Speaker 1: The car's interior is humored, the air gun stale overnight
and thick with the smell of rains swerupd upholstery. I'm
part at the disintegrated edge of Station forty trees lot
body angle just enough that the building looks almost normal
if you ignore the florescent pus through the dark front
glass and the crooked two tone sign drooping above the doors.
In the sluggish yellow gleam of the lot light. The
night's rainfall drips down the windshield, bending every angle out
of true, and I catch my finger tapping against the console,
an old nervous ticket only thought I'd upgroom. As thinder
rolls eastwards and the weather seeds, I can hear the
blood hum in my os, the awkward prelude to doing
something I promise myself I'd never do. Station forty three
lust stop for and sawniacs truckers, giant hearts barely beating
toward Dawn. I press the play button on my laptop, and,
through cheap headphones, listen once more to Grif's final sign off.
Every second now studded, mapped and committed to memory. But
you until the next one comes round. Grif's voice flows
once loose and almost lazy, but tonight marbled with something
forced through tight, uncertain vowels. Instead of his usual throw
toward the future, he stilted. This was the late ly
Chiffets Station forty three, my final piece in the airwoofs,
So good night, good luck wherever you are. That's it, direct,
definite three O four A M A time written all
over the file, properties but wrong anywhere. Griff's style was
a never ending conversation, seguid softly into music or silence,
as if he was afraid to hand up for good,
never just a formal good night. The sinos closing music
cue starts to swell. I crank up the volume and
beneath the swellings whirl after the first four bars the
background and nerves me all over against graps of sound
that logic says are nothing but hate, but m gud
clocks as something else entirely. The tiniest suggestion of words
may be a series of whispered questions, like I've heard
in dreams after long road trips. I can't sort sense
from static words at the edge, can you herefore? Is
it just talking? There's a chill? My own name might
be there or not auditory illusion, Probably yet I jot
the tangu coat three four twenty five. I nudge a
half empty coffee cup aside and stath straight, head letting
the silence between trucks stretch, gaging whether my heart can
roll with what I'm about to do. My voice recorder,
perched on the dash, stares back at me like the
unblinking eye judge. I came here because I need the
story desperation with an undertone of perkatory. For years, I
was somebody, some writer at the Friendly Ghost after midnight
shape shifter of Insignia. Conversations then scanned on my own
fault A bad night, one snap on air, and my
voice became poisoned to the community board and eventually to
every friend I thought I had. Now the Currency of
Redemption is a true crying podcast with barely a thousand downloades,
and my last shotest unravel the legend of what happened
during Griff's final shift. People think he ran away, some
say he's still out there drifting or dead the station.
Stonewall's newsuands and creeps like me alike. But this sign
off is wrong, The logs are wrong, and this thunder
gutters behind me. I know every inch of this fields,
bone deep off a pickup, heads passed on the highway,
headlights painting the chainling fence, even the drivers seen to
give Station forty three a wide both these nights. Why
would Griff formalize a goodbye in the dead of night
on a slot he swore never needed rituals. I'd opened
a car door against the drizzle, said my shoes into
coal puddles and drama coat tighter, force, recorder armed. I
hate toward the batted entrance, feeling vaguely like I am
breaking into my own formal life. There's a low pulse
in my scullars across the lot, not belonging, not quite
being refused either, but something stranger, or suspension or brittle waiting.
Maybe this is what the store window manaquins feel pose
forever on the other side of the glass. The vestibule
glass resists as I haul it open. A muddy, thin
carpet leads me past the predetical silence of the lobby
into the incertain, flickering embrace of Station forty three. I
hesitate in the threshold, not as host, not even as
a guest, but as an outsider, moving toward a story
already half alive, already woven into my blood. I should
have felt relief stepping inside after this much eggsile. Instead,
all I feel is that itch between the shoulder blades,
the sense that the moment Griff signed off, the frequency
of the place changed, as if it's waiting for someone
new to tune in astroskastoris asterisk. Once these firs and
halls belong to me. I remember standing alone at three
in the morning, hands smudged withink and coffee, plotting the
next day of dead outer crowd. I convinced myself as real.
It was a liminal king ingdam tec antony, too smart
for the pay, a music director name burned with flammable hair,
and the volunteer receptionist Sorrow, who showed up religiously at
six a m. Though her only compensation was vintage T shirts.
In those days, the place hummed, insulated by routine and
the warm hum of everything slightly out of date, reel
to real decks, patter desk chair with final cracks, and
old leathermon from the record bins. The station sits wedge
between nothing unless just off the city limits sign at
the tail end of commerce road, within sight of warehouses
left hollowed by mergers and obsolescence. Out back, the transmission
tower looms like a rust to trident, half swallowed by
mugwort and ancient pallets, and the only neighbors are wild
dogs and feral automats, blinking out their last neon in
the fog. My daily routine was a slow bully between
stacks of records and microwave burritos. Greasy had funds molding
to the sides of my skull. The one booth was
my altar, where every small choice of aide opposed before
Nadreid be king. Sacred gruff was my opposite Chai sonic,
more content layeringly read with scratchy field recordings. When speaking
to another person a two way m he'd sometimes wandering
to share a cut, twisting the rotary dial with muscle
memory so old at Saint genetic, You ever get the
feeling the songs, know the order before we do, he'd ask.
It wasn't a real question. There were after IRA's rituals.
The guildily strong coffee, a brewed between ships, chairs pulled
in a semicircle around a cardboard box of pastries can stale.
Something about the off ires may dishonest. Sara always leaned in,
asking what we thought happened to form a host who
just quit returning calls. Back then, it sounded like a joke,
but even familiar centuries free on my last night is
housed a color pressed too far, a mad tangle of
grief cut with accusation. My response just a few poorly
chosen live streamed words, timbered through the night and into daylight.
Management flew when at dawn reading a statement with the
clarity of grief and anger, and there was a hush
on my name that spread molecule by molecule through the
listeners I once thought of as family. I boxed up
my casettes, left badges and keys in the battered reception desk,
and promised myself I'd never come back. The world moves on,
but exile breed ghosts. You start hearing static everywhere are persistent,
low grade ditch a cost the A, M and FM
dials that feels two pointed to be coincidence. Sometimes even
riding the subway to creep between stations, a flick of
Grit's voice sample I couldn't quite place. Back then, I
chalked it up to obsession. Now I'm not so sure.
For this podcast series, I forced myself to be methodical.
I record crispintrol pieces at home, skirting a neat ok
from local radio. Legend two vanished DJ in a station
full of secrets. The radiostatic true or imagined is everywhere.
Pre interview Jitter's ride shotgun whittling my voice down to
the business like my emails and voicemails to the station
awkward as blind apologies get route from general in books
to the maybe pile. We're not ready for outside involvement.
Someone finally says, force muddy with suspicion. The hint. People
are hurting and nobody is ready for the shadows to
come crawling in for a ratings bump. But I get
a crack in the door. Sorrow, half a foot shorter
than I remember, smile, thinner than a phone, t ready
to meet me in the vestibule. When I finally show
up her house, eyed back in an ovouspawn and she
bounces a ring of keys in her palm like she's
weighing weather to use them. It's not the same since
he know, she says soft but not unkind he'll see.
I'll give you the run, but keep it quiet. We
passed down, always painted institutional gray. My footsteps astonishingly laud
somewhere deep in the walls. All transmit us hum with
a frequency I can feel in my teeth. Bright post
us rock for refugees, jazz marathon, open phones for the saustice,
cling to paint so chipped it flakes away at a touch,
every inch except the cloak rum. They're a bat, a
door padlock with two chains, dust and touched around the knob,
burus old sampjury. Nobody mentions it. I keep my own
curiosity in Jack, haunted by Gilton and spoken promise not
to trespas further than I need. The morning rush is
a memory, just sorrosorting bills in a side room. I
record a little ambient sound walking the lent of the
central corridor. It's awkwards, mellows and burnt toast and changed
since I last passed through. I'm inside my old life skeleton,
but it shrouded as if I might startle whatever still
lives here into showIn itself. Sometimes I catch my own
face reflected in the glass by the sound. Both a
familiar trespasser not quite part of the scene any more.
I write it off as the cost of wanting too
badly to belong again. Asteris asteris asterisk Anthony, I is
hooded from three decades of shift work, and the battered
rescue of unpaid labor is waiting at the engineering bay
with the mug of coffee. I dare not touch Sara
sits opposite me, shuffling old ced hans, jittering the table
spread with print out's log sheets, air checks from the
weak grift disappeared. It's business now. I connect my laptop
to the battered monitor, load the overnight locks. We play
the lost half ire of Griff's shift ties, breaking it
down segway after segway, the usual relaxed spiral through Widley
specific requests, then total total shift just before three, the
abrupt two neat sign off, then a sharp drop and
warmer verb. I loop the sign off, scrutinizing background murmurings
under the closing song, I crank the headphones and catch
it something that isn't supposed to be there. Beneath the
sleep tight and the introductory keyboard note, A nearly imperceptible voice,
not griffs like radio played down a tunnel. Can you
hear me? Vories it just me talking, Its shad o
almost song, then barely I catch it while away from
shudders and name Marjorie's weak tonight, the name of the
dynahook across the street, already three years gone, who began
her mourning beneath the flicker of our airwaves, both sorrow
and Anthony schiff tension flickering between resignation and alarm. Anthony
runs a hand through thinning here. You know there've been
people calling in lately asking if the djay are sending
personal messages during music sets. Not spoken. It started after
grifferent missing. Frankly, I chalked it up to night shift pranks,
with the usual hallucinations of sleep to privation. I press
for more. Anthony hesitates, then slide to me A battered
envelope inside old reel's labeled aero glitchy audio, some from
as far back as nineteen ninety two. Not all can
be digitized, he says, but there's weirdness, low level or sigels,
lost tracks, nothing I know how to fix. Sara speaks up,
rolling attention not into her voice. Last spring, I swear
I heard my cat's name Marvin always comes back in
the background of a sign. Often. I had a dream
about the river flooding same night, two lines from that
head under a Chick Caurier solo. I figured I was
imagining it, But sometimes I wonder from down the hall.
A senior D. J. Gilder chimes in overnights always had
patches of we're dead air go signals. I thought no
engineer could explain. Sometimes you hear your own vers back
days later. That's not possible on our automation. Piercing it together,
my hands clenched with the certainty that this isn't glitchrous
station paranoia. This is signal embedded reference, recursive broadcasts that
don't just entertain, but respond, echo subtily haunt. I look
at Anthony, then sorrow, and neither will meet my eyes.
I recognize something familiar, fear that there may be no
boundary between the station and us any more. Asterisk, asturus, asterisk.
I build my days around contacts. I need anchors. By
noon the next day, I'm down the block, sipping medioc
a black coffee to chrome trim diner and spinning out
the word source to any one whole listen the booth
regular cross from me, Walt Sis plainly heard that crazy
night Sam swear to God, the song at two fifty
six always on my mind, to that played at Tracy's funeral.
I never requested, never told anyone. Here. His voice cracks
against some internal wall, and he looks over a waitress
shuffling sugar packets. As last week, the radio had some
talk between tracks about the neighbor's dog dying. That happened
the next day, said the dog's color jingled by the
back shed. She shrugs, play it off, but I spot
the vane in her neck pulsing too fast. At the
engineering desk, Anthony lets me pour over techlogs. The log
book is popped with mysterious notations stretching back decades. CNF
cannot fix tags here and there on a grave eared shift,
along with annotations like a monte cross feed's last crosstook
and signal bleed source and known. These notes are all
from overnight my old domain griffs two two nights straight.
I'm in the station lounge, rigging a field mic and
listening through filtered static for regular overnight patterns. Both times
between two and four A m rainbow like glitches ripple
through the air just at the edge of the speaker's range.
I pipe the feet through an equalizer, isolates spectral oddities,
crank signal gain, voices fergmented, sometimes recognizables passed on air.
Staff echo between songs, short phrases, let them in, let
them in, It's almost time esorrow. See the hallway, then
the knot sensical waltzing with numbers or save the smoke,
other slips for reference, staff and listeners by name. At
several moments, I anticipate the next truck, seconds before accuws up,
even before the automation decides. I start doubting. Is this
muscle memory? Have I internalized the playlists this deeply? At dawn,
nothing adds up. Sarah comes on his shoulders, hunch her
skin raw, pale in the greenish fly rorescent light. It's
getting worse, she says, pomp pres to her forehead. Every
night since Griff vanish a dream voices, a calling in
moss or backwards. Sometimes I don't remember getting here in
the morning. Sometimes my cat hisses at the living room wall.
I'm not sleeping right that afternoon, Digging at the back
of the archives room a spot a walk box as
they just askew enough from old together at Jenkins ninety two,
inside a tangle of quarter inch tape and handred in
transcriptions in the pen of an engineer along retire play
one taper, riple of very feedback, hiss and again, scraps
of speech. What happened on the last night, Anna, don't
trust the bouf clock. Another tape features the voice of
Gris's predecessor, his own bit of sidne off the notes
trail off. Jane Skins left for health, said he wasn't
himself after that final week, avoid the bleeds. When I
meet Sorrow and Anthony again, clustered at the common room table,
I noticed the same exhaustion crowding their eyes. Every One
avoids talk of the night. Griff vanished, but small admissions
slipped through. He'd been working longer, behaving, distracted, barely acknowledged calls.
Anthony voice breaking matters. He told me the transmitter didn't
want something set. The mood in the room feels nodded,
like we're orbiting something that doesn't want to be seen.
Astorrus asteris asterusk. It's nearly midnight and I'm hunched alone
in the soundproof suitet the es so still it seems
to throb in my head Funds. I listened back to
a real labeled three nights before Griff's disappearance. Layer by layer,
I filter out his then curnth the gain fighting distortion.
Two voices. One is Griff, cheeky that I've ever known.
Emergency wrapped around every word, the troops hidden in the frequencies.
They are watching, and so are we. It's breaking through.
Even when the board shows zero, I fling off the
head Funds when something taps against the door. This is
slim package, hand delivered, no postage, just my name. The
contents and note book cover batter pages filled with Griff's handwriting,
broadcast notes, annotated and increasingly mennick ink. Nearly every third
log a time is circled, all marked, bleed, or sometimes
window open. I cracked the coat with a shiver. These
times match up with spikes and static unexplained listener calls,
even some of Sorrow's nightmares. There's more cross reference logs
with sudden stuff illnesses. Sorrow absent couldn't wake up near
by accidents even while with their vents. Griff was triangulating
an invisible pattern, howling at the boundaries only he could
see sorrow corners me after ires, voice so thin it
barely registers. I started taping my dreams. The things I
say they match the phrases on your tapes. Wake up
a river, burn the keys. She shoves a cheap digital
recorder into my palm. Or I shimmer haunted. I haven't
played them for any one. I'm scared. What if for
picking up stuff were not supposed to? Every clue points down,
the same forbidding corridor, Griff piecing together an almost methic
system of signals, trailing some pattern he planned to reveal
may be planned for all this to reach grite Go
maass the night he vanished that odd formal sign off.
It's not a surrender. It's a message coded so those
who now can hear the pla inside the static, I
am buried in Griff's notebook, the scent of meldew and
nervousweat settling around me. When the first of several things
goes wrong, a low buzz too steady for loose wiring,
rises through the walls. Emergency lights flicker, the man broadcast boards,
snuffing out rows of led hissing with fry Dozon Anthony's
shouts echoed down the hall. An auxiliary transmitter never use
except for drills, clicks to life from every speaker overhead
in the back up office. Drew my have funds. The
sign off returns, crissed voice, sibilin and alive, sliding up
the fader. This is Station forty three, final transmission. But
the sentence shakes, fragments, doubling back, an endless delay, and
Griff's live, un mistakable voice barely above a whisper sam,
don't let them forget, don't let it close. Silence falls
thick as velvet, and the last words hang there, burning,
half warning, half in vocation. Impossible in any reasonable world.
The back up board pulses once, then the entire station
drops into a hush, broken only by the panding of
my own heart and the certainty to the signal. Whatever
it is, is not done with any of us. Yet.
I sat motionless, holding Griff's notebook to my chest as
the hush rolled across the station like a tide. Only
my breath, shallow and churning for a full minute. May
be morble that reached my ears was the soft tick
of something cooling beneath the sound booth. Dashboard and the
hollow pulse inside my rips, then faintly it scraping of
shoes on thenleum sorrow darted through the doorway. I was huge,
mouth twisted as if she meant to shout but couldn't
find the right word. Was that him? She managed? Her
voice was flat and jagged, like something barely sanded square.
Please tell me you heard that? Was griff. The question
collapsed into a whisper tash. I handed her the notebook
without letting go. He said, my name, I replied, my
fingers tingled with the afterfix of adrenaline, as if the
charge from the gear had run through me and something before.
Don't let it close. Did ye get any of that?
On the mics, Sora nodded, shaky aye. I heard it everywhere,
even her lips pursed, fighting for control. Even on my phone.
I had to live stream ap up for background, and
that's not technically possible, not if we're off air for
a few seconds. Neither of us spoke. The silent station
pressed him from every side, and I couldn't stop replaying
the voice in my memory. Its raspnstaker, the peculiar catch
on my name refinimself broadcasting from nowhere. Sara clutched the notebook, now,
thumbing through the pages as if expecting something to leap
into her palm. It's all circled here, she whispered. Look
every bleed time, every day. He loved weird static. The
ones you told me about. Each is marked like it's
a window ward gait. Sound returned gradually, A were in
the distant server rack and overhead, venticking to life plumbing
chatter in the wall. But my sense of reality Brittle's
egel refused to settle. I cast my eyes around the
before equipment still blinked uncertainly, as if half waking for
my nightmare. Footsteps pounded down the hall. Anthon and Vrain
appeared in the glass's shape, hunch behind a spill of flash.
Lady o kay, he called, not entering, just hovering at
the edge of the threshold. His silhouette was visibly rattled,
shoulders hunch further than usual, jaw tight. I heard everything
he said with force calm, both the sign off and
what sounded like he broke off. Their face screwn up,
searching for whatever words might seem plausible under the circumstances, Sam,
we need to pull the manes. Can't risk a search.
Trying the back up gear again, got a burning smell
in the wiring closet. Sorra barely reacted. I said we'd
run a diagnostic tomorrow, she mumbled, not looking up. Everything's
been normal except over night, for weeks, you know, normal
and tilgriff. Her tone was brittle as a radio volume knob.
Held on the edge of static, Anthony fixed his stare
on me. Whatever's on those tapes needs to get out
of the studio, and you need to back up everything,
just in case his place goes all the way dark.
I understood. Dean said he didn't believe it was only
about blown circuits. Now we were standing at the edge
of a story, one that threatened to call off the
airwaves and right into whatever counted from memory at Station
forty three. Tearfully, I reached to power off my recorder,
hand trembling only slightly. But for the first time since
returning the impulse to archive to catchure and transcribe everything
felt not only obsessive but imperatively defense all fine throne
to my future self when my own reco might betray me,
I steadied my voice. Let's make copies as soon as
we can. Griff is onto something, Anthony. This isn't just
radio tricks or sleep deprivation. There's a pattern in his
notes here look bleed window recorded, and every one's linked
to reports of weirdness, glitches, dreams, even the dead out
with voices underneath. It goes back decades. He braced in
the door frame, squinting at the notebook's pages, but keeping
his own distance, as if proximity might contaminate him. At
this point, Anthony said quietly, I'll believe just about anything
except that we're safe. He rake a hand through his hair.
I never wanted to admit it, but Griff started changing
the year before. He vanished recording things obsessively, refusing to
let anyone just the graveyard automation even asked me once
if power surgers could carry old signals back in, what
does that even mean? So I looked up. He told
him it was impossible. Of course I did, but he
broke off brolawing. But most of the skear is patched
together from salvage. Nobody's ever diagrammed the system properly. There
might be lines on the main board note nobody is
traced in years. My mind turned over the implications, every
new train of faults, splitting into I want to digitize
a few more reels, I said, and tucked the nopok
under my arm. If you trust me, I'll do it here.
If not, I'll at least take the logs in podcaskierat
before anyone from the board shows up. Anthony nodded, face
and readable. Just don't be alone, not to night. Sara
arose and threaded an arm through mine grep Surprisingly strong, Sam, I,
she faltered, Promise you'll listen to the dream recordings before
you go astrus astorsk Asterisk. Even shifting out of the
adrenaline haze, the station felt different, thicker, shadows, heavier. We
decamped to the volunteer lounge, the only spot with a
couch soft enough for the three of us in crucially
no windows. Anthony busied himself for plugging a serge strip
and cranking the last reliable boom books to a low static,
soothing volume, white noise, safer than dead silence. Sara pressed
the recorder into my palm, again, looking away as I
put on a pair of batted headphones patched together with
gaffer's tape and cat rescue stickers. I started the night
after if fanas, she said, voice muffled. The first tape
is just muttering, but later ones you'll see her muttering
was more than that. The first file, time sumpter weep prior,
was a long tide of barely formed words, a recitation
of odd, overlapping sentences, names, the prickled feigned recognition, my
own name once the phrase burned the keys. At first
it felt like the ordinary nonsense of dreams were half
remembered script. But then in the fourth or fifth segment,
I heard her voice repeat, with waved precision lines that
match what I'd heard on the overnet locks window open,
see the transmitter call out, call out, call out. The
cadence twisted, gaining clarity. A third voice, the same, but
azore altered, laid beneath hers, repeating, don't let it close.
I took off the headphones, hand clenching reflexively. Sorrow watched
white eye. I didn't know until I heard yours, I've
never said those words. Awake. Anthony hunkered down beside the
batter coffee table, snapping the notepock open with two fingers.
Show me how these times line up, he prompted, I
did my words dry and clinical. Look here eleven forty
seven p M Blie patient call. At the same time,
reportedly hearing a song before it played here. Two thirty
a m. Window Saorwrow absent. The next morning, Grifflok's signal
harder to shape, longer to fade. Next three four A M.
Bruce siinoff, formal and wrong. Anthony looked at us, then
at the silent gear and nodded grimly, So what do
you want to do next? Access the booth one more
time to night to digit as the rest. Then we
back up everything document the logs ander I paused. There
was a little point planning further. We all felt it.
Attention wound had run the very wiring of the place.
Anthony shrugged, go, but I'm waiting outside with the lights
on ten minutes tops. That was how I found myself
firding age taped dex in the studio, hands almost steady,
voice barely above a whisper as I read the time
codes into my phone. Each minute dragged. I transferred three
more reels before the tension forced me out. Each one,
under spectral analysis flashed the same strange harmonics. A ghost
cigature just beyond audibility, as if the broadcasts were built
on top of something else, something older than any of us.
I carried the reels, my recorder, soros philes, and the
precious battered notebook straight out to my card the instant
I finished. Not once did I look back at the
paddleck clk room, though I felt its gaze on me
as I passed asterisk, gastrous asterisk. The rest of that night,
I did not sleep, nor did I drive anywhere. I
sat in the car with the rimplinking along the roof,
laptop bounced on my knees, replaying every scrap in careful sequence, mapping, locks, scribbling,
and network of arrows cross the legal pad. Beruf's handwriting
trailed off in increasingly angulo SCROLLA. They are coming through
the signal. They know who's listening. Blee Town's test for crosstalk.
Every window water for the receivers, not the originators. I
scrolled through text messages left and sent to Berne, once
music director, now leagues distant. For a second, I even
considered calling her asking about the old automated playlist schedules,
but the urge to pull any one else into this
was brief, and then gone. I fought twenty ate, the
sun barely diluting the clouds. I felt memories starting to slip,
like a song heard on the drive home and forgotten
by breakfast. Yet the patterns those were tangible each time
I I knew it'll resolve just outside the visible line.
At least I still had the evidence. It was their,
not just of vision varying for tea chipping at my
composure that I spotted something. I checked the external drive.
One of the digit has files at a short wave
from Spike at exactly three four twenty five, not present
in real time playback. I enlarged it isolated. The track
reversed at a half speed beneath the fragment. Griff's voice again,
gut level identifiable. If you're hearing this, you know the cycle.
The story shades itself until someone listens too closely. Don't
trust the silence. It's alive. The warning cut off and
started digital decay, as if torn from its own source.
I looped it, fighting the urge to call someone, any
one at four thirty in the morning, just to anchor myself.
As the station's lights began to come on. Inside, I
saw sorrow resolve. Carol into the lot, parking beside the
bat of Piccopanthony drove. Even though I was barely functional.
I made myself step out, backpack stuffed with tapes and notebooks,
voice recorder clutch like a relic. I needed witnesses to
confirm what I'd heard. I needed not to be alone.
I found another layer. I told Sorrow before she even
unlocked her car reverse half speed. Its grief and mistakable.
He left something behind in the system itself. She just nodded,
We're not going to sleep for a week, or we
won't help if we do. Anthony replied, wearily, joining us
on the sidewalk, his mug steaming freshness. By the ire,
management called in a techoda for tonight. Allied and said
it was routine. Someone from the board wants and uped
it on Griff by Friday. I swallowed dry panic, but
held on to focus. Let's formalize tonight, log everything, every anomaly, dream,
phone call, tape. Whatever Griff was warning above, it's not
finished with us yet. Inside the station greeted us with
the same shiver of chill and ozen. There was no
external evidence of the night's interruptions, no blown fuses, no
singed wiring, no sign that anything extraordinary had happened, except
for us. That was. By mid morning, Sorrow and Anthony
hunched a vermousmatched breakfast, weak coffee and cold, hard boiled eggs.
The logs spread between us like tout cards. I let
the others talk. My mind arted back and forth between
the fragments, chasing connections, the recurring bleeds, the shifts in tone,
the recurrent emphasis on receivership. I asked Anthony, is it
possible to trace the original broadcast lines back before the automation,
all the way to the original transmitter. He nodded, pinching
the bridge of his nose. Probably, the old blueprints are
in the filing room, a mess, but nobody's run them
out the wiring, though, fifty percent guessing, given how much
patchwork we've done over the years, Why Griff's logs kept
pointing back to physical infrastructure? I muttered. Maybe something in
the way the power or signal lines are laid out
is allowing whatever this has crossed up from another frequency
feedback loop. But if that were all, why would we
get names we know or songs tied to private memories?
Saura stared through her coffee cup What if it's not feedback,
What if the signal is choosing somehow or reflecting the
right frequencies, opened some kind of door. Anthony's eyebrows jumped.
Skeptics is a mooring with exhaustion a radio show counter,
he started, then trailed off. Forget it, with what we've
all seen, I've got no right to be a skeptic.
I'll scam for wiring anomalies. Tonight, sorrow voice, barely audible, said,
nobody's told the overnight volunteers yet right, nobody knows how
bad it's garten except us. Let's keep it that way,
I said, until was certain what we're dealing with. The
resolve hun in the air, an uneasy trucer may chaos
astoris fastorus asterisk. Late in the afternoon, while the world
outside forgot about Station forty three, I tried listening, really
listening to the station when it went live on the
emergency back up, saying what should have been DEADA Through
high gain monitors, I caught faintly but undeniably a repeat
of the exact sign off from myurs earlier. It wasn't playback.
There were microd differences in the source, A tiny variance
in white noise, as if each transmission was unique but
intent on replicated itself anyway. I looked at the way
from the side by side, mapping bleed windows against staff
logs and local stores, birthdays, anniversaries, even forgotten secrets whispered
beneath music decades ago. Every time someone listened too closely,
the pattern grew. Some messages seemed to arrive before the
events their referenced. Others winked out after reality changed. At
three forty five, just as the station's daily enter and arrived,
a fresh call blit the reception Ie. Sara answered how
the phone away listened, then dropped it like she'd been stunne.
She didn't look up, only muttering nobody there, just breathing
on my way out. Paranoid gripped me enough to count
every shadow in the holsfice. Yet as I passed the
padlocked cloak room for the first time, I noticed something new,
a pale adea subversity along the upper jam, fresh maybe
from a sign of banner recently torn free My hand
almost with that thought, hovered a breath from the lock,
then darted away white. Then my phone bust in on
NOO number. I entered, stealed for the worst. A voice
raspy and unfamiliar, but with the same grain as late
night callers whispered they are listening, Sam, The signal remembers
us better than we remember ourselves. Don't trust the locks,
then as quickly dead air. My heart pounded long after
the call ended. Fumbling for composure, I scribbled every word,
certain that time itself is beginning to fold round the
events at Station forty three. My breathing only leveled up
when back in a car, I box up the digitized
reels and the batted notebook beneath the seat. Safety was
now entirely a matter of faith. Yet through every track
it played, look I scanned every memory I tried to
call up. There was a sense growing and insistent that
the real story was no longer about Griffalon, something deeper.
It grounded itself in the heart of Station forty three,
tunneling up for years of routine and repetition, waiting for
someone to tune in lon En offer closely enough, for
perhaps desperately enough to hear whatever was truly being broadcast.
Approaching sunset, with storm cards boiling up again over the
tree line, I shut down the laptop and leaned back,
exhaust overtaking even my fear. Just before sleepinasi shallow, fractured
I heard again at spectral snatch, don't let it close.
The words ruttled inside the fracture line of consciousness until
all I could see was the blinking red of the
on air light, pulsing like a warning across the backs
of my eyelids. Tomorrow, I promised, I would dig deeper Tonight.
I let the song of static lull me, battered but intact,
almost believing for one fragile ira that memory was still
my own. There was no silence quite like the one
that followed the transmission. Not quite quite would have been
natural expected in these walls. After the lights flickered out,
and even the vending machines time A tripped over to nothing. Instead,
it was as if every pocket of air and station
fort Etrew's bones went perfectly still, waiting for some queue
to resume. I stood frozen in the cramp volunteer lunch
with sorrow beside me, both of us just holding on
for the world to right itself. Somewhere down the hall,
Anthony's footsteps echoed, but he didn't call out. He didn't
need to that voice. Griff's voice, impossibly back in the wires,
had already said more than any of us were ready
to hear. I pressed my back against the crack final
couch notebook, squashed him my chairs, and watched Sorrow lean
over her phone, fingers trembling as she replayed the sign
off through tinny speakers. The transmission was there on her ab,
exactly as we'd heard it. The pause, the big warning,
my own name, stretched and warped by the air roads.
She thumbed through the notebook again, then slated on the
scarred coffee table between us, as if it might burn.
I forced myself to breathe as the wall seemed to
pulse and warp with the last memory of the sound
from the recording booth. A blue emergency light strode across
the ceiling tiles. It painted us with an undulating alien glow,
and for a brief, mad second, I half expected to
see Griff's shadow slip around the glass, returning for his
shift like nothing had ever happened. But there was all
only us, stranded inside an unfillable hush of aftermath. I
fumble for my own phone, not trusting my hands enough
for the recorder. Every instinct set to get out, But
leaving now would mean walking away from the only thing
that mattered in both my wells, the story and this
liver of redemption. It might bring. Sorrow's hand hovered near mind,
the gesture more instinct than comfort, her expression somewhere between
resolve and terror. Anthony appeared in the doorway, blinking and
wild eyed. Power's dead at the main panel, he said,
I'm not messing with anything until daylight. The boards shot,
but he looked at me, then Sorrow, at then back again.
Can you feel that? I could? There was a pressure,
not pain exactly, but await, just above the collar bones,
the echo of too close static at full volume, as
if the air itself was still transmitting, no wires required.
Sorrow stood slipped past both of us and growld a
flashlight from the drawer. She clicked it on and off
three deliberate times. I'm getting the reels, she said, We're
not leaving them behind. I started to protest, but the
words died, even half shouted as we were. None of
us planned on running until we understood more, or at
least until we knew of whatever had spoken through. The
emergency line was finished with us. We reconvene nearer the
engineering bay. Under the flicker of back BELLI d the
station's usual background helme was gone. In its place, a faint,
persistent his none of us could locate, less like her
conditioning and more like radio noise digging up from the
foundation itself. Anthony gathered up the label tapes with hands
that never quite stopped shaking. For one wild second, as
he brushed past the old sound board, a line of
red monitor lights flickered on their own, then off. He
swore under his breath. Unplug everything you can, he said,
half to himself. No sense making it easier on whatever
the hell that was. Sorrow set the note carefully inside
her messenger back, and for a moment the three of
us stood in a silent circle, as though expecting the
walls to start speaking. What now, I asked. Anthony's lips
drew tight. He glanced at the padlocked cloakroom, then out
at the empty hallway, as if the answer might materialize
if he waited long enough. We get outside, just for
a minute, he said, Check the lines the antenna, if
there's something physical driving this cross wire's induction from an
outside source, anything at all, I want to find it
before night falls again. It sounded rational, which is what
we needed. Or maybe it just sounded like hope. We
filed up through the rear fire exit, shees dragging uncracked anolium,
the hissing static tailing us like a shadow. My heart
drummed against my roofs, Each echo from inside the building
a reminder that things could change again at any moment. Outside,
the coal air shot me awake, slicing through a film
of sweat I'd barely realized was there. Across the parking lot,
the transmission tower loomed, spindley steel lines, catching the last
fragment of storm lit dusk. Antony sprinted upward, tracing the
web of insulated cables as a side alone couldn't tangle
everything that had happened. Sarus stood behind him, arms crossed,
gaze fixed not on the tower but on the building's
back wall, as if something there might signal griss presents
or absence for good. I paced a slow circle around
a car park, eyeing the bassat generator stashed behind a
row of shrubbery. No glow from its windows, just the
metallic stink of an engine went hard and left cool
too quickly. The wind shifted and for a blink a
quad a rick of scorched faint but insistent, like a warning,
smuggled out in the open air. Anthony motioned me over
look at this. He sat crouching beside the junction box
at the tower's base. This line, he tapped a cable,
briefly exposing a length of poorly patched insulation has been
suppliced a dozen times. This can be right, too many jumpers.
His brow furrowed. You ever see a signal divider like
that besides emergency relay? Saw a crouch beside him, brownitted.
It's not documented in any of the Gale logs if
the transmitter has been feeding something besides our broadcast. She
let the sentence trail off and spoke in implications, creeping
between her words. I stepped back, tracing the lines of
my mind. Frequency, bleeding signals, leaking messages ecoated not in
words or music, but in drift and artifact. Griff had
written bleed, window open recorded. Maybe that meant more than
just times and dates. Maybe the structure itself carried memory,
stole like a ghost in old metal. Suddenly, a faint,
rising hum vibrated through the ground. Too low to be mechanical,
more felt than herd. We all a jerk to our feet,
soa shot a glance to the station's back door. The
skin out her throte, pulsing as she swallowed inside it.
She said tightly, if something's about to happen, I don't
want to be out here when it does. We hurried
the moment we rounded the door, crushed thick shadows funneled in,
blotting out the last of the day's natural light. No
one said a word on the way back to the
main hall. We just kept our own pass as narrow,
listening for something, a footful, a new signal, a bolt
from the blue that might mean the patterns griff and
covered were starting up again. We didn't know it then,
but the boundaries were already gone. The next round had begun.
Sarah perched on the rim of the desk, her hands
fidgeting with her phone screen, cycling through unread texts. I
watched her, willing her to say something normal, and failing
to find the words myself. Anthony unscrewed and then replaced
the batted outlet, covered her third time, scanning for any
hint of aarking or heat, not even the familiar pop
from the fridge, a wine from the transmit of blood
through any more, only us, our own and ease held
up by so much anecdote and static. I tried steering
conversation back towards solid ground. What about the locks? Sarah
griff must have crossed, referenced something birthdays in memorial dedications
under the table, calls nobody else log if he tracked
bleed times against actual community events, She hesitated, thumb skidtering
across her battered note book. He did, I just I
think it's what let him predict the weird stuff. Remember Marjorie,
the cook from the diner, the broadcast mentioning her the
one you found in the archive. I nodded. That wasn't
her first. There are other names tracked to real people,
most not even connected to the station. Listeners whove called
and exactly once their names show up in the locks,
then again in the background muck, sometimes a year later. Adony,
now perched beside an open rack of back updates, barked
a short, humorless laugh. I'll take an explained crossfade anomalies
over this. At least those don't make you question your
own head. I knock stung the glass office door without warning.
We all jumped for the briefest moment. I thought something
outside had migrated in the store on a stranger spectrol
a cove Griff himself, But it was just Gilda, the
overnight djay before Graff, blinking behind her, rawt eyed glasses,
fluked by Renee, the new inturn scheduled for the chift
this week. She stuck her head in grave and business
like board once the studio up for a signal test
at nine, said they'll bring in outside engineers from Yates
and Sons if Anthony can't get the man's back. She
glanced at me. Then czar, you chew okay. Rumors are
everywhere about last night's outage. Sara managed a thin smile.
We were here, it was a lot. Not sure the
board would believe the true version. Gilda nodded, searching our
faces for some sign that matched her own apprehension. She
squeezed my arm. You find anything, anything at all? We
need to know. A pause is though inviting confession. I hesitated,
then shook my head. The station would eat its own
before risking panic, and right now, just having Gilda and
Renee in the room felt like too many variables. I
could not judge where caution ended in complicity began. Sara's
gaze flicked to Renee, full of quick almost maternal worry.
Stick with some one, Renee, if you're on to night,
don't go off scraped o k. Renee nodded Chilie, but
her eyes darted to gross notebook as it lay open
on the desk. I've been hearing about that log, she said.
Some one discord says it has all the secret station
goes stores. Is that true? I push it away, closing
the cover almost gently, not exactly, just technical notes from
a man who took everything too seriously. The light taste
of flat even to me. Gilda and Renee left the
office with a wine wave. The hushery is servered itself,
heavier than before. Sarah looked up as the dose one closed.
They have no idea. None of the people outside this
loop dear. Not about the voices, not about the names,
not about the dreams. That's like the system knows worthy
only one shape by what'spoon procast? Anthony chewed at the
inside of his lip, voice flat. Maybe the system's only
half the problem. The other halves what we carry with
us for a time, the three of us just sat
waiting for the aftermath to unravel. Only it did not
in a way his previous crises had. Instead, every stray
sound from the station seemed to double itself, as if
rehearsing fer key yet to come outside. A pickoprumbled off
commerce rove, tire spit and gravel at the lot's edge.
Storm clouds stacked themselves behind the transmission tower, glowing with
heavy thunder at if promising more. I caught my own
reflection in the dusty lobby glass, haggard, older than I'd
felt yesterday, eyes rimmed with worry and fatigue. Sarah touched
my shoulder as if anchoring me back to the hear
and now we should keep working, she said, simply to night.
I want to know if anything happens during those plea times.
I nodded and tried to stand, knees wobbling. The stakes
had changed. It wasn't just about containing a legend or
winning back my reputation. Something was tunneling through memory and
signal alike, growing bold. At each time we sat in
dread and waited, and am we were the only ones
willing who are able to see it through whatever the
personal cost. We returned to the hub, the walls now
holding a charge like the air before lightning. There was
work to do and whatever waited for us in the
window between signals, I had no intention of facing it alone.
For once, Sir didn't look away as we heard it.
Tapes through Battterdexon were set every watch and recorder to
the same time. For once, I felt less like an
impostor and more like someone who might, if only briefly,
pushed back against the dark. Anthony handed me a battered,
half broken set of isolation headphones. You take the next window, Sor,
and I'll watch. I plowed in, heart pounding as the
minute tacked over, the storm pressed up against the black
out windows. Somewhere in the hush, the next anomaly, a
next sign from griffor whatever haunted these wires, waited to
be discovered. The first blee time after the transmission arrived
with a whisper, as if nothing had changed at all,
nothing and everything. The minutes ragged, but the stakes only grew.
Soon the pattern would be clear, and when it was
we would all have to choose what to do next.
Astoris asteris asterisk escalation didn't arrive as a jolt, it
crawled in coilba quill over the next twenty hours. As
we patched the station together embraced ourselves for another night,
Anthony disappeared into the walls, chok at, clinking a long
corridor edges as he traced lines from the transmitter to
every end stage junction. Sorrow busied herself with Griff's notes
and the audio locks, marking every entry with yellow and
orange highlighter, cross checking staff illnesses, listener calls, and a
chillingly the growing list of glitches reported in overnight locks.
I split my attention between digitizing all tapes and pulling
locals for new rumors. The city's bloodline was tangled up
with station forty three signal now and nobody receiving it
remained unchanged. By midday, the board's tech consultant had breezed
and peppering Anthony with pataties about modernizing infrastructure, while Sorrow
and I went over Grif's logs in a now colt studio.
Every second we spent in the station, the weight in
the air pushed a little harder, sat it crawling behind
our ears, sweat pulling, even when the fance rattled at
full till when the consultant left sighting and conclusive data.
Anthony handed me a crumpled print out sweat staining the corners.
The last bleed window was ten seventeen a m. He said,
But we weren't even on air. The really show microburst
of voltage right then, enough to spike every endpoint, but
not to trip the break out look. He indicated, a
column of numbers right here, the coal logs time stamped
at ten seventeen d twelve. Hang up, no source, and
that's when Sorrow's phone vibrated, even though it was an
aeroplane mode, I added. She nodded, brow crimped, dreamed about
the repeated tower burning, woke with a rash on my wrists.
There was no humor in her voice. When the first
of the local news crews appeared just afternoon, trucks scattering
gravel over the lot of room, mill plopped from air
on Facebook posts, and one particularly excitable volunteered. The boy
called the meeting Sorrow and I ducked out of sight
watching Gilda and Anthony parry questions about the location of
night staff and routine upgrade. Nobody mentioned the signals. Nobody
mentioned the sign off or the static, or the way
the buildings are felt thicker since the transmission. Sorrow squeezed
my hand tightly. We're not hiding any more, she whispered,
so soft even I barely heard. If this is the costs,
then let them see it. We didn't eat, our nerves
were hungry enough. Instead, we poured over logs and tapes,
drawing lines over city maps, sketching patterns around times and incidents.
The traffic accident on Commerce, the old woman's house fired
downriverr the cryptic tech Sorrow received from a number she
swore was her father's six years dead. Pattern shifting, Anthony
said at two braw Furda, another notebook page. It's not
just overnight anymore. It's any dead window, any search. The
phone rang shortly after trilling. The heavy quiet sare picked up,
expecting the board of the news, but on the other
end was only a for neeticale, looking like more s
gone to pieces than a voice, shuddering. It's thicker, now,
can you hear it? Can you hear it? Don't let
it go back inside? She hung up, hands quivering uncontrollably.
I wrote the message down, though I feared we were
simply transcribing our own undoing. It was Anthony, with three
hours to midnight, who drew the short stroke. If we're
setting up to monitor the next bleed, we need redundancy,
two recorders, three backups each. I'll man the board. Sorrow
can handle the phones, he paused, giving me a look
so severe it felt like a plea. He take the
tips and monitor real time if anything overlays music voice,
staticky spotted. I agreed, not because I felt courageous, but
because every track record told me the cycle was tightening.
The storm crest returned near midnight, sifting a violet smerror
along the horizon. The parking lot swelled with heads have
missed that pod at the doors, thick compredatory Crouched in
the broadcast booth, we were set, Every watch cleared, every
digital flag. Anthony showed me how to flip the boards
emergency back by sugg Just in case we need a
hard disconnect, he muttered. Sarah busied herself with gris locks,
cross referencing times and names, each more unnerving than the last.
Her highlight of scrolls bled into a lattice of connections. Listeners,
former staffers, and almost events, all tied to windows of
uttered phrases, wrong notes, music used heard by nobody else.
As I studied a particularly warped segment of tape one
from six years prior, I heard something chilling. My own
name buried under a thunderous, unremarkable jazz instrumental. Rewind rewind again.
There it was, Sam Rider, don't let it close, window open,
welcome home. The words had always been there, occupying a
piece of audio history that predated my employment, ma scandal,
even Griff's hiring. I pressed my hands over my eyes,
fision tunneling out as I tried to steady myself. Sir,
I must have seen, because she reached over bomb, faught
against my arm. This is all connected, Sam. She whispered,
every host, every listener, all of us called by name,
before we knew what we were hearing. She was right,
and it razzled me down to the route. Breff's notes
weren't only about warnings. They were signposts, onym apapatterns, a lattice,
holding us in place, even when we thought our selves free.
Ethne tapped the glass from the sand board mouth ready.
I nodded for it dry Ready at three four a
m on the dot. The real test began asterus asterus, asterisk.
We arranged our results for the blee window. Anthony at
the main boiled Sorrow with the coal log and the
old phone me with headphones, two vacupra corders and Gris's
annotated notebook. I kept my gaze locked in the red
digital clock up of the studio door as it slid
from three three fifty seven to three four zero. Lightning
stuttered against the hill as the welled inside compressed, the
hum of electrics, briefly tapering before surging to a finer,
sharper edge three O four. Anthony called voice tight ronning.
Sarah tapped out time code in Grif's lock, the highlight
of his chisel tips squeaking. The headphones hissed with ambient noise,
modulating up and down with a rhythm that felt almost organic.
I detected half a dozen background frequencies and belonging to
official broadcasts. Static added thickening until a whisper pushed forward,
not words. At first, it sounded like a crowd speaking
all at once, flattened and looped beneath the piano roof.
Then voice broke clear, as glass berths there trying to
stop me don't let the signal, and don't trust what
you remember. Sam Sorrow gasped, the pin clattering to the
table as she yanked offf only a piece with a whimper.
It's hem. She was louder than she meant, wide eyed,
one fist pressed to her chest. Through the head funds,
the static crumpled, packing denser and denser until it fractured
into separate, distinct voices. Sorrow heard her father's final words,
delivered in a tone she swore was never broadcast. Anthony flinched,
then stood stark as marble, mumbling, that's me, years ago,
a fight that didn't happen, but I remember the sound
of it for me. A shock, my own voice, but young, desperate,
apologizing for something that I know I never confessed aloud.
The room twisted inward, walls pressing until the station felt
no bigger than the booth itself. A new set of
events began to sync with the transmission. Outside. I heard
the scream of sirens rukishing through the blocks from Commerce,
though we all punctuating the static in uncoordinated harmony. Street
lights blinked, then gutter, then surged with a sickly hue.
Its reflecting us. Sorrow rasped everything broadcast in reality, blurring, repelling,
attracting a Anthony hunched over the board, sweating. Now batteries
are overloading. I'm getting power spikes beyond beck, don't touch
the desk. Suddenly. Audio from the monitor displayed the impossible,
the start of a local police transmission, cutting through then
footsteps of set entering the lobby in real time, matching
the crash of the distant door on tape. We heard
glass shutter just a second before thunderous bang echoed down
the actual hall, sam racodess. Anthony's tone was raw. The
whispers began to spiral, coiling in on themselves, forming a
chorus of name, staff, listeners, even local personalities, each repeated
with fragments of details only known to the people themselves.
The audio recorders pulsed waveforms, forming a pattern of attack,
not decay. Sorrow's body went limp, head bouncing off the
edge of the table as she slumped. Her face was pallid,
one eyelid flickering as she muttered, don't let it end,
don't let it end, don't he Anthony's hands shook as
he tried to disconnect the main board's power cable, but
the stadcock stun still on the outlets, popping loud enough
to make a soul jump. The hair on my arm
stood straight up. The emergency kit fingers closing on the
battered mini recorder. As I pressed play any emergency feed,
a familiar voice Griff again came through, but this time
said in reverse layer with the distorted multi pitch under tone.
I spun the jog wheel until the words became half clear.
Find the tape, burn it all at once. Clarity surge
drew me the missing element, the lynchpin. Griff hunted and
hid for whoever next tried to sever the loop, hand shaking,
I bolted for the cloak room, the only place we'd avoided.
The padlock was rusted, but I forced it with a
heavy kick. Door splitting open on the second try. Inside
nothing but hanging coats, a dustcate shelf, and a battered
box hidden in a recess behind a disldged ceiling tile
rooting for your ancient impersonal letters and fliers. My hand
closed on a real marked in Grif's familiar anxious hand
forty three lass call. I looked over one shoulders, hour
was slumped and mumbling. Anthony, still at the boar, looked
barely conscious, sweat streaking the salt from his brow. I
dashed back, bret ragged as the sirens outside wided out
all other sound guide. I shouted, holding up the reel
at the ny barely glanced up. The main's mains are overloading, Sam,
If you have anything to play, do it now. I
yanked the reel open hand, clumsy to read in tape
through the only operatial deck left in the booth. The
plastic wheels wind as the recording snap to life. Griff's
voice at last, calm, determined, slightly rough. If you're listening,
you're part of it now. The stores keep becoming true,
and the signal just needs another transmitter, another house. You
can destroy the signal. You can only choose who carries it.
A surge of light shot across the board, pinning every
level at maximum for a half second at stretch to
an eternity. The static in my ears resolved into a
course of overlapping memories, the coal with Griff years ago,
broadcast cues. I'd never spoken voices of hosts. I'd only
read about in staff locks, all blending in a single,
desperate harmony. The ceiling lights flickered, then snap dark, as
the bord overloaded and the station fell autoly silent. In
that silence, something transmitted through me, a sequence of involuntary images,
Griff's last day, Jenkins breakdown, every whispered window open, I'd
ever half heard Sorrow's Dream, even my own first night
on air, all scrambled, all at once, as though the
signals searched for a new frequency inside my head. I
tried to yank the headphones off, but my limbs were
sluggish Chrappin's eye, the syrupy suspension of memory and dread.
The room fell away, needle prick sensation flooded at my skin,
and a slick wave of nossa rose up. Everything faded
to a blind pulse, a sensation, not a falling, but
of being tuned. The last thing I heard before darkness
claimed me was the real shuddering to a halt, tap
and spooling on to the floor, and the faintest echo
of Gris's voice impossible to pass and don't let it
close astros Astro's asterisk. The un broke, pale and uncertain.
Across the parking lot, I work on the batter couch
at the volunteer lunge nees tucked my chest as if
I spent a night flinching from an impact that never came.
The air was heavy, neither cool nor warm, every surface
charged with a faint metallic tang. Sorrows propped beside me,
wrapped in an emergency blanket, iced open but blank. She
glanced my way, blinking the haze from her stair. Anthony,
she croaked. I shook my head. The room was empty,
saved for us. The only sound to the ebb and
flow of a distant car rolling along commerce. Oblivious. Sarah
pulled herself uprett slowly, wincing as her head brushed the
torn edge of a poster. What happened? Our question was well?
I refused to plumb. My own memories were fractured, stitched
in the wrong order. Transmission sirens, groat's voice or real
and winding forever. I stumbled to my feet, glancing at
the counters. Every indicator was dead. The station's goats had
gone stone cold. A burnt plastic extench hung beneath the ozone,
crowing sharper As I padded out toward the min hall.
The back up transmitted bank the one that flickered to life,
and the night was a melted shell as read up
black as underwell glass. A commotion pealed from the front.
For a moment, I braced for another wave of static,
of some wrong footed echo from the night. Instead it
was uniforms and the station manager's brittle voice collided in
a babble of confusion. Police had arrived, called by whom
nobody was sure, and were now sweeping the corridor, pushing
past sorrow and me as if we barely existed. A
paramedic glanced us over, took a pulse, nodded perfunctorily. The manager,
mister Lodge and thick necked and uneasy, barked orders. Nobody
touches anything until we're cleared. POW's gone. AI logs show nothing.
It's like you simply stopped broadcasting at three shop. Did
you two report the equipment failure? I offered a non
committal answer. We were here, but it's unclear the equipment
crushed during a late test. Anthony left. I think Bud
I faltered genuinely insured and whose face I had thus seen,
or when he'd gone sour shouldered her way through, drawing
herself tall. We need medical not questioned, we haven't slept
and everything's not right, large and studded us boff, but
his eyes flickered to the dead clock and the box
of tapes on the desk. He grouted a walkie and
barked more instructions. Corprit wants a full order. Will we
keep the studio an own supervised shift If we can't
risk hallucination incidents spreading, They'll be pressed by Neune. God
help us. I realized with the chill that neither Griff's
real norise unnotated notebook was among the items left behind.
The cloak room was empty when I checked the dust
and disturbed, but the box missing Log's tapes all gone.
Back in the lounge, Sorrow was seated with a cup
of water, visibly swallowing the urge to bolt from the building.
We're not going to agree about what happened, are we?
She asked for was flat small? I shook my head
when I tried to remember the arc of the night.
He said, what when the back of trans met it
burned out where Anthony had furnished too. It was like
chasing reflections in broken glass. No chronology, only impression. We
gave our statements to police, both carefully omitting the substance
of Griff's warnings our own hallucinations. The full scope of
what the station had become outside the rumor mill had
already spun up strange power vent at Station forty three,
staff under medical review, possible shared dream episodes, city investigating
equipment safety. The official version would smooth the jagged edges,
but the truth spurrowed, and the tapes had burrowed into
both of us. The board moved quickly. Later that day,
news spread that Station forty three would go dark for
emergency safety upgrades. Staff rotated to temporary status. All over
night programming suspended, pending a full review. At home, I
hunched over my battle laptop, half praying for proof that
the night's horrors existed any whip, But inside my skull,
I prepped a final podcast segment, voice barely aub of
a whisper, I describe Griff's disappearance, this real events of
those last broadcasts, what we'd uncovered and lost, And for
the first time, I said aloud what had been dreading
since the start. I'm no longer sure what's true. I
think some things transmit themselves through us memories, stories, warnings.
I think Station forty three signal outlasted even the people
who built it. I paused outside my window. Sirens wailed
through the city, distant but steady. New stores and rumors
about the night's events arrived by the ire inexplicable accidents.
Dreams of the station had ex radiate in through blocks
of listeners who tuned in too late or maybe too often.
Someone set a sharp sign started flickering in SINCHRONI with
the old Overnight theme. Nothing happened exactly as I remembered,
and yet it all fit the pattern anyway. A press
release arrived in my in books. The new Overnight DJ
would be announced by end of week. I scanned the
attachment fingers numb until I found the name Renee, the
novous Interne with ghost pale knuckles and over ambitious playlists.
The final notification came late, A cute tone for my phone,
something that sounded like a program alert, but was delivered
with no SENDO listed attached the compressed audio file no
but flogged anonymously with the subject line your turn. All night.
I stared at the blinking red light on my portable mic,
the signal pulsing like a heartbeat against the dark, and
felt the certainty of being watched by the frequency itself,
by whatever waited at the other end for the next
voice to carry its message forward. When I finally drifted
into something like sleep, my head filled with an ike
that felt like both longing and dread, waiting for the
last shooter drop some time before dawn. It did. There
was nothing else to do but listen. I took a
breath and click play the foul launch, shriven night aircheck generic.
At first, Rene's nerves was folding in and up between
a patchwork of easy listening tracks and ad reads about
local auctions and lost pets. Then the audio began to
tryst time, stump, leaping forward, backwards, stack, mudding the intro.
The bitch climbed and fell, syllable shrouding and reforming. Berni's
voice blurred, replaced for a breath by mine, speaking in
inverted patterns familiar but fundamentally one. The sequence of apologies, confessions,
and phrases I had never knowingly said much less on tape.
Nearer the end, I whisper cut through crystal line and clear,
not roonee, not even exactly griff, but something between a
voice that had lived on Tepe so long it wore
all of us as disguises. Last Cold, You're on the
air forever. My eyes darted to the mic. The recording light,
which I never switched on, blinked alive in time with
the playback. A shouder ran through me, neither called nor involuntary,
just the memory of being inside the signal, the sense
of a frequency that knew my heart better than I
ever could. I waited to see if anything else would happen.
No new sound came, just the course of echoing names,
my voice melting into theirs. The entire night at Station
forty three folded into two lines of broadcast static, one
that had no beginning and no true end. I shut
my eyes and listened to the silence, feeling as if
the signal itself had moved into me, waiting for the
next chance to be heard.