It came from everywhere. TV’s, radios, washing machines, refrigerators, stoves, computers, sometimes the electrical sockets themselves would emit that low hum. It depended on how close you were to the source.

They called it the Texas Hum. It was so named when the origin was detected somewhere in the western part of Texas. It’s been theorized that the government was sending out this signal as an attempt to harness the electrical power grid as a channel for introducing mind control beams, or some other such nonsense.

Of course this is all conjecture.

Ellie was 12 years old when she first heard the Hum. No one else could hear it, and she had been through every conceivable hearing test devised. Her parents finally settled on the last doctor’s diagnosis of tinnitus. And Ellie accepted it for the time being.

She would devote herself to science, trying to find an explanation for the infernal rhythmic noise that kept her awake at night, and tormented her by day.

The answer would come to her on her 26th birthday.