
“Noise Floor”
The Narrator studies the behavior, thoughts, and emotions of a test subject to determine and evaluate his progress and potential life trajectory.
This story is dense in scientific terminology and analysis. It can be discombobulating for many readers, especially those who don't have a scientific background. However, what makes this narration work is that it is intentionally technical and mechanical.
The subheads such as “Threat Assessment,” “Approach Vector Selection” give the appearance that we are reading a peer reviewed article from an academic scientific journal. It gives the impression that the Narrator is clinical and almost robotic in studying their subject.
Also we don't learn either the Narrator or the Subject’s names (or even whether the Narrator is human or AI). This shows the detachment between researcher and subject. During most of the studies, the Subject could be a cell of clustered bacteria for all that their observer cares about.
However, there are times when emotions and human frailty are called into question. The subject acts in unpredictable ways. The researcher notices miscalculations in their analysis. They even start to express concern, confusion, and anxiety over his welfare. It seems that the one thing that the researcher could not account for was the human factor.
“In This One”
Erik, an actuary, discusses numbers and mathematical equations with his curious daughter, Sophie. She reminds him of his late mother, a math teacher.
This short story demonstrates that sometimes a child's best teacher can be found within their own family. Sophie asks her father plenty of questions about the thickness of pennies, breaths in a year, steps to the moon, or seconds she has been alive. Erik activates her curiosity by encouraging her to figure these problems out for herself.
Numbers become a shared language between the three generations. In his job, Erik has to itemize how much time one has left. A number which is a literal prediction of life and death is later reinterpreted as a game and communication source between father and daughter.
The presence of numbers also becomes a calming source in Erik’s life. After Sophie was born and had trouble breathing, Erik counted the seconds between the beeps on the heart monitor and her breathing.This moment let him hold onto something tangible and connected him to Sophie in infancy.
The numerical connection between Erik, Sophie, and Erik’s mother is manifested through imprinting and pattern recognition. Erik’s mother used her educational experience and mathematical studies to instill that numerical learning style in her son. He used his interest in quantifying risk and social situations into life assessments so Sophie could create an interest in problem solving and using math in everyday applications.
These three generations show how that passage of knowledge can change from academic book learning, to theoretical concepts, to practical applications, to everyday use.
“Proof of Work”
The Narrator tries to weigh their life in numbers while trying to find a way out of their pressing financial situation.
Like Erik and Sophie, The Narrator is obsessed with numbers. But where numbers were previously seen as a means of connection, shared language, and an important legacy passed from parent to child, in this story they have darker connotations of reduced status and systemic dehumanization.
The Narrator often thinks in terms of half-lives. The American Dream has a half-life which has met the sixty-hour mark. The dollar has a half-life as money is deposited, transferred, saved, and spent. The Narrator’s meds are half-used as they take them to cope with pain and anxiety.
The constant references to halves contain a feeling of ambivalence. There isn’t enough to feel completely negative about, but there isn’t enough to be hopeful about either. The halves minimize the Narrator into someone who can’t aspire for more because he is always waiting for the bottom to drop out. One can’t plan for the future if they can’t see or imagine anything differently.
The Narrator also uses the word “nonce,” often. A nonce is a number used once, has no value, and no identity. The Narrator sees the nonce everywhere but particularly in terms of money and finance. It’s highly significant that this story keeps going back to money and the impact that Bitcoins have on the financial sector.
Finance is one of the factors that determine status: how hard a person works, how they present themselves, how they face cost of living pressures, and how they can plan and determine their future. In the Narrator’s life, finance is another number that challenges their sense of self and dehumanizes not only them but all of society. They are simply reduced to a number, a nonce.
“All The Time There Was”
Curtis, a musician, and his former band mates are cursed after they play a strange musical composition.
This story recognizes the mathematical process that can be found in music by creating patterns, establishing a tonal rhythm, measuring a beat, and keeping time. In fact Curtis’ contribution as a bassist is to “keep good time and not get in the way.” He knows that even though he isn’t as flashy or innovative as a performer, he is an important member for being the steady rhythm for the others to stand out.
The conflict begins when Eric, the bass clarinetist, plays a section that is jagged, angular, out of place, and filled with deep emotion and unpredictability. The other musicians follow suit and play in a different manner than they are used to. The composition puts them into darker head spaces to keep up.
Curtis becomes a more creative player. He is able to hold down a root note that makes him stand out instead of fade into the background. He also experiences slower time feeling 45 minutes to an hour have gone by while the composition lasts only twelve minutes. This is similar to Nathan’s studies in “Thermopylae Time” with some slight differences.
While Nathan looked into the time expansion at the point of death, Curtis looked into it during a time of creation and birth. Instead of an awareness of the mind and body coming to a close, the band is awakened to a deeper energy and awareness.
A change occurs within the musicians in the decades afterwards. It veers the story into horror as each member suffers a traumatic fate. They engaged in musical careers before dying. It doesn’t say whether they were affected by the music though Curtis believes it to be so.
It’s worth noting that while a couple died at young ages, some of them lived to be older and had medical issues beforehand. In some cases correlation may not necessarily equal causation, but there could be something else at play.
Perhaps the price of reaching such creative heights where the music or art envelops you so much is that you will forever live outside of real time. Once you have seen boundless creative energy sources, it is impossible to return to the real world and known society. The band’s souls are captured within that composition.
It also explains why so many musicians and artists lived troubled lives and died young. They access an inner world that cannot exist through natural means. It has to be experienced fully through exploration and inspiration. The natural world seems slow and mundane to a creative brain that can no longer access or process it.
“The Marginalia of Brother Lukas”
In the Middle Ages, Brother Lukas, is ordered to remove some volumes from his collection. He weighs which books can be sacrificed.
This story is the best in the anthology even if it contains the loosest connection to the overall main theme. Unlike the others which put a scientific or mathematical concept at the forefront, this book celebrates the history of the act of passing knowledge itself.
Like other characters in this anthology, Brother Lukas decides to go through this tough book weeding scientifically and analytically. He researches each volume in terms of frequent use, number of copies, how long monks spent to work on it, and other factors to determine the book’s value and necessity to the collection.
While he loves each volume, he knows that some have to leave the safety and comfort of the library and be cast aside. Each must be evaluated for their contribution to the library as a whole, the monks reading it, and eventually the community in which that information will be shared.
Unfortunately, it can be difficult to separate the whole from the individual parts. Like many librarians, Brother Lukas loves his library as a complete collection. He gives it his own personal style and system. He gives the shelves names like Silence, Hunger, Breath, and Contrition offering some hints about the book’s contents and their usage.
He knows which books are favorites among the monks and which have never been opened or read. If someone requires a specific source of information, he knows which shelf that it sits on, what the book’s main topics and subjects are, and what page and line number the information is on.
Brother Lukas treats each volume like a beloved child to be cared for, protected, leant out into the world, and returned safe and sound where it belongs. That’s why this task is so difficult for him. He appreciates the library as a whole and treats breaking it up like breaking up a family. He understands not only the weight of the volume that contains the information but the work that went into creating them.
He also understands the labor that it took to create them. This is back when monks transcribed such works by hand and created beautiful illuminated pages. There were true works of art and some spent years even decades working on them. There also were very few copies so if Brother Lukas selects one to be removed, it doesn’t get rid of just the physical copy of the book but the information that it provides. Whatever those pages tell will be gone forever and never remembered because there wasn’t enough shelf space for them.
While other stories in this anthology touch on the process and results of what can be learned, this story honors the vessels in which that knowledge is contained. It demonstrates how important it is to hold onto it, when to decide to bring that knowledge out into the open, and what can be lost when that knowledge is forever silenced.
Echoes by Matthias Meinhardt
This review is also available on Reedsy Discovery.
Echoes is a powerful anthology that lives up to the title. It details the conflicts that echo throughout history between the individual and the society in which they live.
The settings are often fractured and the characters are given close views of the cracks and fissure. The main characters are often faced with moral, ethical, or legal challenges that define the world in which they live and their own placement within it.
“The Law Ur, 2080 BCE”
Akkadu, a potter, and other people are affected by the laws and rampant bureaucracy that surrounds them.
Akkadu becomes an eyewitness to various trials. A woman is found guilty of adultery and sentenced to death. He is ordered to pay a fine for knocking over a priest's offering table. To settle a dispute, two men are ordered to be servants to each other.
These situations recognize the order and system which exists in Ur. It's a system that creates rules, laws, and standards and punishments when those standards are violated. Like the ziggurats that surround the city, the laws are the structure of their civilization. However, it's a very flawed structure.
As many know, laws can be standard (Don't steal. Don't murder etc ), but they are subjected to interpretation by those who wield them. The interpretations often are skewed in favor of the interpreter and are not as fair or as equal as they should be.
The woman is charged in a male dominated society and is subjected to a harsher penalty than the man that she had the affair with. Even when her husband wants to forgive her, the judges are adamant.
Akkadu is also marginalized because of his economic status. A priest has more value than a potter so he has to pay more money than expected. The two men are given an arbitrary sentence that is decided on paper instead of the judge treating it as a different unique case that requires a different answer.
The laws favor the wealthy, male, and entitled. Everyone else is forced to accept it as part of the community’s social contract. As long as they are part of the community, they have to resign to the laws.
Akkadu fears the price of rejection would be isolation. He has chosen the community over the individual.
“The Empire Rome, 130 AD”
During the Roman Empire, a prideful senator holds onto the delusion that the Empire will last as he is challenged by Belial, a mysterious man who knows about empires falling.
The two men differ in their views of history and the longevity of a power structure. The senator is in an elevated position in a society that considers itself the corner of the so-called civilized world. He sees the infrastructure, the military regiments, and the conquests of various countries.
He is convinced that the Empire is too big to fail. He is guilty of hubris, pride in his city. His pride blinds him to the approaching enemies surrounding him. The Senator encapsulates the arrogance surrounding a society that believed that it was infallible and impenetrable.
Belial offers an alternative viewpoint. There are implications that he is immortal, or has been reincarnated. At the very least, he is very old and learned. He knows that other empires rose and fell like the Assyrians and the Greeks.
Like Rome, they believed that they were indestructible. Like Rome will be, they eventually ended by natural disasters, conquering armies, or were defeated from within.
The Senator sees eternity but Belial sees an inevitable end. The Senator shows that Roman arrogance was its own undoing. They believed that its enormous size, tight structure, vast citizenship and regimented military would protect it.
They ignored the gathering armies at the door, the dissatisfaction from the people especially those far from the central power seat, the economic disparity, the increase in corruption, decline in values, and the changing standards until it was too late. Like those before and since, Rome fell.
It's very easy to read this short story and compare it to subsequent governments, empires, and countries trapped by their own egocentric narrative. It's a warning that the moment that the leaders believe that their society could last forever is often the moment that collapse begins.
A society that is too large and too arrogant to care about the people within it should not be surprised when people seek to challenge, change, or destroy it.
“The Printer Lubeck,1543”
Hans Keller, a printer, and his customers welcome the change that the Protestant Reformation brings, unaware of the huge consequences that will befall them.
Instead of characters that respect the status quo like in “The Law” and “The Emperor,” the next two stories feature characters that rebelled and changed things, but still found their upended world worked against them.
This story is set after Martin Luther nails his anti-Catholic thesis that led to the creation of the Protestant religion. Hans and the others see a new way of thinking that dismantles or changes the infallibility of priests, the offering of indulgences, the requirement of confessions, and other concerns that many had with Catholicism.
They see a way of thinking that concentrates more on a personal relationship with the spirit than requiring an intermediary. They seek a religious path that encourages individual experiences rather than organized ritual.
For people like Hans’ friends, Katharina and Samuel, individual experiences are important. Katharina wants the Protestant Reformation to focus on women's roles in the church instead of being viewed as bearers of sin.
Samuel, a Jewish man, believes that his people will no longer be seen as an enemy and will gain acceptance in a world free of priests. They feel that they are finally given voices and representation.
Unfortunately, they find a system that is as corrupt and authoritarian as the one they left behind. Katharina finds that she is still suppressed in a male dominated society. Samuel finds that Protestant fanaticism has led many to attack him and his synagogue.
The system that they thought would be different is now proven to be more of the same with slightly different means of prayer as a way to distinguish the two. They got rid of one authoritarian church for another.
Hans also has to bear responsibility in his role in spreading Protestant propaganda. He was commissioned to print pamphlets decrying Jews and women, words that he knew weren't true but published them anyway.
His hands created the copies that spread hatred, suspicion, and individual action that led to violence, witch trials, pogroms, and death.
“The Executioner Paris 1793”
Etienne, an executioner, is challenged by Louise, an outspoken prisoner, about his loyalties and allegiances during the Reign of Terror.
This story takes an opposite approach to “The Printer.” Instead of surrendering one system for another that brings a more rigid and structured order, this story features characters surrendering one system for another that creates more chaos.
Etienne and Louise represent different perspectives of France after the Revolution. Both were probably rebels against the monarchy or at least recognized the flaws in a system that favors the wealthy elite over the people and promoted the divine right of kings. They recognized the flaws in the system and hoped to change it through ideals, revolution, and actions.
They differ in where the Revolution has gone. Louise recognizes the evil that is inherent when the revolutionaries ignores their former values in the name of escalating violence.
She sees the tyranny that comes when mob rule stands in the way of justice. Rampant emotion rules instead of reason. When those who were once oppressed become the oppressors.
Louise wasn't afraid to fight for her values before and isn't afraid to fight now. She acts as Etienne’s conscience by questioning his actions and wondering if he is serving a darker master than the one who left.
Etienne is steeped in the blood of Revolution and now in the blood of Reign of Terror. He tries to justify it the way others do when faced with an authoritarian system that they helped create. “(He) is just following orders.” “(He) isn't the one making the rules.” “They will come after (him) if (he) refuses.”
Most importantly, he refuses to see the flaws in the system because he is on the same side. He can't recognize the evil outside because he doesn't want to recognize the evil that exists within himself.
Etienne shows what happens when a political following takes the place of morals, ethics, self-respect, and individual responsibility. The State becomes Etienne's reason for being and even if he recognizes the cracks, he won't acknowledge them.
Acknowledging that the system is wrong would make him admit that he was wrong in supporting how far it has gone. Etienne would rather behead hundreds and take his own life instead of acknowledging that he willingly let tyrants through the door and continues to hold it open for them.
“The Movie Star Berlin 1926”
Clara Bode, an American actress accepts a role from German director Felix Keller during the Weimar Republic as hints of Fascism cloud the horizon.
The previous four stories show how society affects the individual by forcing conformity or by rebelling but finding tyranny in the remaining ashes. This and the next story show how individuals are shaped by the society around them. They weren't a part of making, upholding, reporting, or blindly following the system. They just survive within it.
This story is more subtle in depicting the Weimar Republic and Hollywood through Clara’s eyes. She recognizes the illusion in filmmaking. She knows that in American cinema, she is mostly admired for her looks. In the era of silent films, she doesn't have to say anything.
She just has to look good and represent the free spirited bubbly flapper. She represents the shallow excess of the Jazz Age of living fast, opulent, and wild without weighing the consequences.
In Germany, she sees directors and filmmakers treat cinema like an art form. Felix encourages her to use her face and expressions to act and uses lighting, set design, writing, and other components to create a new artistic medium.
Unlike the US which treats film like a business and uses the face to bring more filmgoers, Germany treats cinema as a form of expression and uses the parts to tell a visual story.
The turn that German history takes is not outright revealed but there are hints of Nazism in reference to violent groups, disgust with the ineffective Republic, and anger at the economic downturn. Some have even said that the darkness found in German Expressionism foreshadowed the rise in Nazism.
These films depicted human psychology, rage at the System, and acceptance of the existence of evil and insanity. This is what Felix directs and Clara portrays but it is also what they will live in less than ten years.
“The Fixer Athens 1961”
Eleni plays multiple sides as an agent, informant, and courier during the Cold War leaving allies and enemies in constant states of confusion.
Like Clara before her, Eleni is affected by her society. She doesn't need a pretty face or acting talent to survive the system, she just needs to survive.
Eleni lives in Greece which is a center for Cold War intrigue. It is right where the East and West collided so there were many people who represent one side, both, or neither.
Agents can pass messages then return to sympathetic countries for shelter. This is a world of strict “if you're not with us, you're against us” mentality. They separate the world into good guys and bad guys so someone like Eleni is a threat to that shallow outlook.
Eleni stands on the outside of both governments. She does not support the Soviet Union nor the United States’ allies and instead uses them both for financial gain and to stay alive. She has no loyalties. Her only allegiance is to herself and this single mindedness threatens loyal agents on either side.
It's no coincidence that this is the last story in the anthology. We have seen people questioning, fighting against, defending, and living in various systems.
Eleni is someone who is outside of those societies. Her country begins and ends with her body and mind. She has her own code and is answerable only to herself. She is the individual with no society of her own.
