Samantha could hear through her skin thanks to the implant.
Deaf from birth, she was the benefit of a medical technology breakthrough pioneered by Dr. Zaccheus Moroni.
“Paper resonates with a touch,” he said, “and if one were to attach a sensor to that paper and amplify it, it could be made into a microphone. Why not skin?”
Using subdermal micropore sheets grafted under her skin at her ankles, knees, wrists, elbows, and shoulders, Samantha’s body could be turned into a giant unidirectional microphone. A larger sheet was slipped under the skin of her back to cover the chest’s resonance cage and one more was slid under her scalp.
An nanoprocessor wired to her auditory cortex collated the data from these ‘flat-mikes’ and dumped all available surrounding air vibrations through her skin and into her mind.
The problems were sensitivity and translation. Human minds like a certain volume and are slow to learn new sensations. Samantha had control over the volume by briefly concentrating.
Clothes provided an ocean surf of background noise with every movement. Rain dotted her body with tiny thuds. Running her hands through her hair sounded like wind through the leaves of trees. Music moved her like a puppet.
She ‘heard’ the most clearly while she was naked.
During sex, every touch on her skin became a whisper. Every slap was a shout. Conversely, every yell of her lover ruffled over her skin. Every word of love was felt with her entire body and relayed to her mind as sound. It was a new synesthetic language of the senses.
The only problem was her own voice. If she yelled too loud, it created feedback in her skull and removed her from the moment, forcing her to concentrate and to turn her auditory skin’s sensitivity down. She was quiet by habit now, biting her lips when she needed to scream.
Alone, afterward, she would stand naked in the darkness of her living room, feeling love, and listen to the world.
She didn’t cock her head to triangulate directions when she heard something. People with two ears did that because they needed a third point of data.
She knew exactly where it was coming from.
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