The drawings, diagrams, and documents were arranged so as not to appear arranged on the drafting table in the corner of the living room, the drafting table light left switched on as if by oversight.

“Sorry,” said Colby, emerging from his downstairs bathroom having done nothing inside but flush the toilet and rinse his hands. “I drank a lot of liquids today and I couldn’t wait until we got to the restaurant, and, like I said, my house here is right on the way, so, yeah.”

Iris, his date, stood looking at a photo of his now-dead dog hanging framed on a wall not very near the drafting table. Had she already looked at the drafting table and the drawings, diagrams, and documents thereon while Colby was in the bathroom? He had been tempted to keep watch through the cracked door but worried Iris would catch him.

“Well, I say ‘liquids,’” said Colby. “But I really just mean ‘water.’ I drank a lot of water today.”

Iris was the same height as Colby, five-foot-seven. She wore sandals but the backs of her feet were raw from whatever shoes she’d been wearing all day prior to the sandals. She wore her hair in a style for which it had not been cut, not that it looked bad. “How old is this picture?” asked Iris. Now she was looking at the next framed photo over from the framed photo of Colby’s now-dead dog. Now she was looking at a photo of Colby and his parents at the party celebrating his mom’s eleven years of sobriety and his dad having lost nine pounds despite his lifelong contention that it was impossible for him to lose weight, although by the time the picture was taken he had regained five of those pounds.

“Hmm,” said Colby. “I’m not sure. I think I had it written down somewhere. It might be over there.” He pointed at the drafting table.

“You have how old this picture is written down?” asked Iris. She didn’t sound skeptical, just surprised.

“Yeah, maybe,” said Colby. “I write a lot of things down. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.”

“Huh,” said Iris. “I write things down sometimes. Usually just as a note on my phone. Are you ready to go eat?” She smiled and opened her arms as if to embrace Colby’s confirmation that he was ready to go eat that she seemed sure was forthcoming.

Colby started to panic. They couldn’t leave yet. Iris hadn’t looked at anything on the drafting table. The whole reason for this ruse about needing to stop at Colby’s house on the way to the restaurant so he could use the bathroom was to get Iris to look at the drawings, diagrams, and documents on the drafting table. If she didn’t do that, then what was the point of Colby driving way out of the way to pretend to use his bathroom? “Yeah, I’m ready to eat,” said Colby. “Of course I am, I’m starving. But, oh, hold up…” He crossed the room to the drafting table with what he hoped was a lightly mystified expression on his face. “Hmm,” he said, arriving at the table and allowing his hands to settle on the papers like more papers. “Were you looking at this stuff while I was in the bathroom?”

“No!” said Iris. She sounded defensive, affronted.

“I’m not mad,” said Colby. He chuckled disarmingly. “I just didn’t remember leaving this out.” He picked up one of the drawings and showed it to her.

But Iris wasn’t looking at the drawing. She was looking past the drawing into Colby’s eyes. “So you think I got into the table and pulled something out and just left it there? All without asking? You think I just waited for you to go into the bathroom so I could start moving your stuff around?”

“No, no, no,” said Colby. “I’m sure it was me. I’m sure it wasn’t you. I was just trying to figure out why this particular drawing was on top when it’s such an outdated version of the concept. But actually, yeah, now I remember, I got it out because I wanted to revisit some ideas that I’d rejected a while ago, but maybe not for the right reasons, maybe they were ideas that had some merit.”

Iris was too upset by what she perceived as Colby’s accusation to take the bait. “OK,” she said. “Well, I just don’t like it when people assume the worst about me. Let’s just forget about it and go eat.”

Colby couldn’t figure any other way to lure Iris into asking what he was working on. He was going to have to tell her. “This is all from a concept I’ve been working on since I was seven years old,” he said. He set the drawing back on the drafting table, drumming his fingers on it with affection. “It’s my life’s work. It takes up a lot of my free time.”

“I didn’t touch it,” said Iris. “None of it. I didn’t even go over there.”

“I know, I know,” said Colby. “I’m just explaining.”

“Explaining why you’re so touchy about it?” asked Iris.

“I’m not touchy about it,” said Colby, beginning to feel the first touch of touchiness about it. “I’ve moved on from that. I mean, I wasn’t even mad in the first place. Even if you had moved stuff around over here, that would have been totally fine. But you didn’t, which is also fine. Both things would have been equally fine. But I’ve moved on. Now I’m just explaining the concept to you. I’m explaining what all this is.”

Iris said nothing. She looked unhappy. She did not appear to like Colby anymore, if she ever had. She was not in a frame of mind likely to be receptive to Colby’s concept. His only hope was that, despite her ill feeling for him, the concept would be good enough to win her over, that she would take an interest in the concept in spite of him. But maybe this was good. He certainly didn’t have to worry about Iris feigning interest in the concept just to please him. She was not going to humor him, he could tell. This would be a true test of the power of his concept. Could it cut through the tangle of interpersonal tension that had developed between Colby and Iris, partially as a result of, Colby was willing to admit, his actions? He felt that it could. It should. But would it? He thought so.

“It’s a concept for a silent car,” said Colby. “I’ve been working on it for years.”

“Don’t they already have that?” asked Iris.

“Have what?” asked Colby, although there was only one thing she could have reasonably meant.

“A silent car,” said Iris.

“No,” said Colby. “They don’t. No one does.”

“Electric cars are silent,” said Iris.

“They are not silent,” said Colby. “They’re quiet, but quiet isn’t silent.”

“OK,” said Iris. He could see her stopping herself from saying more. And he could tell that what she was stopping herself from saying was not praise for the simple brilliance of his concept.

“Do you still want to eat?” asked Colby.

“Yes,” said Iris.

Colby was surprised at her answer. “With me?”

“Yes!” said Iris. “Isn’t that what we’re doing? Going out to dinner together?”

“I shouldn’t have told you about my silent car concept while you’re upset,” said Colby. “I don’t think you really gave it any thought. I don’t think you’re giving it a chance.”

“Are we not going to eat?” asked Iris.

“It’s just,” said Colby. “Electric cars still make that electric hum whine kind of buzz noise. Not to mention their tires still make sound on the ground. And they can still honk. Some of them go out of their way to make other noises. Like, to be funny, I think.”

“So, we’re not going to eat,” said Iris.

“You think silent cars would be dangerous,” said Colby. “You think pedestrians wouldn’t notice them until it’s too late, especially blind pedestrians. You see the motorcycle guys wearing those ‘loud pipes save lives’ shirts and you agree with that. And I’m not even saying that’s wrong. But I’m saying, well, if preserving life is the main goal, shouldn’t we just get rid of all cars?”

“Just take me back to my apartment,” said Iris.

No one talked during the ensuing drive, but it took a mighty struggle for Colby to prevent himself from pointing out how much even a drive as strained as this one would be improved by the silencing of his and all other cars on the road.

 

               The concept of a silent car first occurred to Colby when he was almost eight years old. But he told everyone that it came to him when he was seven, which was true. He was seven. He was more seven than he was eight. He wasn’t eight at all. He was only almost eight, which is seven, so by saying he had been seven and not saying he had been almost eight, he was being more accurate. Not that it probably made much difference in people’s minds. Most people other than eight-year-olds feel pretty much the same about seven-year-olds and eight-year-olds.

               The concept of a silent car first occurred to Colby shortly after he had begun to notice the noisiness of cars, the way car noise encroached on the edges of one’s life everywhere one went. It was hard to not notice cars making noise unless one was so used to it that one didn’t notice it anymore, but once one noticed one’s own lack of noticing, the noticing came back in a big way and car noise became impossible to not notice. Which had happened to Colby. The fact that it hadn’t yet happened to everyone else was part of the reason, he thought, that people tended to be dismissive of the silent car concept. One doesn’t feel a need for a solution to a problem one doesn’t recognize as a problem. At some point, alerting people to the inescapability of car noise and why that’s a bad thing became key components of the silent car concept.

               When Colby was a kid—seven, eight, nine, and so on—he probably did mean “quiet” when he said “silent.” It was hard for him to remember now at age thirty-one. But he had probably just meant “silent” as a more sophisticated-sounding synonym for “quiet,” like people would be more impressed with the concept of a silent car than the concept of a quiet car, even a quieter car. But that was the power of language, the power of words. Over time, the word “silent” had asserted itself, driving a wedge between Colby’s concept and similar-but-lesser concepts until they no longer seemed similar, only lesser. He admired the implied perfection of “silent.” No sound at all. None. His concept for a silent car hinged on seeking this perfection.

               Would other sacrifices have to be made? Of course. A silent car was not going to be as powerful as a non-silent car. It would be less roomy, maybe. It would not have a good sound system, nor any sound system. No horn, certainly. The sounds of tires on pavement, not to mention even noisier surfaces like gravel or snow or even wet pavement, were a big problem. And the sound of air whooshing around the body of the car: another big problem. A new concept, Colby found, as with much of life, was often about trade-offs. He had to ask himself questions about the essential nature of cars. He had to make sure he was still conceptualizing a silent car and not crossing over into conceptualizing a car-like silence. The silent car had to be fully silent and fully car.

               At some point fairly early in the conceptualization process, Colby turned to the internet for, what, information? Community? Support? Validation? His search for these and other useful things the internet could theoretically provide was not fruitful. The information he found was mostly about things that already existed, such as cars that were not silent, or about how things that did not exist, such as a silent car, could not exist, neither of which were relevant to Colby’s concept. The communities he found were not supportive and had conspired to refuse, it sometimes seemed, to validate him. They asked the wrong questions. They critiqued his drawing ability and nitpicked his terminology. They said quiet cars would be good enough, they said no one would demand silence from a car, they said the market would not make the mass manufacture of silent cars feasible, and what good would just a few silent cars here and there accomplish as long as most other people kept their noisy cars and some other people kept making their cars even noisier on purpose with louder engines, mightier subwoofers, horns like air raid sirens? Or, worst of all, they assumed he was doing some kind of science-fiction creative-writing thought experiment and tried to welcome him into communities he found repellant.

               Only user long_subtraction, whose real name turned out to be Blaine, seemed like he might, if shown the entirety of the silent car concept in its current state, think it was cool and say so to Colby. So Colby invited Blaine to make the four-hour drive to visit him. Colby feigned interest in Blaine’s “communal isolation” concept to make the visit more enticing though he did not understand Blaine’s concept and was not interested in trying to understand it.

               Blaine made the drive. Colby, who had begun organizing his materials days in advance, handed Blaine a beverage while he was still in the driveway, guided him into the house and into a chair in the living room, and launched into a detailed presentation of his concept. Blaine, who in addition to turning out to have that name also turned out to be older than Colby had expected and also turned out to smell like a blend of powerful ointments, listened with what, as the presentation sprawled onward and outward, Colby started to fear might be growing incredulity.

               When Colby finally ran out of steam, Blaine took his first sip of his drink—diet pop now enfeebled by icemelt—and said, “All well and good, but where are your ideas for how to accomplish all this?”

               “This is a concept,” said Colby.

               “But don’t you want your concept to be implemented?” asked Blaine.

               “Of course,” said Colby, regretting ever hoping that Blaine would grasp what he now realized Blaine could not grasp. Past experience had taught him that this line of questioning never led anywhere worthwhile.

               “So how is that ever going to happen?” asked Blaine. “If you don’t have any engineering skills, I mean.” The ointment smell emanated from him in waves. Colby saw no sign of skin afflictions requiring ointment, but maybe they were fully concealed by his clothing or maybe that just meant the ointment was working.

               “When I’m finished with the concept, engineers and scientists and other experts will figure out how to make it a reality,” said Colby.

               “But that’s the hardest part,” said Blaine.

               “OK?” said Colby. “When did I say that what I’m doing is the hardest part?”

               Blaine was stumped by this one. He tried to pivot. “Well, with my communal isolation concept, I’m doing my best to answer all the practical questions up front so there’s no barrier to implementation down the road. So if people say, ‘Oh, well, what about this?’ then I can just say, ‘Yeah, I already thought of that, and here’s what we do.’”

               “Right, that’s great,” said Colby. “But your communal isolation concept doesn’t require any engineering, but mine-”

               “Are you joking?” asked Blaine. “Are you messing with me? My communal isolation concept requires tons of engineering! It’s mostly engineering!”

               “And you’re an engineer?” asked Colby.

               “Not professionally, no,” said Blaine. “But I’m self-taught. Self-teaching, anyway. It’s an ongoing process.”

               “Well, I’m not doing that,” said Colby.

               “So, OK,” said Blaine. “What are you going to do, then? Just do such a good job pitching your concept that engineers and scientists and other experts will spring into action with the requisite energy to manifest your vision?”

               “Yes,” said Colby.

               “And you’re good at that?” asked Blaine. “You’re good at making other people see the value of your concept?”

               “Yes,” said Colby.

               “Because I just sat through a pretty thorough explanation of your concept,” said Blaine. “And if I’m being honest, it was not inspiring.”

               “I mean, I will be good at it,” said Colby. “Eventually. That’s part of what I’m conceptualizing. How to explain it so people want to get on board.”

               “You didn’t mention that during the presentation,” said Blaine.

               “That part’s still just in my head,” said Colby.

               Blaine made the face Colby had seen many other people make many times before. It was hard to be that disappointed by it anymore. But what was disappointing was that Blaine had prepared a presentation of his own through which he was not shy about demanding Colby sit. “I sat through yours,” said Blaine. “And I drove five-and-a-half hours to get here.”

               “It’s only a four-hour drive,” said Colby.

               “I spent an hour-and-a-half at a gas station trying to get them to let me see the security camera footage of the car of a woman who got gas next to me because I overheard her on the phone plotting to defraud her employer,” said Blaine.

               “How am I responsible for that?” asked Colby.

               “I wouldn’t have overheard the plotting and felt obligated to do everything within my power to foil it had I not been on my way to see you,” said Blaine.

               His presentation was not as long as Colby’s had been, but it was better organized and Blaine’s delivery would have been more persuasive to any objective observer. But Colby was not an objective observer and he hated it. Also, it turned out that in addition to being named Blaine and being older than Colby had thought and smelling like a blend of ointments, Blaine also meant social engineering when he said his concept for communal isolation was “mostly engineering,” which Colby did not consider to be the same thing as regular engineering and which he also considered to be a morally and ethically unjustifiable means of achieving one’s ends unless one’s ends were extremely beneficial to society, which communal isolation, as far as he understood it, which still wasn’t, he was willing to admit, very far, was not.

               In the end, Colby and Blaine had a big screaming argument, Blaine left in a huff, and Colby stayed up until two in the morning working on his silent car concept, hunched over his drafting table drawing differently-shaped roof-mounted warning lights that the silent car might use to alert people to its unchecked approach were its brakes to fail. And he also left a note for later that read: if brake failure cannot be SILENT then it must be IMPOSSIBLE!

 

               Arriving home from his vacation in the middle of the night and one-and-a-half days early, Colby found a young woman standing over his drafting table in his half-trashed living room. The drafting table light was on. The young woman, wearing shorts and a black t-shirt that almost concealed them, glanced over her shoulder at Colby, then went back to examining his drawings, diagrams, and documents. Her boots were extra muddy and would have been muddier had much of their mud not already clung instead to Colby’s carpet. A can of green spray paint rested on the edge of the drafting table.

               “Who are you?” asked Colby. The broken furniture, scattered picture frames, torn-up books, slashed pillows, shattered mirror, and spray-painted walls on the far side of the living room filled him with dread. What was to become of his silent car concept materials? The young woman did not seem intent on destroying them, but half of the living room attested to her capability to do so.

               “I’m The Harmer,” said the young woman. “My real name is Sage Granjen.”

               “What are you doing in here?” asked Colby. He sent his hand into his pocket after his phone.

               “I’m The Harmer,” Sage repeated. She slid a document aside so she could examine the diagram beneath it. “You haven’t heard of me? I’m the one who’s been going around harming people.”

               “I haven’t heard of you,” said Colby.

               “Too focused on this, I bet,” said Sage.

               “You’re here to harm me?” asked Colby. He removed his phone from his pocket. Sage wasn’t watching him. She seemed sincerely absorbed by his work.

               “Yes,” she said. “To harm you by harming your possessions. I was already working on it when I got distracted by your project. How long have you been working on this?”

               “Almost twenty-four years,” said Colby. “I started when I was seven. Well, almost eight.”

               “Seven, huh?” said Sage. “I don’t think I’ve made it back that far yet.” She shuffled some papers around.

               “Most of the material from that era is filed away upstairs,” said Colby. “That there only represents the last two or so years of work. But most of it is refinement of older ideas.” He had not yet dialed so much as the “9” in “9-1-1.” He had not even unlocked his phone screen.

               Sage turned her head to look at Colby more fully, taking casual note of the phone in his hand. “Calling won’t help,” she said. “A friend of the mayor’s friend is in love with me. Unrequitedly.” She winked.

               “Multioak has a mayor?” asked Colby.

               “Yes.”

               “And being a person a friend of the mayor’s friend is unrequitedly in love with means you can do whatever harm you want to anyone you want?” asked Colby. “With no legal repercussions?”

               “Yes,” said Sage. “Within reason.”

               “What you’ve been doing is within reason?” asked Colby.

               “Yes,” said Sage. “I’m very good at knowing where the line is. This kind of thing is still far, far away from the line.” She indicated the vandalism. “I can do much worse, and I have.”

               Colby said nothing. He regretted mentioning the older silent car concept material filed away upstairs. If The Harmer destroyed everything down here, she might head upstairs next. Unless he stopped her, of course. She seemed to have had some knowledge of Colby’s vacation plans; she had probably intended to perform all her harming while Colby was out of town. She did not seem to have a weapon. But she also did not seem alarmed at his surprise appearance. Why was she so confident that he posed no threat? Her confidence that he was not a threat erased any confidence Colby had that he could become a threat.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

               “I’m still trying to decide,” said Sage. “I’m pondering that very question.” She returned her attention to the contents of the drafting table. Her hands rested on Colby’s papers tenderly, almost reverently. “I know what this means,” she said. “I know what it’s like.” Her tone was unlike any Colby had ever heard in the voice of another human being referring to his work. It was not absence of judgment. It was better. It was favorable judgment. Sage had judged Colby worthy, in some way.

               “Does this mean you’re going to spare me further harm?” asked Colby.

               Sage smiled at him. “Of course not. That would be contrary to my own work. That would be a betrayal of my own concept. I’m trying to decide which course of action will do you the most harm: destroying your work or allowing it to remain.”

               “But…no!” Colby blurted. “You can’t…” He bit back the rest of his impassioned plea, terrified to reveal his vulnerabilities.

               Sage laughed. “Don’t stress about what to say. I won’t believe you anyway. People are remarkably poor judges of what would or wouldn’t harm them.”

               Colby felt panicky. It felt like panic was attacking him. An attack by panic. An attack of panic. He thought there should be a term for this feeling. But there wasn’t. He collapsed with as much dignity as he could manage into the nearest chair.

               “Hmm,” said Sage. She tapped her pursed lips with the left side of her right index finger. “Hmm, hmm, hmm. This is why I prefer to harm people while they’re not around. It’s easier to focus on maximizing harm rather than chasing the momentary gratification of witnessing the effects of more immediate harm.”

               “Please,” said Colby. “Please.” He couldn’t stop himself. All he could do was hope she didn’t know what he was begging for.

               Sage groaned. “Oh, this is so tough! But I have to do it. I have to do it right.” She turned away from the drafting table and headed for the front door.

               “You’re leaving?” asked Colby. “You’re sparing my work? You’re sparing me?”

               Sage sighed. “You know how frustrating it is when no one gets what you’re going for, right?”

               “Yes,” said Colby.

               “But knowing that isn’t enough,” said Sage. “Is it?”

               “Enough for what?” asked Colby.

               “You don’t get it,” said Sage.

               “No,” said Colby.

               “And you don’t even want to try,” said Sage.

               “I guess not,” said Colby.

               “One more question before I go,” said Sage. “Is there a difference between only making noise imperceptible to human hearing and being truly silent?”

               It was a question Colby had considered many times before. Many times. But after The Harmer disappeared into the black hours of the morning, her question, fueled by the nearness of the miss, the closeness of the call, burned inside of Colby with an intensity he had not felt in years, and he stayed up well past dawn conceptualizing the silent car at a level that he himself comprehended at only the most instinctual level.

               And in the days and weeks and months that followed, Colby would occasionally pause to examine himself for signs of harm, for trace effects of a harm operating in the background, for indications of harm’s stealthy approach. Finding none, he would shrug and return to his concept. These pauses became less frequent until they ceased entirely. His silent car concept had momentum like never before, progressing in great leaps, whispering through new avenues of thought at great speed, not quite silent, not quite, not quite. But getting there.