Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. The red on air sign above
the studio door burned weakly in the glass, illuminating nothing
beyond itself. From my seat behind the broad batted console,
the world trank to three feet of coiled Excelac cable,
a sheaf of old playlists, and the phosphor glow of
the main boat. The frequency compressed her thumped with every syllable.
Ancient turntable's plot A vibrated faintly against my wrist, deep
in the mirrow of the station itself. Something was out
of step with the IRA hitch in the blood stream,
a minor key that didn't resolve. It's twelve twenty one
a m I said, Mike, level set to three. You're
listening to dead air on w n RC, where Night
brings its own stores. Tell me what's on your mind.
Muted city lights pressed against studio windows, contesting the booth's
halogen gloom. Somewhere outside, another storm was shuttering above the river,
thunderless just to Hayes, thick with humidity, and the ripe
whiff of garbage from the cannery district on the monitors.
The signal strength flickered close to the legal limit, stubborn
as a heartbeat. The call light at my elbow bloom red,
insistent they'd ring then forth. I toggled the line force
keeping easy. Thanks for calling in here on the air
with Marian. Nothing at first, just breathe. Then a woman's
voice of fragile seam holding panic, A bear hullo. I'm sorry,
Am I alive? Here you are, I assured her. I
adjusted the gain to filter out the hum, a practice
moved from ears of night shift confessions. My name is
I don't? She faltered, Why are you playing me? Why
are my words my voice? Why? Why are they on
your station? What do you mean? Are you hearing yourself
on your radio? Just now? There was a sound behind her, glattering,
the distant trill of a phone on a kitchen mall.
Her voice sharpened, brittle. You're playing the kitchen last night,
I hurried myself. There's no way I'll ever tell him
about the letter I heard that I never called in.
Nobody could have a sob snacked the rest. I kept
my tone level. Man, To my knowledge, there's been no
error with the logs to night. I can double check
after we hang up? Did someone prank your line? Maybe?
Did you call before? I know my own voice? She whispered,
I know what I said. My husband was in the
room with me. How why is it all on O now?
A cheer scraped behind her. A door slammed. She held
the phone away. A wooden knocking, maybe at her own door,
echoed faintly through analog compression. I angled the board, watching
for feedback. Nothing unusual in the booth. Just now I
offer the platitude. Falling flat, the line crackled, you're not
as she started? Then her words stutted, fractured by a
digital glitch. Who else's lussa? Then nothing flatness, An edge
of distortion crept into the silence, and a ragged thread
of old static blood into the returne feed. The monitor
needle twitch to zero. My palms were slick. I reached
for the show logs, flicking past the official playlist. My
set list had gone as plan. Nothing unscheduled entered the
rotation for a moment. The usual comfort of paper and
in prendigas s neat lines, Lyles's colored margin notes felt
more alien than the machines themselves. A shadow right outside
the glass caught in my peripheral vision a dart of movement,
quick enough to be mistaken for a trick of reflected
dials and indicator lights. The corridor beyond the booth curved
away into darkness, empty. I waited for a pattern, footsteps,
a cough, the whine of the ancient elevator. There was
no sound except the hush of dead air, not even
the distant thought of late night cleaning. My hands hovered
over the control board, uncertain. I pressed que on the
next track, David Sylvian's office. When the first shimmering cords
filled the void, tension slowly slid down my shoulders. I
reminded myself that just a week before, mister Prendergast had
sat in his chair working the console with the calm
of someone hoot survive radio's slow death toyes. Then, without warning,
he collapsed. The night engineer found him slumped over the
auxiliary board, one hand still resting on the fader heart failure.
They said no family showed up for the funeral. The
residual charge from the woman's phone call polls in my
own chest, ragged and persistent. I listened to the faint
static tickling the speaker's noise floor to color not quite right.
Hovering between the end of a thought and the beginning
of a nightmare, I smoothed the playlist, blinked away at
the exhaustion, and tried to steady my breathing while outside,
behind the glimmer of old Neon, the city's shadows press
closer against the station's faded walls. It struck me just then,
as the Nixon drifted to life, there was more looking
on this frequency tonight than sleepist listeners or wayward signals.
From the moment at first stepped inside w Anossi, the
station felt like stepping into someone else's on Earth diary,
full of crumbling edges, half faded intentions, old loves annotated
in pencil. The glory days had passed long before my hiring,
but I caught the lingering acre as soon as I
grasped the microphone. There was a charge in that, a
kind of invitation. I'd come in, young voice, trembling, eager
for the after midnight slot. That everyone else ignored the
job meant that though the city's real position shudder at dusk,
its confessions found our way to me. W Nossi's foyer
was a crypt of mid century hopes, oxwood final chairs
patched with that tape, crowded beneath the sun bleach banner
your voice on the airwaves since nineteen forty eight. The walls,
bad mustard yellow, were textured with fifty years of grime
and the peculiar odor of stale max wallhouse heart circuitry,
and sweat. Krets of old up he lined the hallway
outside the equipment room, shrouding the cables like undergogd. If
you'd spend a night in a brick room surrounded by
battered toasters and burned out coffee urns, your clothes would
recontil your next shour three blocks away. The city wore
itself thin with each passing year. Once factories piped their
whistle shrieks right onto our signal a quarter to five
and workers had tuned into my first shift out of
habit Now all but one factory was shuddered, shells of
steeldus shining into the night. Those last few city buses
rattled their empty frames to war the deeper. By midnight,
lunch counters and late laundro MutS faked off their open
neons for good. Every few weeks bankruptcy threatened the city
cable at a pool, even the battered little baseball team.
Yet if you walked home after night shift, you'd see
radios glowing blue and back windows tuned to ninety seven
point one, a lifeline. My own routine became as meticulous,
a worn as the station itself. I'd grabbed the scarred
station keys from behind the plant in the alley, not
to Lyle, who worked the day engineering and always wore
the same navy when breaking, no matter the season, and
collect the mess of logbooks from the secretor's desk, where
she scrolled four messages in a looping, impossible script. I'd
pick the least sticky mug for my coffee. Then do
you perferre to resweep at the transmitter room, checking for
telltal heat, lamp flicker, or the smell of insulation crisping
into haze. On most nights, if I timed it exactly,
I'd line in the booth just as the evening host
signed off and gave a tied thumbs up. Rachel counted
for everything, specially when only the transmission mattered. I'd sit
kee you reel to reel back up test the phone
screener dumped my jacket over the cracks steel in the
corner and let Haby pull me into the red lit
whim of the studio. There was a comfort in solitude,
in knowing no one would interrupt the small miracle of
live radio sliding invisibly over a sleeping city. Freendigast himself
always felt less like a bossom, more like a wavering monument. Reclusive, stubborn,
rarely seen before dusk. He'd leave memos in your cubby,
double checked the power conditioners for remember, always be warier
of dead air than a dead line. Once, half way
through an overnighter, I'd overheard him arguing with the shadows
in his office, gruff bursts of no, no, that's not
how it's done. The airway severes I asked about it
the next day, he shrouved, lips pressed white, and tapped
his temple like a telegraph key. Our general manager, Margaret
was only half present, a blend of anxiety and indifference,
forever on her phone with a prospective sponsored at any r.
The Secretary Brenda commiserated with every one about her divorce,
but rarely made it past the newscaster's lunge. The janitor
Thomas kept his head puns on while entering the trash,
into the habit of looking up abruptly if he said
his name, as if he'd just caught you weaves dropping
on a foreign language. From one zero to three zero
a m the phone lines would light up intermittently. Mister Greene,
retired roufer with deep set eyes and a pension from
Martian conspiracy, told elaborate stories in a voice. Texusport Shirley
from Eighth Streets submitted Haruba pie recipe on air, then
called back to correct the sugar amount. Pranks laced the
switchboard half garbled, giggling kids, someone playing reversed gospel records.
But then a voice would break through crave as a
court has bell, to share a story about a marriage,
gun called, or a child not seen in years. W
n Arci was the city's last open confession booth. The
broadcast tower carried not just sounds, but the egg of
things never settle, never to be spoken face to face.
It couldn't last. Everyone sensed it. The sponsorship's going dry.
Equipment rigged with zip ties and luck, the transmitter in
ten of pockmarked by pigeon droppings and age, but still
There was a charge to that routine comfort in the
end as hum until to night, something just outside routine
had bent itself into the signal you recognize a city
by its quirks. Lately mine was limping. Offices and streets
shuttered beneath talk of vanishing pensions and defaulted loans. City
officials may promises on air that every one knew were empty,
but played a lawn out of habit. By night, a
hushed deeper than sleep settled over downtown. The only voice
left itchoing after midnight was the station, a delicate threat,
binding nose adrifts in the small hours. Things should have
gone on as before, safest static on a hundred old radios,
the city secret sealed by habit more than trust. But
I kept thinking about that coal, the woman who'd heard
herself her private life spilling through our speakers. The fragility
of that was more unsettling than the usual parade of
crievances and confessions. There was a distortion in the ordinary,
as if some one else somewhere was listening and on us.
All the next evening, rain stippled against the lobby's cracked window,
tracing chemical halos from sodium street lights outside, my key
stuck grinding against the lock, as if the door no
longer wanted to swing from me. In the broadcast logs,
someone had ridden check a midnight set replaced w slast
Prendigas's selection in Green marker Lyle's shuffle past, carrying abouted
receiver under his arm, face hidden beneath his windbreaker's brim.
There were only two letters in the show's mail box.
The rest of the day's artifactor coffee stained in Dick's
co out, a Hundreton recipe, a brown envelope with no stamp,
satuskew and touched. I settled into the booth, the well
worn ritual of checking the faders and dial's comforting. Only
one bulb shone down from the ceiling now, the others
had burned out the previous week, casting long shadows on
to the tile floor. My first caller, half way Revoke's
turn around look at Me, was a young woman who
stammered out a quicker low before mentioning her voice trembling.
I heard my husband and I arguing about Rentwright there
after the traffic report. How's that possible? We no one
has the recording that was in our kitchen last night.
The line disconnected before I could reassure her. During the
next break, I went back through our digital archives. I
found nothing irregular, no one authorized inserts, no traces of
hidden files. My show locks matched almost except there wedged
between two irreverend old liner adds a track had never queued.
A clit thirty second audio fragment labeled confession three one
on playback, just beneath the surface, hiss. I caught my
own name, my voice so familiar, but not from any shift.
They're remembered, murmured, they always hear you. It lasted less
than a breath, swallowed by distortion in the reverb of
a closing door. I tried not to dwell on how
the hair at the back of my neck prickle when
I heard it. After midnight, the song scene haunted veaders,
sometimes stuck a signing control to the wrong channel and
blasting a split second of commercial jingle through the rolling
stones static rodin on every segway. The phone interface was
out of nowhere, and a volume knobs bun lease. When
I reached for it, I found Brenda and Thomas in
the break room. They huddled by the window, voices low.
Chomas lowered his headphones, nose wrinkling. You feel it right,
The air in here a different this week, Brenda tap
ash into her coffee. My monitor keeps dying, the cleaner says,
the cable room's freezing, even the mice. Once day, Lal
appeared at the door, eyes avoiding mine as he scanned
the equipment schedule, having opened a prenuga's office. Have we,
he asked? None of us answered. I started checking the
air signal obsessively. During my shifts. I would stare at
the spectrum analyzer. Mine hurt on every twitch of the
meter or irregular flicker of lights. He'd urged to find
the source of each anomaly grew by the ire. It
felt almost compulsive, as if something in the current monitored me.
In return, Friday night, as the phone lines went dead again,
I heard it, not in the head fronts, but in
the faint speaker hum. A voice garbled, distant, the vowels warped,
Why are you listening? I scanned the board, but all
lines were clear. I watched the log counter click over there.
Another song cued but never loaded in a printed playlist
into the mystic. But over the air I heard only
lay it static then an unfamiliar voice murmuring beneath the wash.
They always hear you, it said again, softer, this time,
sinking beneath the music like a silt of riverstone. At
day's end, all I wanted was to leave every light
burning on my way out. I wouldn't admit even to
my that I heard the blind corners of the whole
way like a child. In the following days, the mounting
evidence could no longer hide beneath fatigue or technical glitches.
I needed answers. Over lunch, I found Lal Hunch at
the engineer's bench, soldering what looked suspiciously like a homemade
patch cord. The workroom reeked of ozon and burned plastic.
Across from him a credi of mismatched real tipe sprawled
all hand labeled in prindegast meticulous, backward slanting print. Did
you drop off yesterday's erchex? I asked him, careful to
stay casual. He avoided eye contact, face fixed on the
tip of his iron. Didn't get a chance. Margaret's making
us review everything from last week. Bosses want their records
irritate the calls. We took this sound of ruined like
some one was masking frequencies, as though something going on
in the booth. I don't know about, Larles Mautwitch, giving
away a flicker of fear. You've been here longer, Marian.
You know what this place is like. Half the time
things work because nobody dares mess with mister peace wiring.
If there's signal trouble, it's old ghosts, not new ones.
So you're saying it's nothing. I pressed his hand, trembled.
Some things are better not fixed, he replied, voice barely
above a whisper. You don't want to know what's in
those old tapes. I left him with that unease, gnawing
a curiosity. Late that night, I convinced myself to dig
into the tip ark of prendigas private domain. The archived
door creaked open under the weight of its own hinges.
Rack stood mostly full, but dust lined, empty spots like
the ghost of board cassettes. In the back, where the
temperature always fell ten degrees colder. I found the log books,
split by missing pages. The labels were all precise, cross
indexing by date and time, but here in their redactive
words interrupted a flow. The back security camera monitor installed
for show cycled slowly through high contrast feeds thirty seconds
per channel. As I waited by the flickering black and
white's green, a blur of motion seized my attention. At
precisely three fifteen a m. A grainy figure ducked into
the archive room, head obscured by the swinging door. On replay,
the monitor stay glitch, refusing to show the frame again.
Back in the main office, I drew connections in a
note book, dozens of miss val tapes, the night maintenance
uels absent from the slots, and lawbrik times over it,
and in fresh ink. On my way out, I found
lyle in the lobby kotsipay wire enters erased and recopied.
I asked. He flinched. I said to let it lie, Marian.
If you keep digging, it only gets weird. There are
some frequencies no one should catch. He brushed past me,
muttering as he went, Peace. Secrets will be the death
of this place. You mark me. That night, I stayed
past my shift alone. In the dim blue light. I
queued up the emergency back up taps. The raw logs
PRENDI gasqupt for insurance only layered behind the usual settlas
A second, fainter record played fragments of voices unspoled between
gaps and songs, sometimes distorted, sometimes too clear. One segment,
whisper confessed to the tape alone. No one will ever know.
I scanned the names listed on the tip's leaves and
found half fallen between two racks. A slip reading the
councilmen read, march to councilmen read whose name had recently
appeared in the papers? Connected to a city? All breaking
gone suspiciously quiet? Why was he referenced in a w
and ossy tape? A new spike of draft force its
way into my lungs. It was a sort of mistake
with consequences, and the sort of evidence someone might kill
to protect. During the next shift, I returned to my
locker to find the door jar. My notebook had come missing.
Weeks of logs, suspicions, phone call recaps later, the phone
in the boof rang just once when I answered. As
silence filled the line, I measured patient breathing, stretched the
cull past thirty seconds, broken only when distantly the sound
of my own voice asked, is anyone listening tonight? I
shuddered and hung up. By Friday, I realized I couldn't
dismiss it as paranoia. The hallways of the station, walls
once lined with harmas bunter, and the distant boom of
the JAS sat in studio A felt stranger, as if
every corner watched. From the storage room, I could hear
faint ticking beneath the floor, as though a dozen recordings layered,
one atop the next trap, but restless. Then at two
forty four a m all the light went out, not
a serage, not slow of fate, but a sharp vertical cut,
the kind that makes your ears pop and your teeth ache.
The only sound was my own breathing, echoing over the
fallback microphone. I could just make out through layers of silence. Ahmin.
I had never noticed before a frequency so low and old.
It felt more physical than auditory, a bone deep memory
of the station itself. As the power returned, a slow,
forced unpulled by vision back into place, I understood, in
a way that had nothing to do with logical expedients,
that this was no mere malfunction, some one or something
with reworking the frequencies at the core of w and
RC's identity, and that some one had a planet reached
far beyond brank coals or the failings of old equipment.
The evidence found me, not the other way around, but
the following Sunday, Determined to remove all doubt, aboorrored a
forense cardio sweep from an old friend at the local college,
rudimentary but sensitive enough to pick apart. Layer at audio files,
I loaded the most recent anomally Tuesday Net's Confession to
re one. The wave from looks standard until the banding
split into one surface track, one almost camouflage beneath it.
The second track played back what seemed at first like
meaningless noise, pangs, snatches of shuffling pops. Then slowly the
artifacts resolved themselves into human speech. Snippets of private conversations,
kitchen argument, a lullaby, the clink of glasses emerged, voices
familiar and intimate to the town, and unmistakable my own
Lyles Brendas. We'd never recorded these, never broadcast them. Re
Ignition shall meet to the bone. How could recordings from
inside our homes, cars, private spaces be lingering on the
broadcast tapes hidden beneath public tracks? I ran the did
again pattern was undeniable. All the secret broadcasts happened after midnight,
crossed with names corresponding to local officials and community figures.
The content ranged from the Mundana shopping list recited under
breath to raw and damond confessions acts no one want
to me public. The implication settled on me heavier than lead.
The next day I forced the loach on Prendegas private office.
The room was nearly untouched from the night of his death,
brown paneling, a batter typritter with a single sheet, half
heed and blueprints for intenna raised act to the wall,
Elijah on his desk, list of city officials matched to dates,
with cryptic broadcast window time scribbled in the margins in
an old file, cabinet, stacks of cash, bat of brown
envelove stuff with my crooksettes, and blurry polaroids of men
Entrench cooks exchanging secrets outside city Hall and at a
motel and the bike pass. Some faces I recognized, others
better left mentioned. The implication was clear, the patent sickeningly precise.
Prendi Gast had maintained not only WNRC, but a system
of covert operation of surveillance. In blackmail, he captured the
city secrets wielded them as insurance. The power in those
tapes could have swayed elections or ruined lives. In a second,
it forced a single, urgent question, who, beside prenda Gas
was involved? Did his circle extend into my coworkers? Was
Laos's casual fear, the mark of a guilty conscience, or
simple terror? What had grown beyond anyone's control? Paranoia crept
in like a gas leak. I replayed the found tips
again and again, appalled and unable to stop, one tape
bearer beneath the other's laces with a familiar cadence. My
own voice sprittle with longing and insomnia as I whispered
secrets never spoken aloud, histories that have died to keep private.
How could anyone in any device have caught? This? Was
I dreaming at the mic, or at my entire truth,
even unspoken, become part of a system, vast and remorseless.
The sense of danger devied the room, leaving me clutching
the armors of Prendigas's chair, the wood grooves worn down
from unseen finger tips over decades. The station's heartbeat seemed
in sync with my own panic, as the studio clock
advanced toward three thirteen a m. The control board lights laired.
The static that followed, rising from nowhere, crowding up music,
phone lines. Even the gentle pain of the request bell
felt like the city itself breathing down my neck. The
line between broadcasts in reality, past and present was thinning.
Whatever circle I had stepped into, it felt suddenly like
closing a circuit of febick gly, pulling us all sleepless
into a confession we could never erase. But sitting there,
hunched amid the lined up, blinking circuitry and the durn
of night made me realize just how little distance lay
between the inside and the outside, between what I believe
radio was on, what it could be, what someone intent
on listening might make it. The sensation wasn't simply paranoid,
but a physical shift. The chair felt firmer, The small
of my back prickled, as if pressure were gathering behind me.
The wrecker faded out, and before I could cue the
adbumper at that Phantom's static arose again, stronger, this time
rippling underm fingers. As I reached for the slider, I
let the silence draw out a second longer, and I
usually allowed. Every rule said avoid dead air, Every superstition
said never let it go quiet enough for something else
to speak. But I was listening hard down there. Just
under the white noise came a voice. This is all
kept for later, not an echo. It was a statement
and afraid, and it was me. I jaded the jingle track,
and the room snapped back to routine, But my heart
betook much longer to fall in line. On my break,
I drifted through the corridor, passing Perndogas's old office, eye
in the warped door for him, as if expecting it
to split open and stuff to tumble out. Margaret's office
light burned overhead, but the room was empty. Farther along,
I caught sight of Termeas dragging his cot as cleared
to something on his batter transistor radio. He always tuned
to the station, claiming he liked to know when the
ghost frequency was up to something. He jerked the headphones
off as I approached you, messing with the playlist to night,
he whispered, No, I replied, wary, something like a church
out trtun sneaking out over the ads, he muttered, frowning,
Like the wires are carrying more than one. I wanted
to laugh, to brush it off a superstition, but my
hands betrayed me, fidgeting with my security badge. It's just
the old wiring. Thomas Crosstoock from the emergency generator. Maybe
he shook his head and kept pushing the cart, but
his footsteps sped up, soul squeaking in a hurry. As
he disappeared into the gloom pass Brenda's endy station. I
realized it wasn't just me by the phone lines. People
were noticing, but nobody wanted to claim the burden of proof.
Back in the breakroom, Lyle was crumpled in a crack
final chair at a batted maintenance lock up, it across
his knees. He pretended not to notice me as I
filled a mug with coffee gunteppot and half skimmed with
hoily salt. He ever fixed a camera feed in the archive?
I said, only half as casual as I meant to sound.
His head snapped up. No, Mark says it's not in
the budget. Why I debated telling him about the figure
at three fifteen a m. But kept harsh. I just
keep seeing things, or thinking I see things. Lyle scratched
at his jaw. Maybe the station needs a priest, not
an engineer, I smirked. Then let my smile aad. You
sure you don't know anything about I gestured vaguely at
the ceiling the booths, every humming wire. He shrugged, lips
pressed into a thin line. You ever think some places
record more than music, Marian? That question to ask my
bravado was something closer to dread. I returned to the
booth and ran the next block of music, feigning a
routine rhythm, fielding request calls, weaving stition id. I tried
to convince myself it was only intomnia. Yet I couldn't
stop reviewing each line in the lock triple, checking for errors,
for GAP's tiny apertures where something unwanted might slip through.
A minute and forty seconds into Wichita Linemen, the request
light blinked. I answered mid course, half prepared for one
of my regulars. But a man's voss came through the
kind of steady, familiar toniga from a retiree calling after
a sleepless night, Marian. He asked the receiver, piping in
a hiss of night air, this is green. Listen that
recipe you played from Shirley last week she said python
in the bottom cabinet? Did you attit that? Or do
you got some jokers mixing old calls in again? I
shuffled through the show, lock genuinely stumped. Not to my knowledge,
mister Green all calls a life here or pulled from
lowlast week's quotation, He huffed the lion grainy thing is?
I heard my ex's voice too night before last she
passed in March, but clear as anything, her whistling the
tin she did when she rolled pie Crost. Haven't thought
about it in years, didn't even call in. How you're
explaining that? His complained to gentle, almost forgiving, made me
ache for the old certainty of predictable equipment malfunctions. I
really can't explain it, mister Green, But if you hear
anything else like that, could you write down the time?
Maybe the song before it? He agreed and signed off
with a creak of his old chair official sign off.
After five hours of uneasy vigilance, I found myself clutching
a foot long print out of the night's LOKs, scrutinizing
every line for a marmalady. I started to circle recurring
interest a jingle from three weeks ago replayed for no reason,
A comment from a caller who'd never actually called her name,
written in a handwriting I didn't recognize. I tried on
a whim to row out the BOOTHMAC through the patch bay,
thinking if I took control away from the digital board,
maybe any outside tampering would sure. Instead, the room felled
with a hard edge Satoku whine, as if the very
wires were groaning from the strain of two much memory.
Intent on that maneuvering whatever haunted the signal, I resolved
to trace the physical networks, seek where the wires themselves
spread and tidied, where they had been spliced in the
decades before. I grabbed a flashlight from the back of
the supply room and popped the hatch behind the racks
in the control center. The station's veins ran tangled and dustladen,
a map of choices made by half a dozen engineers
long before my time at a call. Behind the racks,
my knees grinding old dust into the carpet fibers. Something
sharp snagged my wrist, A thin copper wire running outside
the insulated bundle clean in you. It vanished through a whole,
drilled tphasively into the concrete floor. I followed it to
a battered utility closet, tapped beneath a set of metal
stairs barely a storage base where cupboard box has what
looked like a pirated phone switcher device meant to rear
out calls installed years ago, enmassed with duct tape and
fading service stickers. A mess of wires found out from
there and joined the building's main bundle. I tried to
tup a loose to panel, but it was bolted with
a heavy duty lock on the wall, ridden and prend
a gust tidy hand A yellowed paper tagree never patch
line three. After midnight from aintenance only, I sat back
on my heels, horpetdery overhead. Someone's footsteps sounded in the distance,
though every other staff member should have cleared out by now.
I waited, breath low until the building stilled out in
the street in the gray start of morning. I held
my key in a closed fist. The city was washing
itself clean. Store frons flicker to life. The light, polluted
with dreams, allowed only the briefest existence. All folks gathered
in the diner's booth clutching radios, half listening, half dozing.
Somewhere I hoped the signal remained, just another smear in
the background. I wondered what might have slipped in despite
my vigilance. The next stretch of days bled together. I
tracked every tape that came through, venturing into the deeper
archive roads during times when I knew Lyle was otherwise occupied.
I began cataloging the missing tapes, chartingwen and where things
seemed to go wrong. There was a pattern. Every Thursday,
two cassettes would vanish from the most recent lock, replaced
by reels labeled only an mptity or a red chief.
The handwriting alternated between prindigast sharp caps and a more
rounded script. Sometimes whole months were absent, coinciding with city
scandals or high prova resignations. One evening, pressed by an anxiety,
I no longer bothered to disguise A confronted Lyle in
the main corridor. He jumped at the sound of my approach,
eyes wide. Why are you so cagy about the tapes
we're missing weeks? Who's taking them? Lyle? He looked past
my shoulder, as if expecting someone to materialize. You oversee
what happens to folks who poke too deep. Margaret sent
me looking for maintenance notes last month, but told me
not to open the low shelves. That's not normal, Mariant
want my advice. Stop digging. I can't just ignore it.
People are calling about their lives being aired, things that
shouldn't even be recorded. His lips compressed the words nearly inaudible.
They always hear you, Marian. You know that there's a
reason that phrase keeps coming up. That's what he believed.
You ever wonder why the walls are so thick in
this place? Against my better judgment, I press the matter.
Did ye help Prendick? I set this up? He shut down,
turning away. If I did, I wouldn't tell the airwaves.
Things got loose after p died. Now it's got a
mind of his own, almost His answer lingered with me.
Long after he left for the garage. I watched him
go as stooped shoulder sharp against the sodium street lights.
The following night, after my shift, I returned to the beef,
determined to catch the next anomaly as it emerged. It
was long before the hand of one old record seguing
to another trigger that shull again, signaling something out of joint.
This time, I left the phone lines open and all
tape feeding through a batter man's deck, the red light
glowing as I sat with headphones on. Without warning, the
city's electrical gridamped everything flicker, monitors stuttered, the panel lets
struggle for power. For ten seconds. The only signaled the
station sent out was my then bracing breath, panhard left,
leaping endlessly about the emptiness with the jolt, systems resumed.
Then the phone rang a direct line, not for listeners.
I answered and heard only silence, except for after several seconds,
a single line nutted in a voice low and rough
as gravel. You are not the first to notice, you
won't be the last. Get out. My mouth went dry.
I hung up, pulse singing in my ears. Driven by
something darker than curiosity, I retraced the neverpath I'd found
in the maintenance closet. This time I waited until deep night,
certain everyone else was gone. I slid around the broadcast racks,
pausing at every creek, every odd shadow, flickering in and
out of led range, and shimmid the copper wire to
its next anchor, prying open a joint panel with a
screw driver. Behind the insulation, nestled between stipples and overseats,
I found another envelope. Photographs of figures outside city Hall,
taken out odd angles off a mid argument, sometimes mid embrace, baseless,
but with scribbles. Were at two thirteen a M de
Green mortgage lost a copy to tape a receipt heavy
with ink listed payment after payment two night. Mate at
the bottom, I note in Prinda gaspercise hand. If Hits
lost so much, the worse, dead air safer. There was
more than blackmail here. There was a living archive, a
shadow narrative strung through every block of programming, preserved for
an audience. Even prendic guest probably did not imagine. It
was a system built not to destroy, but to control,
to terrify, to keep the city's skeletons in some six
state of animation. I nearly didn't hear Margaret coming until
her shoes clicked to a stop behind me. You found
the old patch, she said, force too evenly pitched. I did,
I replied, not turning to face her. She exhaled hard.
This place had started swallowing secrets before we were born.
Mary and Prendergast believed if he kept us city's confessions
bottled up. He could keep things stable. Maybe he was
right until he died, but now nobody knows where the
bottle neckleads. The stillness between us was desperate, heavy with
the weight of what we both now understood. We were
inside the story, trapped on a frequency beyond sleeper memory.
I returned to my car as dawn and raveled down
the avenue and let the silence of the eye pressing
on me for a moment. The urge to drive out
to the city's edge, to leave the towers and wires
behind forever, was nearly overwhelming, but I stayed. I understood
at last that the broadcast was no longer simply mine
to deliver. This was a system, alive and ravenous, built
by hands now mostly gone, spreading itself, absent of its master,
into a self sustaining myth. In the hush before sleep,
claim me, I held the last daming tape. I had
found my own voice, buried and resurrected from the wires.
I listened to myself described in terms I never would
have used, all my defenses stripped away by some postmidnous sircuitry.
The dead air had become a place of keeping, a
mausoleum of confess I didn't dare wonder who else had
darkaf keys, whose hands might be waiting in the line
in the next hour. I just waited, forced into a
roll i'd never imagined, not just an unwilling confessor, but
proof itself, an easy, flickering indelible on every crackling wave,
and somewhere inside the pulse of the red light and
the shift of the frequency band, I could feel it
starting to shape stores without the need for speakers or
hosts or even listeners. The city outside faded into the
sullen blue of morning, the station still alive and whispering
with everything it had ever been told, everything it had
ever stolen, and every secret it was preparing to keep live.
The morning after I had uncovered the full scope of
Prondigas's work, I woke exhausted, fragments of old jingles and
whispered confessions leaping in my mind. There was no clear
line any more between what belonged to the city and
what belonged to the wires. My own memories, my voice
performing secrets i'd never spoken, had wedged under my skin
like glass. In the early light, the radio on my
nights unplayed. Only static is familiar, how distorted, too thick
with and seen shadows to deliver anything like comfort. I
returned to the station that evening, uneasy, expecting sabotage or
some more obvious sign of exposure. Instead, the familiar half
lit lobby stretched before me, unchanged is bat of vinelchair's vacant,
the only movements weighing for an in a crackpot. Laweighted
near the copy machine in the engineering alcove, hunched cap
pulled low despite the heat. He didn't look up as
I entered. Something about his stillness hell, not the clench
of guilt, but the tension of someone watching a slow
motion crash. He could not halt. I tried to catch
his gaze. Anyway, we need to talk, Lyle. He didn't
quite flinch. I figured you'd find your way in. Not
many around who even know were to look? Now you
take anything from Prendigast's office. I glanced at the bat
of Messinger Bagg on my shoulder, heavy with tapes in
a notebook, only what I had to He left me
a birdcomb trail. Some of the log sheets, the tamboured recordings.
Was that you're trying to tell me or someone else,
He snorted, finally meeting my eyes. If I wanted to
warn you, I'd have said it straight. He always said
curiosity made better radio, not safe for people. But once
folks realized there's more to listen for the music. You
see what it does. I motioned him closer, lowering my voice.
He helped him. I found your initials in the engineer's log,
scrolled on splice maps for the patch lines and back
up transmitters. He rocked on his heels. I helped keep
the signals flowing. Old Man said the city's rock could
only be controlled from the shadows. He thought if he
kept everyone's dirty laundry recorded and buried some place only
he could reach, maybe they'd day in line. Folks up top,
the council, the power brokers. They all had their secrets
in his fauld whether they knew it or not. Lyle hesitated,
glancing behind him toward the corridor's empty gloom. It didn't
start so big. First, it was insurance against blackmail from
the unions. Then static. Two years ago. He was recording
everything everywhere. Didn't care who got caught, even us. He
gestured to the racks of tangled cabling and the engineering
closet his vost grim confessional. After a while, the station
just started listening on its own. He built all these
little feedback loops to transmitters, pigabat off the legal call
sign at nights, legal pirate frequencies patched through cityphone boxes.
I helped wire receive a stob in the council chambers,
one under the judge's bench at Municipal Court. There's a
junction box at the police station tinto us. Didn't think
he've really used them. Prendegas said insurance is only good
if he cashed in it the world most possible time.
I never thought he'd go this far. Cold Swatch tightened
my scalp. I ran through the implications, so anyone trying
to push the city in any direction printer gas for
someone in his circle, could threaten them using something pulled
from these confessions from secret recordings. Lyles's voice came up hollow,
as though the words cost him. Are those more after
he died. I tried to keep it running on autopilot,
but soft was nothing like a person. The patch lines,
the relays, they started picking up straight transmissions, calls old
police radio baby monitors stuff in the statics. Sometimes it's
just a loop. Sometimes something near the files in the archive.
The change re record themselves. I don't even know what's
in the air half the time, any more recording show up.
I never made. He pressed a crumpled envelope into my
Pomnau return address, just a list phone numbers, city whole
access codes, and the cryptic phrase shadow shift. Everyone listens,
nobody forgets. Why bring me in? I asked, a force
no longer steady, Why not just let it rot? Lars shook,
fatigue lining his face. P trusted you to keep the
story alive, not just a signal. But now it got
away iron. It's listening to you to ear inside it,
just like the rest of us. Wasn't supposed to spread.
This isn't what we wanted. He broke off, pulling hard
on the brim of his cap, the sword of gesture
you make when every other action feels more dangerous. I
left him at the copy machine, hot pounding the weight
of the arkif burning my shoulder. The air itself seemed thickened,
muggy in the whole way, despite the old cliine of
control shuddering overhead. Every event now felt like a conduit
for breakfast unseen voices I made for the men's studio,
intent on tracking the patch lines, Lyle described the station's
digital spectrum analyzer, a weather device older than most laptops
in the city, ran a waterfall display of every frequency
in ther eye. Typically only our one channel appeared cleanly.
Now four new spiked poles in the noise, low power
and registered pirates ignoal spiraling out into the night. I
isolated one, patched it through the audio monitor, noise mostly
then shoppening, resolving a snippet of conversation a city administrator's voice, Look,
just keep the receipts out of the morning locks. I
don't need anyone asking. Then static another frequency, this time
my own voice, half again from an earlier shift, recounting
a memory I'd never shared out loud. I cross referenced
the listings from Las's note eyes, narrowed calls routed through
half a dozen city positions, each patched into a shadow channel,
each potentially recording or transmitting long past the comfort of
plausible deniability. There was a network here, and the station
was its nervous system still in myself. I tried one
more test. I dialed the only secure City Hall line
I could trust, trying to reach Evelyn, an old friend
whose job involved fixing leaks, usually to bureaucratic kind. After
three rings, she picked up a little worry. Marian, is
this about the station? I heard something about? Yeah, listen,
do not talk on any line except this one, you understand,
don't use the station. Don't let anyone call in. There's
some kind of tap running. I think it's in the
phone boxes, any meeting you've had, anything you've said at
City Hall or in the council chambers. It could be
might already have been aired. Her voice went taut fast.
I heard my mother's voice on the Nun Show. She's
been dead fifteen years. Several councilors claimed they heard their
own two. What's happening done? There is this? A hack
arth mid breath, her words cut away, replaced by stuttering wine.
The line faused. Then a harsh digit has playbe cavoalet
both our voices, my own recounting a late night argument,
something I'd never told us. All The snippet looped. If
they ever find out it ends us, that ends the station.
Then click the coal diyed. I clutched the receiver shaking.
The system wasn't monitoring for utility, it was trapping, replaying,
controlling My every action now risked becoming part of the confession.
The urge to flee ward with the urge to finish
what I'd started, wain spattered the studio winters, streaking long
vertical lines under the flickering sodium glare outside. I listen,
thought I heard the building's bones creak. That night, audio
anomalies worsened. At one seven a m. A warp signal
burst through the main speakers, flattening the playlist and killing
the phone lines. The overide lights spluttered, then held steady.
What filled the air was not mis ignore, even STATICA gobbled,
shuffling medley of local voices, including my own, recounting stores
from pry weeks. Each sentence broke over the last news
direct to Margaret candulling her daughter, some councilman's private ambit,
Brenda muttering about alumony, then snippets of breath, the gentle
click of my car key, and intake of air. Before speaking,
the uncanny proximity of secrets that should never have been aired.
I rushed to the booth. The doors hung a draw
one leading to the main hole, stubbornly prop oopened by
the cleaning cart. Movement flickered at the edge of the
corridor's fluorescent wash, A shadow of tall trailing slightly. I
drew closer, but it dissipated, leaving a kind of cold,
anxious void behind. Just before I reached the board, the
booth phone rang. The caller. I d read outage. I answered,
breath and stady hullo. A reply neither clearly digital nor
fully human, filtered through slow modulated static, A parity of
a voice blurred almost to anonymity. Stop digging, Marian. Dead
air is safer. You'll join Prindigas if you keep listening.
The words thin. Then the coll terminated itself. A single
turn hung in the receiver, growing distant. I barely set
the handset back before the night manager, Henry, a man
whose sole virtue was a strict adherence to rules, burst
in his seat. Was rumple face, pale enough to pick
at vanes beneath the skin. He shut the door, breathing hard. Marian,
you have to get at I've gotten calls from some
one upstairs higher than Margaret. This place isn't safe. The
archives someone's raising everything, and the automated feet won't let
me kill the broadcast. Margaret's half out the door, your
own names, and the main line lock. What are you saying?
My voice hitched. He drew me down the hall, past
the trophy case, nearly dragging me into the old main archive.
The tape doors hung open, reels and spooling at our feet,
handfuls of sets flowing like entrails. He whispered, desperate. It's
not just Prindigast anymore. The systems conferal. There are those listening,
people from the city, maybe the state. When not alone
in this I tried to shut it all down, locked
out the transmitter room, but the signal is still live.
You have to do something. You work closest to him
who wiped the archives, he shook his head. I caught
Lyle boxing up a half dozen reels. Margaret's treading locks.
She says she was told to, but it's not doing
any good. Something keeps sending out signals even when the
boards are dark. The main power behind us, the overhead fixture,
strode through in our shouders into chaotic shapes. He yanked
a walkie talkie from his belt, scanning channels. Every channel,
even the secured ones, were plied in kind to garble voices,
beginnings of confessions, random phrases caught from conversations not meant
for air. A deep resonant hum shuddered through the floor,
followed by total blackout for a breath. The only elimination
filtered from emergency exits signs in the spectral blue of
old monitors on fall back power. The board's lifeless meter
is dead, but from the walls themselves, deepened bowels of
the concrete. A course of feigned overlapping voices persisted. The
studio or a mausoleum of a million measured humiliations and betrayals.
Henry caught my wrist. Don't try to front stairwell. Margaret's
locked the doors from the other side. The emergency lighting failed.
I squeezed his forearm, urging him behind me. Flashlight press
to my palm. Together we followed the wire bundles, each
bruce blue with accumulated dust down into the maintenance stairwell
for a rusted metal fire door, into unfamiliar territory. Brown
fall gave way to sub basement, the station's original fallout shelter.
Miserable with mil you in a life of its own.
Here the air was colder, older shelving units grown beneath
the weight, outdated equipment, old real machines, racks of routing switchers,
all piece leaves, brown folders, nearly indescribable junk talked behind
the fuse panels at a batter door tagged with familiar
script keep out casod in. On duty, Henry hesitated thus
prendegass old bunker he called at the listening room. He
told everyone it was for redundancy, in case the main
tower failed, but he spent his nights here more often
than the real booth. I swung open the door. A
crackling chill rolled out electric tinged with burnt insulation and
the sharp tang of metal. The room itself was a labyrinth,
wires looping like Intestine's cross ceiling pipes, banks of analog oscillators,
tapes straighted through machines, some running, some idle. Screens stacked
in towers sured nothing but rolling static and a ghostly
digital waterfall undet in the furthest alcove sat a figure
elderly hunch, features obscured by low light. His battered maintenance
badge read only custodein. He turned as we entered, pale
eyes reflective in the wash of the monitors. We don't
get men visitors now, he rasped. But the station's always listening.
It was a voice old enough for fables, but carrying
a brisk I clap, practicality, a survivor's edge. Who are you?
I demand it, forcing strength, I didn't feel. He seemed
to weigh my presents. Saul, last of prendi Gas circle.
He used to clean floors, say, cable patch the city's conscience.
When it bled too much into public record. I slid
the tapes from my bag on to the table. I
know about the broadcasts, about the confessions and the blackmail.
How you cap files on everyone, even your own staff.
It didn't end with Prendegas, did it. He shook his head,
pale hands trembling over the switches. No more than the
city ends with the new mayor systems outlve men Prendigast.
He set up the listening post, but never believed how
deep it had reach, Not after automation, not once the
patch networks spread, with every phone, every cable. After a while,
the station stopped needing us to feed the archive, and
it started listening by reflex, like it was hungry. He
looked at me, the flicker of screen light etching shadows
along on his jaw. That's what keeps it alive now,
The dead air between music and our confession settled there
like dust on a deep lake. No one wants to
know where they end up. I navely press. But why
why keep it running at all? Couldn't you have destroyed
the tapes? The relays just pulled the plug. Saul's laugh
rat old, brittle. You ever tried to unhear something marrying
the ghost and the wires? Once they wake up, all
you can do is negotiate. Henry nervously scanned the racks.
The hum in the air seemed to synchronize with my pulse.
What happens if we stop? Saul's eyes narrowed the every
secret lock down here. If you cut the power to
grumble the tapes, you risk it all, pouring out raw
and unfiltered everything all at once. People would find themselves
hearing what shouldn't be said, confessions in the church, dark city, plans, betrayals,
private grief. Some of its just noise, but some would
burn the city down. The air wives only forgive so much.
He leaned forward for soft but iron clod. The dead
air is a filter. It protects by obscuring just enough.
But if you try to raise yourself from it, well,
you don't always get to choose what's remembered and what's lost.
The implication churned within me unease, dread rage at having
been made an unwilling participant. There's got to be a
way to shut it down. If I raise myself, does
this cycle break or duw? I just become another layer
in the static soul regarded me as if I were
a child wishing away the rain. Best outcome, maybe you
vanished from the tapes. Worst, maybe it just finds new
voices hungered in the last. The system listens, whether you
want to or not. My hands shook. I pressed record
on the nearest mike, the legacy model Prendicgast had favored,
the one patched into every major line. My voice came out,
taught Bertil, vibrating with something that felt dangerously close to desperation.
This is Marian. If you can hear me, you've been
part of a system meant to control and punish. By listening,
I refuse to let my voice be used any longer,
My secrets, my memories, any ones, no more shadow archives,
no more dead are the instant the words left my mouth.
Sirens began to wail upstairs, Monitors blinked to strobe being
read over every speek. A chorus of voices Mine, Lyle's, Margaret's, strangers,
old friends erupted, leaping, colliding, caught in perpetual confession equipment.
Fritzton smoked Breaker's trip as the overload built. Soul's mouth
stretched in something like a smile, Regret and fatigue mingling together.
You've done it now. I ran from the bunker, Henry
on my heels, the emergency lights flickering with wild, frowned cadence.
Voices swelled behind us. Rerecorders jammed into replay. The lost
ire was worth audio spat from every available output, raw,
unfiltered confessions that spanned decades. Back in the lobby, I
glimpsed home as and Brenda Thomas clutching as radio. Brenda
frozen mid dial terear etched cross her faces. A dozen
fragments of her own voice tangled from ten different frequencies.
Out on the street, chaos roiled police cruisers drove by
sirens distorted by the radiating hum of our broadcast tower.
My phone pulsed with push notifications, emergency frequencies filled with noise,
city wide scanner alerts tripping in endless relay. The city was,
for a moment deafened by a flood of ghosts. Every wire,
an air with thickness, stores once meant to stay buried,
and then, nearly as sudden as it had begun, a
hush static filled every frequency at once, thick, relentless, beyond
tuning or control. In the weeks that followed, confusion flourished
local news rather transcript and intelligible broadcast, interrupted city reaps
early morning iOS, police investigating rumorsbly wild that someone broke
into the transmitter shack, that prendigas ghost round the board,
that the city's secrets were compromised. Upright, w and Ossi
limped along the station's traditional signal, replaced now by looping
tape fragments, bits of lost confiicients, the mufful voice of
a long dead councilman half swallowed recordings of regular folks
lost time. Margaret was questioned by authorities and let go. Oddly,
she didn't contest the firing, Tomas insisted on new headphones,
though he refused to tell anyone why. Brenda stopped speaking
to anyone in the corridor if she could help it,
Lyle vanished. Some one said they saw him driving west,
eyes hollow, windows open. No one expected him to come back.
The main archives what was left after the poage, were
seized by police and city officials. They found nothing conclusive,
burnt tapes, shredded locks, just enough digital wreckage to stoke
the flames of conspiracy. I stayed, with nowhere else to go,
adrift in a half deserted studio, smelling more and more
like dust and melted plastic. Routines persisted, though the rhythm
felt strip of purpose. I listened for the hum, but
heard only its memory. On my night walks past shuttered
sharps in the course with police stap lobby, I recognized
faces in part kasts, city functionaries, concils are and runners
watching me as if I alone held the map to
what remained. One afternoon weeks on, I passed the church
on eight, caught the familiar tones of old mister Green's
baritone through an open window. Inside. He tuned dials through
the endless static pausing only when he caught amid the
interference what sounded like the earco of a lullaby. I
slid on to the bench behind him, catching his eye
in the reflection of glass. You still listening, I asked softly.
Green nodded, not quite smiling. Got nothing but static now,
But every so often, if for patience some one you
thought was gun, call'sen long enough to say what they
never could. We sat together, not quite in silence, until
the eyre changed. Later on, Back at home, I drifted
through rooms dinvy late summer's haze, unable to sleep. Had
it pulled me to my battered radio, where I turned
the dial through bands haunted by the same thick silence.
Most stations played can music or country talk, but more often, lately,
pure and possibly dens static filled every available slot. It
was in that hayes late night and alone that I
heard it, faint, swimming just under the surface noise, my
own voice, gently, almost lovingly, reciting phrases. And you had
never spoken, even privately, confessions, had never permitted myself to think,
much less vocalize. Each were clipped, echoing, as if stitched
there by a vigilant hand for an audience of no one.
I froze, swept rolling down my spine despite the hill.
I tuned the dial away one hundred two point nine,
then eighty eight point one, But the voice followed, always
at the very low stage of reception, never grown louder,
just enough to catch if you waited long enough, believed
hard enough in ghosts in those eyes. As the city's
few lights flickered behind bob curtains in the last bus
rumbled north, I felt certain others were drawn to the
same thin signals. City officials with sleepers, eyes, aging engineers,
men and women alone in their rooms, each seeking something
only they could truly recognize. Some unguarded moment battered into
the night, preserved now bled out into the endless noise floor,
the tapes, the voices, the signal at all continued on
its almost up me indifferent and relentless, I realized was
so horror and reluctant alle that Prendergast had an awakened
to ghost so much as summoned the city itself into
a new permanent posture of listening. There was no more hiding,
no more keeping. Now the wire hump of the memory
to hungered ate and reassembled every secret a ca catch.
One night, I took a walk to the old transmitter.
Its red evation became blinking through the haze as I
watched a figure older than dust shuffled away from the
fence or radio pressed to batterdire, Our eyes mad as
we crossed paths for recognition hung between us, but no words.
In each face was a reflection of all the secrets
left and said. Maybe the city would grow new stories,
learned to forget differently. Maybe some ghosts weren't men to
be exercised. All I knew was the airwaves, empty now
but never silent, remained ravenous, crackling, beckoning, urging confessions from
anyone foolish or desperate enough to believe the signal had
faded for good. Even with the booth abandoned somewhere, the
broadcast went on. I slipped my radio back into my
cut pocket, trying not to listen, but knowing always that
the frequency was already inside me. The night pressed on,
restless and lide, waiting for someone, anyone, to pick up
a receiver and add a new secret to the static.
I stepped into the streets just as dawn's darted, bending
the sky. What light. There was limping over roof lines
and filling puddles with an ash shimmer. My radio was
still in my pocket, a little barted plastic correctangle, almost
as old as the station itself. I couldn't resist. I
pressed it to my ear, tuning through the fizz, listening
for even a truce of music or news. But it
was all drift and warrible, occasional syllables strung on interference,
rising and falling like a tire tide. He took me nowhere,
in particular, block after block of ugly brook wickamrained, old
glass door fronce, all closed, all indifferent. A police cruiser
idled outside the bank, the officers inside watching me. What
passed A woman in a nurse's smock lit her first
cigarette of the day instead through me, as if I
were an echo. I caught my reflection in the blank
slot of an IDM. I sunk and marvel locked, my
face strange even to myself. I turned down empty streets,
past the old movie house with its marquis half lit,
the sign left over from a double feature. No one
had watched a month's night. Voices slash opened secret down
at the river front warehouses sank into shadow. The wind
snapped and loosened, it torn poster, sending its scuttling along
the sidewalk in raspy pulses. My feet sload only as
I neared the little broadcasting shed that housed the secondary
relay for w and zsi's pad up broken and hanging
door swinging gently, and the breeze graffiti old threats, sloppy
claims of love from before anyone cared what happened to
this building. Scrolled up one wall, partly obscured by the
stubborn creeping of lichen and dirt. In sight, the residual
warmth in the old amplifier told me some one had
been here before me, perhaps within the eyre. That idea
strangely felt like company after weeks of haunted isolation. I
set my radio a top, the console, knuckles skimming the dust,
and found myself compelled to flip every switch, peer into
every crevice, as if the right action might conjure an answer.
My fingers hesitated over a set of togal switches marked
with yellowed labels Remote Patch Master a loop XP. I
flicked on remote patch for a beat, nothing, then a
whisper shuffle from the radio speaker, a rising swell of voices,
none louder than a murmur, but layered hundreds deep, as
if the city's population were gathered in collective confession. No
stores in full, only the beginnings. I never meant if
he knew what I tell no one over and over,
acquirer offun finished amissions, tangled in the static. It had
no end and no clear center. The hair on my
arms rose, A hill rippled through me as a distinctly
familiar voice jutted through the storm, my own again, not
one of the recent confessions, but a line pulled from
years back, something I'd mumbled into the booth's stockness. Believing
myself alone, Am I only what the tape remembers. Some
one behind me cleared their throat, a sound as brittle
as the static itself. I turned, already bracing for a threat.
But it wasn't one of the councilmen or a scavenger.
It was Soul, the custodian, his hands shoved deep in
the pockets of his brown cardigan. He nodded at my
little radio, then at the patch console. Couldn't stay away either, ha,
he said Vorcelow. I tried to summon irritation, but managed
only a dry, exhausted croak. What happens if no one's
left to listen? Saul? Does the tip just start over?
Or does it eventually decay? He leaned against the opposite wall,
studdying a windowless stock like it offered escape. I used
to think the tapes, whether you've nobody cared? But people
always come back accident curiosity bored a mean name it.
All it takes is one person tuning in, even by accident,
and the six kicks off again. Is that how we
ended up here? Saul shrugged, Oh mine, Prendegus set the trap.
Thought maybe if everyone secrets was store, he'd of leverage.
Safety is brand of it. But the transmission out grew
the archive. Now what's left his shape by whoever picks
up a signal? You me, even the ones who claimed
they want nothing to do with it. Cities building the
things no one says out loud. The airways got tired
of waiting. I tried to break the leap. I admitted
for shaking. I thought if i'd just if I confessed
and killed my feed, it'd end. He shook his head.
Let's folding back in the closest thing he had to
a smile. There was something distant in his eyes, like
he was already remembering us both as part of someone
else's store. Maybe you made it worse, maybe you bought
the city a little justice. Time will tell. The question
that had hovered behind every day pressed forward heavier than before. Saul,
did you ever did you ever think about just burning
it out, pulling wires, smashing reels? He paused once, But
the system always rebuilt itself. People like us, they build
again and again. What's dead and the archive just leaked
somewhere else was always a leak, Marian. A sharp popping
in the amplifier cut through our conversation, then a brief
blanketing hum so thick it pressed on our chests. I
flicked off the switches, feeling relief and lingering guilt as
the voices died. Sol straighten, as though dismissing both themselves
and me. You want out, leave, find another city, let
this one rod into silence, But you won't. None of
us ever really do. I watched him disappear out the door,
moving like an exhausted animal returning to its den. I
lingered in the shed, feeling the sticky aftertaste of transmission
winding down. It took a while to collect myself enough
to return home. By then, daylight had scattered the city's ghosts,
at least for now. Yet every window I passed seemed
to hold the watching flicker of a radio, or a
face pressed just out of sight two into a frequency
that never truly faded. A few nights later, after another
impossible day spent tracking rumors, tending to the decaying bulk
of the station, and fielding questions from city officials who
believed more than ever that I held some master key,
I found myself walking the empty corridors again. The cleaners
were long gone, the Knight's engineer missing. The booth was
cool and hull, as if all the oxygen had been
spent and no one bothered to refill it. On the console,
propped up by mug ring and a batted upy sleeve,
rested a fresh envelope with my name scrolled and jittery handwriting.
I opened it slowly, half bracing fur a threat inside
a single polary to my own face captured behind the
booth glass. I startled, mouth open, as if caught. At
the very moment a confession was ripped from me tipped
to the back, a slip of paper with a single phrase,
you made the first cut, the tape remembers. I wanted
to laugh, but the sound caught and died in my throat.
There was nowhere left in the building that felt like Santiri,
but I stayed anyway, as though dignity could be wrung
from clinging to your own disaster. I sat behind the console,
flicked the faders, patched out the feeds, but all that
came for was a smear of old jazz flathers and
polished copper. I drifted so my dreaming fingers, absently dialing
through the night's programming. Now and then a frail confession
slipped out, not my voice, but close an old woman's regret,
a small child's fear at a city workers lonely boast.
Near three m. With a kind of compulsive resignation, I
reached for the broadcast Mike, pressed the cue and let
breath fall the sandboard here, listening to w and O's
see if anyone still tuned in, I spoke voice softer
than usual, maybe to Night's the night we rest. Let
what was said stay said, Let the tape wind down.
No response, but the low steady click of the levels.
Dancing hungry for more, I left the mic live volume
at zero and sat there, letting silence be its own
answer for a long time. Not even the ghost frequencies answered.
Then the oddest thing in the deut interval, the out
took on a nearly warm, enveloping kind of way to hush,
so dense you almost heard heart beating. The city's old
towers and parking ramps, the riverlets and allies felt close
her tuned for the briefest ban. I wondered if perhaps
it had all worked, that the act of laying open
the echo chamber would stove the system for a while,
forced its appetitle swore. When I left that shift, morning
had started. A pale, almost forgiving light tackled the station's
battered face. In the lobby, Margaret's OLVMUK stood on the counter,
half full of rain water flecked with tape flakes. The
night manager's badge hung from the coat tree, spinning lazily
in the draft from a broken pane of glass. I
took the stairs down, skipping the elevator out of habit,
and slipped into the street outside. The hum was back
a raw animal vibration that ran beneath honking cards and
barking dogs in the far or rattle of a refuse truck.
No one stopped me, not this time, not even to watch.
For the first time all season, I caught myself raising
my eyes to the high windows as I passed, daring
them to reflect me back. Each window was blind. But
the further from the station I got, the harder it
came to ignore. The sensation that the city itself was
hanging on my words, that the frequency wound its way
through foam wires, through the concrete, tuned to the pulse
of ordinary lives. I thought of laid driving out of
even at her desk at city Hall, of mister Green
in his kitchen, with the radial low, I tictured them
all alone, called by tired routines. Each of us are pulse,
buried in a waif, waiting for some evidence we were
not the only ones adrift. A week passed, news changed,
the city's crisis deepened, w and OSSI's license was suspended,
but the tower continued to leak static. Some days it
was only a whisper. Some days the rob was got
so loud you could hear it in the pipes. I
got a card from Brenda. She fled to the shore,
tried a new gig at a tourist station there, But
sometimes she wrote. Late at night, the voice on her
monitor slipped, and for just a second she'd catch her
own laughter, a joke meant for Marian and no one else.
The implication was hard to shrug. Everywhere, confessions hovered, and
the air hungered for more. Friday, limping home from a
pointless city council meeting, I passed a huddle of teen
smoking on the library steps, batted boom books blaring nothing
but fuzz Yet every head was bent listening. One of
them jerked his chin at the box. You ever think
coasts used the radio to find out whole inherit the city?
He asked, his friend's eyes flat and knowing later. I
went home, tried for quiet ruinstock coffee cups, opened a
window to the thick evening. The smelt like wet concrete
and distant ozone. I cut all the lights except a
reading lamp, determined to write the day's details out before
sleep fled again, but the notebook stayed blank. I went
to bed sometimes just shy of morning. I woked to
the ancient radio on my nights and crackling itself awake.
It was tuned to a blank spot on the dial,
no station, no legitimate transmission yet out of the phase.
For a few seconds came two lines, my voice in another,
a harmonized, almost gentle echo. Do you hear me now? Pause?
Then the answering voice, rough and nostalgic. You always were here.
That was all. Sleep didn't come easy after I suspected
it never would. One last night, with a feeling pot dread,
part surrender, I walked again to the tower at the
city's edge. Two crept over my shoes, the hiss of ties,
and the distance fell away. I reached the fence and found,
in the weak glow of the signal light, a figure
with hun's shoulders, leaning against the metal radio close to her.
I didn't call her, didn't need to. The city around us,
the wires under foot, the most above, everything ache from
holding secrets. The air itself felt fuller, not with menacing possibility,
but with a raw capacity from memory. Sometimes, I think
the figure said, without turning, if we just listened quietly,
we could piece together everything ever lost. I nodded, though
she wasn't looking. I leaned against the fence, the night
holding us in place, both watchers now. The city's low
electricity ran beneath us, all far. A niece new light
pressed upward, the radio in my hand on hers, all
on the city line, Each one bled out the same, odd,
unfinished hum. Was it hunger or mercy? I couldn't say.
I only knew the frequency had not died, a slipt
here and hopeful, dangerous between everything we thought silent and
all that we dared to confess. In the uncertain brightness,
I realized this was the new equilibrium, the airwaves, patient
and wild, always poised for another secret. I could walk away,
maybe I would one day, But the signal would keep searching, listening,
gathering its ghosts, binding us in the share unending work
of remembering precisely what should never be spoken. I pressed
the radio to my chest, matching my breath to its tenuous,
crackling rhythm, and let that be enough. Above me, the
towers beacon made at slow rotations, read on, read off,
read on, And as the sun rose, I understood it.
To live here on this frequency was to never quite
leave the air behind. And that is the end. Thank
you for listening and I will see you in the
next one.