Piercing through a veil woven with the din of background sounds—the ticking clock, the furnace, the trickling fountain—was an incoherent chime. Not the sound of a pure note, like that from a piano key, or the alarm of the fridge complaining of an open door. This one was different; it was impure. It was a messy sound. It was one that combined many different frequencies that clashed, that expressed itself as something natural and uncontrived.