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Speaker 1: Hullo. I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.

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Let's get into it. Maybe it was the thunder that

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kept me awake, or the cheap coffee, or the glassy

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fatigue that sits in after midnight when the city turns

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to shadow. Either way, I was in the cusp of

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signing off for the night at w CCX, half sprawled

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in a crack final chair that squeaked every time I

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adjusted the fader. The storm outside spat against the windows,

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the kind of rain that slucked the streets with oil

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and made even the knee and look wilted. Dead air

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stretched between the late night Jaz sat to my last

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call O, a woman wanting to complain about a barking dog.

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My voice droned over the A, M hiss, this is

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Sam Reynolds. You're listening to w CCX, your station for

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the sleepless and strange signing off until to morrow. Somewhere overhead,

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lightning made the lights blink up for a heartbeat before steading.

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That's when a phone rang again. Not the line that

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blinks with hopeful listeners and cranks, but the direct studio wire,

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coldless and heavy, the one with the labor partly peel

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from its base like a scab. A first I almost

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didn't pick up, but it was one fifty eight a m.

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And the only thing lonelier than a talk show host

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after sign off is the one who can't resist chasing

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Just one more voice. The line sounded brittle, closer to

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a cold wind than a human presence. Then you're still there,

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not a question. A man's voice scratchedy older. He sounded

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as if every would cost a night a sleep. W

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C c X. I said, this is Sam, you're on

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the air. He hesitated. The car's engine murmured in the background.

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I need to tell you what happened. I saw it,

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I saw all of it. Something about his tone pinched

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at me. Too clear for a prank, too desperate for

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a story. Storms like this, berth accidents and stations like

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I was collected the wreckage. Go ahead, I said, glancing

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at the clock two zero way, And but what did

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you see? He took two shallow breaths, the silence calling

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around his words. There was a crash north y Duck

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the bridge at Harbor and seven at Silverburick plate numbers

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eight y yes seventy one. Jazz was playing something with

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a trumpet, blue and green. I think paths of water

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blurred the security glass. She was standing there, yellow coat,

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blood on the garb rail. That happened at two three

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a m. Not a sound of just this hush, like

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the world stopped to watch. My hand tightened round the phone,

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the weight of oppressing my palm. Sir, are you safe?

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Have you called the police? I waited, he whispered, No sirens.

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Nobody came. The street lights flickered, and everything was fixed

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in place. I want someone to know. Don't let them

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say it never happened. For a second, the signal flickered,

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warping his words. She looked at me, he said, voice fraying.

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And then there was this yellow hush, like a cut

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through the rain. Remember that yellow coat, yellow cut, yellow hush.

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Don't let them. The coal severed with a crunch. I sat,

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breath stalled, foam sweating in my hand. I tried red aling,

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but the number flashed all's errors, like most late night coals.

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The air outside thickened, No sirens, just thunder rumbling low

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behind the glass. I watched the needle twitch in the

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signal meter, felt the smallest pulse deep in my ear,

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and for a suspended moment, every routine that had kept

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me afloat in nights, like the seam paper thin, the

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tape still rolled, catching the static on the line, the

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slide of my chair on terraza floor. When I finally

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found my voice, it was just to close the show

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with half a cent in, something about rainsaw halt, And

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I never heard the end of it myself. When I

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let the street swallowed my head lights and the station

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faded behind me, stucco box nested between darkness and drizzle,

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holding a voice, a vanish call, and a story I

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couldn't shake, even as the city blinked out around me,

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one sodium lamp at a time. A day later, mondane

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routines held the ground by force. The next evening began

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as every other, with my microwave pinging precisely at the

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eight zero p m, summoning its polymer tray of chop

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mystery meat and limp vegetables. I watched the box spinning

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beneath the yellow kitchen light, the numbers taking down in soft,

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familiar rhythm, and tried not to think about the voice

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from the night before. Ten hours earlier had scribbled the

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details on the back of a junk male envelope, yellow coat,

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silverbuck Viduct two three. The pendug so hard it threatened

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to split the paper. I left the envelope face down

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on my counter, unable to decide if I was chasing

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a story or symptom. The city outside my apartment building

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shrank with each passing week, factories exhaling their lost workers,

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and steel skeleton stripped for copper. I zipped my coat

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and walked east, pass burnt at Stauffen's promising easy money,

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past brook walls polka dotted with flyers for yard sails

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and missing kats whose faces had faded into a legibility.

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The air had a tan of wet concrete and tired diesel,

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the kind that stuck to your clauds. It was the

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same descated artery of streets I'd known for years, only empty.

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A couple blocks from the station hadlets called by, making

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greasy reflection shimmer and potholes. I kept walking beneath loose

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power lines, wishing for a stiff drink. The radio station

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squatted at the edge of a once busy boulevard, flat

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roof and yellow stuck out forever one step from condonation.

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Its sign that seed in w CCX clickering like an eyelid,

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was taped at the edges with carboard to keep the

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rain from shortening the bulbs. When I arrived, Lisa was

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at the engineer's desk, her feet resting on a battered crate.

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How lapt up a glow with digital chest pieces in

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mid battle, she gave me a nod A sliding one

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abodel here or late Reynolds. Frank's looking to get the

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sports lot again, advertiser's pult you earn any of this?

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I grunted and tossed her a leftover sandwich, which she ignored.

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My routine fit around her as joke snack chick a

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weather of void complaints from management. I scribbled my sign

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on notes and took stock of the night's playlist. Farther

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down the hall, Frank hollowed into the phone, his voice

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too optus, louder than anyone demanded sell the slot. Doesn't

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matter who feels it to just get a car dealership

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at DANCARATEI school anyone. There was no producer for the

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overnight shift at Bess. You got Frank's clip reminders to

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read the p s A. At worst, you got his

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noise about profit margins. So I stacked my playlist and

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double checked the transmit readings, humming under my breath an

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attempt to come to some muscle memory from my old life,

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when nerves used to mean a story, not survival. I

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had landed at w CCX four years earlier, spiraling out

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of a headline staff reporter suspended to fabricated source alleged

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in council scandal. I'd written too much for too long,

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asked questions of kept's, circling back to the same deliberately

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empty names until I used one that was never supposed

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to be found. My editor through me under a bus

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and told the press had made the source up. The

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phone call started, so did the whisky. By the time

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the courts had done their awkward tap dancing, my apot

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was more empty bottles and furniture. All I could was

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drift through the cracks and tell something anything stuck. WCCX

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didn't ask about old enemies. They just needed someone who

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could fill the space between ads for discount carpeting and

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weather warnings. My callers kept me company, lonely pensioners in Zomiac,

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security guards, the odd conspiracy crank with at effects machine

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in a grudge, never truly dangerous, never truly strange. The

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booth walls were covered with posters for concerts no one remembered,

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and appeal notices for save the Station that had begun

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yellowing before I arrived. The control board was slick with age,

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but each button gave up only tacit resistance. The hum

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of the transmitted became companionable noise. Sometimes, when Lisa got

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bored of chess, she tapped out Morse code on the

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studio table, grinning slyly, as if to remind me what

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actual intrigue looked like. But as the clockhead eleven fifteen

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nine p m. I found myself scanning the phone logs

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for unfamiliar numbers, glancing at the silent studio door, waiting

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for some hint that last night had been a misfire,

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that my mind was so expert at sabotaging itself had

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simply gone for a walk in the rain. The show

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started with a long sigh and the static stitch segue

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into open line Night Edition. My voice poured out, as

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if from someone else, w cc X for the Sleepless

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and the night Bound. This is Sam Reynauld. Fun lines

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are open. The monotony reasserted itself, but the room felt colder,

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slicker at the hum of old plastic, unable to drown

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out a new peculius stillness. I tried to lose myself

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in the ritual of it, but every cough of a transmitter,

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every creek from the dump in the walls pressed on me.

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The anissipation nestled just beneath my collar bone, like knowing

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you've left stove on somewhere far behind you. By twelve forty,

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I'd only taken two calls, an elderly woman disputing the

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size of her property tax bill and a teenager half

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heartedly confessing to fence hopping. My mind replayed the voice

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from the night before, the trembling kiddence, the specificity that

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cut through the fog of the ires, yellow coat, yellow cut,

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yellow hush. I searched for a groove, for the old

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comfort of a city half listening in the dark, But

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the night, usually so forgiven in its dull lake, now

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seemed pointalistic, every moment, paving the way for the one

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where routine would surely shatter midship. I found myself pulling

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up the police scamplug in on my weather station lapt

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up fingers pecking past an apocalypse of pop ups. There

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was nothing, no crash, no accident, just scattered reports of

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down tree limbs and a traffic light out on Fourth.

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A couple of minutes on the city's Live incident fee

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confirmed the same. Not a whisper about the viaduct, the

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buck or the woman in yellow. I replayed the previous

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night's call. The tape hissed up close, the voice seemed

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to bend, the words gliding between present and absent. Touches

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of static were meanings should have been? He'd said it

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so clearly, yellow coat, yellow cut, yellow hush, the phrase linger,

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dragging a chill through the booth of a broad argand entangle.

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My tongue found the words in my mouth, trying out

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their taste, strange, clashing, oddly rhythmic. I appeared at the

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load book cross referencing the coal time two three a m.

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The number read withheld, which sometimes happened, but the lulks

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showed a string of zero, untraceable, not standard for private numbers. Unsettled.

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As called the city Council news fees on my phone,

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looking for any mention of accidents, disruptions or public warnings nothing.

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At one forty six a m. Another call came in

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the line, buzzing, as if already reluctant. Here on w CCA,

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I said, voice sounded thin with tightness. I paused. Then

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a different voice, female, this time pitched high with nerves.

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I need to report a fire. It just happened off

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Summer Street, the old textile warehouse. Flames blue, almost purple.

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So I car pulled away fast, gray hondacord placed done

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jam in as eight hundred twenty six. Someone dropped something

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at the gate of folder blue, singed on one corner.

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It should still be there. My pen hovered, then scratched

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down details, ma'am, have you called the fire department? Her

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breath caught. They were already gone, but nobody's saying anything.

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There was this hush. The fire went out like it

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was sucked up, all quiet. I had to find a phone.

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Remember the folder blue, Folder blue, flames, yellow hush. I froze.

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Excuse me, can you repeat that? She spat out the

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words almost angrily, yellow hush. It was so quiet it

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happens at two three. I tried to untangle the contradiction

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when exactly she didn't blink. I looked at the clock.

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I always look two three, please you have to The

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cold jerked, fizzled, ended. I hung up, feeling my pole

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break its rhythm. There was no mention on the five scanner,

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no chatter on the city's feeds. The building she described

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was a few blocks from the viaduct, the one from

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the night before, blue folder, GREYHANDA two three a M.

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I bit the inside of my cheek. I replayed both

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calls side by side, this time tuning into kittens overlapped

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the unusual phrasing. Both had used yellow hush. Both described

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hyperspecific details. No official source confirmed the license plate numbers

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were precise, plausible, but I could not verify them. Both events,

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minutes apart, occurred exactly at two three. My scalprickled coincidence

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or design. After the show wrapped, I couldn't force attention loose.

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I jotted everything into my battered notebook. Details crolled in

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block letters. The hum of the gear never felt so fragile.

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The city's static pressed at the glass with a new urgency.

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I locked up streets empty and washed in sodium and rain. Later,

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lying in bed while freight trains wailed in the distance,

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I dreamt of yellow wrinkoats and broken headlights, just bleeding

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through static blue folders, drifting in an eily puddle that

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reflected nothing. The next night, something broke in my patience.

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I found myself falling down harbor in my battered saturn

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the stations, becky, sweating in my pocket. The viaduct was

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slick with rain under a broken street lamp, but the

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guard rail was a marred no glass, no blood, no

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sign of a buke or yellow coat. Even the grit

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on the rub was and disturbed puddles intact, as if

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00:11:20,279 --> 00:11:23,200
the world had rejected the caller's memory. I stood there

234
00:11:23,200 --> 00:11:25,960
a while, as closed let in the street. Silence seep

235
00:11:26,000 --> 00:11:29,960
in my nerves vibrated with something more above. Current arked

236
00:11:30,000 --> 00:11:32,559
through the lines, and somewhere beneath it a phantom jazz

237
00:11:32,559 --> 00:11:35,080
liquin through my memory. I checked my phone for the

238
00:11:35,120 --> 00:11:39,120
hundred to time, no new incidents, no emergency alerts. Returning

239
00:11:39,120 --> 00:11:41,639
to the station at twelve fifteen, I was jumpy, scanning

240
00:11:41,679 --> 00:11:45,080
the street for any stray watcher. Inside, Lisa was battling

241
00:11:45,080 --> 00:11:47,639
the end game against the grand Master. Bought cigarette tapped

242
00:11:47,679 --> 00:11:50,159
behind her ear. She eyed the sweat on my brow,

243
00:11:50,840 --> 00:11:54,480
looking for ghosts Reynolds. I shook my head, pulling up

244
00:11:54,480 --> 00:11:56,559
the night's coal logs from the battered front desk PIECI.

245
00:11:57,120 --> 00:12:00,200
The log stretched back decades, half dropped the co from

246
00:12:00,200 --> 00:12:02,960
the night before flass opice, unknown duration time sum to

247
00:12:03,000 --> 00:12:05,840
exactly two three eleven. The night before that, the male

248
00:12:05,879 --> 00:12:08,759
call as was recorded for forty seven seconds, cutting sharply

249
00:12:08,799 --> 00:12:11,480
at two three fifty nine. On a hunch, I pulled

250
00:12:11,519 --> 00:12:14,480
up recordings for three nights earlier. No weird calls, just

251
00:12:14,559 --> 00:12:17,679
normal static yet pinned around the same block of time.

252
00:12:17,759 --> 00:12:20,639
A handful of minor complaints and prank calls reappeared, each

253
00:12:20,679 --> 00:12:23,960
with some permutation of hush or quiet. It could be habited,

254
00:12:24,000 --> 00:12:26,879
not a fact of fatigue mines. But now I was

255
00:12:26,919 --> 00:12:29,480
certain the last two nights had been different, both calls

256
00:12:29,480 --> 00:12:32,919
referring to something that didn't exist, and both callers dropping

257
00:12:32,919 --> 00:12:35,240
the same phrase yellow hush, like actors working from the

258
00:12:35,279 --> 00:12:38,320
same script. I pinned print tepster a thumbtact wal map

259
00:12:38,360 --> 00:12:42,080
i'd once intended for signal strength studies, red pushpins for away.

260
00:12:42,080 --> 00:12:44,799
Each event was described to the viaduct the warehouse, both

261
00:12:44,840 --> 00:12:47,679
within a few blocks of the station. My hand trembled

262
00:12:47,679 --> 00:12:49,799
as if drew a rough circle, tying the locations together

263
00:12:49,919 --> 00:12:53,200
with w CC Exitus Center. The night show began, and

264
00:12:53,399 --> 00:12:55,720
just as I queued the opening jingle, an anonymous email

265
00:12:55,759 --> 00:12:58,240
landed in my in books, subject line free your files.

266
00:12:58,960 --> 00:13:02,320
Attached a crumpled scan newspaper clipping from nineteen ninety seven,

267
00:13:02,440 --> 00:13:05,879
headline unexplained blackout stones downtown midnight, panic as city goes

268
00:13:05,960 --> 00:13:09,600
dark in faded highlighter phrases popped out a circle of light,

269
00:13:09,759 --> 00:13:14,080
yellow hush, a cine folders, unusual radioactivity. The sender's address

270
00:13:14,120 --> 00:13:17,440
was gibberish, an impossible string of zeros and ones. My

271
00:13:17,480 --> 00:13:20,039
back prickle with sweat. I snapped the print up next

272
00:13:20,039 --> 00:13:22,840
to the map thumbta, exploitting the words yellow, hush, my

273
00:13:22,919 --> 00:13:26,679
chestnech like cold set concrete, one question, nod. Beneath every

274
00:13:26,679 --> 00:13:30,279
action was the someone's elaborate prank, or as I finally

275
00:13:30,320 --> 00:13:32,679
hearing the shape of something true, something I'd missed behind

276
00:13:32,679 --> 00:13:35,639
all the static. It was after midnight when coal started

277
00:13:35,639 --> 00:13:39,080
coming in, thick and fast. The first about a missing person,

278
00:13:39,159 --> 00:13:42,320
last scene standing beneath the main street clock, her yellow scarf,

279
00:13:42,399 --> 00:13:45,399
the last thing anyone remembered. The second and on air

280
00:13:45,480 --> 00:13:47,919
argument about a building of evacuation. The sirens was so bright

281
00:13:48,000 --> 00:13:50,480
it was like a blue cut through everything. A third

282
00:13:50,639 --> 00:13:54,039
were reporting a city block blackout, A powdered hush, yellow hush.

283
00:13:54,720 --> 00:13:57,559
These one friendly or random micius the same catchphrases as

284
00:13:57,600 --> 00:14:00,840
the earlier anonymous calls. At the Adam settled over the

285
00:14:00,840 --> 00:14:03,559
show like a mold. I changed tactics, interrogating the next

286
00:14:03,600 --> 00:14:07,120
collar your name, They dodged. How do you know this

287
00:14:07,159 --> 00:14:10,360
happened at two three? A nervous chuckle. Then I always

288
00:14:10,440 --> 00:14:12,879
checked the clock. You know how it is. The next

289
00:14:12,879 --> 00:14:15,000
call was cold and mirthless. I did what you said,

290
00:14:15,080 --> 00:14:18,039
left the folder yellow hush. The circle is almost closed.

291
00:14:18,519 --> 00:14:21,399
The cool practice certainty sent a cold dart through my spine.

292
00:14:21,879 --> 00:14:24,360
Who are you? I threw up them, but the call

293
00:14:24,399 --> 00:14:27,600
cut to static. My fingers punched the map with new pins.

294
00:14:27,639 --> 00:14:31,120
Lisa watched me knitting brow Reynolds. You're muttering to yourself

295
00:14:31,159 --> 00:14:34,240
that a new audience dema or are you losing it? She'dadpad,

296
00:14:34,399 --> 00:14:37,320
looking over my shoulder. I loosened my grip in the shop,

297
00:14:38,240 --> 00:14:41,480
just tracking some crank calls, nothing serious. But above her

298
00:14:41,519 --> 00:14:43,559
head the map blazed with fresh color. News made of

299
00:14:43,600 --> 00:14:46,960
red plastic, each event closing around the station's center. That

300
00:14:47,120 --> 00:14:50,600
was when the anonymous email arrived, subject line, do you

301
00:14:50,639 --> 00:14:54,759
remember no body? Only? In attached clipping newsprint from April

302
00:14:54,759 --> 00:14:58,600
two thousand seven describing citywide relay failures and unexplained interference

303
00:14:58,639 --> 00:15:02,679
in a municipal radio towers, more passages highlighted, a yellow hush,

304
00:15:02,879 --> 00:15:05,480
a circle of signal, a blue folder, and in the

305
00:15:05,519 --> 00:15:08,559
margins someone scrawl. The voice knows where you are. I

306
00:15:08,639 --> 00:15:11,399
sat heavily, the frictionless tunnel of dread burrowing down my skull.

307
00:15:11,960 --> 00:15:15,000
The night president choked of accent, mystery, now force and close.

308
00:15:15,200 --> 00:15:18,000
Something was happening in my space, and someone or something

309
00:15:18,120 --> 00:15:21,240
was listening too closely to what I didn't say. Toward morning,

310
00:15:21,320 --> 00:15:23,799
I drive myself through the closing eye of stacking commercial

311
00:15:23,840 --> 00:15:26,600
cuts to fill the silences left by my hesitation. The

312
00:15:26,639 --> 00:15:28,720
storm had returned to flattening the city's night to tin

313
00:15:28,799 --> 00:15:31,799
and whispers. At one thirty five came the worse coll

314
00:15:31,879 --> 00:15:34,440
yet silence, A first, then a slow intake of breath,

315
00:15:34,559 --> 00:15:38,320
almost mechanical, yellow hush. It's your turn. The circle closes

316
00:15:38,320 --> 00:15:42,519
at chew three, then dead air. My mouth tasted like aluminum.

317
00:15:42,799 --> 00:15:45,000
After sign off, hunching the green tinted hum by the

318
00:15:45,000 --> 00:15:49,080
coffee machine, Lise approached, eyes unreadable. You are right, Reynolds,

319
00:15:49,159 --> 00:15:51,799
your acting wired ye should take a night off. I

320
00:15:51,919 --> 00:15:55,240
forced a smile, no rest for the wicked. But the

321
00:15:55,240 --> 00:15:57,960
way she watched me, arms folded in the electric shadows,

322
00:15:58,080 --> 00:16:00,000
I knew she'd been pinning the same dots in her mind.

323
00:16:01,000 --> 00:16:04,159
Later that week, I set about reviewing hours of sure recordings,

324
00:16:04,200 --> 00:16:07,399
savaging the arcous for links. I stripped the audio from

325
00:16:07,440 --> 00:16:08,799
each of the odd calls and ran them for a

326
00:16:08,799 --> 00:16:12,600
free respectragram analyzer, something ascent engineer at my old paper,

327
00:16:12,600 --> 00:16:15,559
assuring me for picking out four number beeps. The phrase

328
00:16:15,639 --> 00:16:18,200
is a yellow hush, singed blue folder circle of light

329
00:16:18,279 --> 00:16:21,600
recurred at precisely the same pitch and duration, forming sinicoide

330
00:16:21,600 --> 00:16:25,200
pulses on the track. It was crude, almost digital, some

331
00:16:25,360 --> 00:16:28,799
kind of amateur code. Accidentally or deliberately looping back and

332
00:16:28,879 --> 00:16:32,080
forth between collars, I stabbed them each way, from each

333
00:16:32,080 --> 00:16:36,399
word overlaying the signal the pulses matched. I double checked

334
00:16:37,000 --> 00:16:39,519
there was a signal bird here, but I couldn't decord it.

335
00:16:40,120 --> 00:16:43,480
That night, the station felt especially still. Lisa and Francour

336
00:16:43,519 --> 00:16:46,720
present at first, Frank shouting in his office, Lisa checking lines.

337
00:16:46,720 --> 00:16:49,240
But around midnight I realized I hadn't seen either in

338
00:16:49,320 --> 00:16:52,360
over an hour. Lisa's chest board was frozen midgame, his

339
00:16:52,440 --> 00:16:55,799
seat spinning gently. The main office door was ajar. Frank

340
00:16:55,879 --> 00:16:58,639
smoke still seened, half finished coffee, leaving a brown scab

341
00:16:58,679 --> 00:17:02,399
on his desk. I called out, but nobody answered, no

342
00:17:02,519 --> 00:17:05,880
response on my cell. A trickle of anxiety slid down

343
00:17:05,880 --> 00:17:08,640
my roobs. I told myself they'd slipped up for a

344
00:17:08,640 --> 00:17:11,839
smoke or an argument. The show must go on. It

345
00:17:11,920 --> 00:17:14,720
always did. But as I sludged in the booth, cueing

346
00:17:14,759 --> 00:17:17,000
my next track, the lights flickered, then slithered back to

347
00:17:17,039 --> 00:17:21,000
faint life. Thunder shuddered the window. All full lines crackled,

348
00:17:21,039 --> 00:17:24,240
then dropped, blinking out, one after the other except one.

349
00:17:24,720 --> 00:17:28,160
The red phone, the private line nobody ever used, buried

350
00:17:28,160 --> 00:17:31,640
beneath the paperweight and three unpaid electric bills. It wrung.

351
00:17:32,400 --> 00:17:35,200
My hand hovered. The clock said two two way M.

352
00:17:35,799 --> 00:17:39,880
I answered with a rasp w cc X, A voice

353
00:17:40,119 --> 00:17:43,079
mangled with distortion, spoke with that same intricate cool rhythm.

354
00:17:43,400 --> 00:17:46,400
Yellow coat, yellow cut, yellow hush. The circle of lights.

355
00:17:46,440 --> 00:17:49,279
The time is two three. The war's scrape repeating, the

356
00:17:49,319 --> 00:17:51,519
pitch stuttering in my crotones. I felt more than heard.

357
00:17:52,240 --> 00:17:55,880
Then suddenly, Sam reynelds. The next words cut straight from

358
00:17:55,880 --> 00:17:58,960
my past ones. I'd never uttered on air, the source

359
00:17:59,000 --> 00:18:01,759
for city council, the check you cashed, the last story

360
00:18:01,759 --> 00:18:03,880
you files, Sam, don't you want to finish the story?

361
00:18:04,480 --> 00:18:07,680
My throat couldn't summon a reply. The voice shifted, warping

362
00:18:07,680 --> 00:18:10,720
between male and female intonations, echoing callers from nights before.

363
00:18:10,880 --> 00:18:13,680
Don't let them say it never happened. Something close to

364
00:18:13,720 --> 00:18:16,319
a laugh burbled out, low and wrong, stitched from pieces

365
00:18:16,319 --> 00:18:19,799
of different voices, including faintly my own. The coal dropped.

366
00:18:20,400 --> 00:18:23,880
The silence felt swollen, not empty. I stepped into the hallway.

367
00:18:23,880 --> 00:18:27,559
No footsteps, no leser, no frank. Their keys and things

368
00:18:27,599 --> 00:18:31,519
left halfway through routine. They never finished. Every phone line

369
00:18:31,559 --> 00:18:33,720
and light in station dead, except for a tremulous green

370
00:18:33,720 --> 00:18:37,200
globe bleeding from the recording booth outside the sky crackle,

371
00:18:37,279 --> 00:18:40,599
feral wind benged wires against the glass. The storm seemed

372
00:18:40,599 --> 00:18:42,680
to focus on this spot. The squat stuck of tomb

373
00:18:42,680 --> 00:18:45,559
at the middle of the city map, and then precisely

374
00:18:45,599 --> 00:18:48,640
two three a m. Every device still a live cell, laptop,

375
00:18:48,920 --> 00:18:53,160
mixing board went black, Radios cut to static, the transmitters

376
00:18:53,240 --> 00:18:55,039
hump faded to the faint music, the ghost of my

377
00:18:55,079 --> 00:18:57,799
own Joe looping back at me alone. I pressed my

378
00:18:57,839 --> 00:19:01,319
palm against the studio windows, the city blocked by block.

379
00:19:01,480 --> 00:19:03,839
The light winked out, as if memory itself was withdrawing,

380
00:19:03,880 --> 00:19:06,920
taking the city with it. My own reflection stared back,

381
00:19:07,119 --> 00:19:09,319
paler and more alarmed than I had ever looked on camera.

382
00:19:09,960 --> 00:19:12,559
The storm pounded overhead, and in the bloom of darkness,

383
00:19:12,680 --> 00:19:15,799
I felt something slip into place. A circle finally closed,

384
00:19:16,039 --> 00:19:18,839
wrapping the city in an unfathomable hush. The hush was

385
00:19:18,880 --> 00:19:21,240
absolute until I realized it was not silence, but a

386
00:19:21,279 --> 00:19:23,319
deep bone tingle in poles, like the air itself had

387
00:19:23,319 --> 00:19:26,119
been vacuumed out of the world. For a heartbeat, I

388
00:19:26,200 --> 00:19:28,119
listened to my own blood pulse in my ears, then

389
00:19:28,119 --> 00:19:30,279
whirled myself to move, picking my way into the corridor

390
00:19:30,319 --> 00:19:33,240
that linked booth and back office. My shoes made a sticky,

391
00:19:33,279 --> 00:19:35,799
sharp noise against the linoleum, each step echoing as though

392
00:19:35,799 --> 00:19:37,559
I d entered a space much larger than our hunch

393
00:19:37,640 --> 00:19:40,599
little building. I pressed my hand against the wall, half

394
00:19:40,640 --> 00:19:42,599
expecting it to tremble with the city's normal power of

395
00:19:42,640 --> 00:19:46,680
vibration through cheap shetrunk. It was dead. Even the fluorescent

396
00:19:46,680 --> 00:19:49,839
emergency strips and the eggxsit signs were out. I couldn't

397
00:19:49,839 --> 00:19:51,960
see my own hand clearly until I passed the window

398
00:19:52,000 --> 00:19:53,359
at the end of the hole and caught a flash

399
00:19:53,400 --> 00:19:56,599
of lightning that illuminated the parking lotter side. The rain

400
00:19:56,680 --> 00:20:00,000
was sheeted running in rivers across the glass. My car

401
00:20:00,000 --> 00:20:03,000
at the incomplete chess board, Lisa's batted orange back accosted

402
00:20:03,039 --> 00:20:07,000
motionless in that weird silver glow. No voices the officers

403
00:20:07,000 --> 00:20:09,839
should have resounded with frank swearing, Lisa's low music, the

404
00:20:09,880 --> 00:20:13,200
thrumb of hard drives and their cycling system. Instead, I

405
00:20:13,240 --> 00:20:15,960
heard nothing but myself. The static from the booths still

406
00:20:16,039 --> 00:20:18,240
rattled out in faint snatches. Some odd fact left and

407
00:20:18,240 --> 00:20:21,119
a board. Even with power gone, I approached where it

408
00:20:21,200 --> 00:20:23,519
and stepped into the gloom, hand flat against the door frame.

409
00:20:24,039 --> 00:20:26,799
Even the ancient exit sign hummed out a weak red flickering.

410
00:20:26,839 --> 00:20:30,599
As though shamed, I called out Lisa. My voice fell

411
00:20:30,640 --> 00:20:33,000
like a stone, A crack deep in the bones of

412
00:20:33,000 --> 00:20:36,200
the building answered. I thought it might be thunder, but

413
00:20:36,240 --> 00:20:38,519
it had weight, like a locking mechanism, or heavy studio

414
00:20:38,559 --> 00:20:41,799
doors shoving themselves closed. My phone was dead, But in

415
00:20:41,799 --> 00:20:44,200
this strobe of enterness, I wondered if I should try again,

416
00:20:44,400 --> 00:20:48,799
pretend something had changed, a way to reach out breakthrough foolish.

417
00:20:48,880 --> 00:20:51,160
I stared at my own reflection in the dark booth glass,

418
00:20:51,240 --> 00:20:53,640
uncertain what I looked like any more. The careful creases,

419
00:20:53,680 --> 00:20:56,519
the fevered shine in the eyes. For a second, my

420
00:20:56,599 --> 00:20:59,599
reflection flickered. Its mirrored in glass could account for colors

421
00:20:59,599 --> 00:21:01,720
pulsing out, the rim of shadow and effect of fatigue,

422
00:21:01,920 --> 00:21:04,640
or the after image of lightning by reflex. I went

423
00:21:04,680 --> 00:21:07,880
to the front lawby ancient switchboard, mail slots slightly tilted,

424
00:21:07,880 --> 00:21:11,519
blacklisting the original station founders. I rattled the front door,

425
00:21:12,240 --> 00:21:15,359
locked as always after midnight. The ring carried on its

426
00:21:15,359 --> 00:21:17,839
own coat. A of the awning pressing streams under the door,

427
00:21:17,920 --> 00:21:20,680
leaving a shallow paddle at the threshold. I thumbed through

428
00:21:20,720 --> 00:21:24,200
the incoming mail, still jam tight in Lisa's CuPy flyers

429
00:21:24,240 --> 00:21:26,559
and paid bills two postcards addressed to a night desk.

430
00:21:27,240 --> 00:21:29,759
Both had only numbers and words, like fragments from the

431
00:21:29,759 --> 00:21:33,160
recent calls. One listed two three yellow, hush blue folder.

432
00:21:33,720 --> 00:21:35,920
The other a photo clip from an old newsletter, showed

433
00:21:35,960 --> 00:21:38,319
a familiar street, a corner near the station marked with

434
00:21:38,319 --> 00:21:41,920
the slashing yellow line. Everything everywhere circled back to two

435
00:21:42,000 --> 00:21:44,839
three in colors and phrases. No one else used. A

436
00:21:44,920 --> 00:21:47,440
slam behind me made me spin. It was simply a

437
00:21:47,480 --> 00:21:50,759
mop handle tumbling from its closet, clattering across laminatee. I

438
00:21:50,839 --> 00:21:53,680
let my breath out, slowly checking the back offices on

439
00:21:53,680 --> 00:21:56,200
its steady legs. I flicked the light switch, knowing it

440
00:21:56,200 --> 00:22:00,000
would do nothing. Nothing happened, nothing had For minutes there

441
00:22:00,039 --> 00:22:03,799
felt like IROs in the supply closet, groping for a flasklight.

442
00:22:03,839 --> 00:22:05,920
By the light of my phone screen, it still glowed dim,

443
00:22:06,000 --> 00:22:07,720
only to shut her out. As a grasp for it,

444
00:22:07,799 --> 00:22:10,319
I thought about what to do next. Part of me,

445
00:22:10,440 --> 00:22:14,000
sundrilled muscle memory from the newsroom, wanted only to document everything,

446
00:22:14,160 --> 00:22:17,480
stuck facts, capture, sound press record, but there was no

447
00:22:17,519 --> 00:22:20,759
one left to share anything with. Instead, I forced myself

448
00:22:20,759 --> 00:22:23,599
to move, shuffling past empty desks, feeling for warmth, the

449
00:22:23,640 --> 00:22:25,640
smell of someone's day old foot or the familiar wedge

450
00:22:25,640 --> 00:22:28,400
of Liz's perfume. Nothing, just a dry acritrace of burnt

451
00:22:28,480 --> 00:22:31,240
dust and ozone. I moved deeper into the building, the

452
00:22:31,319 --> 00:22:33,920
darkness fighting at my ankles, my breath hanging in the air.

453
00:22:34,559 --> 00:22:37,200
The storm mastered overheads, thunder rolling with more purpose, now,

454
00:22:37,240 --> 00:22:40,200
each pulse far too regular, like a distant machine. Was

455
00:22:40,200 --> 00:22:42,680
it my imagination or did it seem to come every

456
00:22:42,680 --> 00:22:46,880
sixty seconds? I counted one, two, hesitation, then a rumble

457
00:22:46,960 --> 00:22:48,680
right on cue, as though the weather had agreed to

458
00:22:48,680 --> 00:22:51,720
some hidden schedule. In file room, I opened a cabinet

459
00:22:52,359 --> 00:22:56,240
inside rose of square labeled tapes was chopped with broadcast dates,

460
00:22:56,319 --> 00:22:59,680
engineer initials sold the incab bled through stickers. I thumb

461
00:22:59,680 --> 00:23:02,039
passed to local just first nineteen eighty five, the lost

462
00:23:02,039 --> 00:23:05,440
pits call in and dozens marked only night seesanek. At

463
00:23:05,480 --> 00:23:08,599
the very back tippany yellow case labeled back up Prullie

464
00:23:08,680 --> 00:23:11,599
only too free sample. My finger tips tingled as if

465
00:23:11,640 --> 00:23:14,319
I touched static? Why back up a really at a time?

466
00:23:14,400 --> 00:23:18,000
So precise I checked the lock. The tip was schedule

467
00:23:18,039 --> 00:23:20,680
for weekly recording, always around two zero to two ten

468
00:23:20,720 --> 00:23:23,240
a m. I set it on the desk, staring at

469
00:23:23,279 --> 00:23:27,200
the familiar careful handwriting Franks, I remembered an ancient piece

470
00:23:27,240 --> 00:23:29,079
of advice from my journal as a mentor, left the

471
00:23:29,079 --> 00:23:31,200
story instead of pushing it, and sat tip in hand,

472
00:23:31,319 --> 00:23:34,039
trying to listen past my own heart through the window.

473
00:23:34,119 --> 00:23:36,319
The block outside was a ghostly after im which nothing

474
00:23:36,400 --> 00:23:39,240
moving except when blown trash. Just as I reached for

475
00:23:39,279 --> 00:23:41,400
the door to leave, a hollow thump rattled the ceiling

476
00:23:41,559 --> 00:23:43,400
like heavy built landing above me, though there was no

477
00:23:43,559 --> 00:23:47,920
second story. I startled upright n scraping the chair. For

478
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:50,519
a brief second, I thought Lisa Frank had returned, playing

479
00:23:50,559 --> 00:23:54,799
some elaboratrick, but there was nothing, only my own rugged nerves.

480
00:23:55,519 --> 00:23:57,599
As I pressed back toward the main control room, I

481
00:23:57,680 --> 00:24:00,160
tracked each step for sound, if there was some one

482
00:24:00,240 --> 00:24:02,319
or something else in the station. They were more patient

483
00:24:02,359 --> 00:24:05,759
than I was. In a production nook, the machinery blinked radically.

484
00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:08,599
I popped the cover off the main riding box, expecting

485
00:24:08,640 --> 00:24:11,240
a tangle of frey wires. Instead, I found a newborn

486
00:24:11,279 --> 00:24:13,799
haze of dust and tucked inside. Atop the corsack. It

487
00:24:13,839 --> 00:24:16,240
boared a length of yellow ribbon. I pulled it out,

488
00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:19,079
the cut ends were sinched black as this scorched in

489
00:24:19,119 --> 00:24:22,279
some faint fire, but the center was antonished. My thoughts

490
00:24:22,359 --> 00:24:26,000
real yellow, always yellow. Down the hall way now, my

491
00:24:26,119 --> 00:24:29,240
nerves sharpening, I opened the door to the satellite phone closet,

492
00:24:29,480 --> 00:24:31,480
mostly unused. The hard were so out of date it

493
00:24:31,519 --> 00:24:34,960
looked prehistoric, but the connectors, which should have shone with

494
00:24:35,079 --> 00:24:38,640
decades of grime, were wipe clean. Whoever, whatever had been

495
00:24:38,680 --> 00:24:40,359
in here knew the place as well as I did.

496
00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:44,519
I reached Lisa's chair, her game so weighted, white Queen

497
00:24:44,599 --> 00:24:47,799
May capture Black King, boxed in her coffee cup, cold,

498
00:24:48,319 --> 00:24:51,039
her jacket missing from its usual spa. No sign of

499
00:24:51,079 --> 00:24:53,759
a struggle, no debris, no spilled water should warn me

500
00:24:53,839 --> 00:24:57,319
so many times not to leave, I shouted again, voice cracking,

501
00:24:57,519 --> 00:25:00,920
Lisa frank, nothing but the echo battered around the cinder

502
00:25:00,920 --> 00:25:03,960
block walls. I knew, then, truly new, across the scalp

503
00:25:04,039 --> 00:25:06,559
and spine that I was alone, marooned by detail in absence,

504
00:25:06,640 --> 00:25:09,440
surrounded by loops and pattents that refused to snap into logic.

505
00:25:10,160 --> 00:25:13,319
But the building wasn't finished performing. The main breaker grunted

506
00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:15,839
somewhere beneath my feet, and a pulse of greenish emergency

507
00:25:15,920 --> 00:25:18,599
lighting swept on, flickering, as though the generator realized it

508
00:25:18,680 --> 00:25:21,000
still had one last trick to play. A guest of

509
00:25:21,039 --> 00:25:24,200
air churned around my ankles. Something ticked in the ductork,

510
00:25:24,319 --> 00:25:27,279
carrying words I couldn't pass at first, but the cadence

511
00:25:27,400 --> 00:25:30,119
was there. Of two O three yellow cut circle of signal,

512
00:25:30,200 --> 00:25:34,079
blue folder close the hush. My own recorded voice cobbled

513
00:25:34,079 --> 00:25:38,000
together from desperate broadcasts, whispering through the vents. I backed away,

514
00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:41,279
hands cold and tingling breath hopped between my teeth. I

515
00:25:41,319 --> 00:25:44,039
hammered on the studio window, trying to rouse the outside world.

516
00:25:44,680 --> 00:25:47,119
The city's blocks were utterly black. Not even the high

517
00:25:47,160 --> 00:25:49,680
sodium pink of the old street lamps remained, just smears

518
00:25:49,720 --> 00:25:52,440
of wet light, all fixed on the station's perimeter. I

519
00:25:52,519 --> 00:25:54,240
clunched the tape in my fist so tightly it hurt.

520
00:25:54,839 --> 00:25:57,799
The green light guttered insteaded revealing graffiti carved into the

521
00:25:57,839 --> 00:26:00,480
paint by the door. Do you remember the folder? It

522
00:26:00,519 --> 00:26:04,240
glowed faintly phosphorescent in the emergency pallor a tiny blue

523
00:26:04,240 --> 00:26:06,720
smere trail below its short dust, or a mocker or

524
00:26:06,799 --> 00:26:09,400
something far older. I pressed a shaking hand to the

525
00:26:09,440 --> 00:26:12,759
cold glass, focusing on the lines cut by age out.

526
00:26:12,799 --> 00:26:15,200
In the lot beyond my car, a solitary figure stood

527
00:26:15,200 --> 00:26:17,400
a moving just beyond the cun of light thrown by

528
00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:21,480
the defective lamp. Shorter than Frank, taller than Lisa, another

529
00:26:21,599 --> 00:26:24,440
neck collar. A prankster with the one who left the

530
00:26:24,480 --> 00:26:27,720
tape notes the emails. I pressed the indo calm, an

531
00:26:27,759 --> 00:26:30,680
old battered system that worked on a separate battery powert strip.

532
00:26:31,160 --> 00:26:34,680
Who's at there? My voice cracked across the speaker. The

533
00:26:34,759 --> 00:26:37,480
figure didn't move beneath the hood or coat, too dark

534
00:26:37,559 --> 00:26:40,119
to tell what beneath the drizzle and haze, they simply waited,

535
00:26:40,799 --> 00:26:43,400
as if to underline it. The power glitched again, plunging

536
00:26:43,440 --> 00:26:45,400
the room into a near total dimness, where only the

537
00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:47,880
indicator on the main transmit a flashed and the static

538
00:26:47,960 --> 00:26:49,720
in the air leveled out to an unlivering had not

539
00:26:49,839 --> 00:26:52,519
akosh I went to the window for a clearer view.

540
00:26:53,160 --> 00:26:55,519
Another volley of lightning painted to parking off. The figure

541
00:26:55,640 --> 00:26:59,039
was gone. Only the wet concrete remained glistening now and

542
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:01,680
the feige impression of sheprint impossible to make out, visible

543
00:27:01,759 --> 00:27:04,480
only for the split second. A new message pulsed up

544
00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:07,119
on the laptop, stark and screen flickering, then holding close

545
00:27:07,160 --> 00:27:10,079
the circle two you are the signal. I almost dropped

546
00:27:10,079 --> 00:27:12,759
the tape. I forced myself to replay the last call,

547
00:27:12,839 --> 00:27:16,279
mentally holding the phrases in mine fighting panic. There was

548
00:27:16,319 --> 00:27:21,440
method buried here. Each call had given excessive, impossible detail, colors, numbers,

549
00:27:21,519 --> 00:27:25,680
evidence left behind but never found, objects described but not retrieved.

550
00:27:26,359 --> 00:27:29,319
At every turn. The reality they described was perfectly situated

551
00:27:29,359 --> 00:27:32,640
to never be confirmed, never be denied, only reforts, like

552
00:27:32,680 --> 00:27:34,880
a bad memory that threatened to become true. Spoken aloud

553
00:27:35,000 --> 00:27:38,480
enough times, my vision blurred, nors battered with the tide

554
00:27:38,519 --> 00:27:41,599
of surreality. I gripped the desk, wheeling myself back to

555
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:44,559
the prisent. I was inside WCCX at its center. The

556
00:27:44,599 --> 00:27:46,519
lines of the city raid like spokes from the building

557
00:27:46,559 --> 00:27:49,160
squat hut, each detail taking a perimeter only as seemed

558
00:27:49,160 --> 00:27:52,039
able to trace. A sudden scratching from beneath the door

559
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:54,920
yanked me to attention. Shifting for a makeshift weapon, I

560
00:27:54,960 --> 00:27:57,680
found only a heady tape splicer, cold and greasy against

561
00:27:57,720 --> 00:28:01,319
my palm. The scratching intensified a s almost deliberate rhythm.

562
00:28:01,839 --> 00:28:05,359
I crouched and peered at the gap. Nothing visible, a

563
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:07,440
gust of wind, and as quickly as it began, the

564
00:28:07,519 --> 00:28:10,519
sound ceased. I waited, blood roaring in my ears, heart

565
00:28:10,559 --> 00:28:13,759
thudding unevenly, when nothing else happened, I forced open the

566
00:28:13,799 --> 00:28:17,000
door and swept my flashlight in arcs empty floor, the

567
00:28:17,039 --> 00:28:19,359
same puddle by the entry, a detailed new in its exactness,

568
00:28:19,480 --> 00:28:22,200
suggesting someone or something had entered. After the rain started.

569
00:28:22,839 --> 00:28:25,200
The green light on its dying breath flickered one last

570
00:28:25,279 --> 00:28:27,640
time in that bloom. I caught a glimpse of a

571
00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:29,519
new item on the mail shelf, off fold of blue

572
00:28:29,599 --> 00:28:33,119
slightly singed on one edge. I snatched it, handshaking, and

573
00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:36,000
ripped it open on the desk, inside a stack of

574
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:39,160
yellow index cards, each marked with the words remember the Hush,

575
00:28:39,400 --> 00:28:41,920
and a photo of me at this very desk last week,

576
00:28:42,079 --> 00:28:45,200
wearing the same shirt, the same shell sharked expression, the

577
00:28:45,279 --> 00:28:48,880
time stamp neatly impossibly read two free a M. My

578
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:52,279
knees nearly buckled. I wanted to scream, but my throat

579
00:28:52,319 --> 00:28:55,319
was a rusted hinge, forcing myself to flip through the

580
00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:58,440
cars I found increasing the delirious crips you were listening

581
00:28:58,599 --> 00:29:01,559
the signal flows from here and drop the hand rating

582
00:29:01,599 --> 00:29:04,480
flash between block and careful looping scripton on one card,

583
00:29:04,559 --> 00:29:07,079
scrolled in a childish trembling hand. Please tell them not

584
00:29:07,160 --> 00:29:10,559
to forget me. My head pounded, my skin niched, as

585
00:29:10,599 --> 00:29:13,960
though electricity danced along my nerves. I forced deep breaths,

586
00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:16,880
tried focusing on the physical and the present. I pressed

587
00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:19,279
my hand to the dismantled from my co willing myself

588
00:29:19,359 --> 00:29:21,839
not to pass out. On impulse, I went to the

589
00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:24,039
old rill to reel deck and with fearful reverence, slid

590
00:29:24,119 --> 00:29:26,839
the back prelay only two three sample tip onto the player.

591
00:29:27,559 --> 00:29:31,079
It word alive, battery companionably clicking in the silence. The

592
00:29:31,119 --> 00:29:33,279
playback warble then filled the air with a symphony of

593
00:29:33,319 --> 00:29:37,240
overlapping voices. Mine LIS's franks twisted and laid, reading the

594
00:29:37,279 --> 00:29:41,880
same incantatory sequence. Yellow hush, blue, folder memory, closed, circle, opened,

595
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:45,799
the city weights punctuated every sixty sickond by the unmistakable

596
00:29:45,839 --> 00:29:47,839
snare tap of a blue and green that jazz cut

597
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:51,519
the first collar had named. The building hummed. The power

598
00:29:51,559 --> 00:29:54,200
flickuld back for a single heartbeat, and every device powered

599
00:29:54,240 --> 00:29:56,359
back on, just long enough for every light every screen

600
00:29:56,400 --> 00:29:59,839
to flash the phrase two free. Remember. Then, as if

601
00:29:59,880 --> 00:30:02,599
a a few summer felt with finality, everything went dark again.

602
00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:05,359
I stood in the after glow, trying desperately not to

603
00:30:05,359 --> 00:30:08,559
sink into despair. The line between what was being reported

604
00:30:08,599 --> 00:30:12,519
and what was happening was narrowing, collapsing. The phrases, the objects,

605
00:30:12,559 --> 00:30:14,680
the times. It was all focused on the spot, this ire,

606
00:30:14,680 --> 00:30:18,160
at this windling house, this finished staff. Thunder batted the roof,

607
00:30:18,279 --> 00:30:21,359
the regular and human interval now impossible to ignore. I

608
00:30:21,480 --> 00:30:23,559
pressed my palm heart against the cold glass. This time

609
00:30:23,759 --> 00:30:26,400
it pulls faintly back alive, with the storm of the

610
00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:30,720
building's nervous system or something older humming through each circuit outside.

611
00:30:30,839 --> 00:30:34,039
The rain finally slackened. The streets the station, my own

612
00:30:34,119 --> 00:30:36,640
ragged reflection were matted in shadow, the circle holding me

613
00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:39,880
in its inescapable signal saturated grip. I had no choice

614
00:30:39,920 --> 00:30:41,799
but to wait hell by the hush, as the hands

615
00:30:41,839 --> 00:30:44,799
of the broken lobby coxsolate inexorably toward that terrible magnetic

616
00:30:44,839 --> 00:30:47,559
I are two three. My hand was still displayed against

617
00:30:47,559 --> 00:30:50,519
the glass, finger tips throbbing from the pressure. The hush

618
00:30:50,599 --> 00:30:52,599
that full doubly CCC seemed to breathe around me, a

619
00:30:52,680 --> 00:30:55,359
dense pulse inside my scallopose currents of vast it stretched

620
00:30:55,359 --> 00:30:57,440
out every second until it threatened to spit me open.

621
00:30:58,039 --> 00:31:00,359
My skin crawled with the six static of sleeplessness or

622
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:02,480
fear were both, and I was all but incurred by

623
00:31:02,480 --> 00:31:04,519
the faint after image of the words flashing across every

624
00:31:04,559 --> 00:31:07,799
power device in the station. To three Remember the old

625
00:31:07,839 --> 00:31:10,319
emergency lighting strained and died, leaving me at the heart

626
00:31:10,319 --> 00:31:12,119
of the building in a gray slub of semi dark.

627
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:15,039
Even the rain outside had lost its rhythm, shifting to

628
00:31:15,079 --> 00:31:17,839
an irregular trickle. Up picked at the awning, reluctant probing

629
00:31:18,440 --> 00:31:20,759
my chest burnt shop with the sensation that someone stood

630
00:31:20,799 --> 00:31:23,839
centimeters behind me, but every quick glance revealed nothing. The glass,

631
00:31:23,920 --> 00:31:26,480
the bank of dusty monitors, the silent chess boats still

632
00:31:26,480 --> 00:31:29,359
bearing leases, unfinished campit a fumble for the flat slight

633
00:31:29,400 --> 00:31:32,119
I'd found my hands d stady, a weak cone of

634
00:31:32,200 --> 00:31:35,319
yellow sweat flanoleum snagging on footprints, my own, ferried in

635
00:31:35,359 --> 00:31:37,240
by a drag of muddy water, and something else, a

636
00:31:37,279 --> 00:31:40,000
faintmere slown across the studio floor toward the back corridor,

637
00:31:40,720 --> 00:31:43,839
I followed, stepped careful but virgin, each breath catching on

638
00:31:43,920 --> 00:31:47,160
some internal hook. In the passage behind the booths, the

639
00:31:47,240 --> 00:31:49,720
musty air tinged with cigarette butts and ozone, I found

640
00:31:49,759 --> 00:31:52,240
a door I had never attempted maintenance or archive, painted

641
00:31:52,279 --> 00:31:54,839
over so many times, the molding had developed a brittle fringe.

642
00:31:55,559 --> 00:31:58,119
The streak and the floor ended here. Lost into the threshold.

643
00:31:58,759 --> 00:32:01,119
An old sticker two, faded for its message to make sense,

644
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:04,400
peeled away above the latch. I stood a myself, pressing

645
00:32:04,440 --> 00:32:06,920
my ear against the painted metal, straining for any hind

646
00:32:06,960 --> 00:32:09,079
of movement, preth a stack or step, anything that would

647
00:32:09,079 --> 00:32:11,480
dispel the growing certainty that I was the only one inside.

648
00:32:12,200 --> 00:32:16,519
No luck. I tried thenobbuce stubone resistant sticky as congealed glue.

649
00:32:17,119 --> 00:32:19,640
I gave a careful shove of my shoulder. The door

650
00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:22,480
relented half an inch, then creaked wider, admitting me to

651
00:32:22,519 --> 00:32:25,680
a low watch chamber of shadows and fermenting boxes. My

652
00:32:25,799 --> 00:32:28,920
flask light danced between stat demo cassettes, discarded office chairs,

653
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:31,720
several unopened boxes stamped with ancient government insignia as a

654
00:32:31,759 --> 00:32:34,480
property of city. Till acommunication slash returned on demand and

655
00:32:34,559 --> 00:32:37,400
a row of battowed lawn disconnected silver towers with hand

656
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:40,920
written cold tags really to slash seamen as servant. One

657
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:44,559
machine disturbingly modern among the debris, thrummed with an alien energy.

658
00:32:45,160 --> 00:32:47,000
The humpk out across my nerves as clearly as the

659
00:32:47,079 --> 00:32:49,920
jazz lick had haunted these knights. A top a plinth

660
00:32:49,960 --> 00:32:52,759
of old manual sat a folder blue and scorch almost

661
00:32:52,799 --> 00:32:55,119
blackened on its leftage, not unlike the one described so

662
00:32:55,200 --> 00:32:58,599
breathlessly by my recent collar. My heart trept over itself.

663
00:32:59,319 --> 00:33:02,000
I reached for it from grazing the curl corner. The

664
00:33:02,079 --> 00:33:04,640
heat of the thing was wrong, as if manufactured minutes ago,

665
00:33:04,880 --> 00:33:08,440
not fanstasted. In a closet inside I found sheets printed

666
00:33:08,440 --> 00:33:11,599
with column logs, rows of time states, wavengths, all sorted

667
00:33:11,599 --> 00:33:14,839
into two minute intervals, annotated in several different scripts, one

668
00:33:14,960 --> 00:33:17,599
round and feminine, one harsh and vertical. One. A mistake

669
00:33:17,599 --> 00:33:20,200
could be my own. In the margin a line written

670
00:33:20,240 --> 00:33:23,240
in red sharp eye repeat keywords amplify response closely, But

671
00:33:23,319 --> 00:33:26,839
two three a chill licked my scalp. There were recordings

672
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:29,559
to a stack of minique set tapes labeled with broadcast

673
00:33:29,640 --> 00:33:32,000
dates that mapped almost precisely to the strange calls I'd

674
00:33:32,039 --> 00:33:35,880
been fielding these past weeks. One marked with my own initials,

675
00:33:36,279 --> 00:33:39,079
was threaded inside a battered portable, taped except side the folder.

676
00:33:39,759 --> 00:33:42,920
Out of either habit or compulsion. A press play static

677
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:45,279
filled the closet at first. Then the unmistake will rise

678
00:33:45,319 --> 00:33:47,200
and fall of my own voice, clipped from dozens of

679
00:33:47,240 --> 00:33:51,440
past shows, stitch with uncanny precision, yellow co yellow hush

680
00:33:51,680 --> 00:33:55,519
blue folder. The circle closes, my voice climbing and falling

681
00:33:55,559 --> 00:33:58,240
in ways I did not remember, broken by sharp contacts

682
00:33:58,240 --> 00:34:00,400
of skickles, in the distant scuffle of chairs, the slap

683
00:34:00,440 --> 00:34:03,440
of a hand against old wood. A woman's voice leases

684
00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:07,039
flashed in so garbled as to be unplaceable. Will the

685
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:09,800
lights flicker at two three? You must remember what you forgot?

686
00:34:10,599 --> 00:34:13,119
As I listened, the loop grew denser, layering phrases so

687
00:34:13,280 --> 00:34:15,159
neatly that it was clear this was not the random

688
00:34:15,199 --> 00:34:19,039
uppet of anxious callers, but a choreography. The script revised

689
00:34:19,079 --> 00:34:21,679
and reperformed and injected into the city's blood, strewed through

690
00:34:21,679 --> 00:34:24,440
my show. My show, specifically, I shut off the tape

691
00:34:24,480 --> 00:34:27,920
chest height and tucked everything folder tapes logs under my arm.

692
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:31,199
I stepped backward into the corridor, my flasklight flickering now

693
00:34:31,239 --> 00:34:33,239
as if responding to the mounting static in the air.

694
00:34:33,920 --> 00:34:36,880
Shuffling toward the main studio, I passed ways of empty desks,

695
00:34:37,159 --> 00:34:39,199
wise trailing off of phones, as though some one had

696
00:34:39,280 --> 00:34:42,360
yanked every hardline cord from behind its panel. The building

697
00:34:42,480 --> 00:34:44,679
was neither cold nor warm temperature, itself seen to have

698
00:34:44,760 --> 00:34:47,480
absented itself, leaving only the humming fob of the storm

699
00:34:47,559 --> 00:34:50,599
skeleton's the atmosphere. Back at the booth, the only sound

700
00:34:50,679 --> 00:34:53,840
was the click of my own swallowing. My reflection stretch

701
00:34:53,920 --> 00:34:55,920
and bruised in the dark glass seemed ready to split

702
00:34:56,639 --> 00:34:59,199
a shift in the low frequency sandscape. Some were deep

703
00:34:59,199 --> 00:35:02,079
in the building low generator wheeze coughed into halting life.

704
00:35:02,679 --> 00:35:06,239
Dim panels, blinked, devices stirred and sickly green. The emergency

705
00:35:06,360 --> 00:35:08,639
lights along the ceiling poles awake with a fluorescence more

706
00:35:08,719 --> 00:35:13,840
jownness than braid. Anna voice not outside, not on the phone,

707
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:17,239
but inside, loud, blaring out from every ancient speaker, as

708
00:35:17,239 --> 00:35:19,559
if it was the natural combination of every buried whisper,

709
00:35:19,719 --> 00:35:23,199
every anxious confession. W cc X this is the signal.

710
00:35:23,280 --> 00:35:26,840
The circle closes. The pitch was wrong, A composite digital echo,

711
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:29,719
constructed of voices I recognized and couldn't, interwoven with my

712
00:35:29,800 --> 00:35:32,039
own in the distorted textures of old nice shift guests

713
00:35:32,079 --> 00:35:35,320
and callers. The words scraped across the frequencies in waves,

714
00:35:36,159 --> 00:35:39,079
Sam Reynolds, It pronounced my name like a defect to

715
00:35:39,079 --> 00:35:41,679
a fall in the mesh. You should have known, didn't

716
00:35:41,679 --> 00:35:45,280
You always want the truth? The whole room vibrated. The

717
00:35:45,320 --> 00:35:48,119
backup generator continued its death rattle, The lights swell in

718
00:35:48,239 --> 00:35:51,039
with each utterance. I stumbled for the main board, nom

719
00:35:51,079 --> 00:35:54,400
but active, no tape rolling, no open MIC's justice, parasitic

720
00:35:54,440 --> 00:35:57,440
presence speaking through every circuit. You were the node before you,

721
00:35:57,519 --> 00:36:00,360
with a host, every message seated, delivered, and Amplif you

722
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:03,719
never listened, you just broadcast. I jotted at every kill

723
00:36:03,760 --> 00:36:06,599
switch and chords, tried to physically break the feedback, but

724
00:36:06,719 --> 00:36:09,159
each movement only changed the color of the light, now green,

725
00:36:09,440 --> 00:36:13,239
now amber, now shimmering like a moldslick. The voice pressed on,

726
00:36:13,960 --> 00:36:16,119
do you remember the old building, Sam? The news van

727
00:36:16,199 --> 00:36:18,760
marked for return to asset storage. You stood there, stores

728
00:36:18,760 --> 00:36:21,159
pouring through your hands, never asking who was listening on

729
00:36:21,199 --> 00:36:23,800
the far end. That's why to send you here, you asked, Sam,

730
00:36:23,840 --> 00:36:27,239
but you never really listened. And then newly horrifyingly, other

731
00:36:27,320 --> 00:36:31,159
voices layered above Lisa's clear as eyes. We tried to

732
00:36:31,199 --> 00:36:33,280
warn you, Sam, the signal can be shut out. You

733
00:36:33,400 --> 00:36:35,760
have to finish the broadcast. It was the sound of

734
00:36:35,800 --> 00:36:38,159
a mind maraveling of identity, twisted through the mesh of

735
00:36:38,239 --> 00:36:41,719
layered frequencies, a chime high in regular pulls from the

736
00:36:41,719 --> 00:36:44,880
board at sixty one second intervals, too free, coming up

737
00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:48,039
again and again. Desperate, I twisted from the booth and

738
00:36:48,119 --> 00:36:51,119
bolted for the front door. The locked, stiff and resistant,

739
00:36:51,440 --> 00:36:53,719
refused to yield. I braced and slam'ed, shoulder first, but

740
00:36:53,840 --> 00:36:56,480
it held crony only a scance sentimeter in its frame.

741
00:36:57,039 --> 00:36:59,400
At that moment, my flashlight beam caught on movement through

742
00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:01,440
the glass down the street. Across the rain slick road,

743
00:37:02,119 --> 00:37:05,920
people first appair, then three, then a dozen, walking quietly,

744
00:37:06,039 --> 00:37:09,199
almost rustily, toward the corners near the station, their clothes

745
00:37:09,280 --> 00:37:11,880
blurred in the night's distorted glow, faces half seen, but

746
00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:16,039
turned all towards the building. No shouting, no running, no

747
00:37:16,159 --> 00:37:18,480
headlights on the street, just silent encirclement, as if they

748
00:37:18,519 --> 00:37:20,599
were marking out the edges of the map I drawn inside.

749
00:37:21,280 --> 00:37:23,960
Some stood in doorways, some half shadowed behind parked cars

750
00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:27,320
and moving patient. I shouted, pounding with my fists, but

751
00:37:27,400 --> 00:37:30,360
none gave sign of hearing or caring. City peeble but

752
00:37:30,480 --> 00:37:33,800
changed empty listening. In a sudden spasm of hope, I

753
00:37:33,880 --> 00:37:36,599
ran for the alley exit at the back. The emergency

754
00:37:36,679 --> 00:37:38,840
release barb bit my palm, but the door swung wide

755
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:41,960
and I lunged into cool, gritty air. The city's blackout

756
00:37:42,039 --> 00:37:45,480
was complete, not merely low power, not an outers, nothing.

757
00:37:46,079 --> 00:37:48,079
It was as if every traffic light, every bulb, every

758
00:37:48,119 --> 00:37:50,119
heated store front had been vacuum of their ability to

759
00:37:50,159 --> 00:37:53,719
illuminate or resist. The silence outside was rasping. It made

760
00:37:53,760 --> 00:37:56,800
my ears rain. The city looked petrified. People at the

761
00:37:56,840 --> 00:37:58,800
far end of each street standing were sitting with its

762
00:37:58,840 --> 00:38:02,039
strange blank alignment. Each turned slightly toward the squad musted

763
00:38:02,119 --> 00:38:05,280
color tuck of w CCX behind me. I called that again.

764
00:38:05,880 --> 00:38:08,760
The echo caught in the wet break fell flap far off,

765
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:11,480
three blocks over a glimpse to figure in a yellow coat.

766
00:38:11,559 --> 00:38:14,199
Was it? The shape was hard to fix, wavering at

767
00:38:14,199 --> 00:38:17,079
the edge of visibility, a car stowed beside her, a

768
00:38:17,119 --> 00:38:19,519
silver curve of hoodwinking in the black. But nothing else,

769
00:38:20,400 --> 00:38:23,840
no movement, no urgency, just a tableau set in waiting.

770
00:38:24,519 --> 00:38:27,440
My breath burned cold in my lungs. I sprinted into

771
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:30,079
the street, feeling the residual electricity in my limbs. Every

772
00:38:30,119 --> 00:38:33,280
step of rebute to caution. I throdd between the boderspaced

773
00:38:33,280 --> 00:38:36,280
in regular units, all eyes vacant, listening as if waiting

774
00:38:36,320 --> 00:38:39,079
for a trigger or a cue. Their faces barely twitched

775
00:38:39,079 --> 00:38:41,400
where brushed passed expression the safe for a tiny and

776
00:38:41,440 --> 00:38:43,679
inspiratory flick of the eye, where never a fiend electronic

777
00:38:43,760 --> 00:38:45,920
kiss issued from a near by darkened radio or foam.

778
00:38:46,559 --> 00:38:48,920
I reached the end of the block, turned and looked back.

779
00:38:49,599 --> 00:38:51,719
The entire station was illuminated from with him, with the

780
00:38:51,800 --> 00:38:54,519
same near supernatural green. Each window was green, each wall

781
00:38:54,559 --> 00:38:57,920
a transmitter. I was not only the station's hosed but

782
00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:00,719
apparently also its lynchbin, the epicenter of something I did

783
00:39:00,800 --> 00:39:03,480
not understand, Something that naw pulls out through old city

784
00:39:03,559 --> 00:39:06,760
arteries and silent intersections, drawing the city's sleep workers inward

785
00:39:06,840 --> 00:39:09,960
and concentric orbus. A pulsive drought pushed me to retreat,

786
00:39:10,000 --> 00:39:12,480
to go back, but as I did, a slow wave

787
00:39:12,480 --> 00:39:15,719
of noise rose across the city, from one hundred darkened speakers, payfuns,

788
00:39:15,800 --> 00:39:20,119
car radios, all at once. The phrase echoed, a sonorous intonation,

789
00:39:20,239 --> 00:39:23,159
lapping against the buildings and pulling at my feet. Don't

790
00:39:23,239 --> 00:39:25,760
let them say it never happened. It was the warning

791
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:28,599
from the first co now multiplied, modulated since tid is

792
00:39:28,639 --> 00:39:31,639
in use. A sprinted back through the alley, shees, skidding

793
00:39:31,679 --> 00:39:34,000
on broken tile, and burst through the rear entrance into

794
00:39:34,039 --> 00:39:36,360
the station's main room, my mind boiling with the need

795
00:39:36,400 --> 00:39:38,280
to be anywhere but here, but where. The escape was

796
00:39:38,360 --> 00:39:42,000
narrowing with every breath inside, The generator's output was fading,

797
00:39:42,039 --> 00:39:45,559
the colored emergency lights collapsing into strobe on every speaker,

798
00:39:45,639 --> 00:39:48,320
every radio. The voice came again, this time with the coherence,

799
00:39:48,360 --> 00:39:51,079
more sinister for its calm. It's the host who completes

800
00:39:51,119 --> 00:39:54,159
the signal. It's the host who carrers the confession. I

801
00:39:54,239 --> 00:39:57,000
hammered at the main power block, anged arrestor plugs, mass

802
00:39:57,039 --> 00:39:59,719
a stack of auxiliary signal taps against the counter plastic

803
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:02,679
show out spinning. Nothing stopped the sun to every brooken piece,

804
00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:05,320
kept replaying each fragmant, carrying the signal's code in my

805
00:40:05,400 --> 00:40:07,920
own voice and leases and to cut with others unfamiliar

806
00:40:08,000 --> 00:40:10,199
half forgotten sphy so it might have come from anywhere

807
00:40:10,199 --> 00:40:12,920
in my once long reporting career. One of the cupies

808
00:40:12,960 --> 00:40:15,599
in the wall, usually stuffed with yellow traffic cetaceans and mail,

809
00:40:15,679 --> 00:40:18,079
hung open, paper spilling out like a small cloth banner

810
00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:21,719
folded inside the emergency transmittered a battered unit from the

811
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:24,400
city's old civil defense system, lights blinking with a frantic

812
00:40:24,559 --> 00:40:28,239
animal urgency, its signal wires half clipped and then respliced

813
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:30,719
by some unknown hand, ran along the walls and into

814
00:40:30,760 --> 00:40:33,760
the broadcast board, feeding every noise and interruption right back

815
00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:36,639
into the loop. I ripped the rig free wires tearing,

816
00:40:36,800 --> 00:40:38,840
but the backup transmitter was to life somewhere in the

817
00:40:38,880 --> 00:40:41,199
wall sort of made it routined, grinding app message after

818
00:40:41,280 --> 00:40:44,760
message city I test remembered the hush. The tapes I

819
00:40:44,840 --> 00:40:48,000
smashed on refix kept spinning. Broadcast decks still let him.

820
00:40:48,079 --> 00:40:51,599
Rolling from the window, I saw movement, people shifting. It

821
00:40:51,760 --> 00:40:53,440
was not a friends at attack or riot, but a

822
00:40:53,519 --> 00:40:57,480
calculated sequence groups of three and five, crossing at corners, stopping, wading,

823
00:40:57,760 --> 00:41:00,920
moving in sudden synchrony. Distantly, a line of car started

824
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:03,599
to roll down the street, headlights black. Only the shimmer

825
00:41:03,639 --> 00:41:06,000
of their body is reflecting occasional ocs of dying lightning.

826
00:41:06,559 --> 00:41:10,400
Phone lines juttered with sudden blistering activity, one after another.

827
00:41:10,559 --> 00:41:12,719
The phone ut my elbow lit up lines one for six,

828
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:16,440
then auxiliary desk lines, all flashing madly each time. I

829
00:41:16,480 --> 00:41:20,039
picked up voices overlapped children's elderly accent from the cities,

830
00:41:20,119 --> 00:41:23,199
every corner, each repeating some permutation of the phrases. The

831
00:41:23,280 --> 00:41:26,599
circle closes. You have to finish it. The blue folder

832
00:41:26,679 --> 00:41:30,960
is burning. It's time, yellow, Hush, do you remember Sam?

833
00:41:31,440 --> 00:41:34,480
Don't forget the next line. The repetition ground my sense

834
00:41:34,519 --> 00:41:37,480
of time to dust. I tried it, desperately, futilely, to

835
00:41:37,559 --> 00:41:39,760
reason with collars. Who am I speaking to? What do

836
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:42,679
you want? But they never answered, never deviated, only leering

837
00:41:42,719 --> 00:41:45,079
their words like a coil locked on a single, dreadful chant.

838
00:41:45,800 --> 00:41:48,280
I smashed the board with a chair, plastic and metal splintering,

839
00:41:48,320 --> 00:41:51,199
and beneath the debris a second hidden transmitter flicker to life.

840
00:41:51,840 --> 00:41:54,719
I tore open wall panels, finding another old a piece

841
00:41:54,760 --> 00:41:57,920
of hard worre slaughter behind dusty insulation labeled back PIMIRK.

842
00:41:58,559 --> 00:42:01,760
Every device relayed the broad gas, each feeding and amplifying

843
00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:04,760
the hush. I staggered from panel to panel, tools now

844
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:06,840
shaking in my grasp, every self a slicked with sweat

845
00:42:06,880 --> 00:42:09,119
or rain or panic. All that did was make the

846
00:42:09,199 --> 00:42:11,119
next tape play with the voice which to a new

847
00:42:11,159 --> 00:42:13,960
speaker or a different speaker. Why vibrate with the coded phrase?

848
00:42:14,760 --> 00:42:17,039
It was the city's nervous system, built into the veins

849
00:42:17,039 --> 00:42:20,239
of the building, inseparable on the present. The only notion

850
00:42:20,360 --> 00:42:22,480
that cut through the fob was that this was spontaneous.

851
00:42:23,079 --> 00:42:25,760
This wasn't a city succumbing to simple accident or pranksters

852
00:42:25,800 --> 00:42:28,960
mastering a hack. This was an architecture, a system constructed

853
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:32,239
over years, maybe decades, one that required the participation of

854
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:35,559
a host, a signal keeper nay. In a break from

855
00:42:35,599 --> 00:42:38,239
the stuttering feedback, I turned to the offices for grounding

856
00:42:38,320 --> 00:42:41,119
or escape. The admin office was silent to Lisa's game,

857
00:42:41,199 --> 00:42:44,920
unfinished from a cold, everything fixed in place. On a hunch,

858
00:42:45,159 --> 00:42:48,599
I rummaged through Frank's battered file drawer behind Teck's lips,

859
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:51,760
budget notes, and sheaves of unread listener mail. I found

860
00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:55,159
a folder marked install of Release Lost Reynolds inside a

861
00:42:55,239 --> 00:42:58,440
handful of photos me looking younger, thinner, folding a note

862
00:42:58,480 --> 00:43:00,280
book at a city council meeting years before for my

863
00:43:00,360 --> 00:43:03,400
disgrace lease at the station's old transmitter, grinning frank arguing

864
00:43:03,440 --> 00:43:06,440
into an old ham radio at the bottom. Members consigned

865
00:43:06,480 --> 00:43:09,239
by a series of anonymized bureaucratic entities of City Signal

866
00:43:09,280 --> 00:43:12,519
Control SUBNIT three AID with dates stretching back nearly twenty years,

867
00:43:12,719 --> 00:43:17,000
referencing broadcast tests, key phrase, dissemination trials, behavioral observation nodes.

868
00:43:17,719 --> 00:43:20,199
Each document referenced two three, a M, and a block

869
00:43:20,239 --> 00:43:22,760
printed phrase that matched the ones lettering, the tapes, the calls,

870
00:43:22,800 --> 00:43:25,559
the clipped stories, trial housh slash coats, last circle, sight,

871
00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:29,199
w CCX or vacuumed any last breath from my lungs.

872
00:43:29,880 --> 00:43:32,079
I was implicated by designs swept up in a project

873
00:43:32,119 --> 00:43:34,559
that spanned more than failing newspaper careers or bad debts.

874
00:43:35,280 --> 00:43:38,119
My name dodded across trial logs, test notes, case stutters,

875
00:43:38,800 --> 00:43:42,039
a network of names, shuffled identities, trial dates, and performances

876
00:43:42,079 --> 00:43:44,760
of a night time emotional suggestion. I sank into the

877
00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:48,239
battered desk chair, folder across my knees, my skinich with

878
00:43:48,280 --> 00:43:51,920
the recognition these broadcasts, the voices one spontaneous interruptions. They

879
00:43:51,920 --> 00:43:55,159
were seated messages, triggers embedded within the city's psychic architecture,

880
00:43:55,280 --> 00:43:58,800
each one leveraging the susceptibility of old hosts, lonely listeners

881
00:43:58,920 --> 00:44:02,159
and the role longitude of ours. After midnight heartbreak, shoving

882
00:44:02,239 --> 00:44:05,679
the file away, I stared at the security monitors. Footage

883
00:44:05,719 --> 00:44:08,400
played from the last several nights, each time stump flickering

884
00:44:08,480 --> 00:44:10,519
to two free before spooling back a mantout of me

885
00:44:10,599 --> 00:44:13,119
pacing the studio, sometimes muttering into the dead air, while

886
00:44:13,119 --> 00:44:15,960
the von air at light was supposedly dark, but worse.

887
00:44:16,199 --> 00:44:19,840
In several sequences, I watched myself sleepwalking hephons on reading

888
00:44:19,880 --> 00:44:22,639
from scripts, newly familiar language clipp profectly from the code

889
00:44:22,679 --> 00:44:25,599
of calls and messages, my own voice recorded as if

890
00:44:25,639 --> 00:44:27,719
for a scrip read except I had no memory, no

891
00:44:27,840 --> 00:44:30,920
reason to be at the mic, certainly no audience. Camera.

892
00:44:31,000 --> 00:44:34,480
Angles caught me removing tapes from lockers, stashing folders and knicks,

893
00:44:34,599 --> 00:44:37,440
riding on index cards, that appeared later in my own mailbox.

894
00:44:38,199 --> 00:44:40,519
I was both target and vector. I realized with the

895
00:44:40,599 --> 00:44:42,719
rush that my role was less that of investigator than

896
00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:45,159
that of a living, breathing piece of the transmission circuit,

897
00:44:45,159 --> 00:44:47,760
as sleep, a broadcaster talking my own mind into transmitting

898
00:44:47,800 --> 00:44:51,800
every secret detail, every trigger phrase, without even knowing a final,

899
00:44:51,880 --> 00:44:54,480
unbearable recognition. I'd been set up longer than I'd known.

900
00:44:55,039 --> 00:44:57,920
Files referenced me as node slash host s Reynold's clear

901
00:44:57,960 --> 00:45:01,360
and staged reactive for to stitch the broken time men together,

902
00:45:01,559 --> 00:45:03,920
me shaking hands with a shadowy counselman from the scandal

903
00:45:03,960 --> 00:45:06,519
that ruined me, Frank nodding just out of frame, Lisa

904
00:45:06,559 --> 00:45:09,079
holding a blue folder that matched the ones described on air.

905
00:45:09,760 --> 00:45:12,679
I slumped, nauseated, knowing now that the only thing I

906
00:45:12,760 --> 00:45:15,320
had never broadcast was my own confession, my own real truth,

907
00:45:15,440 --> 00:45:18,760
and filtered by suggestion or could The lights fluttered once more?

908
00:45:18,880 --> 00:45:22,239
The green faded to a harsh, probing white behind my eyes.

909
00:45:22,360 --> 00:45:24,800
The loop began again, this time with nowhere left run

910
00:45:25,320 --> 00:45:28,199
a doub CCX. This is Sem Reynold's night host. The

911
00:45:28,239 --> 00:45:31,599
signal flows from here. The volume swelled and split inside

912
00:45:31,639 --> 00:45:33,440
my head, not from a speaker now, but from the

913
00:45:33,480 --> 00:45:36,400
marrow of my bones. I moved again, not by instinct,

914
00:45:36,480 --> 00:45:39,039
but as if compelled by corps, by ritual, heading for

915
00:45:39,119 --> 00:45:41,320
the bat at master carte rack, the unseen point at

916
00:45:41,360 --> 00:45:44,239
which the station's core ark I've converged. I tried to

917
00:45:44,280 --> 00:45:47,679
pull the tapes, but my hands refused. Instead, my fingers

918
00:45:47,679 --> 00:45:50,880
stwitched into the motions of loading reels, threading tape, setting volumes,

919
00:45:50,920 --> 00:45:52,760
every axe, own grain from years of night shifts. It

920
00:45:52,760 --> 00:45:55,440
happened even as I tried to resist. I blacked out.

921
00:45:55,440 --> 00:45:58,519
Whether from terror, exhaustion of the mind, warping, ovlay of suggestion,

922
00:45:58,719 --> 00:46:01,920
I don't know. I fell somewhere between sion's cream, a

923
00:46:02,000 --> 00:46:05,920
moment's stretch across a thousand ears, filling with the throbbing, repetitive, pulsive.

924
00:46:06,519 --> 00:46:10,719
Remember blue folder, yellow hush, do not interrupt a Wokhire's days,

925
00:46:10,840 --> 00:46:13,159
I couldn't say. At the mic mout dry fingers flicking

926
00:46:13,239 --> 00:46:16,320
instinctively at the old fashioned faders. The main clock was

927
00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:19,000
stuck at two three. There was nobody else in the building,

928
00:46:19,079 --> 00:46:22,480
no shuffle of shoes, no pressure of another body, just me,

929
00:46:22,920 --> 00:46:25,760
my gear and the endless blind city beyond. Though on

930
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:28,960
air bull burned with a violet tinge. I fumbled from

931
00:46:28,960 --> 00:46:31,400
my phone, but every system was locked, every app frozen,

932
00:46:31,519 --> 00:46:33,880
every outlet dead, but won the broadcast system, which was

933
00:46:33,920 --> 00:46:37,760
somehow impossibly still hot. The show's call lines blinked as usual,

934
00:46:38,159 --> 00:46:41,599
line one, line three, and line five, But this time

935
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:43,840
when I picked up, the voices on the end were different,

936
00:46:43,880 --> 00:46:46,559
Quieter but intimate, conversational in a way that cut directly

937
00:46:46,599 --> 00:46:50,840
through my defenses. Hullo, Sam, A pause recognition in it

938
00:46:50,920 --> 00:46:53,480
that sent shoals through me. Do you remember what you

939
00:46:53,559 --> 00:46:56,159
told me about your first day here? A different line,

940
00:46:56,239 --> 00:47:00,239
a different voice, no less personal, Sam, It's Lisa at

941
00:47:00,239 --> 00:47:02,400
once that eve mfered the people who fell asleep listening

942
00:47:02,440 --> 00:47:04,800
to nothing but static? Is this the silence you wanted?

943
00:47:05,480 --> 00:47:08,719
Another line, an old, slowed voice, the buck, Sam. She

944
00:47:08,880 --> 00:47:11,599
looked at you, didn't she? Each one pushed me gently

945
00:47:11,639 --> 00:47:15,320
to peel back, disclose, admit not only facts but feelings, failures,

946
00:47:15,440 --> 00:47:18,079
a whole suppressed planet of guilt and shame. Each new

947
00:47:18,159 --> 00:47:20,559
voice responded to memories I'd thought belonged only on the

948
00:47:20,599 --> 00:47:23,559
other side of the windshill, the night's divide. With each

949
00:47:23,639 --> 00:47:25,800
ounce fished out of me, something in the air shifted.

950
00:47:25,840 --> 00:47:28,280
I felt the building itself tense, awaiting a verdict and

951
00:47:28,360 --> 00:47:32,239
impossible ask. Desperate, I realized the only possible escape might

952
00:47:32,280 --> 00:47:35,119
be embracing it, rather than fleeing. To break the circuit,

953
00:47:35,199 --> 00:47:37,719
I had to send something wholly alien to the codinonous message,

954
00:47:37,840 --> 00:47:40,840
not predetermined, not falter, not formed by committee, but carrying

955
00:47:40,880 --> 00:47:43,920
the unbearable actual truth. I made a decision, brought the

956
00:47:43,960 --> 00:47:46,280
figure up, checked the mic, white blood from my bitten lap,

957
00:47:46,960 --> 00:47:50,119
live again. This is Sam Reynolds w c c X.

958
00:47:50,239 --> 00:47:51,679
If you can hear me, if any one can, I

959
00:47:51,760 --> 00:47:54,679
want to set the record straight. I started with the scandal.

960
00:47:55,280 --> 00:47:57,840
I confessed force breaking, how I'd never fated my sores

961
00:47:57,920 --> 00:47:59,840
but had been caused by threats I didn't dare name.

962
00:48:00,039 --> 00:48:02,119
How I'd run stores by voices in the phone, by

963
00:48:02,159 --> 00:48:04,559
phases in late night meetings, people who kept pushing me

964
00:48:04,639 --> 00:48:07,320
to deliver lines on cue. How my exile at w

965
00:48:07,559 --> 00:48:10,280
CCX was not escape but sentence. That I'd ignored signals

966
00:48:10,360 --> 00:48:13,039
hidden in the city's routine and lost myself inside patterns,

967
00:48:13,119 --> 00:48:16,320
unable to tell memory from trigger, desire from compulsion. I

968
00:48:16,440 --> 00:48:19,800
apologize genuinely for the ruins left behind, for every collar

969
00:48:19,840 --> 00:48:21,880
I cut off or snubbed, for every friend or coaker

970
00:48:21,880 --> 00:48:24,400
I'd pushed away in my fog of obsession, I spoke

971
00:48:24,440 --> 00:48:27,280
the real phrases. I was lonely, ashamed, desperate for connection.

972
00:48:27,880 --> 00:48:29,480
I hammered out the posts of me that had died

973
00:48:29,480 --> 00:48:31,079
a little. Each time a night coal came in, and

974
00:48:31,119 --> 00:48:33,159
I felt only the urge to jase, not to answer.

975
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:35,880
I recited every phrase from the loop at this time,

976
00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:38,480
converting them, basking outward. What does the yellow hush mean?

977
00:48:38,559 --> 00:48:41,440
Who are you really? If I listen without expectation? What

978
00:48:41,559 --> 00:48:44,360
happens if I break the circle? The words were raw,

979
00:48:44,559 --> 00:48:47,360
halting and plants, placed now not by an uncea manipulator,

980
00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:51,800
but by me. Interocense, I finished breath, shuddering. I pressed

981
00:48:51,840 --> 00:48:54,280
the scent key and the batter transmitter, flooding the boorb

982
00:48:54,360 --> 00:48:58,079
of my words. A humbuilt in the walls, arising feverish crescendo,

983
00:48:58,159 --> 00:49:00,280
and then complete silence, so complete a I thought the

984
00:49:00,320 --> 00:49:03,960
world had ended. Outside, the city was black, but slowly

985
00:49:04,000 --> 00:49:07,039
the lights over several blocks flickered, thence dead. It first

986
00:49:07,079 --> 00:49:09,480
the main drag, then the residential ribbon, The lawned dover,

987
00:49:09,599 --> 00:49:11,440
then the dots stretching out toward the north. I had

988
00:49:11,480 --> 00:49:13,000
up to woke up, drawing a seam of light through

989
00:49:13,000 --> 00:49:15,599
the night. I let out a saw, half relaf, half terror.

990
00:49:16,239 --> 00:49:19,840
Within minutes, motion thudded back into the streets. Car started,

991
00:49:20,079 --> 00:49:22,280
horns blared, someone threw up in a shop window, and

992
00:49:22,320 --> 00:49:26,159
a dialect radio station blasted pocket maximum volume. People blinked

993
00:49:26,199 --> 00:49:29,159
as a frousing from catalepsy voice of sharpening at automonic

994
00:49:29,199 --> 00:49:32,320
of collective chants now absent on my signal meter. The

995
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:34,760
input line and output lime flattened a no more coated loop,

996
00:49:34,960 --> 00:49:37,679
just leave direct sound. There was no e mail, no

997
00:49:37,800 --> 00:49:41,760
congratulatory voice, no final admonition. It was overre if only

998
00:49:41,800 --> 00:49:44,639
for a time. When the last redundant circuit sizzled and

999
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:46,920
died in my hands, I allowed myself to fall back

1000
00:49:46,920 --> 00:49:49,639
into the batted engineer's chair, head prop and the dusty boards.

1001
00:49:50,280 --> 00:49:53,440
I'd opened the circle, not closed it. The husher chattered

1002
00:49:53,480 --> 00:49:56,920
for now days. Possibly we exsploded together. In the aftermath.

1003
00:49:57,480 --> 00:49:59,559
The city's black up became just another entry in the

1004
00:49:59,599 --> 00:50:02,360
already crowded roll of Ober mysteries. The Night of the Circles,

1005
00:50:02,440 --> 00:50:06,000
as the morning news dubbed it. Residents claim flickers, odd dreams,

1006
00:50:06,039 --> 00:50:09,079
a sense of waiting for signals that never arrived. Most

1007
00:50:09,119 --> 00:50:12,159
shrugdom went back to work, confusions subsuming into memory. As

1008
00:50:12,199 --> 00:50:15,559
power and routine returned, w cc X became a room

1009
00:50:15,599 --> 00:50:18,440
at stop on Eben Legend podcasts. Strangers rang into ask

1010
00:50:18,480 --> 00:50:21,599
about to the circle Hoox, Lisa and Frank vanished into

1011
00:50:21,639 --> 00:50:24,320
the city side. Where's memory? No trace, no police note,

1012
00:50:24,639 --> 00:50:27,519
no dry cleaner bell. I could not bring myself back

1013
00:50:27,559 --> 00:50:30,679
to the station. Even walking past the old transmission mass

1014
00:50:30,719 --> 00:50:33,760
made my pulse jump into a tinney static rhythm. Now

1015
00:50:33,840 --> 00:50:35,719
I spend my mornings in a cafe halfway up the

1016
00:50:35,719 --> 00:50:38,400
block from my old apartment. The radio set over the

1017
00:50:38,480 --> 00:50:40,840
cake case runs a constant background to static, the AM

1018
00:50:40,920 --> 00:50:43,119
band refusing to quit its lowest no matter how f in.

1019
00:50:43,159 --> 00:50:46,519
The barrister rotunes it one cray dawn a jazz refreds

1020
00:50:46,519 --> 00:50:49,199
itself through the noise, blue and green a freeze, But

1021
00:50:49,320 --> 00:50:53,039
the moment passes. My hand pauses over the crossword. The

1022
00:50:53,119 --> 00:50:54,880
payphone at the back of the shop brings us on

1023
00:50:55,000 --> 00:50:58,280
that barely registers to regulars. The barister gives me a

1024
00:50:58,360 --> 00:51:00,280
sideways look as if to say it's always been ringing,

1025
00:51:00,480 --> 00:51:04,679
and perhaps it has. On the third burst, I answer some.

1026
00:51:05,599 --> 00:51:08,360
The voice is soft, draped a familiar deadban. It's she

1027
00:51:08,440 --> 00:51:12,559
returned to listen. Recognition stings Lisa or something using her

1028
00:51:12,639 --> 00:51:15,199
voice lets that silence linger a beat too long enough

1029
00:51:15,239 --> 00:51:17,840
for static to chew the edges. I want to ask,

1030
00:51:18,000 --> 00:51:20,639
but she hangs up. The city outside the windows is

1031
00:51:20,679 --> 00:51:23,239
a coloshe of old fred by routine, newly fragile in

1032
00:51:23,280 --> 00:51:26,280
the strip mall light. Every face passes behind a glass,

1033
00:51:26,320 --> 00:51:29,559
like a watermark on newsprint, indistinct but ever present. I

1034
00:51:29,719 --> 00:51:32,440
catch my reflection. A flicker of electronic blue plays across

1035
00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:34,679
my eyes, as if a signal is bouncing there, just

1036
00:51:34,760 --> 00:51:38,159
below the surface, beneath all the silence. The hush clings

1037
00:51:38,199 --> 00:51:41,559
to the corners for a moment. I almost answer, almost

1038
00:51:41,599 --> 00:51:43,880
hum the next line, but something blurs in my brain.

1039
00:51:44,000 --> 00:51:48,159
The circuit never fully closed. Some signals never die, They

1040
00:51:48,280 --> 00:51:51,559
just shift frequencies, waiting for the next whirling host. A

1041
00:51:51,639 --> 00:51:55,119
bus roll past the cafe window, scattering puddles. I look

1042
00:51:55,159 --> 00:51:57,199
down at the cross where each clear tangle might be

1043
00:51:57,320 --> 00:52:01,320
suppressing deep divats in the newsprint. Improvise network seven letters

1044
00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:04,559
somewhere behind me, the static from the cafe radio congealed.

1045
00:52:04,719 --> 00:52:06,440
Each pop in a regular poe was standing in for

1046
00:52:06,519 --> 00:52:09,239
the missing words I'd never say out loud. I caught

1047
00:52:09,280 --> 00:52:11,559
the faint shimmer of my own reflection, double exposed over

1048
00:52:11,559 --> 00:52:13,639
the bakery's shells. For a flicker. My eyes were lit

1049
00:52:13,679 --> 00:52:16,320
by blue again, Gone the instant I registered it, the

1050
00:52:16,440 --> 00:52:18,599
room felt close, stuffer than it should have, as if

1051
00:52:18,639 --> 00:52:20,440
the power outage had drained some layer of it. The

1052
00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:24,360
building couldn't quite replace chair scrape, Nakin's flutter, but every

1053
00:52:24,440 --> 00:52:27,400
human noise seemed damped. A young woman behind the counter,

1054
00:52:27,519 --> 00:52:29,920
softly humming along to the radio, turned the dial at intervals,

1055
00:52:29,960 --> 00:52:32,480
tracing the spectrum, pausing at moments where the static swiled,

1056
00:52:32,599 --> 00:52:35,599
not vanished. The hum of muted voices flickered in an

1057
00:52:35,639 --> 00:52:38,079
out under her melody laid so that sometimes she sounded

1058
00:52:38,119 --> 00:52:41,320
as if she was echoing herself. I tried not to listen,

1059
00:52:41,480 --> 00:52:43,800
but found my ear worming towards those patches in the noise,

1060
00:52:43,880 --> 00:52:47,159
hunting from messages layer beneath. Once out have dismissed it

1061
00:52:47,159 --> 00:52:49,760
as furredolia. My old neck for seeing patherns and clouds

1062
00:52:49,800 --> 00:52:52,000
can shuffled note in the open ended fery that made

1063
00:52:52,039 --> 00:52:55,519
stores stick. Now, I caught myself counting the intervals between

1064
00:52:55,599 --> 00:52:58,360
unexplained pauses, matching them to the old tape in my mind.

1065
00:52:58,440 --> 00:53:00,719
Two beats, a hiss, then a modul delated phrase half

1066
00:53:00,719 --> 00:53:04,960
eaten biaus, always at those minute lawn marks. The payphone

1067
00:53:05,039 --> 00:53:08,159
round twice more that morning, both times a letter bring

1068
00:53:08,280 --> 00:53:11,519
chest thumping, each burst, driving my attention back to the radio,

1069
00:53:11,639 --> 00:53:14,400
to the city flickering behind the window. I noticed what

1070
00:53:14,480 --> 00:53:16,480
I hadn't before, the patrons all pausing for just a

1071
00:53:16,559 --> 00:53:19,039
second when the statu bloomed, a hand stilt over a spoon,

1072
00:53:19,119 --> 00:53:21,239
a gaze fixed on a crumbling pastry, a shoe tapping

1073
00:53:21,280 --> 00:53:24,719
midstep in perfect synchrony with this, I thought my paranoid

1074
00:53:24,840 --> 00:53:27,159
was spent. But in these tiny freeze frames I saw

1075
00:53:27,280 --> 00:53:29,440
the echo of that night waiting were framed for daylight.

1076
00:53:30,079 --> 00:53:32,760
At lunch time, I stepped out into the street. The

1077
00:53:32,840 --> 00:53:34,760
light was clearer, the ruins of the black out more

1078
00:53:34,840 --> 00:53:38,000
visible now, shops closed for days, CRIDs still flickering, traffic

1079
00:53:38,079 --> 00:53:41,199
signals on its certain schedules. As I crossed the avenue,

1080
00:53:41,280 --> 00:53:43,400
a woman in a rain spatted yellow jacket pass me

1081
00:53:44,079 --> 00:53:47,320
our shoulders brushed. She looked up, meeting my eyes with

1082
00:53:47,400 --> 00:53:49,239
a gaze so direct and familiar that the world tolded

1083
00:53:49,280 --> 00:53:51,199
for Breatha's moment, as if I were falling back into

1084
00:53:51,199 --> 00:53:54,559
a call, a broadcast, a loop. You dropped this, she said,

1085
00:53:54,679 --> 00:53:57,559
voice level and dry. She pressed something into my hand,

1086
00:53:57,599 --> 00:54:00,639
a slip of blue notepaper, corner chard, don't forget the

1087
00:54:00,719 --> 00:54:03,719
next line. Before I could reply, she melted into the crowd,

1088
00:54:03,800 --> 00:54:06,559
feet light in the puddle pavement. I turned the note over,

1089
00:54:07,280 --> 00:54:10,519
wait for the signal. In neat locky, gripped beneath my

1090
00:54:10,639 --> 00:54:12,199
own name and a hand that could almost have been

1091
00:54:12,239 --> 00:54:15,159
mine a decade ago. A horn blared. I stepped back,

1092
00:54:15,360 --> 00:54:17,480
just in time to avoid a delivery vans loshing across

1093
00:54:17,519 --> 00:54:21,800
the crosswalk, adrenaline pulse in my throat, roarin sire. I

1094
00:54:21,840 --> 00:54:24,280
shoved the note into my pocket, knuckles tight, feeling the

1095
00:54:24,320 --> 00:54:27,199
crease and singe against my palm. I made myself walks

1096
00:54:27,239 --> 00:54:29,360
out away from the station, passed a row of shut

1097
00:54:29,440 --> 00:54:31,760
of stores and the familiar graffitied wall, half covered by

1098
00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:34,480
new fliers. The hum of city life picked up again,

1099
00:54:34,760 --> 00:54:37,480
pulse by Paul's students, jattering a street musician testing a

1100
00:54:37,559 --> 00:54:40,320
saxophone against the wind, the city piecing itself together after

1101
00:54:40,400 --> 00:54:43,239
the blackout. Yet every so often I caught a skip beach,

1102
00:54:43,280 --> 00:54:45,719
pedestrians holding at an intersection, just a shade too lawn

1103
00:54:45,840 --> 00:54:48,320
glancing up together, as a city bus paused before its right,

1104
00:54:48,400 --> 00:54:51,280
the driver's blank face forward. Even the dogs in the

1105
00:54:51,320 --> 00:54:53,760
park froze at odd intervals, noses lifted waiting for a

1106
00:54:53,840 --> 00:54:56,639
kila didn't come. The recidu of the pasm clawn, like

1107
00:54:56,719 --> 00:54:59,039
the echo of a psalm's chorus, hummed after it's been forgotten.

1108
00:54:59,559 --> 00:55:01,199
With no where where else to be, I ducked into

1109
00:55:01,239 --> 00:55:04,000
the lobby of the public library. The hush was soothing,

1110
00:55:04,119 --> 00:55:08,960
almost normal. Students scavenged power abloits pensioners hunched over magazines,

1111
00:55:09,119 --> 00:55:12,199
a security guard dozing behind a bank of monitors, the

1112
00:55:12,320 --> 00:55:15,880
reference discolored with familiar halogen, a warming bomb. Yet as

1113
00:55:15,920 --> 00:55:18,320
I moved through reading rooms and technical stacks, my spy

1114
00:55:18,320 --> 00:55:22,239
inich certain that even here something was different. Somewhere overhead,

1115
00:55:22,360 --> 00:55:24,559
the vents system clan bloon air whistling to a rhythm

1116
00:55:24,559 --> 00:55:27,239
I couldn't dismiss. I traced my usual path to the

1117
00:55:27,280 --> 00:55:30,960
public computer's muscle memory steering me, then paused. Someone had

1118
00:55:31,039 --> 00:55:34,039
left a machine unlocked. The screen was dense with search

1119
00:55:34,119 --> 00:55:37,800
results for a w CCX, bluckout coded broadcasts, yellow harsh,

1120
00:55:38,000 --> 00:55:40,119
and dozens of old news clippings with my name cut

1121
00:55:40,239 --> 00:55:43,880
and pasted into the querries. The browsers tabbed blinkered articles,

1122
00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:46,159
foreign posts, and even a map not unlike the one

1123
00:55:46,159 --> 00:55:47,920
I tapped up at the station. Pins clustered in a

1124
00:55:48,000 --> 00:55:51,400
rough circle over downtown, familiar co ordinates. A chat window

1125
00:55:51,400 --> 00:55:54,559
flushed along the taskbar. The username was a jumble of

1126
00:55:54,639 --> 00:55:57,000
letters and numbers, but the profile photo was an old

1127
00:55:57,039 --> 00:55:59,000
broadcast fan, the same make and color as a one

1128
00:55:59,039 --> 00:56:01,920
part behind the station and the night everything collapsed, A

1129
00:56:02,039 --> 00:56:04,360
message blinked, addressed to me, Sam, You're not the only

1130
00:56:04,480 --> 00:56:07,679
note left. I nearly shut the lid, hands trembling, but

1131
00:56:07,719 --> 00:56:10,400
another message appeared. Were all receivers, at least some of

1132
00:56:10,480 --> 00:56:12,760
the time. It never just stops. Watch for the hush.

1133
00:56:13,599 --> 00:56:16,760
My senses telescoped in. I scanned the others around me,

1134
00:56:16,920 --> 00:56:20,000
searching for any telle furtive glances, mouse clicks that matched

1135
00:56:20,039 --> 00:56:22,880
the rhythm of the static. I half expected to ceelys

1136
00:56:22,960 --> 00:56:25,119
in the next chair or Frank some shadow version of them,

1137
00:56:25,239 --> 00:56:28,880
eyes fever bright, passing coded notes, but there was nobody,

1138
00:56:29,079 --> 00:56:32,199
just the anxious, random shuffling of city life. The chap

1139
00:56:32,239 --> 00:56:35,400
winked off before I could tiver reply. Outside, the wind

1140
00:56:35,440 --> 00:56:37,599
shur and garbage up the curl, and above the clouds

1141
00:56:37,639 --> 00:56:40,199
were splitting some light lan spoon shop on natural columns,

1142
00:56:40,320 --> 00:56:43,039
lighting up the street like a city wise spotlight. As

1143
00:56:43,079 --> 00:56:45,800
the sun hit the street, the radiostatic faded were placed

1144
00:56:45,840 --> 00:56:48,119
for a few blots by normal talk in traffic, interrupted

1145
00:56:48,199 --> 00:56:51,119
only by odd of stressed silences. But in the distance,

1146
00:56:51,519 --> 00:56:53,239
just at the edge of hearing, I cut the return

1147
00:56:53,320 --> 00:56:55,719
of the old motif. The faintest strain of jazz trumpets cued,

1148
00:56:55,760 --> 00:56:58,559
and mournful wound into the background of the city. Back

1149
00:56:58,639 --> 00:57:01,440
in my apartment, I tried to some Catharsis, some final

1150
00:57:01,480 --> 00:57:03,960
document to prove it all happened, but my words unravel

1151
00:57:04,039 --> 00:57:06,480
as soon as I stared at the blank page. I

1152
00:57:06,559 --> 00:57:09,559
watched the clock tick, every eye occurring the possibility of recurrence.

1153
00:57:09,639 --> 00:57:11,719
I saw the digital numbers flirt with tea free, and

1154
00:57:11,840 --> 00:57:14,840
even in daylight, my chest narrowed until they passed. I

1155
00:57:14,960 --> 00:57:16,519
kept the blue folder in the desk roar with the

1156
00:57:16,519 --> 00:57:18,639
cinged edge, leaking flakes of ash on to receipts, and

1157
00:57:18,719 --> 00:57:22,360
old press passes inside my name in three different scripts,

1158
00:57:22,400 --> 00:57:26,320
annoated log sheets, over lapping voice samples. The proof, if

1159
00:57:26,360 --> 00:57:28,840
it was ever real, now seemed to become less certain,

1160
00:57:29,039 --> 00:57:31,960
like a dream shaded by someone else's sleep. The city,

1161
00:57:32,079 --> 00:57:34,840
for all its pretense of order, now felt held together

1162
00:57:34,920 --> 00:57:37,320
by the scotch tape of returning power and mutual denial.

1163
00:57:38,000 --> 00:57:40,480
I heard callers late at night on other stations, distant

1164
00:57:40,559 --> 00:57:43,679
a m bands halfway across the continent, using familiar key words,

1165
00:57:43,760 --> 00:57:46,679
describing things nobody else in the broadcast booth ever acknowledged.

1166
00:57:47,280 --> 00:57:50,119
The patents linked beneath the surface, waiting for host less, tired,

1167
00:57:50,159 --> 00:57:53,800
more credulous, or simply new. One afternoon, I stayed outside

1168
00:57:53,920 --> 00:57:56,880
w CCX. The sign was busted for good to just

1169
00:57:56,920 --> 00:58:00,039
blant plastic and pealing adhesive. The doors were changed and

1170
00:58:00,199 --> 00:58:04,079
paper with violation notices. The booth, through warped glass, was

1171
00:58:04,159 --> 00:58:06,639
layered in dust, chess bowne, frozen still coat and mug

1172
00:58:06,719 --> 00:58:08,599
and notes, Like evidence left behind at the scene of

1173
00:58:08,599 --> 00:58:11,639
an unexplainable event. There was no sense of drama, just

1174
00:58:11,679 --> 00:58:14,119
attired silence. Hanging over it, the same hush that always

1175
00:58:14,159 --> 00:58:16,760
came when someone wanted to be forgotten. I pressed my

1176
00:58:16,840 --> 00:58:19,000
palm to the doors glass, and for a flickering moment,

1177
00:58:19,320 --> 00:58:22,480
felt a pulse beating back of phantom feedback. Turning away,

1178
00:58:22,639 --> 00:58:24,519
I caught a last look at my own reflection, double

1179
00:58:24,559 --> 00:58:26,599
exposed shot with a web of blue and green from

1180
00:58:26,639 --> 00:58:29,079
the street people's lit was something extra natural that faded

1181
00:58:29,079 --> 00:58:32,119
as quickly as the clouds passed over the sun. You still, there,

1182
00:58:32,199 --> 00:58:35,559
came a voice beside me, not a question, just the assertion,

1183
00:58:35,719 --> 00:58:38,840
old as any broadcast. I turned, but only caught the

1184
00:58:38,920 --> 00:58:41,239
retreating wave of a hand sleeve gold in the late light.

1185
00:58:41,760 --> 00:58:44,000
As I walked back toward the city's noise, I couldn't

1186
00:58:44,000 --> 00:58:46,800
help imagining, through every settle pause, every lingering note on

1187
00:58:46,840 --> 00:58:49,840
the radio, every perfectly time silence on the customer's tongue,

1188
00:58:49,880 --> 00:58:52,760
that something or someone was still listening, still waiting, The

1189
00:58:52,880 --> 00:58:56,599
hush always gathering, always threatening to become music or message

1190
00:58:56,800 --> 00:59:00,800
or instruction. Sometimes, when sleep refuses me, I find myself

1191
00:59:00,840 --> 00:59:03,119
speaking the phrases into the dark, testing them. Not quite

1192
00:59:03,159 --> 00:59:05,920
a prayer, not quite a code. They echo back, dry

1193
00:59:05,960 --> 00:59:07,880
and meaningless, But I can't quite lose the sense that

1194
00:59:08,119 --> 00:59:10,559
somewhere as circuit is closing, waiting for the next storm,

1195
00:59:10,639 --> 00:59:13,239
the next signal, the next host ready not just a broadcast,

1196
00:59:13,360 --> 00:59:15,880
but to listen. There is peace in the static, but

1197
00:59:16,039 --> 00:59:18,519
only for those willing to live off the record, and

1198
00:59:18,679 --> 00:59:22,039
even then the next call is never far away, and

1199
00:59:22,199 --> 00:59:24,599
that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I

1200
00:59:24,639 --> 00:59:25,719
will see you in the next one.