Shell game

When you hold a seashell to your ear, it sounds like the ocean. Of course it doesn’t sound exactly like the ocean, but the day you found that particular shell you were walking along a beach, and the crystal clear blue water stretched away as far as you could see.

Afterward, you brought the shell back with you, to the city. Surrounded once more by the hustle and bustle, the constant chatter and sounds of traffic, you held the shell up to your ear and you said “Ah, the ocean sounds just like — this.”

But sometimes you might find yourself on a lovely beach and realize you miss your city home, just a little. The crazy traffic sounds, the roar of the subway, the cafes full of strangers arguing late into the blustery night.

For those times, perhaps you can reverse engineer the shell. Then you can take it with you on vacation, pack it in your bag between the socks and the toothpaste. And when you need to be reminded of home, you hold it to your ear, and you hear the traffic, the noise, the calls of street vendors and hissing brakes of municipal buses — the constant reassuring hum of the big city.

The shell knows whether it is in town or not — a simple embedded radio receiver sees to that, listening for frequencies found only in the city. Now you will always be able to take that city with you, just for those moments when you really need it.

After you get home again to your little apartment in town, your vacation just a memory, you find the shell in your bag, in its place between the toothpaste and socks. You hold it up to your ear one more time.

And hear only the sounds of the whispering ocean.