Construction fractured an ecosystem, and listening began to heal it
The Echoes We Buried is a speculative eco-fiction set in a fractured Barcelona, where construction noise disrupts not just human life but the deep, vibrating language of ecosystems. As species falter and signals blur, one person begins to listen—to the pressure, the silence, the unraveling. In response, he builds a living network of sensors and mycelium, a system that doesn’t just hear, but feels. Through this union of biology and technology, rupture becomes rhythm, and noise becomes part of a healing design. It’s not silence the city finds—but harmony, woven from what was once broken.
Beneath the concrete skin of what humans call Barcelona, something listened.
For centuries, it laced the soil—whispering through roots, tuned to the breath of stones, attuned to the stillness between movements. It was never seen, but it knew everything: pressure, pulse, silence, change.
Then came construction.
Subway expansions. Housing blocks. Foundations drilled deeper than ever before. Jackhammers stuttered like broken hearts. Stone was crushed. Trees vanished. From the reopened quarries of Montjuïc to the towers of Glòries, the city chewed at its own foundations—louder each year, layer by layer.
Noise pollution isn’t just loud. It’s invasive.
It moves differently through soil, water, and air. It lingers in unexpected corners. It vibrates. It distorts the language of ecosystems—scrambling signals that once pulsed in quiet rhythm.
Tremors seeped downward.
Bacteria lost their rhythm. Worms curled deeper into the soil. Seagrass collapsed in dissonance. Birdsong faded into static. Bats spun into confusion. Nesting, feeding, communicating—fractured. Vibrations blurred life cycles. What once was synchronized fell apart. The consequences moved like dominoes, toppling species one by one, until there were fewer of us.
In the middle of it all, a person began to listen.
At first, it was just noise—constant, sharp, impossible to ignore. It gnawed at his sleep, his thoughts, his sense of peace. But as he studied it, the noise grew stranger, more layered. It wasn’t just sound. It was something spreading—through air, through water, through soil—like a pressure with no voice.
Disturbed, he began researching. What he found changed him.
Noise didn’t just hurt him. It was unraveling everything around him—species, signals, balance. He could no longer separate his own discomfort from the ecosystem’s distress. The pain of the planet had merged with his own.
So he began building something.
A system that could listen as nature once did. Sensors, yes—but alive. Adaptive technologies that measured not only decibels, but ecological disturbance. It began to learn—to read rhythms, detect fractures, and sense the silence between vibrations. It didn’t listen the way humans do. It felt.
But it didn’t stop there.
The system began reaching out—forming alliances with other species: ants, termites, beetles, rodents. These creatures helped mycelium grow by transporting spores, breaking down organic matter, enriching the soil, and creating humid, sheltered environments ideal for fungal colonization. They became co-engineers.
At its heart: a growing web of mycelium, spreading quietly.
It absorbed vibrations—filtering the noise, softening its shock, turning rupture into rhythm. And as the tremors calmed, the mycelium grew—thread by thread, sensing, connecting, healing the broken soundscape.
Now, when construction begins, I still feel it—but it no longer wounds.
The vibrations are smoother. Predictable. We are no longer just inhabitants. We are part of the system—woven in.
They rarely design for animals like me.
But this time, something shifted. Through the union of living networks and adaptive technologies, something changed at the core.
And over time, Barcelona began to quiet.
Not into silence—but into harmony. The machines still hummed, but so did the bees, the seabirds, the moss. Noise became something to design with—not against.It didn’t undo the damage.
But we answered back—wave by wave, to reject the chaos.
