I was experimented upon.

It was the last day of last April, while I was checking emails in my lab, when a nice lady came in a desperate flurry and pleaded me to help her. How could I refuse a damsel in distress, flushed and blustering as she was?

Turned out she wanted me to be an experimental subject. I said, okay, no problems. After all, she said the experiment would only take 20-40 mins.

(You know you’ve inhaled something deadly when you agree to a range and believe resolutely that it will take only a couple of minutes anyway.)

I followed her through a series of dark hallways, turning around enough corners that I knew I would not be able to find my way back. If I survived the experiment, that is.

Soon, we arrived in her laboratory and she pointed to a small cabin. I entered it with much apprehension. She strapped me to a chair, blinded me with a pair of weird goggles and covered my ears with huge headphones.

She asked me if I was comfortable.

I nodded. Slowly, carefully.

Then she left me and closed the door behind her. Complete darkness descended upon me immediately. Even my jagged breaths were nothing but dry heaves, muffled by the soundproof walls, which reminded me of those in lunatic asylums.

No one can hear you scream in space.

(Well, enclosed spaces anyway.)

Suddenly, bright light filled my eyes. I had video. And I could hear the scrabbling, scratching sounds of her outside the cabin, prodding switches and pulling levers.

Those noises made me feel more nervous than the previous darkness and silence combined.

And then she spoke to me.

“Uhm, can you hear me?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, good. Now you will hear some noises, okay?”

“Yeah?”

“Pay attention to the first sound. It will be the control sound. We will call it … The Control Sound.”

“Yeah…”

“Then you will hear another sound. You will please compare this sound with The Control Sound and give me a Number. The Control Sound is 100. You tell me what Number you think the sound feels like. Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, good. Then,” and here she paused, before continuing, “you will hear The Control Sound. Again. And then, another sound. Give me another Number. And we do it again. And again. Okay?”

“Yeah…”

“Good, good, GOOD. Now we can start. Are you ready?”

“Yeah!”

I heard the headphones crackle, and then the noise, er, I mean The Control Sound, began. At the same time the screen turned black and I could see a small number one at the bottom right corner.

The Control Sound reminded me of a train, crunching rusty tracks. As it faded away, the screen changed from black to a video of a sunny countryside. Then a train (see, I was right) passed by, rumbling as trains do.

Okay.

After awhile, I realised she was waiting for me to say something, so I bent down to the microphone on the table in front of me somewhere and announced:

“Seventy?”

Apparently she was satisfied with the Number. She replayed The Control Sound again, the black screen returning with the number two now. And then the next train. I knew what to do this time.

“Eighty-five.”

I soon discovered I could better judge the quality of the sounds if I closed my eyes and blocked out the distracting images. After forty-three abysmally boring noise sequences, the screen broke up into the words “Vielen Dank”.

The woman came in and removed my bindings. At last, daylight! Feeling awfully bewildered, I asked her what the experiment was about. (Looking back, perhaps I should have asked beforehand.)

She told me it was a psycho-acoustic experiment to gauge human auditory response to visual stimulation.

“Visual stimulation?”

“Yes, we wanted to know how you would judge the quality of the sounds with the help of the images.”

“Oh.”

“It’s a very important part of the experiment. Car makers will use this data to decide how their cars should sound to attract buyers viewing them.”

“Oh.”

“So you’ve been a great help. Maybe the next model of BMW or Audi would sound different because of the Numbers you gave me.”

“OH.”

“Thank you for your time. And here, have a chocolate.”

I stared at the minibar of Ritters Sport in disbelief. I took one, thanked her for it and left as quickly as I could, praying the next Volvo would not sound like a hen frying an egg.

I am not known for the excellence of my hearing capabilities, to put things mildly.

Now, the strange part of the story is that it really happened. And I still had the chocolate bar afterwards to prove it.

I just didn’t dare eat it.

.

Copyright © 2003 Kenny Mah Ying Fye.