When the Waves Took Me

The ocean sounds were my anchor. They had to be. When you’re pushing frequencies past 100,000 hertz and your own brain is the test subject, you need something to hold onto. Something real. Something that doesn’t feel like it’s about to pull you apart from the inside.

I remember the way the tape recorder clicked when I turned it on. That small, mechanical sound—the certainty of it. A tiny witness. I placed it on the desk beside my notes, beside the headset I’d taken apart and rebuilt more times than I could count. Wires hanging out the sides like entrails. A Frankenstein of my own making.

I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. Breathed in from my belly, not my chest. That was the trick. Chest breathing brings anxiety—I’d learned that years ago, back when I thought meditation was just something people did to feel superior. Belly breathing brings clarity. Or at least, it brings something close enough to clarity that you can pretend the rest doesn’t matter.

One, breathe out. Two, breathe in. Three, out. Four.

The ocean sounds washed over me. Waves against a shore I’d never seen. Birds I’d never heard in real life. But they felt real. They felt like somewhere I could go, somewhere safe. Somewhere far away from the KIA and their questions, from the letter that had appeared in my apartment, from Tarif and his comfortable little world that he’d probably never leave again.

I tried not to think about Tarif. Tried not to think about the man across the street smoking his cigarette, watching my coffee shop without watching me. Tried not to think about what my brother had done—what he was still doing, somewhere out there, with doors he’d opened without understanding what was on the other side.

Fifty breaths. That was the count. Fifty breaths, and then silence. Just the ocean. Just the waves. Just the slow, rhythmic pulse of something that felt almost like peace.

I placed the headset over my ears.

The sound hit me immediately—high, piercing, oscillating. Frequencies rushing in and out like tides. Up and down, back and forth. A wave made of sound, made of numbers, made of everything I’d spent the last three years building and breaking and rebuilding again.

The binaural beats theory was simple enough. Present a 500Hz tone to the left ear, a 510Hz tone to the right. The brain assembles the difference—10Hz—and that difference becomes something new. Something that doesn’t exist in the physical world, only in the space between your ears. Two eyes give you depth perception. Two ears give you a doorway.

But we’d pushed past simple binaural beats at Netex. Past the basic applications of calmness or anxiety or anger. We were into something else now. Something that the government had noticed. Something that Stephen Kane and Mark Taylor had smiled about in elevators while avoiding my questions.

“Ultimately, yes,” Kane had said. But his voice had hesitated. His eyes had shifted. And I’d known, in that moment, that whatever we were building was never going to end up in consumer hands. Not the way I’d imagined. Not the way I’d hoped.

The frequencies climbed higher. Past 100,000 hertz now. Past the range of human hearing. Past the range of anything I’d tested on myself before.

My body began to rise.

That’s what it felt like. Rising. Lifting away from the chair, away from the desk, away from the tape recorder that was still running, still witnessing, still holding onto the real world for me. The ocean sounds grew louder, then softer, then louder again. The waves crashed against a shore that I could almost see. The birds called out to each other in voices that sounded almost like words.

I was dreaming. I knew I was dreaming. But I couldn’t wake up.

There was sand beneath my feet.

I don’t know when I first felt it—the grit of it, the warmth, the way it shifted under my weight like something alive. I don’t know when the sound of the waves became the feel of the water, lapping at my ankles, pulling at the hem of my jeans. I don’t know when I opened my eyes to find myself standing on a beach that I’d never seen before, under a sky that was the wrong shade of blue.

But I was there. I was there, and I wasn’t in my study anymore.

The air smelled like salt and something else. Something metallic. Something that reminded me of the letter I’d received, the one that had sent me running back to my apartment, burying myself in work, pretending that if I just understood the technology well enough, I could protect us from ourselves.

But there was no protecting anyone here. There was only the beach, and the waves, and the feeling that I was being watched.

I turned around.

There was a figure in the distance. Standing at the edge of the water, looking out at the horizon. I couldn’t make out their face, couldn’t tell if they were man or woman, friend or threat. But they were there. They had always been there, maybe. Waiting for me to find this place.

I took a step toward them. The sand shifted. The waves pulled at my feet. The ocean sounds grew louder, more insistent, like they were trying to tell me something I didn’t want to hear.

And then the sky cracked.

Not with thunder. Not with lightning. With something worse—something that felt like a sound and a feeling and a thought all at once. A frequency that didn’t exist in the physical world. A note that had never been played on any instrument, that had never been heard by any ear, that had only ever existed in the space between the left and the right, the real and the unreal, the door and the doorframe.

I fell to my knees. The sand was cold now. The waves were retreating. The figure on the horizon was gone.

I opened my mouth to scream, but the sound that came out wasn’t mine.

It was Jacob’s voice. My brother’s voice. Saying something I couldn’t understand, in a language I’d never heard, from a place I’d never been.

The tape recorder clicked off.

I woke up on the floor of my study, the headset still on my ears, the ocean sounds still playing, the waves still crashing against a shore that existed only in my mind. My hands were shaking. My chest was heaving. I was breathing from my chest now—short, panicked breaths that brought nothing but anxiety and the taste of metal.

I pulled the headset off and threw it across the room. It hit the wall and cracked open, wires spilling out like veins. I stared at it for a long time. Minutes. Hours. I don’t know. The sun had moved across the floor, and my legs had gone numb, and the tape recorder was still sitting on the desk, waiting for me to press play and hear what I’d said.

I didn’t press play. Not then. Not for a long time.

Because I already knew what I’d find. I’d find proof that the technology worked. That the frequencies could transport someone to another place, another state of being, another reality. I’d find proof that everything I’d built, everything I’d helped create, was more dangerous than I’d ever imagined.

And I’d find proof that my brother had already been there. That Jacob had opened the door first. That he’d walked through it and found something on the other side, something that had changed him, something that had sent him running from the KIA and from me and from everything he’d ever known.

I didn’t know what he’d found. I didn’t know if he was alive or dead or something in between. I didn’t know if I would ever see him again, or if I would ever be able to look him in the eye if I did.

But I knew one thing, with the certainty of a number that doesn’t lie: I was going to find him. I was going to find him, and I was going to understand what he’d done, and I was going to make it right.

Or I was going to die trying.

The ocean sounds kept playing. The waves kept crashing. The birds kept calling out to each other in voices that sounded almost like words.

And somewhere out there, on a beach I’d never seen, in a place that didn’t exist, my brother was waiting for me.

This is just one moment from Seventh Journey. If you want to experience the full story, it’s available on Amazon.

📚 The Seventh Journey Trilogy

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When the Waves Took Me