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Speaker 1: The package did not belong among the cracked mail boxes

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or the pizza flies that accumulated in a vestibule of

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my apartment building. Two days before I opened it, I

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had stepped around it three times. I assumed it was

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for a neighbor. The labor weather my address only barely

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eligible for smeared ink and grime. But a fourth morning,

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the postman or perhaps a less patient tenant, had propped

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it up against my door, a battered carboard box that

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rattleddully when I picked up edges silled with the yellow

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tape that had attempted sincerity but was now barely clinging

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to the flaps. The wad alone brought me back, unexpectedly,

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involuntarily to another box, another set of tapes, decades ago,

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in another part of this city, Even before I slid

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it open, and os and tank rows through the dented seams,

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the way an old Prince former sometimes smells when the

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wind picks up dust beneath the static of transmission. There

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was no return address, just the fading black of my

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building number, and a trace of something else, a residue

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like coffee and for garden attics. Inside some one had

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packed the remants of another era's equipment of battered verriel

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to reel, tape or corder. The chromedled one knob tilted

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at an odd angle as metal case stippled with old burns.

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Six bools of tape, swaddled and yellowed knee print beneath

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the topmost reel, A typer to note with no name,

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no greeting. You always wanted to know what really happened,

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listened before it's too lay. My apartment is smaller, just

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large enough, though the wall seemed to flex him with

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some winter nights at that moment, each corner toaster radio,

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stack of research books. The podcast here on my kitchen table,

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seen sharply in focus, as if electrified by the box

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of sudden presents. I sat down, breathing uneasily, hands sweating,

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despite the January cove radiating off the kitchen tile. My

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fingers shook, extracting the first reel, lining it on to

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the tape of cord or spindle. I convinced myself I

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would listen only for a minute, just long enough to

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file it away, some elaborate prank. In this city where

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nobody cared to remember Channel thirteen, the stodger sometimes took

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desperate forms. The machine grown weakly, then clicked, and the

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tapes stuttered to life. The hiss was overly intimate and textured,

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and a roar of tiny pops above what might have

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once been some A jingle emerged, or rather its fossil

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the original Channel thirteen music, but warped at the edges,

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the melody swimming in and out of focus as the

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submerged beneath us. Then a voice far off, pleading urgent

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in an unfamiliar tone. They flickered away into metallic static,

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the tape shuddering as if it wanted to split itself out.

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A woman's laugh inverted, an echoing dissolved into a bust

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of feedback that forced me to turn down the volume.

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The sound was alive, with things omitted. Just as I

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was about to stop the tape, a phrase cut through,

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half swallowed by the whir of gears. A DJ voice

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I almost recognized Peter's or was it Alsi's, but now slow, rasping,

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clutching to listlessness to be HEARDD back a press pause,

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but the tape slept in protests and winding a final

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second of breathless nothing. My palms were slick against the

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battered surface. Of the machine. I sat u moving for

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a long minute, feeling the faintest vibration in the air,

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and certain if it was real or memory. In a

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half mirror of my kitchen window, my own face looked older,

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shadowed by the fluorescent like the face of someone who

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had spent countless nights in small humming boosts that felt

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safe until they didn't. This is the story of Channel thirteen,

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and why nobody in the city wants to remember, least

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of all those of us who survived being heard, or

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so we'd thought. People still say nothing happened, that it

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was just another casualty of the rusting city. But some

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things resist forgetting, and this was one of them. Perhaps

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that's wide Even before the tapes, I could never leave

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it behind for good. In the old days, there wasn't

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much to look at driving out to Channel thirteen, unless

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you were the sword who collected stores from concrete relics.

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The city lies in a hollow, steel mills to the west,

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rows of burned out housing to the east, a wide

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river dissecting neighborhoods that never quite blend. When you leave downtown,

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you passed the cacases of defunct factories, the signs still

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advertising shoes and radios and coff syrup, long after anyone's

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bought such things. Channel thirteen was on the edge of

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it all, perched at the end of a two lane

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access road. It's blinkoed road broadcasting tower, visible only after

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you crested a low embanquet lined with sumac and gnarled

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rail ties. Even from the parking lot, you could smell

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the chemical trace of the river in the air, and

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if the wind was wrong, the sire and note of

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the treatment plant downstream. I was twenty five, then, grateful

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for any any job that paid against the grain of

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respectable employment. The other hosts and engineers would drift, as

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in time more than geography, a clutch of old dja

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clinging to the belief of free from radio still mattered.

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A couple students desperate for extra cash, Me and my

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press shirt sleeves, with too much coffee and not enough sleep.

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Channel thirteen went live at six, but I worked the

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rotation from ten pe and to two way m the

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dead i rows as we called them back then. The

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city slept uneasy, but those of us in the booth

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chased our own kinds of insomnia. The need to listen

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of the private hope that someone out there was listening back.

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Night after night, the routine became its own comfort. You'd

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park beneath the halogen lamp, half the bowls flickering out.

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By midnight, there would be the obligatory nod from dennisound

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engineer perpetually cleaning grime from a mug that probably hadn't

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held coffee in a decade, And then you'd step inside,

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greeted first by the mural in the entryway. It featured

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a white nineteen seventy is Optimism smiling DJ with comically

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oversized headphones, the founder's stern gaze beside station's motto, our

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voice in the air. Time hadn't been kind to the paint.

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The eye seemed to bleed under leaky pipes. The red

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and blue brushwork had cuddled into bruce purple. In sight,

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the station fell like its own weather system. Some winter nights,

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condensation ghosted the window between the newsroom and Studio eight.

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There was always a humming, sometimes are contented from sometimes ratical.

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Thus seemed to bleed from the walls themselves, as if

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the building or something behind it powered the voices that

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traveled across its airways. I used to joke with Alice,

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one of our more poetic hosts, that the hum was

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the city's heartbeat, and she grin and say it was

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just the transformers, all slow death and feedback. But sometimes,

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when I was tired enough, it seemed like something else. Entirely,

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the show was mostly requests, news from wire services, occasional

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interviews with the city's bee list variety. No glory, but

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steady company callers who became as familiar as distant relatives.

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There was Old Tad, who dialed in every Thursday at

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twelve twenty eight m with stores about the river, Oisimon,

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who asked for blues wreckers and left critic messages for

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DJA before dawn. We made fun of ourselves, pirates steering

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a leaky ship, finding small joys in the routines, scrolling

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a playliss on, grease muched notepads, the ritual of swapping

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out calls, a spare quarter enter take, the sharing of

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cigarettes outside under the hum red light above the door.

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Decades later, when I left all that behind, I told

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myself it was only nostalgia that made me remember so sharply.

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But when I drove past the old road on the

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way to my first apartment as a podcast producer, I

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couldn't resist turning off just to see the station again.

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This was research, I reassured myself, new material for a

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true crime episode, something to freshen up a series that

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had become, much like me, a little to sedate for

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its own survival. That first afternoon, the city itself seemed

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to assist the idea. The shops on my block had

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changed hands so many times that my memory failed to

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match them with old names. Corners that held bakers were

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now vap shops or tax preparation huts. Even the if

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out restless, the brittle late winter wind carrying dust from

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scaffolding across industrial lots. Channel thirteen had been shuttered for

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a decade and a half. Once sneon sign Poll's visible

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blocks away, a beacon for whichever poor soul finished a

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shiff after midnight. When I pulled up, now the sign

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was nothing but a rusted bracket. The windows were boarded over,

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the siding tagged with layers of graffiti, only intermittently legible warnings,

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tags for fuselys, and the corners of impromptu street dot work.

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The big red door was chained. The glass beside it,

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punctured by an ancient brick. I parked, taking my time,

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maybe hoping some detail would shake loose, a crack and

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a caked over memory. A pair of kids on back

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swerve to avoid me, their faces blank, uninterested. The city

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used to be friendlier, or maybe I just remembered it

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that way. Inside my car, A thumb for a notebook,

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reminders for questions I meant to ask. Only a few

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ex staff was still around as I tracked on social

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media through the slanted roomor channels of local history. Most

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of them e the shut down My inquiries well, left

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my messages unread. I tried to corn a store down

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the block, figure the clerk might at least indulge a chad,

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if not a confession. The bell jangled above the door

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as I walked in, but the young man at the

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counter barely looked up from his phone. I asked if

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he remembered channel thirteen. He shook his head, I sliding away.

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When I pressed, he simply said that place should stay closed.

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People didn't like what came through it. That was the

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most direct answer I got. Other conversations played at Lexilent conspiracies.

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A woman walking her dog paused only long enough to say,

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people don't talk about that place any more, before guiding

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her labrador faster across the intersection. I left business cards

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tucked under windshield wipers, but no one called. That should

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have been enough, a local cold case gone colder, a

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best of backdrop for a miniature episode, But the box

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haunted me. I would catch myself staring at it while

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editing interviews, unable to bring myself to open it again,

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uncertain if I wanted the answers it might contain my

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intent shifted down stream, this would be less a podcast

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to more a personal reckoning, an attempt to exume the

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simple companionship of the late night and those of us

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who found shutter their wants privately. I worried what I

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had already begun to suspect that the silence surrounding Channel

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thirteen was maintained not by indifference, but by mutual consent.

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Maybe the truth deserved to stay buried. But a part

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of me, the same part that I used to sign

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off just before two a m. And stare at the

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empty booth, couldn't let it go. On a Wednesday, Caving

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to impulse, I queued up the second tape setting the

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ancient recorder on my desk beside my podcasting rig. This

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time I let the real spin longer, turning out the

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lamps so the only light was the jittering blue from

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my laptop. The program began pieces like a puzzle thrown

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at the wall. The tape cut through with music that

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ought to have been period appropriate to accept. The songs

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were always a little off Elton John were there should

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have been Foga, a chrotting local garage band's experimental single,

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excepts load and reversed. The lyrics peppered with syllables that

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prickled at the back of my skull. The djay transitions

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were sharp edged, the tone wandering, sometimes a breathless chair,

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sometimes a dangerous flat line. Every horror, at exactly ten past,

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a jolt of static would puncture the signal, reducing even

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the strong mistrackster metallic whimper. One passage caught my attention,

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a string of five words almost lost underneath a caller's

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veined laughter. One voice not belonging to any host I

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could remember in toning we hear you come through. That

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voice repeated, fracturing the other sentences, but its tone never wavered.

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A patient gently insistent, almost predatory. It played only in

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the dead air, those strange gaps where instructions or adds

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ought to have been. I tried matching what I heard

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to old station Russes, playing back memories of graveyard shifts

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and staff meetings, Peter, who had a gift for impressions maybe,

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except Peter was gone by nineteen ninety seven, burned up

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by too many overnight sobs. Alice had a higher register

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and rich habitually ended sentences with a little rasp that

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this voice lacked. After a while, the line between remembering

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and inventing blurred. Background noises barely audible unless I jacked

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the gainer kept for covering a faint, worrying rhytnic and mechanical,

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not quite matching any tape mechanism Monu. On the third Tibin,

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I detected what sounded like the flutter of paper, thin, harsh,

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then what might have been someone muttering behind a closed door.

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There was a physical discomfort to listening. I kept feeling

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at the age of a memory I couldn't quite summon,

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an echo of old shift changes, or maybe something less ordinary,

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a fissure in the sense of what belonged to reality.

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And what didn't. None of these fragments fit any broadcast

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log I'd reviewed, nor did they match the show run

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downs craps I kept from my years at thirteen. If

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these were malicious hoaxes, someone attained stickingly recreated the logistics

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of mid nineties radio fur drive, nobody would understand but me.

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Sometimes I simply blamed the failing equipment. The tapex quealed

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my headphones based the reels grew hot to the touch

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after only ten minutes of playback, But the voices, the pattens,

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They lingered at night, with the city traffic a distant rumor,

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I'd catch myself listening too closely between the words. After

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day spent wrestling with the tapes, I decided to seek

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cat antos from some one who might actually know more.

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Dennis was the last of the old god, the engineer

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who'd spent more time than any one wandering the bowels

240
00:11:16,960 --> 00:11:20,600
of Channel thirteen jury raking equipment and muttering about budget cuts.

241
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I found him by chance's name and the LEAs agreement

242
00:11:23,320 --> 00:11:26,279
of a low rise apartment near a waterfront. The call

243
00:11:26,320 --> 00:11:29,720
was awkward. He sounded distracted, throw gravelly, with age and cigarettes.

244
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But when I mentioned old tapes. The silence on the

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other end grew so thick I worried the line had died.

246
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He's still alive, I said, I read your email, he replied,

247
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didn't think anyone come looking? Not now. A wet cough,

248
00:11:43,240 --> 00:11:46,440
then a drag of something combusting. You really want the story?

249
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You buy me a coffee block, no sugar. We met

250
00:11:49,240 --> 00:11:51,480
a dinah beside the river, a place that still opened

251
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at six for the few shaft workers who cared. Dennis

252
00:11:54,399 --> 00:11:57,039
arrived late, hair grayer than I remembered, curt too large

253
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for his diminished frame. He slouched into the booth, lighting

254
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a cigarette, only after the waitress turned a blind eye.

255
00:12:03,320 --> 00:12:05,600
His teeth were few, his nails yellow, but his gay

256
00:12:05,600 --> 00:12:08,240
stage sharp, scanning the empty restaurant for eavesdroppers, even as

257
00:12:08,240 --> 00:12:11,840
he sipped his scalding coffee. I knew you poke around. Eventually,

258
00:12:11,960 --> 00:12:15,919
Dennis said, no one else comes back. His hands fidgeted

259
00:12:15,960 --> 00:12:18,159
with an ancient match book, flicking it open and closed.

260
00:12:18,799 --> 00:12:23,159
You working a book or something? I hesitated podcast, mostly

261
00:12:23,200 --> 00:12:25,519
for myself. I got some tapes. Someone mailed them to me.

262
00:12:25,679 --> 00:12:28,159
There's stuff on them, Dennis, stuff I don't remember airing.

263
00:12:28,759 --> 00:12:30,559
He was silent for a full minute. I was traveling

264
00:12:30,559 --> 00:12:33,480
to the stain tiles above the counter. There were problems,

265
00:12:33,600 --> 00:12:36,600
not just the kind up micstatic, he muttered. He remembered

266
00:12:36,600 --> 00:12:38,879
the surge is ninety nine one. They hit me up

267
00:12:38,879 --> 00:12:40,840
on the roof fixing lines every other week. There was

268
00:12:40,879 --> 00:12:43,519
always a hum, but sometimes wasn't the equipment. I'd come

269
00:12:43,559 --> 00:12:45,960
back downstairs check the boards. Half the logs would be

270
00:12:46,039 --> 00:12:49,039
off by ires segments we didn't schedule, recordings made by

271
00:12:49,080 --> 00:12:53,240
no one I could trace. I prodded people disappearing. His

272
00:12:53,320 --> 00:12:56,639
fingers tightened around the mug. Started before you got there.

273
00:12:56,720 --> 00:12:58,759
I think first it was little stuff, phones ringing with

274
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no one, their voicemails he couldn't play back twice. Then

275
00:13:01,200 --> 00:13:03,759
it got worse, transmission locks changed by invisible hands. I

276
00:13:03,840 --> 00:13:06,320
tried bringing it up to el ye know that manager.

277
00:13:06,399 --> 00:13:08,559
He told me to stop, said the transmitter was an AFRIT.

278
00:13:08,720 --> 00:13:10,480
But he never went up on the roof, never heard

279
00:13:10,480 --> 00:13:13,440
what I heard. Dennis fell into a heavy silence, as

280
00:13:13,440 --> 00:13:17,440
if free playing some private inventory of disappointments and scares. Finally,

281
00:13:17,480 --> 00:13:20,440
he looked up Voislow last year. I tried to look

282
00:13:20,519 --> 00:13:23,200
up the frequencies we used FCC wiped most of them,

283
00:13:23,200 --> 00:13:25,200
but every so often, if you park outside the old

284
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lot late enough, you'll pick up something not quite natural,

285
00:13:27,879 --> 00:13:30,080
like the city's talking to itself. I won't go back.

286
00:13:30,159 --> 00:13:32,840
You shouldn't either. I pressed him for more about any

287
00:13:32,840 --> 00:13:35,799
one else who might talk about the tapes. He shook

288
00:13:35,799 --> 00:13:38,399
his head, stood awkwardly, and walked out, leaving me with

289
00:13:38,440 --> 00:13:41,039
the check and the echo of his last words, if

290
00:13:41,080 --> 00:13:43,600
you ever hear your own voice calling back, don't answer.

291
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After Dennis left, the unease in my chest sharpened. The

292
00:13:47,559 --> 00:13:50,000
way he described the missing time the altered locks was

293
00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:51,960
too close to what I'd been finding in the tapes.

294
00:13:52,600 --> 00:13:56,320
He mentioned broadcasts nobody programmed coming through static. I thought

295
00:13:56,320 --> 00:13:58,039
of the phrase to listen as to be her back.

296
00:13:58,720 --> 00:14:01,360
That evening, driven Beckmu and the LUSTI less thrill of

297
00:14:01,360 --> 00:14:04,919
amateur saluting, I broke into the city's municipal archives. The

298
00:14:04,960 --> 00:14:07,360
building was easy enough to access a side door, j

299
00:14:07,360 --> 00:14:09,200
down nearly off its hinges, lat and cold air in

300
00:14:09,200 --> 00:14:12,679
the light spell of sodium street lamps. Inside, I followed

301
00:14:12,679 --> 00:14:15,480
memories from my old inten days. Down two flights, left

302
00:14:15,480 --> 00:14:18,240
behind the water stained map of the county. I flipped

303
00:14:18,240 --> 00:14:21,080
through boxes marked nineteen ninety seven two thousand one found

304
00:14:21,120 --> 00:14:24,960
station locks, checklists, terminations. What I discovered wasn't so much

305
00:14:24,960 --> 00:14:28,159
a record as a series of erasures. Staff liss snapped

306
00:14:28,159 --> 00:14:30,919
off abruptly named vanishing after a particular week, without any

307
00:14:30,960 --> 00:14:34,200
notations for resignation or payment. I compared the weeks to

308
00:14:34,240 --> 00:14:37,080
tape date, finding a pattern after a final shift. Nothing,

309
00:14:37,080 --> 00:14:40,759
no forwarding address, no further checks. I examined a stack

310
00:14:40,799 --> 00:14:43,159
of censored in sident reports, pages punched with holes where

311
00:14:43,159 --> 00:14:46,759
complaints had been filed after midnight. Several redacted mentions of

312
00:14:46,799 --> 00:14:50,120
unexpected staff absences read like a chorusness in half its verses.

313
00:14:50,799 --> 00:14:54,480
Most curious were the phone locks. Every week, usually between

314
00:14:54,480 --> 00:14:56,960
midnight and one a spike of unlisted in bunk halls.

315
00:14:57,600 --> 00:15:00,559
The numbers were impossible to trace. Each dist appearance had

316
00:15:00,559 --> 00:15:03,080
been preceded by a rash of these culls, growing more frequent,

317
00:15:03,120 --> 00:15:06,240
before whoever it was, had stopped answering altogether. Not one

318
00:15:06,320 --> 00:15:09,279
was resolved. The final notations on two of the forms

319
00:15:09,320 --> 00:15:13,320
simply re color unresponsive issue close. Something in those records

320
00:15:13,360 --> 00:15:15,320
rhyme with the same dissonance, the sense of a presence

321
00:15:15,320 --> 00:15:18,639
too persistent to be a technical malfunction compel. I listened

322
00:15:18,639 --> 00:15:22,279
to more tapes. Some patents persisted. The djay voices grew

323
00:15:22,320 --> 00:15:24,600
emptier in a week before their last broadcast, their powder

324
00:15:24,639 --> 00:15:27,919
collapsing into fragments, word choices, slipping into syntax that didn't

325
00:15:27,960 --> 00:15:31,200
quite belong to any error or region. Sometimes they'd break

326
00:15:31,279 --> 00:15:34,559
form at entirely, making personal aside, pausing mid sentences if

327
00:15:34,559 --> 00:15:37,080
hearing something beyond the music, then resuming in an utterly

328
00:15:37,159 --> 00:15:40,440
flat monotone. It happened across years, cross every person I'd

329
00:15:40,440 --> 00:15:44,320
ever known to work those ires painstakingly. I began documenting

330
00:15:44,399 --> 00:15:46,799
these changes, comparing the voices at their most lucid and

331
00:15:46,840 --> 00:15:50,360
their most altered. Overlaying them, I realized each daffer, just

332
00:15:50,399 --> 00:15:53,200
before their final show, repeated the same critic phrase to

333
00:15:53,279 --> 00:15:55,759
listen as to be heard back. The first tape had

334
00:15:55,759 --> 00:15:57,600
presented it as a slip. Now it felt like a

335
00:15:57,639 --> 00:16:01,120
transmission planted in each fading voice, reaching out to relatives

336
00:16:01,159 --> 00:16:05,759
of the vanished, proofruitless, reluctant siblings, elderly parents. All conversations

337
00:16:05,840 --> 00:16:10,200
ended abruptly, most never returned. One call connected as someone answered, listened,

338
00:16:10,240 --> 00:16:11,879
then hung up without a word. As soon as I

339
00:16:11,919 --> 00:16:15,559
mentioned Channel thirteen. A week later, my own podcast recordings

340
00:16:15,559 --> 00:16:17,840
developed a persistence carratchy under tone, a kind of so

341
00:16:17,960 --> 00:16:21,320
harmonic interference that no filter could shake. By this point,

342
00:16:21,360 --> 00:16:24,639
every new detail pointed toward one inescapable conclusion. Whatever happened

343
00:16:24,639 --> 00:16:26,919
at channel thirteen was no accident, but the result of

344
00:16:26,919 --> 00:16:29,440
some deliberate pattern. As sequence folded into the city's own

345
00:16:29,480 --> 00:16:32,399
deadre If I wanted truth, it wouldn't be found in

346
00:16:32,440 --> 00:16:35,320
stores or papers. I had to see for myself what

347
00:16:35,399 --> 00:16:38,759
lay behind the stations, ruined walls. I returned at dusk,

348
00:16:38,960 --> 00:16:40,879
right as the day flickered out and the city sill

349
00:16:40,960 --> 00:16:44,200
wet turned black against a diluted Crimson sky. My heart,

350
00:16:44,200 --> 00:16:46,200
hammered as a hammered was the weakest board over the

351
00:16:46,200 --> 00:16:49,159
back window. The glass behind it eielded after a shove.

352
00:16:49,879 --> 00:16:52,360
I stumbled in sighed, using my phone's flascight to cut

353
00:16:52,360 --> 00:16:55,279
through the gloom. The interior was a time capsule, tables

354
00:16:55,320 --> 00:16:58,080
laid with mold and spilt coffee, fossilized in ridges, pads

355
00:16:58,080 --> 00:17:00,759
of note pepper gone gray with age. A wave of

356
00:17:00,799 --> 00:17:04,119
stagnant ere struck me in distinctly redolent of dust, ancient cigarettes,

357
00:17:04,200 --> 00:17:08,079
the musk of decomposed insulation. The main studio was largely intact,

358
00:17:08,119 --> 00:17:10,960
A filthy, antiquated tone tables caught scattered across the bat

359
00:17:11,000 --> 00:17:14,039
of the noleum, stray scraps of script in one corner,

360
00:17:14,079 --> 00:17:16,480
amount of an opened mail, birthday cats, a polaroid of

361
00:17:16,480 --> 00:17:18,839
two d jay and a half halc I suspiciously averted

362
00:17:18,839 --> 00:17:22,240
from the camera. The sense of layered abandonment was almost overwhelming.

363
00:17:22,799 --> 00:17:25,799
Every detail scream no one ever meant to return. I

364
00:17:25,880 --> 00:17:29,079
moved on to the back offices. One door pad locked

365
00:17:29,119 --> 00:17:32,039
and nearly few shut by corrosion resisted my first few tries.

366
00:17:32,720 --> 00:17:35,000
I scounged up a pen from a scattered cup, jammed

367
00:17:35,000 --> 00:17:36,960
it into the loch. Heaved with both hands until the

368
00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:39,920
wood buckle beneath the hinges pop with an expulsion of

369
00:17:39,960 --> 00:17:44,039
dried metallic breath. Inside the office was smaller, thus layers

370
00:17:44,079 --> 00:17:46,880
on everything, the ceiling browning with what looked like water damage.

371
00:17:47,279 --> 00:17:50,119
But here things were different. Some unrecently relative to the

372
00:17:50,119 --> 00:17:52,559
rest of the building had moved papers, set things neatly

373
00:17:52,599 --> 00:17:55,440
in a pile atop desk. In the corner, a wall

374
00:17:55,480 --> 00:17:58,319
safe with the handle left pointed lea's que I cracked

375
00:17:58,319 --> 00:18:01,359
it open heart pounding pulse fluttering just beneath my ears

376
00:18:02,119 --> 00:18:05,680
inside reel's large format, marked and read only with dates.

377
00:18:06,359 --> 00:18:09,359
Each date matched a missing staff member's final documented shift.

378
00:18:10,000 --> 00:18:12,599
I counted seven reels in total, dense with dust except

379
00:18:12,680 --> 00:18:16,440
round the most recent, which looked barely disturbed. Alongside them

380
00:18:16,519 --> 00:18:19,079
was a sheaf of faded memos, all labeled for internal

381
00:18:19,200 --> 00:18:23,200
use only, typed and initial dilgibly. Most referenced Project ray Line,

382
00:18:23,240 --> 00:18:25,440
an external program tied to post office box in the

383
00:18:25,480 --> 00:18:28,079
city far west of ires One, with no known relationship

384
00:18:28,079 --> 00:18:31,200
to local media. A final discovery a folded map of

385
00:18:31,200 --> 00:18:33,640
our city southeast quadrant, printed in black and white, with

386
00:18:33,720 --> 00:18:36,279
concentric circles drawn by hand, radiating outward from the spot

387
00:18:36,319 --> 00:18:40,279
marked thirteen studio transmitter slash beacon. Each circle corresponded to

388
00:18:40,319 --> 00:18:43,839
a different interval one mile three five. Someone had made

389
00:18:43,839 --> 00:18:47,000
careful notes law on the periphery, dates, whether notations, strange

390
00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:49,599
symbols I didn't recognize, as if chatting a field experiment

391
00:18:49,720 --> 00:18:53,119
rather than radio listenership. As I gathered the tapes, the map,

392
00:18:53,240 --> 00:18:55,839
and the memos, my phone began to vibrate insistently in

393
00:18:55,880 --> 00:18:58,680
my pocket. The display was blank except for a number

394
00:18:58,680 --> 00:19:01,799
that rolled over to being all zero. I swallowed, pressing

395
00:19:01,839 --> 00:19:04,279
the green econ anyway, as if Hattock could hold me together.

396
00:19:04,920 --> 00:19:07,119
On the other end was a voice, broken, disjoined it

397
00:19:07,200 --> 00:19:09,680
but horribly familiar, scraping the air in the same cadence

398
00:19:09,680 --> 00:19:12,720
I'd heard bleeding through the tapes for days. It rasped

399
00:19:12,759 --> 00:19:15,599
a year out of time, airwaves listening. I dropped the

400
00:19:15,599 --> 00:19:18,119
phone to the floor. The line was silent, but I

401
00:19:18,119 --> 00:19:20,160
could feel a charge twisting through the air, the taste

402
00:19:20,160 --> 00:19:23,160
of copper blending with panic. Even before I left, I

403
00:19:23,240 --> 00:19:25,240
knew I was being heard, and I had already answered.

404
00:19:25,839 --> 00:19:28,319
I stumbled backward over a tangle of cable, clutching the

405
00:19:28,359 --> 00:19:30,200
tapes and the brittle memos until the crinkle of the

406
00:19:30,240 --> 00:19:32,799
paper seemed to fill up my skull. My breath came

407
00:19:32,839 --> 00:19:35,759
in shallow snatches. For a moment, the shapes behind my

408
00:19:35,799 --> 00:19:39,079
eyes tried to reorganize themselves into faces, syllables. Some one

409
00:19:39,240 --> 00:19:41,400
was spring inside a soundpro of booth, just out of sight.

410
00:19:42,160 --> 00:19:45,079
I passed my back to the wall. The office was suffocating,

411
00:19:45,119 --> 00:19:47,319
no moving air, only the echo of my own pulse.

412
00:19:47,920 --> 00:19:50,039
The phone on the scuff linoleum blinked. I snatched it

413
00:19:50,160 --> 00:19:54,359
up thum grazing the screen. The interface flickered, statical lines jumping.

414
00:19:54,400 --> 00:19:56,359
The home screen, replaced for half a second by an

415
00:19:56,400 --> 00:19:58,640
image I recognized only at the edge of my mind's eye,

416
00:19:58,640 --> 00:20:00,960
the old mule from Channel thirteen entry away. But the

417
00:20:00,960 --> 00:20:03,680
eyes were empty sockets, the colors leached out, teeth too

418
00:20:03,640 --> 00:20:06,319
wide in a field of blurring faces. I squeezed my

419
00:20:06,319 --> 00:20:09,240
eyes shut, then opened them again. The scream was black.

420
00:20:09,880 --> 00:20:12,200
My fingers moved through muscle memory, the podcast app the

421
00:20:12,240 --> 00:20:14,880
voice recorder, both present, but stuttering, as if a thumb

422
00:20:14,880 --> 00:20:17,559
print had been left somewhere in cold A sound seemed

423
00:20:17,559 --> 00:20:20,119
to shut her through the building, low and frodi when

424
00:20:20,200 --> 00:20:22,200
I would have called plumbing, except that water had not

425
00:20:22,279 --> 00:20:25,000
run in this place for a decade. I turned half,

426
00:20:25,000 --> 00:20:27,759
expecting to see someone Denis, maybe passed or present, to

427
00:20:27,759 --> 00:20:30,599
step in from the hallway, but nobody came, only the

428
00:20:30,640 --> 00:20:33,880
wind pressing weakly at weather boards, and the gentle, methodical

429
00:20:33,920 --> 00:20:37,279
patter of another rain beginning outside. I gathered myself and

430
00:20:37,319 --> 00:20:39,799
moved quickly, fitting the master rills and the project rail

431
00:20:39,799 --> 00:20:42,839
line file into my messenger back. The weight was heavy,

432
00:20:42,880 --> 00:20:46,000
almost admonishing a counterbalance to my need to escape. I

433
00:20:46,079 --> 00:20:48,960
navigated the hallway toward the back exit, past the main studio,

434
00:20:49,039 --> 00:20:51,359
passed the kitchen with its avalanche of split sugar packets

435
00:20:51,400 --> 00:20:54,799
and patch by doughnut holes. The heavy silence pressed against

436
00:20:54,799 --> 00:20:58,039
me with peculiar force. If I paused, I could almost

437
00:20:58,039 --> 00:21:01,079
imagine other footsteps following in time with my As I

438
00:21:01,119 --> 00:21:03,599
turned the lost corner, a metallic creak ricocheted down the

439
00:21:03,599 --> 00:21:07,960
empty corridor. I stopped, frozen slowly. From around the bend.

440
00:21:08,119 --> 00:21:10,640
A slot of light formed underneath the door to Studio Bee.

441
00:21:10,640 --> 00:21:13,240
It had been windowless in the old days. The switch

442
00:21:13,240 --> 00:21:15,079
beside it was now rough gouge in a plaster, but

443
00:21:15,119 --> 00:21:17,559
a sliver of illumination traced the tile in a vibrating,

444
00:21:17,680 --> 00:21:21,480
unsteady line. My mouth dried out. It wasn't possible for

445
00:21:21,519 --> 00:21:23,640
any power to run here. The box was long shut off.

446
00:21:23,720 --> 00:21:26,599
Service men had torn out the Lion's years back, but

447
00:21:26,720 --> 00:21:30,200
the globe persisted. I approached, at first a step, then another.

448
00:21:30,359 --> 00:21:33,519
The crunch of glass yards under my sneakers each footful

449
00:21:33,559 --> 00:21:36,240
made my nerve shiver. I pressed my ear to the door.

450
00:21:36,839 --> 00:21:40,039
There was unmistakable sound inside, faint, undulating, like slow motion

451
00:21:40,160 --> 00:21:43,480
laughter underwater. The radio was playing, except the stations bled

452
00:21:43,519 --> 00:21:46,119
across each other, snatches of competing songs, bits of weather

453
00:21:46,160 --> 00:21:48,599
reports folded over, a copy, a word here, a half

454
00:21:48,640 --> 00:21:51,240
swallowed phrase there, coming up atwelve, coming up a twelve

455
00:21:51,240 --> 00:21:55,079
our voice on the air. I recognized the cadence, my own,

456
00:21:55,200 --> 00:21:58,559
distorted and clipped through generations of taped degradation. The vose

457
00:21:58,680 --> 00:22:01,920
rose and felt punctuated by ADDICTA felt physical pressing against

458
00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:05,240
my jaw, A sire heat rose in my throat. I

459
00:22:05,359 --> 00:22:08,039
reached for the handle, found its death, then yielding, the

460
00:22:08,119 --> 00:22:10,559
door swung open to utter dark, the snow visible sores

461
00:22:10,559 --> 00:22:13,359
for the light slunted along the floor. The air inside

462
00:22:13,400 --> 00:22:15,599
was thick with ozon, and the tongue of hot electronics,

463
00:22:15,640 --> 00:22:18,640
stronger than in the otter rooms. On a folding chair,

464
00:22:18,720 --> 00:22:21,880
a tape of corridspond wheels turning lazily, emitting that light

465
00:22:21,920 --> 00:22:23,920
glowing dimly from within the seam, as if a bulb

466
00:22:23,920 --> 00:22:27,079
were burning itself out inside the chassis. I moved forward,

467
00:22:27,160 --> 00:22:30,400
every muscle, stiff and willing, but compelled. In the beast's glass,

468
00:22:30,440 --> 00:22:33,079
caught from the corridor's lost, clotted leam, I saw myself

469
00:22:33,119 --> 00:22:36,559
hunch palla jaw set, but beside me for an instant

470
00:22:36,559 --> 00:22:39,319
longer than an explanation, something else stared out. Another face

471
00:22:39,440 --> 00:22:42,880
features blur imposed at the same height. A double exposure

472
00:22:42,880 --> 00:22:44,440
from a camera I didn't know I was holding on

473
00:22:44,559 --> 00:22:48,400
to my skin erupted in prickling shock. I stepped back

474
00:22:48,480 --> 00:22:50,680
and the presence vanished, leaving only the fogging of my

475
00:22:50,759 --> 00:22:53,440
own breath. The tape. Dick's sounds ratched it up. Put

476
00:22:53,440 --> 00:22:55,480
a now something not on my heartbeat, skipping a base

477
00:22:55,559 --> 00:22:58,279
rhythm twined with a tiney jingle. Channel thirteen Zili signal

478
00:22:58,319 --> 00:23:01,799
fractured into overlapping octaves. The urge to bolt battle with

479
00:23:01,839 --> 00:23:04,599
another darkenee, not to know exactly, but to witness, to

480
00:23:04,599 --> 00:23:07,559
have something concrete as proof. I reached for the spinning

481
00:23:07,599 --> 00:23:10,400
wheel out of habit. It was warm and perilously pint

482
00:23:10,440 --> 00:23:12,839
when I picked it up, A magnetic tape flapping disjointedly,

483
00:23:12,880 --> 00:23:15,880
as if it was playing out against resistance. The recorders

484
00:23:15,880 --> 00:23:18,720
played button was jammed partway down, warped plastic, refusing to

485
00:23:18,720 --> 00:23:22,960
budge fully into stop. Then the voices changed, no longer

486
00:23:23,079 --> 00:23:26,279
just mine. I recognized alice strained in toning a wordless litany,

487
00:23:26,319 --> 00:23:29,279
broken up by clicks and tape edits. He dere fast,

488
00:23:29,359 --> 00:23:33,200
asking questions that never quite formed into sentences. Dennis himself

489
00:23:33,240 --> 00:23:35,720
in a his stone, feed at don't let the signal finish.

490
00:23:36,119 --> 00:23:38,319
The buildings are shifted with each phrase, a chill that

491
00:23:38,359 --> 00:23:41,640
penetrated both memory and skin. I stepped backward, the tape

492
00:23:41,640 --> 00:23:44,200
still in hand. The voices chased each other in an

493
00:23:44,279 --> 00:23:48,559
endless recursively growing quieter than louder, until only silence remained.

494
00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:51,640
I said, the real flat on the table. Some part

495
00:23:51,640 --> 00:23:53,359
of me craved to listen to it in a safer place,

496
00:23:53,400 --> 00:23:55,839
preferably far from these walls, with light and an escaper

497
00:23:55,880 --> 00:23:58,960
out at hand. The bulb inside the recorder's cosette compartment

498
00:23:59,039 --> 00:24:01,599
let off a final bright red flicker, then died, snuffing

499
00:24:01,599 --> 00:24:04,400
the glow. Something in the building shifted to maybe only

500
00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:06,599
the wind, but I found my hands trembling, my scalp

501
00:24:06,640 --> 00:24:08,559
tied as if the whole station had drawn a breath

502
00:24:08,599 --> 00:24:11,319
in unison behind me. I left the room, pulling the

503
00:24:11,319 --> 00:24:14,039
door shut so gently the click was nearly inaudible. The

504
00:24:14,119 --> 00:24:16,400
rush to the exit was under rook, guarded by hope

505
00:24:16,400 --> 00:24:19,519
more than's ends. I clambered through the same window, boots

506
00:24:19,519 --> 00:24:22,359
scraping the sail, and dropped to the gravel. Night had

507
00:24:22,359 --> 00:24:25,480
crept up fully. Now the rain was heavier, drumming on

508
00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:27,480
the car's roof as I tossed my back carelessly on

509
00:24:27,519 --> 00:24:30,240
to the passenger seat and slammed the door. Only when

510
00:24:30,240 --> 00:24:32,400
I twisted the ignition did my chest loosen one and

511
00:24:32,440 --> 00:24:35,119
hail at a time. But as the headlights illuminated the

512
00:24:35,119 --> 00:24:37,799
boarded entrance, I glimpsed something movement behind the slats, the

513
00:24:37,799 --> 00:24:40,559
colorless flicker of a face pressing against the gap. Not

514
00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:44,319
a threat, exactly by expectation, like someone waiting for their cue,

515
00:24:44,880 --> 00:24:47,519
refusing to look back. I drove off ties, hissing on

516
00:24:47,599 --> 00:24:51,039
wet tarmac, the city's deadlights blinking in my periphery. Thus

517
00:24:51,039 --> 00:24:53,400
strange tactic lingered a presence, pressing at the spine, and

518
00:24:53,440 --> 00:24:56,039
after image of the voices caught not just in memory,

519
00:24:56,079 --> 00:24:58,759
but in the act of remembering itself. I went home

520
00:24:58,799 --> 00:25:01,440
by a longer streets I had wound tight traveling but rats.

521
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:04,720
No podcast host should have reason to revisit every intersection

522
00:25:04,759 --> 00:25:08,359
signed only by phantoms, old lives, former friends, the unseen hands,

523
00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:12,000
that ruy tun channel thirteen shift after shift at my apartment,

524
00:25:12,039 --> 00:25:14,799
I stumbled up the stairs, heart racing by heavier than before.

525
00:25:15,359 --> 00:25:17,880
In the cold mechanical glow of my kitchen, I laid

526
00:25:17,880 --> 00:25:20,559
out the nice spoils, the master reels, the project real

527
00:25:20,640 --> 00:25:23,599
and file, the concentric circle's map, the pal of redacted memos,

528
00:25:24,240 --> 00:25:26,079
my skin tingled with the memory of the coll the

529
00:25:26,079 --> 00:25:28,880
cut off phrase aowave is listening. The phrase lived with

530
00:25:28,920 --> 00:25:31,680
me now. I dry washed my face, needing to do

531
00:25:31,720 --> 00:25:33,880
something with my hands, then scanned the apartment, as though

532
00:25:33,880 --> 00:25:36,759
expecting someone to have followed me. The only sounds were

533
00:25:36,759 --> 00:25:38,880
the pluck in refrigerators were in the distant horns of

534
00:25:38,880 --> 00:25:41,960
freight along the river. Cautiously, Ann spoilt one of the

535
00:25:42,000 --> 00:25:44,359
master reels, a date from late nineteen ninety nine, the

536
00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:47,279
month I remember Peter stopped showing up. Nobody talked about

537
00:25:47,279 --> 00:25:50,200
why the tip had warped slightly. The magnetic and coating

538
00:25:50,279 --> 00:25:52,960
rubbed thin in places, but I threaded it into the revere.

539
00:25:53,440 --> 00:25:55,839
My throat worked unconsciously, a reminder of how Off and

540
00:25:55,920 --> 00:25:58,480
I once spoken these boosts, how many iOS were spent

541
00:25:58,519 --> 00:26:02,480
striving for cadence, not me. I press play the first

542
00:26:02,559 --> 00:26:05,119
ten seconds were only his, but a deliberate hiss, as

543
00:26:05,119 --> 00:26:07,440
if some one had ucked out the sound of emptiness itself.

544
00:26:07,960 --> 00:26:10,680
Then music, a jagged iff I couldn't place, neither vintage

545
00:26:10,680 --> 00:26:13,039
nor new, the key shifting every few bars, the temper

546
00:26:13,079 --> 00:26:16,160
wrong for any radio format I ever scheduled. The DJA

547
00:26:16,240 --> 00:26:19,359
delivery was different, soft, almost pleading, as if he knew

548
00:26:19,359 --> 00:26:22,440
he was talking only to himself. At twelve past midnight,

549
00:26:22,480 --> 00:26:24,559
the pattern emerged a break as before, but on this

550
00:26:24,680 --> 00:26:27,920
tape the silence was total, unbroken even by static. Then

551
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:31,400
Peter's voice, not with words, but with breath alon, awful, sighs, great,

552
00:26:31,440 --> 00:26:34,119
and then the phrase We'll listened once, don't answer back.

553
00:26:34,599 --> 00:26:37,000
The deep mechanical were vibrated in the machine, and the

554
00:26:37,039 --> 00:26:40,079
signal wavered as an outside voice crossed the recording. Not

555
00:26:40,200 --> 00:26:43,880
a DJ, not a caller, something layered over both. To

556
00:26:44,039 --> 00:26:46,720
listen is to be heard back. The words came from

557
00:26:46,720 --> 00:26:49,920
everywhere and nowhere at once. I clamped my headphones off,

558
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:52,960
pulse thudding at my temples. It had sounded like someone

559
00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:56,039
in the apartment with me. I spun around half expecting

560
00:26:56,079 --> 00:26:58,720
to find a post in standing at the window. Of course,

561
00:26:58,759 --> 00:27:01,079
there was no one, only ste rising from the radiator

562
00:27:01,079 --> 00:27:03,880
and rain poking the glass with effort. I amois on

563
00:27:03,920 --> 00:27:06,880
the tape replaced it in its battered case. I turned

564
00:27:06,880 --> 00:27:10,240
the review's pardial to off, but the faintest humb persisted,

565
00:27:10,279 --> 00:27:12,160
as if something in the coils refused to wind down.

566
00:27:12,160 --> 00:27:14,200
A sound too familiar to dismiss, too close to the

567
00:27:14,240 --> 00:27:16,880
ross islence. I grew up with the broadcast frooons. After midnay,

568
00:27:17,559 --> 00:27:20,400
I forced myself to focus the project rail line papers. First.

569
00:27:21,039 --> 00:27:23,960
The members referenced things I half understood. A signal strength studies,

570
00:27:24,079 --> 00:27:27,559
carry of frequency modulations, city maps with coded overlays, months

571
00:27:27,559 --> 00:27:30,480
of technical logs annotated by hand, and recurring references to

572
00:27:30,640 --> 00:27:33,960
subjects exposed to ray line over sustained intervals. One had

573
00:27:33,960 --> 00:27:37,079
a log attached subject five. Gradual alteration and honest speech

574
00:27:37,119 --> 00:27:40,279
begins after eight nights. Exhibits linguistic drift, increase in late

575
00:27:40,279 --> 00:27:44,599
shifting scheduled callbacks. Transmission continues despite staff absence, followed protocol

576
00:27:44,759 --> 00:27:48,480
do not answer a weight return transmission. The language was federal,

577
00:27:48,559 --> 00:27:50,680
or at least not local, impossibly removed from the blue

578
00:27:50,680 --> 00:27:53,079
collar routine of the staff i'd known. I felt a

579
00:27:53,119 --> 00:27:56,400
sense of intrusion of trespassing into research better left and disturbed.

580
00:27:57,000 --> 00:27:59,240
I looked again at the concentric map. The circle's match.

581
00:27:59,279 --> 00:28:01,279
Neighborhoods that had it always seemed a bit more restless,

582
00:28:01,400 --> 00:28:05,720
higher energy bills, more outages, sudden unexplained brownouts. The distribution

583
00:28:05,920 --> 00:28:08,799
was random. Each ring was labeled with a time window,

584
00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:11,759
a brief note test broadcasts twelve zero two thirty am

585
00:28:11,880 --> 00:28:15,279
monitor for external contact. Suddenly the rain increased and the

586
00:28:15,319 --> 00:28:17,960
crackle ran through the lights my apartment, dimming and coming back,

587
00:28:18,119 --> 00:28:21,160
the surge pulling at my laptop's charging cable. Just for

588
00:28:21,200 --> 00:28:23,400
an instant, my speakers let out squeal than a figt

589
00:28:23,400 --> 00:28:25,640
trees of my own sign off, echoing years after it

590
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:29,039
should have faded to dead or my phone vibrated. I

591
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:32,359
checked at no new messages, blank coal lock, but scrolling

592
00:28:32,440 --> 00:28:34,359
up there was a voice memoir I had not recorded.

593
00:28:34,440 --> 00:28:37,000
Thirty seconds tie and stumped. During my drive home, when

594
00:28:37,039 --> 00:28:39,319
my phone was sipped and mewed in my jacket, I

595
00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:44,640
press play silence, then euro being heard repeat my own voice.

596
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:47,240
They can slurred, uttering a final word that clitched and

597
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:50,319
disappeared in a wash of static in the distance. Through

598
00:28:50,400 --> 00:28:52,519
three panes of glass inthic city air. The rumble of

599
00:28:52,559 --> 00:28:55,039
a train passed itself into distinct intervals are ryther, not

600
00:28:55,119 --> 00:28:58,359
quite morse, but insistent. The phrase repeated in my head,

601
00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:00,640
skipping like a recordless shy of the grow, don't let

602
00:29:00,720 --> 00:29:03,519
it finish. I looked down at the reels, at the map,

603
00:29:03,599 --> 00:29:06,200
at the stack of memos, and for the first time

604
00:29:06,200 --> 00:29:08,559
in years, I wondered, without any irony, whether we had

605
00:29:08,599 --> 00:29:12,160
been the experiment, not the broadcasters, not the ones transmitting,

606
00:29:12,200 --> 00:29:14,680
but the ones meant to become the message out in

607
00:29:14,759 --> 00:29:17,039
the fire escape. The city started and flickered, dripping with

608
00:29:17,039 --> 00:29:19,880
impossible frequencies. I could nearly see, drifting over the river

609
00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:23,640
and out across the silent neighborhoods. Everyone said Channel thirteen

610
00:29:23,759 --> 00:29:25,480
was gone, but I no longer believed that. With the

611
00:29:25,519 --> 00:29:27,799
tape spinning and the voices looping in a cursive refusal,

612
00:29:27,880 --> 00:29:30,359
it lived wherever there was a receiver leftune to silence.

613
00:29:31,119 --> 00:29:33,680
I was out of time, and whether I wanted to

614
00:29:33,799 --> 00:29:36,680
or not, I was listening. I barely slept after the

615
00:29:36,759 --> 00:29:39,279
last tape. In a half doze. My brain played old

616
00:29:39,279 --> 00:29:42,119
station music out of nothing, jazz with mechanical noise, the

617
00:29:42,160 --> 00:29:45,359
sort you can't mistake for dreams. I kept bracing for

618
00:29:45,359 --> 00:29:47,079
a knock at the door, a flash of old police

619
00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:50,480
light through the blinds, some catastrophic rational consequence for trespassing

620
00:29:50,519 --> 00:29:53,599
and death. Every so often my form vibrate, but no

621
00:29:53,759 --> 00:29:57,279
notifications ever appeared. At four, I got up and circled

622
00:29:57,319 --> 00:29:59,519
my apartment, boot quenching and the loose tapes and wadded

623
00:29:59,559 --> 00:30:02,480
up memos i'd been laying out for iOS. With nowhere

624
00:30:02,480 --> 00:30:04,720
else to go, I finally locked everything in a desk

625
00:30:04,799 --> 00:30:06,960
drawer and forced myself back to bed, but my eyes

626
00:30:06,960 --> 00:30:09,960
never truly closed. The static stepped to my a tension

627
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:12,400
and my own thoughts liked behind, separated from any sense

628
00:30:12,440 --> 00:30:15,240
of safety by something electric, something waiting for me to slip.

629
00:30:15,720 --> 00:30:18,640
Morning spat in uneven light through cloud and old finishing blinds.

630
00:30:19,319 --> 00:30:21,720
I sat hunched over back coffee, replay knows word in

631
00:30:21,759 --> 00:30:24,359
my heady here, out of time air waves listening. The

632
00:30:24,400 --> 00:30:26,839
phrase had a rhythm, a strange familiarity I didn't want

633
00:30:26,839 --> 00:30:29,400
to admit to. It had been in Peter's, was once

634
00:30:29,480 --> 00:30:32,440
thin in mine, impossibly in something else, not quite human

635
00:30:32,519 --> 00:30:34,359
that called up the line. As I left the ruined station,

636
00:30:34,960 --> 00:30:36,799
I set up my digital rig, the one I'd swore

637
00:30:36,799 --> 00:30:38,400
and would keep no styal jet bay. When I left

638
00:30:38,400 --> 00:30:41,480
commercial radio on my screen, the project file for the

639
00:30:41,519 --> 00:30:44,119
Channel thirteen episode pulls with an air corrupted audio with

640
00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:47,359
segments jacket gaps where interviews and edits had once fowed.

641
00:30:48,079 --> 00:30:50,559
All my original raw audio was compromised in the exact

642
00:30:50,559 --> 00:30:53,119
way that it started with. The tapes underlying segments were

643
00:30:53,119 --> 00:30:55,920
static formed words or appeared too if you looped them

644
00:30:56,000 --> 00:30:59,240
just right. Even my backup bestie kept glitching no matter

645
00:30:59,279 --> 00:31:02,319
how I transferred, re imported. I didn't trust the cloud

646
00:31:02,319 --> 00:31:05,119
any more. It felt like handing off bread comes to

647
00:31:05,160 --> 00:31:07,720
something that read every file and remembered all missing pieces.

648
00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:10,759
Instead of edits, I stacked the physical evidence in front

649
00:31:10,799 --> 00:31:13,680
of me on the kitchen table, a concentric map, the project,

650
00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:16,720
REALI memos, even my original cassettes from my own shifts,

651
00:31:16,880 --> 00:31:19,480
all arranged to hunt for a thread, the compulsion to

652
00:31:19,480 --> 00:31:21,400
piece it all together over roade fear I wouldn't be

653
00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:23,599
the first to all last to thinknowledge might confer protection,

654
00:31:23,839 --> 00:31:25,880
or at least dull the edge of the unknown. I

655
00:31:25,920 --> 00:31:28,799
had an engineer of stubbornness inherited from Denis, and a

656
00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:32,599
vestigial hope for rational explanations. Connecting paper and tape and

657
00:31:32,680 --> 00:31:35,119
city events became my only till left against whatever had

658
00:31:35,119 --> 00:31:40,079
burrowed under my routines. I made less dates, possible, motives, correlations.

659
00:31:40,759 --> 00:31:43,759
I compared every staff absence, I could document mine Alice's

660
00:31:43,880 --> 00:31:45,799
peters to the dates marked and the master rules and

661
00:31:45,839 --> 00:31:48,480
the city wide patterns and real lines, weather and outage notes.

662
00:31:49,279 --> 00:31:52,680
Some things aligned within a good precision. Most vanishings twinned

663
00:31:52,680 --> 00:31:55,400
with complaints logged to the power company, frequencies of readers,

664
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:58,640
Atmospheric interference, deared animals found in city parks when the

665
00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:01,200
sky pulls with unexpected arouse no one else seemed to

666
00:32:01,200 --> 00:32:04,400
have noticed. In every single case, the outage is centered

667
00:32:04,400 --> 00:32:07,119
with thin channel thirteen's coverage radius ripping outward with a

668
00:32:07,119 --> 00:32:11,039
troubling regularity, like echoes. The more I read, the clearer

669
00:32:11,079 --> 00:32:13,640
the logic in the memos became not crazy, not chaotic,

670
00:32:13,759 --> 00:32:17,240
but methodical. Project rey Line wasn't just a technical trial,

671
00:32:17,279 --> 00:32:19,400
but an intentional attempt to push something through the airwaves

672
00:32:19,440 --> 00:32:21,440
to shape the city with a signal strong enough to

673
00:32:21,440 --> 00:32:24,240
do more than play music or news. The language was

674
00:32:24,279 --> 00:32:26,799
called written by someone who believed people and voices were

675
00:32:26,799 --> 00:32:30,920
simply variables. Phrases like subject, drift or carrier event jumped

676
00:32:30,920 --> 00:32:33,240
out at me. The last set of memos described a

677
00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:36,119
protocol for exposure, keep staff in the booth past midnight,

678
00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:39,960
increase in scheduled content, monitor for a feedback phenomena. Each

679
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:42,799
time someone went missing, the broadcaster's logs grew less and

680
00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:47,000
less coherent, eventually devolving into wordless loops or silences, like

681
00:32:47,039 --> 00:32:50,039
a mind being erased and repopulated. With the signal. As

682
00:32:50,079 --> 00:32:52,599
noon pressed in, I began to cross reference station lobs

683
00:32:52,599 --> 00:32:56,440
against old news items and emergency reports. One thing surfaced

684
00:32:56,480 --> 00:32:59,599
every time calls from listeners about strange forces behind the music.

685
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:03,119
This in a week before each staffer's disappearance. The public

686
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:05,240
had noticed in their own way, but by the time

687
00:33:05,319 --> 00:33:07,319
anything could be verified, it was too late. Dead air

688
00:33:07,359 --> 00:33:10,599
redacted statements, rumors that only grew more fractured with each telling.

689
00:33:11,119 --> 00:33:13,759
I laid out the tip chronologically, determined to analyze one

690
00:33:13,759 --> 00:33:17,160
final pattern before taking any reversible step. With the kitchen

691
00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:19,319
door close and my phone set on airplane mode, I

692
00:33:19,359 --> 00:33:22,079
played the last known broadcast of each vanished staff member,

693
00:33:22,160 --> 00:33:24,599
recording what happened every hour at exactly ten past the

694
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:26,759
time when the surge of the signal change would strike.

695
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:30,640
Always without variation, the same freight appeared, either in their voice,

696
00:33:30,680 --> 00:33:33,920
the static or the ovolaid interference. To listen is to

697
00:33:33,920 --> 00:33:37,319
be her back, sometimes the end of pleading, sometimes surrender,

698
00:33:37,400 --> 00:33:40,640
sometimes nothing at all but a clipped tail. The last tape,

699
00:33:40,680 --> 00:33:42,759
the freshest, was mine, my own sign off from the

700
00:33:42,759 --> 00:33:45,799
final week I work late nights. I'd never listened back

701
00:33:45,839 --> 00:33:47,960
to it before, to embarrass by the ruonness I brought

702
00:33:47,960 --> 00:33:50,680
to the roll, the weariness in my delivery. Yet there

703
00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:53,079
it was, at ten past one, just after an awkward

704
00:33:53,119 --> 00:33:56,039
son transition. My younger self mumbled almost beneath his breath

705
00:33:56,119 --> 00:33:58,200
to listen, as before cutting off with a cough and

706
00:33:58,279 --> 00:34:00,799
jumping to the next track. The hairs on my arms

707
00:34:00,880 --> 00:34:04,000
rose and slow measured terror. I had been touched by two.

708
00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:06,599
Maybe I'd just been lucky left before the whole thing

709
00:34:06,599 --> 00:34:10,079
could finish. Desperate for something to break the circularity, I

710
00:34:10,119 --> 00:34:13,039
went searching for a side. Data in old community forms

711
00:34:13,079 --> 00:34:15,920
and amateur radio posts. I found threads about word wide

712
00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:17,679
ben noise picked up around the city in the late

713
00:34:17,760 --> 00:34:20,920
nineties when Channel thirteen was at its peak range. No

714
00:34:20,960 --> 00:34:23,119
one ever tied it to missing persons with a shutdown,

715
00:34:23,679 --> 00:34:27,239
but a chilling consistency remained. All reports described phantom voices,

716
00:34:27,440 --> 00:34:31,159
reverse voices, or calls that couldn't be traced. Worse, some

717
00:34:31,199 --> 00:34:33,360
of these complaints had been logged the very season that

718
00:34:33,400 --> 00:34:36,320
project ray Line's memos labeled as primary window for non

719
00:34:36,360 --> 00:34:39,599
staff exposure over and over at the city itself seemed

720
00:34:39,639 --> 00:34:42,079
to be the real test subject for whatever had been broadcast.

721
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:45,440
The map's circles weren't ratings. Each was a blast radius.

722
00:34:46,079 --> 00:34:48,280
I started its wedding despite the cold that pressed in

723
00:34:48,320 --> 00:34:51,800
through the window frames. As desk approached, my options thinned.

724
00:34:52,440 --> 00:34:54,400
I had all the evidence any city coroner would go

725
00:34:54,400 --> 00:34:57,039
as story collector could want, but none of it felt actionable.

726
00:34:57,559 --> 00:35:00,679
Interviews led nowhere, recordings corrupted, and no one, no family,

727
00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:03,800
no city official would risk even denial. I couldn't shake

728
00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:06,840
the feeling that something remained unresolved. A final circuit to close,

729
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:09,719
I thought, returned one night to night. All along the

730
00:35:09,719 --> 00:35:12,280
signal was meant to repeat. That was the only way

731
00:35:12,360 --> 00:35:15,079
Loops ever closed. Some one had gone to the trouble

732
00:35:15,079 --> 00:35:17,280
of sending me the tapes, the map, the box, hoping

733
00:35:17,360 --> 00:35:20,760
or fearing that I tried to understand and maybe, by investigating,

734
00:35:20,840 --> 00:35:23,840
pick up the same broadcast, unwittingly finishing what they'd started.

735
00:35:24,480 --> 00:35:27,079
My recorder started hissing without prompt, a faintacle in the

736
00:35:27,079 --> 00:35:30,199
head funds, even when no jack was inserted. I unplucked

737
00:35:30,239 --> 00:35:33,480
everything for an hour. I paced hands and hair, every

738
00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:35,880
surface in my apartment, resonating with the left over note

739
00:35:35,880 --> 00:35:39,280
of a power search. Could I risk he returning? Hadn't

740
00:35:39,280 --> 00:35:42,360
a signal already found me? My voice was already echoing,

741
00:35:42,400 --> 00:35:44,920
shifting on my drives, muttering in the periphery. At night,

742
00:35:45,400 --> 00:35:47,880
Dennis had worn me and walked away, at least for time.

743
00:35:48,440 --> 00:35:51,320
Peter and Alice had not been so lucky, but they'd

744
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:53,039
been on air at midnight in the booth where the

745
00:35:53,039 --> 00:35:55,400
equipment patched into a city they assumed was merely silent.

746
00:35:56,119 --> 00:35:58,280
The urge burned to fight the repetition, I would need

747
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:00,679
to witness it, But why tempt the pattern designed to

748
00:36:00,679 --> 00:36:03,639
catch and transform whatever observe it. When evening fell, I

749
00:36:03,679 --> 00:36:05,880
stoffed the project rail line folder and a fresh tape

750
00:36:05,880 --> 00:36:08,840
into my back, rolled my portable digital recorder and bubble wrap,

751
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:11,639
and threw on the only clean jacket left. I left

752
00:36:11,639 --> 00:36:13,760
the box of Old Tatee spinning on my kitchen table,

753
00:36:13,800 --> 00:36:15,800
as if hoping the ghosts would distract each other. While

754
00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:18,239
I was gone. The car ride out was rolled with

755
00:36:18,320 --> 00:36:20,800
wind and the swallen malaise of city streets at their emptiest.

756
00:36:21,679 --> 00:36:24,159
I tried every logical argument for turning back, but my

757
00:36:24,239 --> 00:36:26,400
mind looped in the same logic as the tapes. What

758
00:36:26,519 --> 00:36:29,159
is herd must be listened for? What calls out must

759
00:36:29,159 --> 00:36:31,320
be answered? Whether the pattern will simply begin again with

760
00:36:31,360 --> 00:36:34,639
the next unlucky voice. Halfway there, a police cruiser sat

761
00:36:34,639 --> 00:36:38,320
idling at an intersection, headlights stuttering at odd intervals. As

762
00:36:38,360 --> 00:36:40,800
I drove through, the officer glanced from the window, but

763
00:36:40,840 --> 00:36:43,360
seemed more interested in the static buzzing police radio than me.

764
00:36:43,440 --> 00:36:45,960
I tried to, too my dashboard to fempast the dead frequencies.

765
00:36:46,519 --> 00:36:48,840
For a split second in the static, between one hundred

766
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:50,920
seven point seven and one hundred eight point one, I

767
00:36:50,960 --> 00:36:53,320
heard Channel fourteen's old bumper our voice on the air,

768
00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:56,320
fragment slow and menacing, but there, as if the city

769
00:36:56,400 --> 00:36:59,800
never let anything truly fade out, the station loomed a

770
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:02,639
heart and of black angles against the frail sky. I

771
00:37:02,679 --> 00:37:05,719
parked a block away and killed the headlights. The neighborhood

772
00:37:05,719 --> 00:37:09,440
farther west was already dark, every window empty. I cinched

773
00:37:09,480 --> 00:37:12,360
my collar and jogged the distance. The side window I'd

774
00:37:12,360 --> 00:37:14,880
cracked days before was still half open, whether having wiped

775
00:37:14,880 --> 00:37:18,639
away even the freshest footprints. With shaking hands, I slid through,

776
00:37:18,719 --> 00:37:20,880
careful not to slice my palm on the jagged glass.

777
00:37:21,559 --> 00:37:24,840
Inside was almost comfortingly unchanged. The studio's tang of dust

778
00:37:24,840 --> 00:37:27,320
and degradation called and being everything with a slow nourish.

779
00:37:28,079 --> 00:37:30,119
My own recent tracks were just faint enough that I

780
00:37:30,119 --> 00:37:33,400
doubted myself. Maybe I'd been anticipated, maybe something else had

781
00:37:33,400 --> 00:37:36,039
come and gone. In the meantime, the master control room

782
00:37:36,119 --> 00:37:38,519
was the station's heart. The big board, static and luminous

783
00:37:38,519 --> 00:37:41,519
sliders kicked up old posts, curl in off a cathodeciatti,

784
00:37:42,159 --> 00:37:45,079
The red on air bulb pundad from its court. Sound

785
00:37:45,079 --> 00:37:48,320
baffles drooped like exhausted wings. I threaded my own tape

786
00:37:48,320 --> 00:37:50,519
into the portable deck and set up my digital recorder,

787
00:37:50,599 --> 00:37:53,079
framing the control surface so I could narrate my process.

788
00:37:53,840 --> 00:37:56,559
Every gesture felt ritualistic, The careful tap of the VU meter,

789
00:37:56,679 --> 00:37:59,639
the rotation of each faded knob. I waited at Breatha's

790
00:37:59,679 --> 00:38:02,239
Daddy until eleven fifty eight, then hit record on the

791
00:38:02,239 --> 00:38:04,679
digital end with shaking hands, press play on the tape deck.

792
00:38:05,360 --> 00:38:07,719
My own voice slayered over the speakers, playing out into

793
00:38:07,719 --> 00:38:10,079
the room, my narration shaky but intelligible. This is a

794
00:38:10,079 --> 00:38:12,360
live attempt to capture what remains a project re line

795
00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:15,320
the failed transmissions of Channel fifteen and whatever present still

796
00:38:15,320 --> 00:38:18,199
lives here for documentation for those who need closure, for

797
00:38:18,239 --> 00:38:20,679
which have a truth survives the static. If you're hearing this,

798
00:38:20,800 --> 00:38:23,920
I'm But before I could finish, the tape deck's bat back,

799
00:38:23,960 --> 00:38:26,360
a jagged surge of noise of feedback wine Sofia's it

800
00:38:26,440 --> 00:38:29,079
knocked the mic off the table. I tried to adjust

801
00:38:29,119 --> 00:38:31,280
the gain, but the room itself began to resonate, the

802
00:38:31,400 --> 00:38:34,159
very walls clicking in a slow, gone rhythm. My own

803
00:38:34,199 --> 00:38:37,280
voice leaped, wors came out of the speakers before I spoke,

804
00:38:37,320 --> 00:38:39,840
them layered and doubled. The syllab was mangled. Then too

805
00:38:39,920 --> 00:38:43,000
fast is there with there? We've listening? I snapped the

806
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:45,280
power off, but the decks stayed alive, humming with an

807
00:38:45,280 --> 00:38:48,639
insistent mechanical life. Theon ai are bulb sputtering and flickering red,

808
00:38:48,639 --> 00:38:51,519
as if connected to some external pulse. In the studio

809
00:38:51,519 --> 00:38:54,400
Gass's reflection shapes moved behind me, blows that could have

810
00:38:54,400 --> 00:38:56,800
been shadows with a memory of station staff. He once

811
00:38:56,840 --> 00:38:59,639
claimed these ires as their own. For a horrifying moment,

812
00:38:59,719 --> 00:39:01,719
the air behind my chair thick and smelling again of

813
00:39:01,719 --> 00:39:04,440
ozone like cords tearing inside the ribs of the building.

814
00:39:04,960 --> 00:39:07,199
The ritual of the broadcast took over. I queued the

815
00:39:07,239 --> 00:39:09,639
next segment as if still behold into a format lock,

816
00:39:09,800 --> 00:39:11,760
and the studio lights guttered on for half a second,

817
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:15,280
running off nothing, drawing power from absence itself. The frequency

818
00:39:15,320 --> 00:39:18,119
monitor rolled red lines by secting the green. Something was

819
00:39:18,159 --> 00:39:21,800
happening beyond mundane interference. The sense of performance, the need

820
00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:23,960
to speak was all but overwhelman, the urge to address

821
00:39:23,960 --> 00:39:26,599
whoever or whatever was on the other end, forming a bond,

822
00:39:26,679 --> 00:39:29,800
a contract too old and simple to break. Somewhere between

823
00:39:29,840 --> 00:39:32,840
twelve six and twelve twelve, the entire sound skip changed,

824
00:39:33,559 --> 00:39:36,440
disemboded voices filtered through, not recorded by a love, a

825
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:40,280
fugue of staff, chatter, sometimes pleading, sometimes resigned. I heard

826
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:43,440
denis fatigue but urgent. Check the levels. Don't let it through.

827
00:39:43,519 --> 00:39:46,039
If you hear yourself, hang up, don't let it finish,

828
00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:49,239
Alice in a high, hollow tone. I wanted someone to

829
00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:51,320
answer me. Now I don't know who I am any more.

830
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:54,559
The sense of the rooms dimension shifted. The control surfaces

831
00:39:54,559 --> 00:39:56,519
seemed to deepen to wide and pass sight, as if

832
00:39:56,559 --> 00:39:59,079
the studio extended into all those unlit miles of copper

833
00:39:59,119 --> 00:40:02,480
wire and dead stations starting the city against the far wall.

834
00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:05,960
Paperwork fluttered as if touched by passing footsteps on the

835
00:40:06,000 --> 00:40:08,239
desk material as the folder I hadn't brought a sheaf

836
00:40:08,239 --> 00:40:11,320
of touchcook pages with the header channel thirteen emergency scripts

837
00:40:11,360 --> 00:40:14,440
to be read only on air. Each page contained variations

838
00:40:14,440 --> 00:40:16,840
of the same phrase, tweaked for tone, but always ending

839
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:18,800
to listen as to be heard back. To hear yourself

840
00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:21,559
is to transmit, do not answer, do not let it finish.

841
00:40:21,960 --> 00:40:24,679
I picked up the top sheet, hand trembling. The urge

842
00:40:24,719 --> 00:40:27,480
to comply was tangible. A compulsion is persistent as static.

843
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:30,320
My voice cracked as I read if you're out there,

844
00:40:30,400 --> 00:40:32,480
please in the building's low hum ratched to a roar.

845
00:40:33,159 --> 00:40:35,920
Pee buckled through the headset stuttering in time with my pulse.

846
00:40:36,639 --> 00:40:39,000
As I tried to finish the line, my words spun off,

847
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:41,960
my actual voice repeated, and the speakers cycling faster than possible,

848
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:44,800
then layering into itself until it became a single pulse tone.

849
00:40:45,199 --> 00:40:49,400
My vision flicker tunneled at the edges studioblasts rippled with condensation.

850
00:40:50,079 --> 00:40:52,639
Something moved on the other side, so wet pressed against

851
00:40:52,719 --> 00:40:56,800
old formed baffles. I knew the shape Peter's outline, or

852
00:40:56,800 --> 00:40:59,039
something like its mouth, opening and closing back it by

853
00:40:59,039 --> 00:41:02,400
impossible light, but islan. The shadow reached for the board,

854
00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:05,280
hands stopping just above the sliders, hesitating as if asking

855
00:41:05,320 --> 00:41:08,800
my permission, as if in hypnotic compliance. I found myself

856
00:41:08,840 --> 00:41:11,840
reading from the script, even as the world compressed, not

857
00:41:11,920 --> 00:41:14,800
the words I intended, but those rising from some deeper strata.

858
00:41:14,920 --> 00:41:17,280
To answer is to be changed. The air is always listening.

859
00:41:17,360 --> 00:41:19,599
If you hear yourself, don't it that last words stretch,

860
00:41:19,800 --> 00:41:23,320
nearly breaking me. Suddenly both her cord is blurred with noise.

861
00:41:24,039 --> 00:41:26,519
My sign off played audibly across the booth, but continued

862
00:41:26,559 --> 00:41:29,760
after I stopped, diverging into new sentences, then devolving into

863
00:41:29,760 --> 00:41:31,920
a broken litany of listening to listen, heard back you.

864
00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:35,519
The shape in the glass stared, its face split not

865
00:41:35,599 --> 00:41:37,719
in pain, not in malice, but in the bottom as

866
00:41:37,719 --> 00:41:40,280
patience of expectation, awaiting not for rescue but for connection,

867
00:41:40,920 --> 00:41:44,079
a contract seeking closure. I reached for the power. Every

868
00:41:44,159 --> 00:41:47,239
muscle siff with loss. The air pressed close, the walls,

869
00:41:47,239 --> 00:41:50,480
compressing the city's inert frequencies, begging for one final signal,

870
00:41:50,519 --> 00:41:54,239
one permanent receiver. Dennis's voice sounded through the FEEDBA couldn't

871
00:41:54,280 --> 00:41:56,239
let it finish, and as slam my palm down on

872
00:41:56,239 --> 00:41:58,800
the tape deck in the digital rig, sending bow tumbling

873
00:41:58,840 --> 00:42:01,760
off the desk, all at once, the noise cut off,

874
00:42:02,440 --> 00:42:05,719
no voices, no feedback, not even the building's inchient hum.

875
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:08,320
In the silence, my own labor breathing filled the roar

876
00:42:08,519 --> 00:42:11,840
dark air. Time snapped back into motion, the electronics dead,

877
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:14,920
the red on aile light snuffed for good, nothing but

878
00:42:14,960 --> 00:42:16,760
my own heart in my ears, and a memory of

879
00:42:16,800 --> 00:42:19,679
sound press painfully against the hollow of my fruit. I

880
00:42:19,679 --> 00:42:22,639
stuggered outside, leaving the gear, the folder, and the exhausted

881
00:42:22,719 --> 00:42:26,119
room behind the City's night was freezing, unyielding, but free

882
00:42:26,119 --> 00:42:28,960
of the static that had strangled every street before The

883
00:42:29,039 --> 00:42:31,880
drive back was almost a block out. I don't remember

884
00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:34,760
shifting gears, only how the silence pressed, clean but expectant

885
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:38,039
around the empty station lot. When I finally let myself

886
00:42:38,079 --> 00:42:41,360
into the apartment, it was sunrise. My hands didn't shake,

887
00:42:41,440 --> 00:42:43,920
They clung to keys and take more as talsmans than evidence.

888
00:42:44,639 --> 00:42:48,199
The tapes themselves were early quiet now. My digital recorder,

889
00:42:48,320 --> 00:42:51,679
when I loaded the files, had captured only fragments, dislocated voices,

890
00:42:51,679 --> 00:42:54,360
truncated words, and unresolved loop ending in nothing but his.

891
00:42:55,320 --> 00:42:58,519
Some days passed before I finished the podcast episode. The

892
00:42:58,679 --> 00:43:01,760
edit was halting the conclusions, satisfying the evidence and complete.

893
00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:05,800
I knew better than to promise answers. Instead, I played

894
00:43:05,840 --> 00:43:09,239
excerpts odd segments from the confrontation, whispers, threading my own narration.

895
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:12,800
I laid out my research, the power outages, the sec locks,

896
00:43:12,920 --> 00:43:15,920
the city's costo of venice staff. I made my warnings

897
00:43:15,960 --> 00:43:18,159
plain that whatever real line was, it didn't end. When

898
00:43:18,199 --> 00:43:21,800
Channel thirteen went dark, its rescue infected every silence I'd

899
00:43:21,840 --> 00:43:24,320
inhabited since a form of audio haunting, the refusal of

900
00:43:24,320 --> 00:43:27,079
the air to let me be alone. I released the episode,

901
00:43:27,199 --> 00:43:31,360
then breeze for consequences there were none for days only,

902
00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:34,280
the hum for only late night calls from unknown numbers,

903
00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:36,159
heavy with the sound of my own el LA podcast

904
00:43:36,280 --> 00:43:38,320
going back by else in absence where I sensed some

905
00:43:38,320 --> 00:43:41,400
one was listening too closely. My nervous system matched it

906
00:43:41,480 --> 00:43:43,800
up permanently, not panic, but the distinct impression of being

907
00:43:43,840 --> 00:43:48,840
recorded surveiled expected. With time, new symptoms emerged in the

908
00:43:48,920 --> 00:43:51,760
quieter intervals between edits. I started to hear without source,

909
00:43:51,840 --> 00:43:54,719
sometimes from the space behind my desk, sometimes just under

910
00:43:54,719 --> 00:43:58,760
the fridgis whine and neve interference. Sometimes the phantom was language,

911
00:43:58,800 --> 00:44:00,559
a phrase I could almost make out my own voice,

912
00:44:00,559 --> 00:44:03,800
bleeding through headspace where no external input existed. The once

913
00:44:03,840 --> 00:44:07,000
comforting rituals of audio production collapse beneath the new superstition.

914
00:44:07,159 --> 00:44:10,599
Don't play back what you haven't finished, don't listen too late,

915
00:44:11,159 --> 00:44:13,559
don't let yourself become a receiver for what's waiting to loop.

916
00:44:14,159 --> 00:44:17,679
I stopped leaving voicemails, stopped answering late night calls. I

917
00:44:17,760 --> 00:44:20,119
left the tapes and touched the map, blocked away project

918
00:44:20,159 --> 00:44:22,400
re line, filed in a dray silk with shaky resolve.

919
00:44:23,000 --> 00:44:25,039
I couldn't bring myself to dispose of any of it.

920
00:44:25,159 --> 00:44:27,679
Ownership felt like the last fragile boundary between me and

921
00:44:27,719 --> 00:44:30,760
the repetition that took Peter Alice. So many I'd never met,

922
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:34,679
listeners wrote in a few at first, thin dozens. Most

923
00:44:34,719 --> 00:44:36,880
said they were fascinated to Channel thirteen, now the nucleus

924
00:44:36,920 --> 00:44:40,400
for a city widecamp vitaiale, but a minority left troubling messages.

925
00:44:41,039 --> 00:44:42,960
One cent a voice memo of something they'd picked up

926
00:44:43,039 --> 00:44:45,599
during a thunder storm on the South Side. It's you right,

927
00:44:46,280 --> 00:44:49,079
my own voice layered under the static, intoning the same phrase,

928
00:44:49,119 --> 00:44:52,760
half reactive, half catatonic. Another caller bade me to turn

929
00:44:52,800 --> 00:44:54,480
the station off for good, as if I had power

930
00:44:54,519 --> 00:44:57,679
over what lived in the city's dead spectrum. In my nightmares,

931
00:44:57,760 --> 00:45:01,000
I sometimes returned to the booth, math drive gone, headphones

932
00:45:01,000 --> 00:45:03,559
clewed to my head, The script waits open before me.

933
00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:07,400
My hand's restless. Outside the city flickers and hums, every

934
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:10,440
window tuned to the same silent plea for recognition. In

935
00:45:10,519 --> 00:45:13,400
those moments, I begin to understand what Rae Line had started.

936
00:45:13,480 --> 00:45:15,960
Not a broadcast, but it opposite, a transmission meant to

937
00:45:15,960 --> 00:45:18,719
convert the listener to anchor pressence in absence to creaticos

938
00:45:18,760 --> 00:45:21,320
that would replace all memory with a single, endlessly repeating

939
00:45:21,360 --> 00:45:24,239
hum life since as remained gentle on its surface and

940
00:45:24,320 --> 00:45:27,199
jagged beneath, the city, for all its rust and blight,

941
00:45:27,199 --> 00:45:30,440
appears to proceed indifferent to whatever lies not beneath its frequencies.

942
00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:34,360
But the silence is no longer innocent. It feels layer expectant,

943
00:45:34,400 --> 00:45:37,719
th with all the things unsaid and unacknowledged. A month

944
00:45:37,800 --> 00:45:42,320
passes in two. The world warms and forgets, or pretends to.

945
00:45:43,079 --> 00:45:45,320
But some nights, especially in the teeth of a storm,

946
00:45:45,400 --> 00:45:47,760
the air vibrates with old ghosts, the city's apartments reached

947
00:45:47,760 --> 00:45:50,280
for a lost voice, and the old resonance tines with

948
00:45:50,320 --> 00:45:53,599
whatever I have become one evening fan forwards a sniffet

949
00:45:53,639 --> 00:45:56,840
recorded off their clock radio during a tornado watch. The

950
00:45:56,880 --> 00:46:00,559
attached file is choppy, distorted by wind, but unmistakable. The

951
00:46:00,639 --> 00:46:03,920
can channel thirteen coal letters decades extinct, stutter in the

952
00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:06,480
margin w q C H thirteen on the air, too

953
00:46:06,519 --> 00:46:09,159
soft to be rebroadcast, much less a prank. Some frequency

954
00:46:09,199 --> 00:46:13,000
nobody claims underneath. Another voice rises, and I know before

955
00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:15,440
I hear the syllables that it's mine. I play and

956
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:18,760
reaply the file, feeling my skin ice over. My own voice,

957
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:21,920
modulated and fractured, delivers the phrase I never recorded outside

958
00:46:21,960 --> 00:46:23,920
the old booth. To listen is to be heard back,

959
00:46:24,039 --> 00:46:25,880
turn it off if the signal answers of the foul

960
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:28,199
corrupts there, descending into a hiss that is not mere

961
00:46:28,199 --> 00:46:30,679
tape noise, but at a presence, a signal that still

962
00:46:30,719 --> 00:46:32,920
knows my name. If you are in the city when

963
00:46:32,960 --> 00:46:35,000
the storms roll over the river, if you scan the

964
00:46:35,039 --> 00:46:37,920
dial and find Channel thirteen's fountain coal sign, don't linger,

965
00:46:38,519 --> 00:46:42,360
don't answer, don't let it finish. There are frequencies that

966
00:46:42,440 --> 00:46:46,159
remember once the comfort was in being heard. Now I

967
00:46:46,199 --> 00:46:49,440
know sometimes the silence is listening back. I set the

968
00:46:49,440 --> 00:46:51,840
phone down on the kitchen table, feeling the final notes

969
00:46:51,880 --> 00:46:53,679
of my corrupt de voice humming dully through the wood,

970
00:46:53,679 --> 00:46:56,159
as if the resent itself could poison a room. The

971
00:46:56,199 --> 00:46:59,079
city outside was silent, yet mayas strained for another recurrence

972
00:46:59,079 --> 00:47:00,719
of those coal letters. The night on station on a

973
00:47:00,760 --> 00:47:04,119
non frequency JACKO tinged with my own dread for several minutes.

974
00:47:04,159 --> 00:47:06,840
I sat there, frozen, unable to move, the unnatural hush

975
00:47:06,840 --> 00:47:09,519
weighing on every object around me. It wasn't just an

976
00:47:09,559 --> 00:47:12,440
audio though. Ever since the fan had sent a file,

977
00:47:12,519 --> 00:47:15,840
I'd noticed my apartment felt increasingly wrong. At night, corner

978
00:47:15,920 --> 00:47:18,920
seemed to tilt subtly when I shifted my focus. Light

979
00:47:18,960 --> 00:47:21,280
bulbs stuttered for a moment each time I spoke certain

980
00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:24,599
words aloud. If I was quiet enough, just before sleep,

981
00:47:24,639 --> 00:47:26,880
i'd hear arabic pulsing from inside the walls, never quite

982
00:47:26,880 --> 00:47:29,559
synchronizing with my own heartbeat, though I sometimes tried, out

983
00:47:29,559 --> 00:47:32,360
of desperation to force them to match. For a while,

984
00:47:32,400 --> 00:47:35,440
I tried routine as a defense. I kept up interviews

985
00:47:35,440 --> 00:47:38,159
for the podcast, now scrubbing each new audio file line

986
00:47:38,159 --> 00:47:40,559
by line in paranoid hob I'd catch the signal infecting

987
00:47:40,599 --> 00:47:43,559
my words. Emails from listeners poured in a new one

988
00:47:43,559 --> 00:47:46,400
every hour, each with a story. Some swore they'd heard

989
00:47:46,400 --> 00:47:49,400
the call sign. Others told me about dreams being lost

990
00:47:49,440 --> 00:47:52,000
in hole's line and to end with blank humming tape reels,

991
00:47:52,239 --> 00:47:54,559
or walking through a city where every speaker, every car

992
00:47:54,639 --> 00:47:57,639
radio whispered with barely restrained longing, turn it off, turn

993
00:47:57,679 --> 00:47:59,760
it off, turn it And every message ended the same.

994
00:47:59,840 --> 00:48:02,679
I hope you find peace, Please be careful, I thank them,

995
00:48:02,679 --> 00:48:05,119
all hoping to reassure and not transmit the fear I

996
00:48:05,119 --> 00:48:08,079
now lived with. Yet each date, the line between reality

997
00:48:08,119 --> 00:48:11,079
and transmission blurred a little more. I began to question

998
00:48:11,119 --> 00:48:13,320
which memories belonged to my time at the station, and

999
00:48:13,440 --> 00:48:15,199
which ones had grown in the cracks left by re

1000
00:48:15,280 --> 00:48:19,000
LINEA spliced identity, a trace laid down by feedback. Driven

1001
00:48:19,039 --> 00:48:20,840
by the need to prove I still own myself, I

1002
00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:23,280
made a decision early one morning, just as the sun

1003
00:48:23,320 --> 00:48:25,920
threatened beneath the shelf of clouds, I would try to

1004
00:48:25,920 --> 00:48:28,400
triannulate the new signal find its source, not with old

1005
00:48:28,440 --> 00:48:30,719
reels or harnted tapes, but with my own hand and

1006
00:48:30,760 --> 00:48:33,400
what lettle remained of my technical skill. There was a

1007
00:48:33,400 --> 00:48:37,199
suborn practicality in me despite everything. If I found something

1008
00:48:37,239 --> 00:48:40,199
hard and physical equipment relay and new paratransmit, i'd of

1009
00:48:40,239 --> 00:48:42,199
proof there was a limit to its reach, and perhaps

1010
00:48:42,239 --> 00:48:44,840
a way to end the repetition. I repurposed the cheap

1011
00:48:44,840 --> 00:48:47,239
best to Yo software to fined radio kit, patching it

1012
00:48:47,280 --> 00:48:49,639
to a battered lapt up loaded with signal analysis plugins.

1013
00:48:50,159 --> 00:48:53,360
If Chanel thirteen was genuinely rebroadcasting, even as a phantom,

1014
00:48:53,400 --> 00:48:56,480
there'd be a spike a signature something the city's background

1015
00:48:56,480 --> 00:48:59,599
noise couldn't fully hide. I assembled a portable antendor from

1016
00:48:59,679 --> 00:49:02,320
juncture odds and ends, assembled a small field kit, and

1017
00:49:02,360 --> 00:49:06,079
waited for the next storm. The weeks crawled, I began

1018
00:49:06,119 --> 00:49:09,480
sleeping less, listening more. My apartment turned into a nest

1019
00:49:09,480 --> 00:49:12,960
OF's spectral frequencies. Radio was tuned to static speakers, hissing

1020
00:49:12,960 --> 00:49:15,159
low and a wet noise. The oververe position like an

1021
00:49:15,199 --> 00:49:18,400
altar in a living room. I drew maps marking neighborhoods

1022
00:49:18,400 --> 00:49:20,840
where listeners described the signal as strongest is out near

1023
00:49:20,880 --> 00:49:23,960
the river, often during high wind or atmospheric pressure drops.

1024
00:49:24,639 --> 00:49:27,599
It matched eerily the concentric circles on the project Reline

1025
00:49:27,639 --> 00:49:31,159
documentation rain Blood on the city three consecutive nights before

1026
00:49:31,159 --> 00:49:33,679
and east. When finally pulled in something wild and dangerous.

1027
00:49:34,280 --> 00:49:36,960
I packed the se R notebook in a battered flashlight

1028
00:49:37,000 --> 00:49:39,599
and drove toward the old station. But when I reached

1029
00:49:39,599 --> 00:49:42,199
the city's edge, passing the same factories the vanished red

1030
00:49:42,239 --> 00:49:44,360
glow of the broadcast tower, I stopped abruptly a few

1031
00:49:44,360 --> 00:49:47,360
blocks short. The urge to return full circle to channel.

1032
00:49:47,400 --> 00:49:50,480
The team was palpable, but not quite right, the reported

1033
00:49:50,519 --> 00:49:55,039
new transmission, every email confirmed, never centered exactly there. Instead,

1034
00:49:55,239 --> 00:49:57,880
I doubled back and zixigged through back streets, pausing every

1035
00:49:57,880 --> 00:50:00,599
few blocks to raise the antenna and scanned for strong surges.

1036
00:50:01,199 --> 00:50:03,760
The search became a ritual. Popped the trunk, raised the

1037
00:50:03,800 --> 00:50:07,800
whitby's clothes, listening for any phrase or jingle, static most times,

1038
00:50:07,880 --> 00:50:11,079
sometimes snippets of distant traffic or dispatch. But as I

1039
00:50:11,119 --> 00:50:13,840
crossed into the old industrial quarrid between an abandoned rail

1040
00:50:13,880 --> 00:50:16,360
yard and what was once a bottling plan, the signal sharpened,

1041
00:50:16,400 --> 00:50:18,519
first a war, but then a brief blast of unmistakable

1042
00:50:18,599 --> 00:50:21,480
Channel thirteen sound design, the station jingle just off key,

1043
00:50:21,559 --> 00:50:25,840
followed by silence, then still listen is to be. I

1044
00:50:25,920 --> 00:50:27,920
dropped the antenna, pulse roaring in my ears as the

1045
00:50:27,920 --> 00:50:30,960
phrase dissolved in a metallic rasp. The source, if you

1046
00:50:30,960 --> 00:50:33,719
could call it that, was mobile, pulsing, sometimes from one alley,

1047
00:50:33,800 --> 00:50:36,719
then another block over, as if the city itself redirected

1048
00:50:36,719 --> 00:50:39,400
the message through the wires, telephone poles, and half ruined

1049
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:42,639
reey cabinets no repairman had touched in decades. On the

1050
00:50:42,679 --> 00:50:44,880
third try, in the lee of a sagging viaduct. The

1051
00:50:44,920 --> 00:50:48,639
signal nearly overloaded my headphones. A burst cut through more

1052
00:50:48,639 --> 00:50:52,840
complete than before, w qc H one three, turn it off.

1053
00:50:53,599 --> 00:50:56,480
In that moment, standing in a wet sodium, led half dark,

1054
00:50:56,519 --> 00:50:59,320
and memory glided against the present. The first year I

1055
00:50:59,360 --> 00:51:01,159
worked a channel thirteen, there was a week when a

1056
00:51:01,159 --> 00:51:03,480
sequence of phone calls arrived to the request line, each

1057
00:51:03,519 --> 00:51:05,480
from a different number, but all beginning with the same

1058
00:51:05,519 --> 00:51:08,599
flat halting phrase. This is wqc H. Do you hear me?

1059
00:51:09,239 --> 00:51:12,039
We chalked it up to pranksters, but now I heard

1060
00:51:12,079 --> 00:51:15,880
the same cadence. The pattern was the thing lightning down's

1061
00:51:15,920 --> 00:51:18,840
far south, temporarily flooding the alley in sharp edged white.

1062
00:51:19,400 --> 00:51:22,400
With each flash, my unshadow flecked against the brick, doubled

1063
00:51:22,440 --> 00:51:24,360
by some other shape at my back, longer thicker at

1064
00:51:24,360 --> 00:51:28,280
the shoulders. Martha jar and frozen. Expectation determined, I marked

1065
00:51:28,280 --> 00:51:30,960
the precise GPS coordinates of the signal's peak, took photos

1066
00:51:30,960 --> 00:51:33,320
of the street, and returned to my car nose flay.

1067
00:51:33,360 --> 00:51:35,920
But my resolve battered into clarity. If it was an

1068
00:51:35,960 --> 00:51:38,280
electrical relay or some old city hard where commandeered and

1069
00:51:38,360 --> 00:51:42,400
realize's final days, I'd find proof, or perhaps I privately admitted,

1070
00:51:42,519 --> 00:51:44,519
I just needed to know that whatever haunted the airs

1071
00:51:44,559 --> 00:51:47,360
could be found in matter, not solely in me. Dawn

1072
00:51:47,440 --> 00:51:50,320
broke pale and faint. As I returned home, the city's

1073
00:51:50,320 --> 00:51:52,840
pace resumed, trucks in the distance, a sharp cat streaking

1074
00:51:52,840 --> 00:51:56,000
across a puddled lot. I captured the field recordings into

1075
00:51:56,039 --> 00:51:59,119
my laptop, faltering and replaying the specific moments when Channel

1076
00:51:59,119 --> 00:52:02,559
thirteen's voice played through. I applied every digital noise reduction

1077
00:52:02,679 --> 00:52:05,920
and spectral analysis TRECKENNU. None of it wiped the signal,

1078
00:52:06,559 --> 00:52:09,400
sometimes beneath my own spoken field notes, the station's old

1079
00:52:09,440 --> 00:52:12,159
coalsign powles like EKG, looking beneath the skin of static.

1080
00:52:12,719 --> 00:52:14,800
The more I listened, the more convinced it became that

1081
00:52:14,880 --> 00:52:16,519
the piece of the transmission had latched on to me.

1082
00:52:16,599 --> 00:52:20,239
In the process, my SD card corrupted itself again, refusing

1083
00:52:20,280 --> 00:52:22,719
to play back, accept for a mangled looping to be

1084
00:52:22,800 --> 00:52:27,079
heard back, heard back, heard, panic, layre then faded. I

1085
00:52:27,199 --> 00:52:31,239
recognized the impulse, fear becoming ritual, ritual becoming patten, patten,

1086
00:52:31,280 --> 00:52:34,280
cycling to compulsion. If the project re lined files were

1087
00:52:34,360 --> 00:52:36,920
to be believed, Attempting to isolate the signal only cemented

1088
00:52:36,960 --> 00:52:40,079
its grip. I attempted to sleep, but hallucination scraped. At

1089
00:52:40,079 --> 00:52:42,920
the edge of waking. I saw the abandoned control room,

1090
00:52:43,079 --> 00:52:45,760
the green glass indicator lies flirting in the dark. Denis

1091
00:52:45,840 --> 00:52:48,920
louched in his chair, chaining together in comprehensible warnings, and Peter,

1092
00:52:49,039 --> 00:52:51,840
looking up from his playlist, lips forming again and again,

1093
00:52:52,079 --> 00:52:55,159
don't let it finish. I heard my own voice, barely

1094
00:52:55,199 --> 00:52:57,039
older than a boy, whispering the phrase at the core

1095
00:52:57,079 --> 00:52:59,639
of every tape. A sudden pounding at my door shocked

1096
00:52:59,679 --> 00:53:02,920
me away, first once, then again, Larry Heart hammering a

1097
00:53:02,960 --> 00:53:05,480
grope from my phone, but there were no notifications, no

1098
00:53:05,599 --> 00:53:08,639
miscalls showing. I shambled to the peep hole, puring down

1099
00:53:08,719 --> 00:53:11,039
on to the dim hall. A figure stood on the landing,

1100
00:53:11,119 --> 00:53:15,000
mid thirties, trenchcoats soaked through hail, long and unkempt. For

1101
00:53:15,119 --> 00:53:17,239
a moment, I thought one of the vanished had come

1102
00:53:17,280 --> 00:53:20,119
home or resuscitated. Alice or some version of Peter. Shuffling

1103
00:53:20,159 --> 00:53:22,800
forward to ruind the tape and started all again. The

1104
00:53:22,880 --> 00:53:25,920
figure noticed the movement and looked up. She spoke softly

1105
00:53:26,039 --> 00:53:29,000
enough I almost didn't hear. Here're the one from the podcast.

1106
00:53:29,679 --> 00:53:32,760
I opened the door cautious few inches. That's me yea

1107
00:53:33,039 --> 00:53:35,800
is there. I'm Meghan, my brother. He worked at Channel

1108
00:53:35,840 --> 00:53:39,880
thirteen back then. My heart skipped the last roster at

1109
00:53:39,920 --> 00:53:42,440
only two. Meghan's one attempt, who vanished after two weeks.

1110
00:53:42,679 --> 00:53:44,960
The other an engineer sibling who had called the station

1111
00:53:45,079 --> 00:53:47,320
in the late hours, sometimes just to hear a familiar

1112
00:53:47,360 --> 00:53:50,239
voice across the lonest sprawl of the city. She hesitated,

1113
00:53:50,320 --> 00:53:52,719
glancing down the stairs, as if measuring whether I was

1114
00:53:52,760 --> 00:53:55,480
worth the truth or a warning. I heard your episode,

1115
00:53:55,519 --> 00:53:57,440
the one with the final sign off. Tried three numbers

1116
00:53:57,480 --> 00:53:59,199
to reach you, my brother used to say. In the

1117
00:53:59,280 --> 00:54:01,079
last weeks he found felt like he could hear people

1118
00:54:01,119 --> 00:54:03,559
talking through the wires, not just behind the glass. He

1119
00:54:03,679 --> 00:54:06,000
left a note. I want you to read it. Her

1120
00:54:06,039 --> 00:54:08,679
face was drawn, creased with the exhaustion of someone who'd

1121
00:54:08,719 --> 00:54:10,599
lived in the margins of the real line shadow newly

1122
00:54:10,679 --> 00:54:13,280
as long as I had. She handed me a carefully

1123
00:54:13,320 --> 00:54:16,599
folded scrap, which I took would deliberate ritual care. For

1124
00:54:16,679 --> 00:54:18,480
a moment, both of us seemed to listen, not to

1125
00:54:18,599 --> 00:54:20,920
each other, but to some third presence, hovering and quiet

1126
00:54:20,960 --> 00:54:24,400
between our words. I nodded her into the apartment. She

1127
00:54:24,519 --> 00:54:26,199
pushed on the edge of the kitchen chair while I

1128
00:54:26,239 --> 00:54:28,719
opened the note, feeling both hopeful and vaguely mortified to

1129
00:54:28,800 --> 00:54:30,920
let a stranger into the heart of my haunted routine.

1130
00:54:31,480 --> 00:54:35,400
Her brother's handwriting was lipping, almost childish. The square read

1131
00:54:36,039 --> 00:54:38,079
I see them sometimes in the jack, where the phone

1132
00:54:38,119 --> 00:54:40,719
line runs in and the walls bleeding out behind every circuit.

1133
00:54:40,800 --> 00:54:42,760
They never want to speak. They just want someone to

1134
00:54:42,840 --> 00:54:44,960
hear their names, even if the names are wrong. If

1135
00:54:45,000 --> 00:54:46,760
you ever hear your own voice, hang up. If you

1136
00:54:46,800 --> 00:54:49,079
feel the signal pull at you, don't answer. I love you,

1137
00:54:49,199 --> 00:54:51,239
don't listen for too long. They are always waiting for

1138
00:54:51,280 --> 00:54:54,639
the silence. There was something unmistakably etchingly true in the note,

1139
00:54:54,760 --> 00:54:57,480
child as shape, more vulnerable than any broadcasted warning because

1140
00:54:57,480 --> 00:55:00,679
it was meant for no audience. It'll Mygnix's failed trembling.

1141
00:55:01,199 --> 00:55:03,280
He left that tape tunder my door the morning before

1142
00:55:03,280 --> 00:55:06,440
he disappeared. She trailed off, swallowed, and fixed her gaze

1143
00:55:06,480 --> 00:55:08,480
on the mount of tapes and equipment cluttering my counter.

1144
00:55:09,239 --> 00:55:11,599
I listened to his last broadcast. You hear it too,

1145
00:55:11,840 --> 00:55:14,599
don't you? You know the signal isn't gone. I tried

1146
00:55:14,639 --> 00:55:17,840
searching for comfort, but only found the exhausted sincerity shared

1147
00:55:17,840 --> 00:55:22,280
by survivors. It's not gone, I said, it's everywhere. I

1148
00:55:22,320 --> 00:55:25,000
think we're still inside it somehow, or maybe it's inside us.

1149
00:55:25,760 --> 00:55:29,320
Megan nodded, looking pained but also relieved. I thought so.

1150
00:55:29,639 --> 00:55:31,320
I thought, if some one else says it out loud,

1151
00:55:31,400 --> 00:55:34,159
maybe it breaks the spell, maybe it makes it less hungry.

1152
00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:36,800
There was much to say beyond that, so we kept

1153
00:55:36,800 --> 00:55:39,679
our silences, lighting the room's faint mechanical humpful of gaps

1154
00:55:40,440 --> 00:55:42,679
through the east window. The sky was beginning to clear,

1155
00:55:42,800 --> 00:55:44,880
but the city below was still thick with the aftertaste

1156
00:55:44,920 --> 00:55:47,559
of the storm. She took her lea soon after, but

1157
00:55:47,679 --> 00:55:49,960
not without giving me one final searching look. If you

1158
00:55:50,000 --> 00:55:51,840
figure out how to end it, tell the city, tell

1159
00:55:51,880 --> 00:55:54,960
them to stop listening. She hesitated, then opened her palm

1160
00:55:55,000 --> 00:55:57,480
to reveal about it old quartern's jack, possibly from a

1161
00:55:57,599 --> 00:56:00,079
radio or agent phone, a talisman against whatever lived in

1162
00:56:00,159 --> 00:56:04,039
the lines. I took up, weighing at pitted solidity. After

1163
00:56:04,159 --> 00:56:06,400
she left, I sat for a long time, holding the jack,

1164
00:56:06,559 --> 00:56:08,440
the letter, and the se ar kid in my lap.

1165
00:56:09,039 --> 00:56:10,960
If the answer it was anything. It felt like this.

1166
00:56:11,159 --> 00:56:14,280
He cannot resolve a transmission built on longing. Nothing that

1167
00:56:14,360 --> 00:56:17,119
had happened to Channel thirteen was ever truly erased. Every

1168
00:56:17,199 --> 00:56:19,679
warning was a wish for closure that, when repeated, only

1169
00:56:19,760 --> 00:56:22,599
prolonged the loop. For the next few days, I barely

1170
00:56:22,679 --> 00:56:25,679
spoke my own fears, drifting towards resignation but not defeat.

1171
00:56:26,360 --> 00:56:28,920
The city moved on as always, but my in books

1172
00:56:28,920 --> 00:56:32,039
filled with similar stores, people who lost siblings, partners, friends,

1173
00:56:32,079 --> 00:56:34,360
after a long night's tune to frequencies that never appeared

1174
00:56:34,400 --> 00:56:37,239
on any schedule. Some wrote about tapping lines just to

1175
00:56:37,320 --> 00:56:39,960
hear static, searching for a Nannza because the absence left

1176
00:56:40,000 --> 00:56:43,000
by Channel thirteen was louder than any broadcast. With a

1177
00:56:43,079 --> 00:56:45,280
quarter inch jack in my pocket, I retraced my route

1178
00:56:45,320 --> 00:56:47,320
to the signal's epis into the really box beneath the

1179
00:56:47,400 --> 00:56:50,960
viaduct early evening. The city's lights filtered through thin mist.

1180
00:56:50,960 --> 00:56:54,000
As I crouched by the box, tills ready. The padlock

1181
00:56:54,119 --> 00:56:56,320
was half rusted, and surprisingly it leaves some one had

1182
00:56:56,360 --> 00:57:00,119
been here in recent months, perhaps even weeks. Inside. What

1183
00:57:00,239 --> 00:57:02,760
I saw was at once per sake in disquieting. Why

1184
00:57:02,800 --> 00:57:05,960
as Chris grossed the terminal's in improbable tangles. Tape to

1185
00:57:06,000 --> 00:57:08,360
the inside door was a schematic burying the faded Channel

1186
00:57:08,400 --> 00:57:10,920
thirteen logo and a project re Line reference code, along

1187
00:57:10,960 --> 00:57:13,559
with a tiny sticker that wreathe a silence persists close

1188
00:57:13,599 --> 00:57:16,239
the circuit. The relay it self ran silent, but if

1189
00:57:16,239 --> 00:57:17,760
I pressed my ear to its shell, I could hear

1190
00:57:17,760 --> 00:57:20,360
the faintest of oscillations of pulsing modulating in time with

1191
00:57:20,360 --> 00:57:23,239
the phantom transmissions had held for weeks. It was a

1192
00:57:23,320 --> 00:57:26,519
live installation, and possibly the backbone that made Channel thirteen's

1193
00:57:26,519 --> 00:57:30,280
echo possible even in technical absence. I reached in, retracing

1194
00:57:30,320 --> 00:57:32,639
the hand labeled wise and finally finding a port size

1195
00:57:32,639 --> 00:57:35,840
to fit Meckin's jack. With hands that trembled, I plugged

1196
00:57:35,840 --> 00:57:39,039
it in and waited. The pulsing tone surged, then faded,

1197
00:57:39,239 --> 00:57:42,800
replaced by absolute stillness into that hush. My own breath

1198
00:57:42,880 --> 00:57:45,880
sounded two loud for a moment I feared had made

1199
00:57:45,880 --> 00:57:48,480
it worse, awakened. Something that had thrived in feedback now

1200
00:57:48,559 --> 00:57:51,559
set loose. But when I raised the SDR and tenants

1201
00:57:51,559 --> 00:57:53,679
found the local bandwidth, all I heard was the soft

1202
00:57:53,719 --> 00:57:57,719
and differentiated ocean of city static Channel thirteen jingle had gone,

1203
00:57:57,840 --> 00:58:01,239
its aftermath, routed silently back through the void. I stood

1204
00:58:01,280 --> 00:58:03,719
in the alley for some time, kneeling before the relay,

1205
00:58:03,800 --> 00:58:05,920
half expecting some sign, the flash of a face, or

1206
00:58:06,000 --> 00:58:10,360
retry from beyond. But nothing emerged, only the ordinary hum

1207
00:58:10,440 --> 00:58:12,880
of wires, the breathing of the city regaining its autonomy.

1208
00:58:13,519 --> 00:58:15,639
As I walked home, the air felt different, no lighter,

1209
00:58:15,760 --> 00:58:18,880
but less expectant. The absence was not peace exactly, but

1210
00:58:18,960 --> 00:58:21,360
it was closure of a kind. When I climbed the

1211
00:58:21,400 --> 00:58:24,280
stairs and closed my door behind me, my apartment felt normal,

1212
00:58:24,480 --> 00:58:26,960
or as normal as it diver could be. The Revere's

1213
00:58:27,039 --> 00:58:29,960
light was dark. My voice recorder was started, with no

1214
00:58:30,079 --> 00:58:34,199
files added, no sign off played from the drawers or outlets. Still,

1215
00:58:34,320 --> 00:58:36,559
I kept the quarter inch jack in my hand, rolling

1216
00:58:36,599 --> 00:58:39,159
it over my knuckles like a prayer bead. For years,

1217
00:58:39,400 --> 00:58:41,840
I'd believe the only thing separating us from repetition was

1218
00:58:41,880 --> 00:58:43,960
the wilter step away to refuse the urge to perform,

1219
00:58:44,039 --> 00:58:46,639
to cease the hunt for some one listening back. Now,

1220
00:58:46,880 --> 00:58:48,920
having found the last circuit and closed it, even if

1221
00:58:48,960 --> 00:58:51,079
only for a time, I found room finally to rest.

1222
00:58:51,840 --> 00:58:55,679
These passed. Then weeks, the podcast faded into the background

1223
00:58:55,679 --> 00:58:57,840
of the city's endless churn, the odd stranger still the

1224
00:58:57,960 --> 00:59:01,199
milling him with faint, anxious queries. Once or twice I

1225
00:59:01,239 --> 00:59:02,840
awoke from a half dream with the shape of those

1226
00:59:02,920 --> 00:59:05,360
vanished voices in my mind. But the urgency had gone.

1227
00:59:05,880 --> 00:59:08,000
I could listen to the city's silence and find nothing

1228
00:59:08,079 --> 00:59:11,199
but my own thoughts there until one blistering night, when

1229
00:59:11,239 --> 00:59:13,800
thunder crack close. A new message arrived, a single audio

1230
00:59:13,880 --> 00:59:16,440
file from a listener across the river. They opened with

1231
00:59:16,519 --> 00:59:18,800
white eyes, then a sound of a distant laugh, echoing

1232
00:59:18,840 --> 00:59:21,199
the cadence of some one I used to know. Then

1233
00:59:21,679 --> 00:59:25,360
one final phrase, never quite finish. If you hear channel thirteen,

1234
00:59:25,880 --> 00:59:28,400
the file ended abruptly, the warning consumed by a surge

1235
00:59:28,400 --> 00:59:31,000
of static and rain. Now in the middle of the night,

1236
00:59:31,159 --> 00:59:33,239
in a city that refuses to remember, I keep the

1237
00:59:33,320 --> 00:59:36,760
old jack on my desk, the last and broken loop. Sometimes,

1238
00:59:36,960 --> 00:59:39,360
when storms threaten and the air tingles like an open channel,

1239
00:59:39,400 --> 00:59:42,760
I unplug everything and wait. Listeners might call, stores may

1240
00:59:42,800 --> 00:59:45,880
spiral on you. But the best advice remains unchanging. If

1241
00:59:45,920 --> 00:59:48,440
you hear channel thirteen, turn it off. If what's on

1242
00:59:48,519 --> 00:59:50,719
the other end speaks in your own voice, don't answer it.

1243
00:59:51,480 --> 00:59:54,599
And above all, if the signal answer is back, don't

1244
00:59:54,679 --> 00:59:55,239
let it finish.