When the City Falls Silent, Please Hear the Voices Never Spoken

I sit alone in my small apartment near Union Station, rain tapping the window like a forgotten hymn. My mother used to hum Cuban lullabies in Spanish while she cleaned hospital halls after night shifts—her voice a thread through generations I never recorded. My father, a Black veteran, would tell me stories of streets that didn’t make it home—each one a pixel of resilience.

I turned those echoes into code.

Using Unity and Unreal Engine, I built an interactive narrative called ‘Echoes of the City’: not a game for win or fame—but a space where loneliness speaks back. Players don’t ‘level up.’ They sit. They listen. A child’s drawing on a wall becomes sacred when no one else hears it.

I embedded RNNs trained on oral histories—not RNGs chasing high RTPs—but emotional rhythms only those who’ve been told they’re invisible know by heart.

One user wrote: ‘I played this at 2 AM after my shift too… and cried because I finally heard my grandmother’s voice again.’

That’s when I knew: technology isn’t meant to replace memory—it’s meant to hold it.

We don’t need more stars. We need quieter lights.

Join me this Friday night at Neon Circle: submit your own silent story. No profile needed. Just your voice—and the place it came from.