1 00:00:05,200 --> 00:00:08,519 Speaker 1: Hello. I welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here. 2 00:00:09,160 --> 00:00:12,480 Let's get into it. The first time I realized something 3 00:00:12,519 --> 00:00:14,720 was wrong with those recordings, I was sitting alone in 4 00:00:14,720 --> 00:00:16,679 a quiet office, years after I had left the Despatch 5 00:00:16,679 --> 00:00:20,320 Shanter for good. The county had finally upgraded the recording system, 6 00:00:20,480 --> 00:00:22,679 and someone needed help my grading the old archives into 7 00:00:22,679 --> 00:00:25,199 the new software. Most of the people who had worked 8 00:00:25,199 --> 00:00:27,480 the overnight desk back then have long since moved on, 9 00:00:27,760 --> 00:00:29,239 but my name was still on a lot of the 10 00:00:29,280 --> 00:00:32,280 older files because I had spent more nights behind a 11 00:00:32,320 --> 00:00:34,719 console than anyone else still around. They asked if I 12 00:00:34,719 --> 00:00:37,520 could help sort through the recordings and identify anything important 13 00:00:37,520 --> 00:00:41,320 before the system was wiped. It sounded simple enough, a 14 00:00:41,320 --> 00:00:43,759 few hours of listening to old calls, making sure nothing 15 00:00:43,799 --> 00:00:46,560 critical was lost in the transition. I hadn't thought about 16 00:00:46,560 --> 00:00:49,320 those night shifts and years, But the moment I logged 17 00:00:49,320 --> 00:00:51,399 into the archive server and saw my old operator our 18 00:00:51,439 --> 00:00:54,479 da appear on the screen, something about it felt strangely familiar, 19 00:00:55,159 --> 00:00:57,079 like opening a box of things he packed away a 20 00:00:57,119 --> 00:00:59,719 long time ago and suddenly remembering details he didn't expect 21 00:00:59,719 --> 00:01:02,679 to room. The despatch center back then had been a 22 00:01:02,759 --> 00:01:05,120 narrow room tucked into the back of the sheriff's office. 23 00:01:05,599 --> 00:01:08,280 Three consoles face a wall of monitors and radio equipment, 24 00:01:08,439 --> 00:01:10,799 all of it humming quietly beneath fluorescent lights that never 25 00:01:10,840 --> 00:01:13,439 seemed bright enough no matter how many bulbs they were placed. 26 00:01:14,079 --> 00:01:17,400 The air always smelled faintly of stale coffee and warm electronics, 27 00:01:18,159 --> 00:01:21,200 and there was always the sound of static. It wasn't loud, 28 00:01:21,959 --> 00:01:24,439 just a constant whisper from the radio speakers, of softest 29 00:01:24,519 --> 00:01:26,599 that blended into the background until you all must start 30 00:01:26,680 --> 00:01:29,640 noticing it. After enough nights on the job, that sound 31 00:01:29,680 --> 00:01:32,359 became part of the rhythm of the place. Most nights 32 00:01:32,400 --> 00:01:36,840 were uneventful. Deputies patrolled the county roads, Truckers rolled through 33 00:01:36,879 --> 00:01:40,120 the highways that cut across the farmland. Occasionally someone would 34 00:01:40,120 --> 00:01:42,159 call in about a broken down vehicle or a suspicious 35 00:01:42,200 --> 00:01:45,040 car sitting too long in a parking lot, But long 36 00:01:45,079 --> 00:01:48,000 stretches of time past where nothing happened. All he would 37 00:01:48,000 --> 00:01:50,079 sit there, watching a clock call forward, listening to the 38 00:01:50,159 --> 00:01:53,719 quiet exchange of radio checks between patrol units Unit twelve, 39 00:01:53,760 --> 00:01:57,840 status check ten four dispatch all quiet. It was a 40 00:01:57,959 --> 00:02:00,239 kind of job where IROs of silence could suddenly breaking 41 00:02:00,280 --> 00:02:03,120 to chaos without warning. But more often than not, the 42 00:02:03,159 --> 00:02:06,280 silence held, and after a while you started to trust 43 00:02:06,280 --> 00:02:10,000 that silence. You trusted the system too. Every call that 44 00:02:10,080 --> 00:02:13,039 came through the despatch center was automatically recorded an arcove. 45 00:02:13,680 --> 00:02:16,280 The software e lowered everything the incoming phone number, at 46 00:02:16,280 --> 00:02:18,560 the time the call started, which operator answered it, and 47 00:02:18,599 --> 00:02:21,039 every second of audio from both sides of the conversation. 48 00:02:21,680 --> 00:02:24,599 It was a system designed to remove uncertainty. If a 49 00:02:24,639 --> 00:02:27,560 call happened, the system new, If a despatcher answered it, 50 00:02:27,719 --> 00:02:31,080 the system recorded it. That was the whole point, which 51 00:02:31,120 --> 00:02:33,879 is why the recordings I discovered that afternoon felt so wrong. 52 00:02:34,439 --> 00:02:37,039 The arcou software displayed every call that had ever passed 53 00:02:37,039 --> 00:02:39,879 through the system, neatly organized into folders by year. An 54 00:02:39,919 --> 00:02:42,879 operator I d as I scrolled through the recordings tied 55 00:02:42,919 --> 00:02:44,840 to my name. The fan names looked exactly the way 56 00:02:44,879 --> 00:02:50,439 I expected them to, dates, times, case numbers. Most of 57 00:02:50,479 --> 00:02:52,840 them brought back vague memories. An accident on the highway, 58 00:02:52,840 --> 00:02:55,360 a domestic dispute out near the county line, a late 59 00:02:55,439 --> 00:02:57,240 night call from someone who had locked their keys in 60 00:02:57,280 --> 00:03:00,919 their car. Routine things until I noticed a group of 61 00:03:00,960 --> 00:03:04,879 recordings I didn't recognize there were seven of them. At first, 62 00:03:04,919 --> 00:03:08,120 I assumed I had simply forgotten about those calls. After 63 00:03:08,240 --> 00:03:11,120 working hundreds of overnight shifts, it wasn't unusual for the 64 00:03:11,159 --> 00:03:13,759 details to blur together. But the more I looked at 65 00:03:13,800 --> 00:03:16,000 the time stamps, the more certain I became that something 66 00:03:16,080 --> 00:03:19,080 wasn't right. Each file had my operator idea attached to it. 67 00:03:19,719 --> 00:03:22,639 According to the system logs, I personally handled every one 68 00:03:22,680 --> 00:03:25,360 of those calls, and every one of them had been 69 00:03:25,400 --> 00:03:29,159 recorded during overnight shifts that I remembered very clearly, because 70 00:03:29,159 --> 00:03:31,840 they had been quiet nights, the kind where you drank 71 00:03:31,840 --> 00:03:34,520 too much coffee just to stay awake, the kind where 72 00:03:34,520 --> 00:03:37,400 the phone never rang. But according to the archive it had. 73 00:03:38,039 --> 00:03:40,599 At first I assumed it was a labeling stake. The 74 00:03:40,639 --> 00:03:44,360 old recording system had never been perfect. Files occasionally ended 75 00:03:44,400 --> 00:03:47,319 up in the wrong folders after software updates or equipment failures. 76 00:03:47,919 --> 00:03:50,319 Sometimes calls were duplicated or miss foul. When the server 77 00:03:50,439 --> 00:03:54,360 re started, it happened. Still, curiosity got the better of me. 78 00:03:55,080 --> 00:03:57,599 I clicked the first file. For a moment, there was 79 00:03:57,639 --> 00:04:00,520 nothing but static. Then a voice came for the speaker, 80 00:04:00,560 --> 00:04:04,240 faint distorted and breathing hard hallo, hallo, I need some 81 00:04:04,280 --> 00:04:06,599 one out here. I think there's been an accident. The 82 00:04:06,639 --> 00:04:09,840 signal crackled so badly that half the words dissolved into noise. 83 00:04:10,520 --> 00:04:13,520 I leaned closer to the monitor, instinctively turning the volume up, 84 00:04:13,520 --> 00:04:16,000 as if that might somehow make the audio clearer. The 85 00:04:16,040 --> 00:04:20,360 caller sounded like they were outside. Wind brushed across the microphone. 86 00:04:20,399 --> 00:04:22,439 Somewhere in the distance. I could hear what sounded like 87 00:04:22,439 --> 00:04:25,680 a car engine idling. Every few seconds, the signal faded 88 00:04:25,720 --> 00:04:28,000 and returned again, like some one talking through a weak 89 00:04:28,079 --> 00:04:31,720 radio connection. But the strange part wasn't the caller. The 90 00:04:31,800 --> 00:04:34,120 strange part was the silence on my side of the recording. 91 00:04:34,680 --> 00:04:38,040 Despatch calls always recorded both ends of the conversation. That 92 00:04:38,160 --> 00:04:41,800 was how the system worked. The caller spoke, the despatcher responded, 93 00:04:41,839 --> 00:04:45,120 and the entire exchange was preserved in the archive. Except 94 00:04:45,120 --> 00:04:48,120 in this file. In this according, the caller spoke into 95 00:04:48,120 --> 00:04:51,920 the void. There was no reply, no dispatcher asking for 96 00:04:51,959 --> 00:04:54,920 a location, no voice telling the caller to stay calm, 97 00:04:55,519 --> 00:04:58,920 no instructions, just the frightened voice repeating the same question 98 00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:02,279 again and again, Hello, is any one there? I checked 99 00:05:02,279 --> 00:05:05,000 the time, stem The call had supposedly come in at 100 00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:08,000 two fourteen a m. The time meant something to me immediately, 101 00:05:08,600 --> 00:05:12,040 because I remembered that shift it had been unusually quiet. 102 00:05:12,560 --> 00:05:14,560 I could picture the room exactly as it had looked 103 00:05:14,560 --> 00:05:17,000 at night, the dim lights, the empty consoles beside mine, 104 00:05:17,079 --> 00:05:23,040 soft tom of the radio equipment. No accidents, no emergency calls. Nothing. 105 00:05:23,639 --> 00:05:25,480 Yet here was a recording suring that some one had 106 00:05:25,519 --> 00:05:27,680 called despatch for help, and that the system had lobbed 107 00:05:27,680 --> 00:05:30,560 me as the operator handling the call. I sat there, 108 00:05:30,600 --> 00:05:33,040 staring at the screen for a long time. Then I 109 00:05:33,120 --> 00:05:35,920 opened the second recording, and that was when things became 110 00:05:35,959 --> 00:05:39,079 harder to explain. The second call started the same way 111 00:05:39,120 --> 00:05:43,920 as the first, static when moving across the microphone. Then 112 00:05:43,959 --> 00:05:47,079 a voice that sounded strained and breathless, But this time 113 00:05:47,120 --> 00:05:50,759 the caller was different. A man's voice, older, speaking quickly, 114 00:05:50,800 --> 00:05:53,079 as if he was trying to keep his composure. I 115 00:05:53,160 --> 00:05:55,800 need some one out here, he said, there's a car 116 00:05:55,879 --> 00:05:58,839 off the road. I think the driver's hut. Again, there 117 00:05:58,879 --> 00:06:01,279 was no response from the spat much. I let the 118 00:06:01,360 --> 00:06:04,879 recording play without touching anything. The man continued describing what 119 00:06:05,040 --> 00:06:07,079 he saw, the way the vehicle had slid off the pavement, 120 00:06:07,120 --> 00:06:09,240 the shallow ditch beside the road, a row of fence 121 00:06:09,240 --> 00:06:12,040 post running along the shoulder. I knew that rode well 122 00:06:12,120 --> 00:06:13,720 enough that I could picture the scene in my head, 123 00:06:14,279 --> 00:06:16,759 but I still had no memory of that call. When 124 00:06:16,800 --> 00:06:20,079 the recording ended, I checked the time stump again, different night, 125 00:06:20,920 --> 00:06:24,040 same shift, and once again the system showed the call 126 00:06:24,079 --> 00:06:26,959 had come through my console. According to the archive, I 127 00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:30,160 had answered the phone. According to my memory, I never 128 00:06:30,240 --> 00:06:33,079 had turned in the dark. But nothing that stood out, 129 00:06:33,720 --> 00:06:36,199 nothing that should have left. Seven mysterious recordings bared in 130 00:06:36,240 --> 00:06:39,240 the system archaves, and definitely nothing that should have been 131 00:06:39,279 --> 00:06:42,439 connected to my console. The second recording started the same 132 00:06:42,439 --> 00:06:47,040 way as the first. Static went across the microphone. Then 133 00:06:47,079 --> 00:06:50,279 a voice that sounded strained and breathless, But this time 134 00:06:50,319 --> 00:06:54,040 the caller was different, a man's voice, older and speaking quickly, 135 00:06:54,040 --> 00:06:56,279 as if he was trying not to panic. I need 136 00:06:56,319 --> 00:06:58,839 some one out here, he said, there's a car off 137 00:06:58,839 --> 00:07:01,560 the road. I think the drivers her. I sat back 138 00:07:01,560 --> 00:07:03,800 in my chair and let the recording platter without touching 139 00:07:03,879 --> 00:07:07,199 anything again. There was no dispatch or response on the line, 140 00:07:07,720 --> 00:07:11,079 no voice asking questions, no instructions to stay calm, or 141 00:07:11,079 --> 00:07:14,319 provide a location, just the caller speaking into empty air. 142 00:07:15,000 --> 00:07:17,879 The strange thing was how specific the details were. The 143 00:07:17,920 --> 00:07:20,680 man described a curve in the road, a mile mark 144 00:07:20,800 --> 00:07:23,279 near a line of old fence posts, the way the 145 00:07:23,279 --> 00:07:26,199 car had slid halfway down into a shallow ditch. I 146 00:07:26,279 --> 00:07:28,519 knew it roaded well enough that I could picture exactly 147 00:07:28,519 --> 00:07:31,040 where he meant, but I still had no memory of 148 00:07:31,040 --> 00:07:34,160 that call. When the recording ended, I checked the time samp, 149 00:07:34,240 --> 00:07:36,920 the same way I had with the first one, different night, 150 00:07:37,720 --> 00:07:40,879 same shift. Again, the system showed the call had come 151 00:07:40,920 --> 00:07:44,319 from my console. Again I had no recollection of it happening. 152 00:07:44,920 --> 00:07:48,879 That alone would have been unsettling enough. Despatches forget things sometimes, 153 00:07:49,040 --> 00:07:52,920 especially after years of working overnight shifts, calls blur together, 154 00:07:53,519 --> 00:07:56,600 details fade, But there are certain kinds of moments you 155 00:07:56,639 --> 00:07:59,439 don't forget, especially not emergency calls as sound as urgent 156 00:07:59,519 --> 00:08:02,079 as the one to those recordings, and yet I had 157 00:08:02,079 --> 00:08:05,079 absolutely no memory of them. But as I kept listening 158 00:08:05,079 --> 00:08:07,120 through the rest of the files, something else began to 159 00:08:07,120 --> 00:08:09,800 stand out. At first it was just a small detail, 160 00:08:10,399 --> 00:08:13,680 Then it became impossible to ignore. Every call mentioned the 161 00:08:13,680 --> 00:08:16,560 same road, a two lane stretch of rural highway that 162 00:08:16,639 --> 00:08:18,680 ran along the north edge of the county before dipping 163 00:08:18,680 --> 00:08:21,759 into a long valley of farmland and trees locals just 164 00:08:21,800 --> 00:08:24,639 called a county road. Date anyone who had worked dispatched 165 00:08:24,639 --> 00:08:26,519 for more than a few months knew that road well. 166 00:08:27,120 --> 00:08:29,160 It cut through a wide stretch of open land where 167 00:08:29,160 --> 00:08:31,319 the farms were scattered far apart, and the cell signals 168 00:08:31,319 --> 00:08:34,360 sometimes dropped without warning. During the day, it was quiet 169 00:08:34,440 --> 00:08:36,840 enough that you could drive for miles without passing another vehicle. 170 00:08:37,360 --> 00:08:40,159 At night, it felt even more isolated. The road curve 171 00:08:40,200 --> 00:08:42,320 gently along the edge of the valley, dipping down through 172 00:08:42,360 --> 00:08:44,720 low patches of trees before climbing back toward up and 173 00:08:44,759 --> 00:08:47,919 farmland again. There were only a handful street lights along 174 00:08:47,919 --> 00:08:50,120 the entire stretch, and most of them were clustered near 175 00:08:50,120 --> 00:08:52,840 the small intersections where gravel roads branched off toward the 176 00:08:52,840 --> 00:08:56,840 surrounding fields. It wasn't a dangerous road exactly, but it 177 00:08:56,879 --> 00:08:59,279 had a few sharp bends and lawn dark stretches where 178 00:08:59,360 --> 00:09:01,440 drivers could eat drift off the shoulder if they weren't 179 00:09:01,480 --> 00:09:04,639 paying attention. Every winter we'd get the occasional accident when 180 00:09:04,639 --> 00:09:06,639 someone took the courst too fast. Of slid on ice 181 00:09:06,720 --> 00:09:09,519 during the first cold nights of the season. Still, it 182 00:09:09,600 --> 00:09:11,360 wasn't the kind of place that generated a string of 183 00:09:11,360 --> 00:09:14,639 emergency calls like this. Most Knights of Road barely showed 184 00:09:14,679 --> 00:09:17,279 up in the despatched logs at all. Yet every one 185 00:09:17,279 --> 00:09:20,320 of the mysterious recordings came from somewhere along that same stretch, 186 00:09:21,000 --> 00:09:22,720 and every one of them had been loged under my 187 00:09:22,720 --> 00:09:26,960 operator ID. I started listening more carefully. The voices were 188 00:09:26,960 --> 00:09:32,120 different in each recording, different callers, different situations, that the 189 00:09:32,120 --> 00:09:37,879 tone was always the same, confused, frightened, urgent. One woman 190 00:09:37,919 --> 00:09:39,600 sounded like she had stepped out of her car and 191 00:09:39,759 --> 00:09:43,039 was trying to describe something she didn't quite understand. There's 192 00:09:43,080 --> 00:09:45,320 another vehicle here, she said at one point, her voice 193 00:09:45,320 --> 00:09:48,720 shaking slightly, But there's nobody inside it. The engine still 194 00:09:48,799 --> 00:09:51,440 running in the background. I could hear when moving through 195 00:09:51,440 --> 00:09:53,840 the microphone, and what sounded like gravel crunching under her 196 00:09:53,879 --> 00:09:57,000 shoes as she walked closer to the vehicle. Another collar 197 00:09:57,080 --> 00:09:59,480 described seeing headlights down in the trees beside the road, 198 00:09:59,679 --> 00:10:01,600 as if a car had slid down the embankment and 199 00:10:01,600 --> 00:10:04,240 come to rest somewhere below the shoulder. I can see 200 00:10:04,240 --> 00:10:07,080 the lights, the mount said, breathlessly, but I don't know 201 00:10:07,120 --> 00:10:09,840 how to get down there. A third recording captured someone 202 00:10:09,879 --> 00:10:12,120 shouting over the sound of passing traffic, trying to make 203 00:10:12,159 --> 00:10:14,720 themselves heard of the noise of trucks moving along the highway. 204 00:10:15,320 --> 00:10:18,279 But in every single one the pattern repeated. The caller 205 00:10:18,360 --> 00:10:22,639 spoke and no despatcher answer. The recordings ended the same 206 00:10:22,679 --> 00:10:26,279 way too. The caller would say hello again, ask if 207 00:10:26,320 --> 00:10:29,159 anyone was on the line. Sometimes their voice would grow 208 00:10:29,200 --> 00:10:32,279 more nervous as the seconds passed. Then the recording would 209 00:10:32,320 --> 00:10:38,320 stop just like that. No follow up, no response, no instructions, 210 00:10:39,000 --> 00:10:41,600 and nothing in the system showing that deputies had been dispatched. 211 00:10:42,200 --> 00:10:44,759 I leaned closer to the screens, crawling back and forth 212 00:10:44,799 --> 00:10:47,799 through the coal logs connected to those files. The entries 213 00:10:47,799 --> 00:10:51,519 were all there, the time stumps the operator I D 214 00:10:52,360 --> 00:10:54,480 even the automated task shuring that the calls had been 215 00:10:54,480 --> 00:10:56,799 captured and stored by the system exactly the same way 216 00:10:56,840 --> 00:10:59,960 every other emergency call was archived. Everything about the rest 217 00:11:00,080 --> 00:11:02,720 go to look legitimate. There was no indication that the 218 00:11:02,759 --> 00:11:05,600 files had been altered or added later, no sign of 219 00:11:05,600 --> 00:11:08,720 a serviglitch that might have misfiled the audior. According to 220 00:11:08,720 --> 00:11:11,200 the system, the calls had happened exactly the way they appeared, 221 00:11:11,799 --> 00:11:14,799 except for one problem. I couldn't remember a single one 222 00:11:14,799 --> 00:11:17,240 of them, and the more I listened, the more strange 223 00:11:17,240 --> 00:11:19,240 feeling began creeping in at the back of my mind, 224 00:11:19,960 --> 00:11:23,399 because the details in their recordings started sounding familiar, not 225 00:11:23,559 --> 00:11:27,480 from the calls themselves, but from incidents I remembered happening later. 226 00:11:28,200 --> 00:11:30,440 I couldn't explain why the connection bothered me so much. 227 00:11:30,480 --> 00:11:33,399 At first, it was more of a vague sense of recognition, 228 00:11:33,519 --> 00:11:35,799 like hearing a story you've heard before but can't quite place. 229 00:11:36,559 --> 00:11:38,879 So I pulled up the counties incident reports and began 230 00:11:38,960 --> 00:11:42,480 comparing dates. The dispatch archive wasn't just a collection of 231 00:11:42,519 --> 00:11:45,480 audio files. Every call that came through the system was 232 00:11:45,519 --> 00:11:48,480 tied to a lodger web of reports, incident locks, officer notes, 233 00:11:48,559 --> 00:11:51,720 time stamps, and despatch interest that documented what happened after 234 00:11:51,759 --> 00:11:54,240 the phone rang. If those calls had been real, there 235 00:11:54,279 --> 00:11:56,360 should have been followed up a port somewhere in the system. 236 00:11:56,919 --> 00:12:00,279 So I began comparing the time stamps. The first recording 237 00:12:00,320 --> 00:12:02,240 I'd played had been locked at two fourteen a m. 238 00:12:02,320 --> 00:12:05,279 On a Tuesday night, I pulled up the incident reports 239 00:12:05,279 --> 00:12:07,480 for that week and started scanning through them one by one, 240 00:12:07,679 --> 00:12:10,000 looking for anything that had happened along County Road Eate. 241 00:12:10,639 --> 00:12:14,279 At first, nothing strayed out. There were routine traffic stops, 242 00:12:14,879 --> 00:12:17,519 a noise complained in town, a report of a loose 243 00:12:17,559 --> 00:12:20,759 dog near the county line. Then I found it. Two 244 00:12:20,879 --> 00:12:23,480 days after the recording's time stamp, a patrolled deputy had 245 00:12:23,519 --> 00:12:26,080 responded to a single vehicle accident along that exact stretch 246 00:12:26,080 --> 00:12:28,519 of road. I sit down and slid off the pavement 247 00:12:28,600 --> 00:12:30,879 during a late night rainstorm and ended up halfway down 248 00:12:30,879 --> 00:12:33,600 the ditch beside the highway. The location listed in the 249 00:12:33,600 --> 00:12:35,600 report was only a few hundred yards from the mile 250 00:12:35,679 --> 00:12:38,559 market a Colla had mentioned in the recording. I stared 251 00:12:38,600 --> 00:12:40,559 at the screen for a while, telling myself it was 252 00:12:40,559 --> 00:12:44,639 probably coincidence. County roads were long and accidents happened all 253 00:12:44,679 --> 00:12:48,519 the time. It didn't mean anything. Still, the similarity narrowed 254 00:12:48,559 --> 00:12:51,720 at me, so I checked the second recording. The man 255 00:12:51,759 --> 00:12:53,320 who had called about the car in the ditch had 256 00:12:53,320 --> 00:12:54,799 mentioned a curve in the road near a row of 257 00:12:54,799 --> 00:12:58,000 all fence posts. I searched the incident locks again, and 258 00:12:58,039 --> 00:13:01,120 found something that made my stomach tidan. Three days after 259 00:13:01,159 --> 00:13:03,919 the recording's timestamp, deputies had responded to a call from 260 00:13:03,919 --> 00:13:06,600 a passing driver reporting a disabled vehicle at the same curve. 261 00:13:07,240 --> 00:13:09,759 The driver had apparently lost control on loose gravel and 262 00:13:09,840 --> 00:13:14,159 ended up stuck on the shoulder, same road, same general location. 263 00:13:15,000 --> 00:13:17,720 Just days later. For a while, I sat there, staring 264 00:13:17,720 --> 00:13:19,799 at the report and the screen, trying to convince myself 265 00:13:19,799 --> 00:13:22,919 it didn't mean anything. County road stretched for miles, and 266 00:13:23,039 --> 00:13:26,000 accident happened all the time. If you look hard enough, 267 00:13:26,159 --> 00:13:29,440 you can find connections between almost anything. But something about 268 00:13:29,440 --> 00:13:33,200 the timing bothered me. Not just the location, the timing, 269 00:13:33,840 --> 00:13:35,840 because the details in the report matched to callo his 270 00:13:35,879 --> 00:13:39,679 description almost perfectly, the curve in the road, the fence 271 00:13:39,720 --> 00:13:42,519 puss along the shoulder, even the direction the car had 272 00:13:42,519 --> 00:13:45,159 slid off the pavement. I leaned back in my chair 273 00:13:45,159 --> 00:13:47,720 and reaplay the recording again, listening to the caller's voice 274 00:13:47,759 --> 00:13:49,399 with a kind of quiet dread I hadn't felt the 275 00:13:49,399 --> 00:13:53,200 first time. The man's sounded genuinely panicked. He could hear 276 00:13:53,240 --> 00:13:55,279 the confusion in the way he spoke, like someone who 277 00:13:55,320 --> 00:13:57,559 had come around a blind curve and suddenly found himself 278 00:13:57,559 --> 00:14:00,200 staring at something he didn't expect to see. And the 279 00:14:00,240 --> 00:14:02,240 more I listened, the more certain I became that he 280 00:14:02,240 --> 00:14:04,360 had been describing the exact same location listed in the 281 00:14:04,360 --> 00:14:07,440 incident report. That was when I started to feel uneasy. 282 00:14:08,000 --> 00:14:12,279 Once might be coincidents, twas felt different, so I kept going. 283 00:14:12,840 --> 00:14:14,960 I went through the rest of the recordings, won by one. 284 00:14:15,559 --> 00:14:18,519 Each time, I listened carefully to the caller's voice, jotting 285 00:14:18,559 --> 00:14:21,279 down the details they mentioned, mal marker's landmarks, anything that 286 00:14:21,360 --> 00:14:24,919 might help narrow down the location. Sometimes the callers was Pacific, 287 00:14:25,600 --> 00:14:28,919 sometimes they weren't, but even the vague details started forming 288 00:14:28,960 --> 00:14:31,559 a rough picture of the same stretch of road. Then 289 00:14:31,600 --> 00:14:33,840 I searched the incident reports for the days that followed, 290 00:14:34,480 --> 00:14:37,519 and every single time I found something, not always the 291 00:14:37,519 --> 00:14:39,720 same exact event, but close enough to make the pattern 292 00:14:39,759 --> 00:14:43,559 impossible to ignore. A stranded driver reported by a passing tracker, 293 00:14:44,120 --> 00:14:47,120 a car discovered abandoned near the tree line, a missing 294 00:14:47,120 --> 00:14:49,399 person report that began when someone's vical was found part 295 00:14:49,480 --> 00:14:51,799 along the roads I had late at night, all of 296 00:14:51,840 --> 00:14:54,679 them within days of the recordings, all of them along 297 00:14:54,720 --> 00:14:57,440 the same stretch of road, and none of them connected 298 00:14:57,440 --> 00:15:00,399 to any dispatch called that match the recordings. The more 299 00:15:00,440 --> 00:15:02,519 I dug into the logs, the worse the feeling became. 300 00:15:03,120 --> 00:15:06,120 Because if those recordings were real emergency calls, then deputy 301 00:15:06,159 --> 00:15:09,200 should have been dispatched immediately, a troll unit should have 302 00:15:09,200 --> 00:15:11,600 been sent to the scene. Someone should have written a 303 00:15:11,679 --> 00:15:15,000 report about the call itself. But there was nothing, just 304 00:15:15,039 --> 00:15:18,519 the later incidents, as if the recordings had described something 305 00:15:18,519 --> 00:15:21,039 that hadn't happened yet. By the time I reached the 306 00:15:21,080 --> 00:15:23,600 last file, the quiet office around me felt a lesser smaller. 307 00:15:24,200 --> 00:15:27,279 The building was nearly emptied that afternoon. Most of the 308 00:15:27,279 --> 00:15:29,799 staff had already gone home, leaving only the faint hum 309 00:15:29,840 --> 00:15:31,759 of the server racks in the occasional sound of fist 310 00:15:31,799 --> 00:15:34,840 up somewhere down the hallway. The despatch rocour system glowed 311 00:15:34,840 --> 00:15:37,320 softly in front of me, its interface filled with rows 312 00:15:37,320 --> 00:15:40,080 of time stamps and file names, and every one of 313 00:15:40,120 --> 00:15:42,559 those seven recordings felt like it was pointing towards something 314 00:15:42,600 --> 00:15:45,600 I didn't want to understand. I went back and listened 315 00:15:45,600 --> 00:15:48,159 to the recordings again, this time paying closer attention to 316 00:15:48,159 --> 00:15:51,279 the background sounds. At first, it had all blended together 317 00:15:51,279 --> 00:15:54,279 a static and went but the more carefully I listened, 318 00:15:54,279 --> 00:15:57,720 the more certain details began to stand out. In one recording, 319 00:15:57,759 --> 00:15:59,279 there was a faint waiale in the distance that I 320 00:15:59,320 --> 00:16:03,240 hadn't noticed, for it was barely audible, buried beneath the 321 00:16:03,279 --> 00:16:07,120 caller's voice, a siren not loud enough to be close, 322 00:16:07,799 --> 00:16:10,679 but there. In another file, the sound of an engine 323 00:16:10,679 --> 00:16:12,960 idling somewhere near by faded in and out of the recording, 324 00:16:12,960 --> 00:16:16,399 as to call this book. And in one particularly distorted clip, 325 00:16:16,480 --> 00:16:19,240 I could hear something metallic scraping against payment in the background, 326 00:16:19,840 --> 00:16:21,799 the kind of sound a car might make after sliding 327 00:16:21,840 --> 00:16:24,399 off the road. None of those sons had meant anything 328 00:16:24,399 --> 00:16:27,200 the first time I heard them, but now knowing what 329 00:16:27,240 --> 00:16:30,159 I knew about the later incidents, they felt different, almost 330 00:16:30,240 --> 00:16:32,559 like pieces of a puzzle. I didn't want to finish assembling, 331 00:16:33,080 --> 00:16:36,360 because if the recordings really described those events, then the 332 00:16:36,399 --> 00:16:39,720 calls had somehow been captured before the emergencies themselves ever happened. 333 00:16:40,159 --> 00:16:42,159 And the deeper I dug into the logs, the harder 334 00:16:42,159 --> 00:16:45,000 it became to convince myself that was impossible. By the 335 00:16:45,000 --> 00:16:47,240 time I finished cross checking the last recording, I had 336 00:16:47,279 --> 00:16:49,879 reached the point where I needed a second opinion, not 337 00:16:49,960 --> 00:16:52,240 because I expected someone to confirm what I was starting 338 00:16:52,240 --> 00:16:53,919 to suspect, but because I hoped they would prove I 339 00:16:54,000 --> 00:16:56,279 was wrong. There had been a guy named Mark who 340 00:16:56,279 --> 00:16:59,799 worked in the despatched center years earlier. Mark caused a dispature. 341 00:17:00,320 --> 00:17:03,120 He handled the technical side of things, maintaining the radio equipment, 342 00:17:03,159 --> 00:17:05,839 the recording systems, and the server that locked every call 343 00:17:05,880 --> 00:17:08,519 that came through the center. If any one could explain 344 00:17:08,559 --> 00:17:10,920 what I was seeing, it would be him. It took 345 00:17:10,960 --> 00:17:13,640 a little digging to find his number. The county had 346 00:17:13,680 --> 00:17:15,920 gone through several staffing changes since I had left, and 347 00:17:15,920 --> 00:17:18,240 Mark had moved on to a private communications company a 348 00:17:18,240 --> 00:17:21,759 few towns over. I almost didn't call. Part of me 349 00:17:21,839 --> 00:17:24,200 still wanted the whole thing to be a mistake, a 350 00:17:24,279 --> 00:17:28,519 miss Valdokove, a glitch in the system, something ordinary that 351 00:17:28,519 --> 00:17:31,640 I had somehow misunderstood. But the pattern in those recordings 352 00:17:31,680 --> 00:17:34,839 was too precise to ignore, so I called him. When 353 00:17:34,880 --> 00:17:36,960 I finally reached him and explained that I was helping 354 00:17:36,960 --> 00:17:39,079 with the archaevagration, he agreed to take a look at 355 00:17:39,079 --> 00:17:41,279 the files with me. A few days later, we met 356 00:17:41,319 --> 00:17:43,960 at the despatch Center. The building looked almost the same 357 00:17:43,960 --> 00:17:47,279 as I remember, but the equipment had changed, new monitors, 358 00:17:47,400 --> 00:17:50,880 new radio consoles, new recording software. The old system, the 359 00:17:50,880 --> 00:17:53,200 one we'd used during those overnight shifts, had already been 360 00:17:53,200 --> 00:17:55,640 disconnected and boxed up in the back room, but the 361 00:17:55,720 --> 00:17:58,599 archived data was still there. Matt pulled up the system 362 00:17:58,680 --> 00:18:02,240 logs tied to the recordings out and unlike the audio files, 363 00:18:02,359 --> 00:18:04,400 the locks showed the technical side of what had happened 364 00:18:04,440 --> 00:18:07,000 when each call was captured as signal routing system time 365 00:18:07,079 --> 00:18:09,680 stamps and the hard repust the calls had traveled through 366 00:18:09,720 --> 00:18:13,559 before they were stored. At first, everything looked ordinary. The 367 00:18:13,599 --> 00:18:17,160 files had been created automatically by the recording server. Each 368 00:18:17,200 --> 00:18:20,119 one was tied to my console. The system recognized them 369 00:18:20,160 --> 00:18:22,559 as incoming emergency calls and archived in the same way 370 00:18:22,599 --> 00:18:26,200 had archived every other call. So the recordings themselves were real. 371 00:18:26,880 --> 00:18:29,799 They hadn't been added later, They hadn't been misfiled from 372 00:18:29,839 --> 00:18:33,000 somewhere else. The system believed this cause had comes through 373 00:18:33,000 --> 00:18:36,039 my station. Mark Lee and closer to the screen, scrolling 374 00:18:36,039 --> 00:18:38,799 through the deeper diagnostic logs at most despatches never saw. 375 00:18:39,519 --> 00:18:43,240 After a minute or two, he frowned, that's strange, he said, 376 00:18:43,599 --> 00:18:48,160 what I asked, These signal packets, he said, pointing to 377 00:18:48,200 --> 00:18:51,799 a column of numbers in the log. They're incomplete. I 378 00:18:51,839 --> 00:18:54,240 didn't know much about the technical side of radio systems, 379 00:18:54,319 --> 00:18:57,279 but even I could see that something looked unusual. Normally, 380 00:18:57,319 --> 00:18:59,519 incoming calls generated a clean stream of data as the 381 00:18:59,559 --> 00:19:02,519 signal move through the network, but the interest tied to 382 00:19:02,519 --> 00:19:06,759 those recordings looked fragmented. Chunks of data were missing, certain 383 00:19:06,799 --> 00:19:09,759 identifiers were corrupted, a cut off half way through. It's 384 00:19:09,839 --> 00:19:11,960 like the system caught the signal in the middle of something, 385 00:19:12,079 --> 00:19:15,680 Mark said, not a full coal connection Kadak caused the 386 00:19:15,720 --> 00:19:19,880 despatcher side of the audio to disappear. I asked, maybe, 387 00:19:19,960 --> 00:19:22,759 he said, if the system grabbed the signal before the 388 00:19:22,759 --> 00:19:26,039 line fully opened. That explanation might have made sense, except 389 00:19:26,039 --> 00:19:30,200 for one problem. The time stems. Mark opened another section 390 00:19:30,240 --> 00:19:32,039 of the log and compared the data with the incident 391 00:19:32,079 --> 00:19:34,680 repulse I had already pulled up. At first, he didn't 392 00:19:34,680 --> 00:19:37,960 say anything. He just stared at the numbers. Then he 393 00:19:38,079 --> 00:19:40,960 leaned back in his chair and rubbed his forehead. Okay, 394 00:19:41,079 --> 00:19:44,960 he said, slowly, That part doesn't make sense. What part 395 00:19:45,759 --> 00:19:49,240 these signals? He said, tapping the screen again, according to 396 00:19:49,240 --> 00:19:51,640 the server clock, they were captured before the events and 397 00:19:51,680 --> 00:19:54,200 the incident reports. I felt a chill creep up the 398 00:19:54,200 --> 00:19:58,599 back of my neck. How much before I asked Mark? 399 00:19:58,599 --> 00:20:01,279 Click through the logs, lining up the time side by side. 400 00:20:02,279 --> 00:20:06,000 In some cases he said two days. He looked back 401 00:20:06,039 --> 00:20:09,559 at me. In one case, almost for a moment, neither 402 00:20:09,599 --> 00:20:12,799 of us said anything, because if the system logs were correct, 403 00:20:13,359 --> 00:20:16,000 then the calls hadn't just been incomplete. They had been 404 00:20:16,039 --> 00:20:19,720 recorded before the emergencies themselves had ever happened. For a moment, 405 00:20:19,799 --> 00:20:22,680 neither of us said anything, because if the system logs 406 00:20:22,680 --> 00:20:26,039 were correct, then the calls hadn't just been incomplete. They 407 00:20:26,039 --> 00:20:28,920 had been recorded before the emergencies themselves had ever happened. 408 00:20:29,640 --> 00:20:32,119 After Mark pointed out the Tiinsdowne problem, neither of us 409 00:20:32,119 --> 00:20:34,519 spoke for a while. The numbers were still on the 410 00:20:34,559 --> 00:20:37,279 screen in front of us. The system logs didn't look 411 00:20:37,359 --> 00:20:40,839 dramatic or mysterious. They were just rows of digger time stamps, 412 00:20:40,960 --> 00:20:44,480 routing paths. Signal identifies exactly a kind of information dispatched 413 00:20:44,519 --> 00:20:47,640 technicians looked at every day without thinking twice. But when 414 00:20:47,720 --> 00:20:49,799 you compared them to the incident reports, the pattern was 415 00:20:49,799 --> 00:20:53,960 impossible to ignore. The signals had arrived first, the real 416 00:20:53,960 --> 00:20:57,519 emergencies had happened later. It didn't look dramatic on the screen. 417 00:20:58,160 --> 00:21:00,000 Nothing about those logs jumped out the way of life. 418 00:21:00,039 --> 00:21:03,079 Rushing warning light might It was just quiet data sitting 419 00:21:03,079 --> 00:21:05,640 there in neat columns. But once you saw it, you 420 00:21:05,640 --> 00:21:09,160 couldn't and see it. Mark eventually broke the silence. If 421 00:21:09,200 --> 00:21:12,160 the system actually captured those calls, he said, slowly, then 422 00:21:12,240 --> 00:21:14,759 they had to come through the radio network somehow. I 423 00:21:14,839 --> 00:21:19,240 nodded that much seemed obvious. Emergency calls didn't just appear 424 00:21:19,240 --> 00:21:21,799 in the archive system out of nowhere. They had to 425 00:21:21,799 --> 00:21:24,400 pass through several layers of infrastructure before they ever reached 426 00:21:24,400 --> 00:21:27,920 the despatch console. But our despatch center didn't receive calls 427 00:21:27,920 --> 00:21:31,200 directly from the road. Most emergency calls were routed through 428 00:21:31,240 --> 00:21:34,559 the regional network before they reached our station. Along the way, 429 00:21:34,599 --> 00:21:37,400 they passed through several towers and repeaters that boosted signals 430 00:21:37,400 --> 00:21:40,720 across the rural parts of the county. Mark started tracing 431 00:21:40,720 --> 00:21:44,440 that path through the old infrastructure diagrams. The software displayed 432 00:21:44,440 --> 00:21:48,119 a map of the communications network, towers, relay stations, signal 433 00:21:48,119 --> 00:21:50,319 paths that branched across the countryside like a web of 434 00:21:50,319 --> 00:21:54,200 invisible for it. At first the verts looked normal, Then 435 00:21:54,240 --> 00:21:56,880 one location started appearing again and again in the locks. 436 00:21:57,599 --> 00:22:00,599 One tower in particular kept showing up or a repeat, 437 00:22:00,599 --> 00:22:02,279 a station that sat at the edge of the valley 438 00:22:02,279 --> 00:22:05,359 north of County Road eight. I remembered that tower vaguely. 439 00:22:05,920 --> 00:22:08,599 It had been installed decades earlier, back when the county 440 00:22:08,599 --> 00:22:11,960 expanded emergency radio coverage into the more remote farming areas. 441 00:22:12,559 --> 00:22:14,480 The terrain there dipped into a long bowl of lines 442 00:22:14,480 --> 00:22:17,359 surrounded by low ridges, which sometimes blocked signals from region 443 00:22:17,359 --> 00:22:20,799 and despatched center directly. The repeater tower solved that problem. 444 00:22:21,119 --> 00:22:23,599 It received transmissions from radios or cel relays in a 445 00:22:23,680 --> 00:22:25,640 valley and bunced them back toward the main networks so 446 00:22:25,720 --> 00:22:28,559 despatch could hear them clearly. In theory, it was just 447 00:22:28,599 --> 00:22:31,759 another piece of infrastructure quietly doing its job, the kind 448 00:22:31,799 --> 00:22:34,759 of equipment nobody thought about unless it stopped working. But 449 00:22:34,839 --> 00:22:37,119 when Mark opened the maintenance records for that tower, the 450 00:22:37,160 --> 00:22:39,920 history attached to it was longer than I expected. The 451 00:22:39,960 --> 00:22:42,640 equipment had been serviced dozens of times over the years. 452 00:22:43,359 --> 00:22:46,960 Most of the notes were routine battery replacements and tenor adjustments, 453 00:22:47,000 --> 00:22:51,599 signal calibration checks. Technicians had swapped up cables, replaced all transmitters, 454 00:22:51,640 --> 00:22:56,079 repaired storm damage. Nothing unusual, but scattered among those entries 455 00:22:56,119 --> 00:22:59,279 were a handful of remarks that felt different, not serious 456 00:22:59,359 --> 00:23:04,200 enough to triggers, just hadd signal distortion during cold weather, 457 00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:10,720 unexpected transmission echoes, possible atmospheric interference affecting reception. Mark scrolled 458 00:23:10,720 --> 00:23:13,880 slowly through the record, stopping occasionally to read alder interests 459 00:23:13,880 --> 00:23:17,680 more carefully. These go back years, he said, quietly. How 460 00:23:17,720 --> 00:23:22,240 many I asked? More than a decade. He kept scrolling 461 00:23:22,319 --> 00:23:24,880 until he stopped on a report from nearly fifteen years earlier. 462 00:23:25,480 --> 00:23:28,359 Look at this, he said. The technician who had written 463 00:23:28,359 --> 00:23:31,720 the report described unusual signal reflections currying during winter nights 464 00:23:31,759 --> 00:23:35,359 when the temperature dropped rapidly after sunset. According to the note, 465 00:23:35,400 --> 00:23:37,960 a phenomenon cold temperature version could rap radio waves and 466 00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:40,079 layers of cold air, causing the inter bunced cross long 467 00:23:40,119 --> 00:23:43,319 distances instead of dissipating normally. It was the kind of 468 00:23:43,359 --> 00:23:46,039 thing that sometimes let people pick up radio stations hundreds 469 00:23:46,039 --> 00:23:49,319 of miles away. Truck drivers occasionally talked about it over 470 00:23:49,319 --> 00:23:51,880 the radio hearing distant broadcast late at night that normally 471 00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:55,400 wouldn't reach the far but the technician had added something else. 472 00:23:56,160 --> 00:23:59,240 Under certain conditions, those reflected signals could arrive at the 473 00:23:59,319 --> 00:24:03,759 terror in fragments. Signals might overlap. Pieces of transmissions might 474 00:24:03,799 --> 00:24:07,640 arrive sickens or minutes apart. Sometimes signals from completely different 475 00:24:07,680 --> 00:24:11,400 areas could bleed into the same frequency. Basically Mark's ed 476 00:24:11,559 --> 00:24:14,640 leaning back from the screen. Radio waves can behave strangely 477 00:24:14,720 --> 00:24:18,480 when the atmosphere cooperates, strange enough to show up days hurry, 478 00:24:19,119 --> 00:24:22,799 I asked. He gave a short laugh. No, he said, 479 00:24:23,400 --> 00:24:26,000 that part still makes no sense. But the more we 480 00:24:26,039 --> 00:24:28,680 studied the signal pass connected to the recordings, the clearer 481 00:24:28,720 --> 00:24:31,759 the pattern became. Every one of the mysterious coals had 482 00:24:31,759 --> 00:24:34,680 passed through the same repeata tower. Every one of them 483 00:24:34,720 --> 00:24:38,160 had originated somewhere along county Rodate, and every one of 484 00:24:38,200 --> 00:24:40,119 them had arrived in the system as a damaged and 485 00:24:40,160 --> 00:24:43,039 complete signal, as if the tower had caught only part 486 00:24:43,039 --> 00:24:45,920 of the transmission was something that wasn't supposed to reach 487 00:24:45,920 --> 00:24:48,079 it at all. I leaned back in my chair and 488 00:24:48,119 --> 00:24:50,160 looked at the map of the network displayed in the monitor. 489 00:24:50,720 --> 00:24:53,240 The repeata tower sat alone on a small ridge overlooking 490 00:24:53,240 --> 00:24:56,079 the valley, just a small blinking icon on the screen, 491 00:24:56,640 --> 00:24:58,799 a quiet piece of infrastructure that most people in the 492 00:24:58,839 --> 00:25:02,359 county probably didn't even no existed. Farmers drove past it 493 00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:05,920 every day without realizing what it was. Travelers passed through 494 00:25:05,960 --> 00:25:08,640 the valley beneath it without ever seeing it. But if 495 00:25:08,640 --> 00:25:11,559 the recordings had come through there, then that tower might 496 00:25:11,559 --> 00:25:13,359 have been listening to something none of us had ever 497 00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:15,960 intended to hear. Mark and I didn't say it out 498 00:25:15,960 --> 00:25:18,799 loud at first, but we were both thinking the same thing. 499 00:25:19,400 --> 00:25:21,720 If the recordings had passed through that repeated tower, then 500 00:25:21,720 --> 00:25:23,759 the only way to understand what was happening was to 501 00:25:23,759 --> 00:25:27,119 hear the signal from the tower itself. Unfortunately, the tower 502 00:25:27,119 --> 00:25:29,519 wasn't somewhere you could just walk into an examine. It 503 00:25:29,559 --> 00:25:31,839 sat on a low ridge about fifteen miles north of ten, 504 00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:35,240 surrounded by fencing and a locked equipment shed. Most of 505 00:25:35,279 --> 00:25:37,799 the time it ran and at hand it Technicians only 506 00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:40,559 visited it when something broke. But there was another way 507 00:25:40,599 --> 00:25:43,440 to listen. Every repeater in the county transmitted on a 508 00:25:43,480 --> 00:25:47,640 known frequency. Dispatch consoles could monitor those frequencies if necessary, 509 00:25:47,720 --> 00:25:51,440 especially when technicians were troubleshooting signal problems. The equipment in 510 00:25:51,440 --> 00:25:53,640 the despatch center had changed over the years, but the 511 00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:57,079 frequencies themselves hadn't. Mark pulled up the old channel list 512 00:25:57,079 --> 00:25:59,039 and found the one tie to the repeat o overlooking 513 00:25:59,039 --> 00:26:01,599 County Road day He stared at it for a moment, 514 00:26:02,279 --> 00:26:05,000 then he clicked a monitor button. Let's just see what 515 00:26:05,079 --> 00:26:08,599 it sounds like, he said. It was already late afternoon 516 00:26:08,599 --> 00:26:11,559 by the time we started monitoring the signal. The despatch 517 00:26:11,599 --> 00:26:14,119 center was quieter than usual, and the day shift operators 518 00:26:14,119 --> 00:26:15,839 didn't pay much attention to what we were doing in 519 00:26:15,839 --> 00:26:18,359 a corner. Most of them assumed we were just running 520 00:26:18,359 --> 00:26:22,519 diagnostics on old equipment, which technically wasn't far from the truth. 521 00:26:22,960 --> 00:26:25,359 The speaker filled with a soft tess of radio static. 522 00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:29,000 Mark adjusted the gain slightly, filtering out some of the interference. 523 00:26:29,640 --> 00:26:32,680 For a long time, nothing happened, but neither of us 524 00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:34,920 turned the speaker off faintly. The tower wasn't somewhere you 525 00:26:34,920 --> 00:26:37,319 could just walk into and examine. It sat on a 526 00:26:37,319 --> 00:26:39,839 low ridge about fifteen miles north of town, surrounded by 527 00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:42,759 fencing and the locked equipment. Chad Most of the time 528 00:26:42,759 --> 00:26:46,400 it ran unattended. Technicians only visited it when something broke. 529 00:26:47,039 --> 00:26:49,759 But there was another way to listen. Every repeater in 530 00:26:49,799 --> 00:26:53,400 the county transmitted on a known frequency. Dispatch consoles could 531 00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:57,119 monitor those frequencies if necessary, especially when technicians were troubleshooting 532 00:26:57,119 --> 00:27:00,319 signal problems. The equipment in the despatched enter had changed 533 00:27:00,319 --> 00:27:03,880 over the years, but the frequencies themselves hadn't. Mark pulled 534 00:27:03,880 --> 00:27:05,680 at the old channel list and found the one tied 535 00:27:05,720 --> 00:27:08,839 to the repeater overlooking County Road eight. Let's just see 536 00:27:08,839 --> 00:27:11,680 what it sounds like, he said. It was already late 537 00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:14,759 afternoon by the time we started monitoring the signal. The 538 00:27:14,799 --> 00:27:17,079 despatch center was quieter than usual, and the day shift 539 00:27:17,119 --> 00:27:19,119 operators didn't pay much attention to what we were doing 540 00:27:19,160 --> 00:27:22,640 in the corner. It was subtle at first, so subtle 541 00:27:22,640 --> 00:27:24,759 I wasn't sure i'd heard it. The static and the 542 00:27:24,759 --> 00:27:27,519 speaker shifted slightly, as though a distant transmission had begun 543 00:27:27,559 --> 00:27:30,759 to bleed into the frequency. Mark leaned forward immediately, his 544 00:27:30,799 --> 00:27:34,559 hand moving toward the dial. Wait, he said, quietly. The 545 00:27:34,599 --> 00:27:37,119 noise and the speaker wavered again. For a moment, it 546 00:27:37,160 --> 00:27:41,160 almost sounded like wind. Then the signal sharpened. A faint 547 00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:44,799 voice emerged from the noise. Hollo. The whove was so 548 00:27:44,880 --> 00:27:48,200 quiet I almost thought I'd imagined it. Mark rose beside me. 549 00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:52,400 Neither of us moved. Then it came again, Hello, can 550 00:27:52,440 --> 00:27:55,559 anyone hear me? The voice sounded exactly like the callers, 551 00:27:55,559 --> 00:27:58,079 and the recording strain distorted, as if character a weak 552 00:27:58,119 --> 00:28:01,400 signal struggling to reach its destination. Mark's hand hovered over 553 00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:04,079 the controls, but he didn't touch them. We birth knew 554 00:28:04,119 --> 00:28:05,839 that if we changed the settings too much, we might 555 00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:10,279 lose the signal entirely. The voice continued, I'm on County Roads, 556 00:28:10,319 --> 00:28:13,680 near the old fence line, my cargesta. The transmission cut 557 00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:16,319 off in a burst of static. For several seconds, the 558 00:28:16,400 --> 00:28:19,400 room was silent again, just the softest of radio noise 559 00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:21,960 filling the speaker. I checked the clock on the wall, 560 00:28:22,519 --> 00:28:26,279 eight forty seven p M. Did you catch that, Mark 561 00:28:26,319 --> 00:28:30,319 ask quietly. I nodded. The description the caller had started 562 00:28:30,319 --> 00:28:33,559 to give was painfully familiar. A cost sliding off the road, 563 00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:37,079 a fence line, the same stretch of highway that appeared 564 00:28:37,119 --> 00:28:39,720 in every one of the recordings. The difference was that 565 00:28:39,839 --> 00:28:42,240 this time we were hearing the signal live, or at 566 00:28:42,319 --> 00:28:46,200 least it sounded live. MAK started according the frequency, immediately 567 00:28:46,279 --> 00:28:48,359 wrote in the signal through the despatch arc HAVE system, 568 00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:51,400 the same way in coming calls were normally captured the 569 00:28:51,440 --> 00:28:54,880 recording time. I began counting upward in the monitor. We waited. 570 00:28:55,640 --> 00:29:01,000 Ten minutes, passed, twenty. The signal never returned. Eventually the 571 00:29:01,079 --> 00:29:04,079 room filled again with the steady whisper of static. Mark 572 00:29:04,200 --> 00:29:07,400 leaned back in his chair and exhaled slowly. If that's real, 573 00:29:07,599 --> 00:29:10,160 he said, someone out there might need help. But there's 574 00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:13,960 no report, I said. He checked the call logs. Nothing. 575 00:29:14,440 --> 00:29:17,279 No emergency calls had come in from that area, No 576 00:29:17,319 --> 00:29:20,319 deputies had been dispatched, just the two of us sitting 577 00:29:20,359 --> 00:29:22,200 there with the recording of a voice asking for help 578 00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:25,160 on a roadway. According to the system, nothing had happened yet. 579 00:29:25,839 --> 00:29:28,000 And that was when I finally understood what those earlier 580 00:29:28,039 --> 00:29:32,200 recordings might have been. They weren't echoes, they weren't corrupted calls. 581 00:29:32,880 --> 00:29:35,960 They were something much stranger. The repeater tower wasn't just 582 00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:39,680 catching signals somehow under the right conditions, It was hearing 583 00:29:39,720 --> 00:29:43,440 them before they happened. For a long moment after the transmission, faded. 584 00:29:43,599 --> 00:29:47,200 Neither of us moved. The recording system continued running quietly 585 00:29:47,240 --> 00:29:51,119 beside us, capturing nothing but static. Mark eventually saved the 586 00:29:51,119 --> 00:29:53,160 file and leaned back in his chair, staring at the 587 00:29:53,160 --> 00:29:55,079 monitor as if he expected the voice to come back 588 00:29:55,119 --> 00:29:58,920 at any second, but the channel remained silent. If that 589 00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:01,359 call was real, he sa said, after a while, someone's 590 00:30:01,400 --> 00:30:04,160 going to report it. We both knew how the system worked. 591 00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:07,519 A stranded driver, an accident, anything serious enough to make 592 00:30:07,559 --> 00:30:09,599 someone reach for their phone would eventually appear in the 593 00:30:09,599 --> 00:30:13,160 dispatch cue. But the coal logs stayed empty. The night 594 00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:15,960 shift Dispatrick glanced over at us once or twice, probably 595 00:30:16,039 --> 00:30:18,359 wondering why two people were sitting there monitoring an old 596 00:30:18,359 --> 00:30:20,680 repeat of frequency, But no alarms went off and no 597 00:30:20,759 --> 00:30:24,839 new coals appeared. Eventually the shift ended. Mark exported the 598 00:30:24,880 --> 00:30:27,440 recording and attached it to the diagnostic ORPAWT. He started 599 00:30:27,440 --> 00:30:30,160 writing about the old tower. He tried to explain the 600 00:30:30,200 --> 00:30:35,079 situation in technical language signal anomala's atmospheric conditions, unusual timing irregularities. 601 00:30:35,759 --> 00:30:38,880 It sounded reasonable enough on paper, but neither of us 602 00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:41,839 really believed it. A week later, the county completed the 603 00:30:41,880 --> 00:30:45,440 communications upgrade they had already planned. The all repeated tower 604 00:30:45,440 --> 00:30:47,599 overlooking the valley was taken off line and replaced with 605 00:30:47,640 --> 00:30:50,640 new equipment that used a completely different RULAE system. Mark 606 00:30:50,720 --> 00:30:53,480 told me that when the technicians dismantled the original hardware, 607 00:30:53,680 --> 00:30:56,680 most of it was scrapped. The tower itself remained standing, 608 00:30:56,839 --> 00:30:59,759 but the equipment that had been installed decade EARLA was gone. 609 00:31:00,240 --> 00:31:03,240 After that, the strange recordings stopped appearing in the archive system. 610 00:31:03,839 --> 00:31:07,640 No more partial calls, no more disordid voices from County Rhodate. 611 00:31:08,319 --> 00:31:10,839 The despatch center returned to a quiet rhythm I remembered 612 00:31:10,839 --> 00:31:13,480 from my years working over night shifts, throteen traffic stops, 613 00:31:13,599 --> 00:31:16,519 the occasional roadside accident, the steady exchange of radio chatter 614 00:31:16,599 --> 00:31:20,160 between deputies and dispatch. On the surface, everything went back 615 00:31:20,200 --> 00:31:23,240 to normal. Matt moved on to other projects and eventually 616 00:31:23,240 --> 00:31:26,279 stopped talking about the recordings altogether, and I tried to 617 00:31:26,319 --> 00:31:28,759 convince myself that whatever we'd heard that evening had been 618 00:31:28,799 --> 00:31:31,839 nothing more than a technical quirk, a rare combination of 619 00:31:31,880 --> 00:31:34,839 signal interference and bad timing, the kind of thing that 620 00:31:34,880 --> 00:31:37,559 could happen once had never happen again. But every so 621 00:31:37,720 --> 00:31:40,279 often I still find myself thinking about that voice we 622 00:31:40,319 --> 00:31:43,359 heard through the static, because if our theory had been correct, 623 00:31:43,359 --> 00:31:45,680 if the repeat a tar had really been catching fragments 624 00:31:45,680 --> 00:31:49,319 of emergency calls before they happened, then those early recordings 625 00:31:49,359 --> 00:31:52,160 might not have been mistakes. They might have been warnings, 626 00:31:52,799 --> 00:31:54,720 and we had never answered a single one of them. 627 00:31:55,319 --> 00:31:57,400 For a long time, I managed not to think about 628 00:31:57,400 --> 00:32:00,359 those recordings. Life moved in the way it had always does. 629 00:32:01,039 --> 00:32:04,640 Jobs change, buildings get remodeled, New equipment replaces the old systems. 630 00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:08,279 Nobody remembers any more. The despatch center kept operating, the 631 00:32:08,319 --> 00:32:11,400 deputies kept patrolling the roads, and County Roadate stayed as 632 00:32:11,440 --> 00:32:15,039 quiet as it had always been. Eventually, the archive project ended, 633 00:32:15,599 --> 00:32:17,599 the old recordings were moved to a back up server, 634 00:32:17,720 --> 00:32:19,240 and most of the staff who had worked with that 635 00:32:19,279 --> 00:32:22,599 systems stopped thinking about them altogether. For a while, I 636 00:32:22,640 --> 00:32:25,319 did the same, But every now and then something would 637 00:32:25,319 --> 00:32:28,839 pull me back to it, usually late at night. Sometimes 638 00:32:28,880 --> 00:32:30,839 I'd remember the way that for sounded coming through the 639 00:32:30,839 --> 00:32:33,160 repeat of frequency to panic in it, the confusion, the 640 00:32:33,160 --> 00:32:35,359 way the caller kept asking if anyone could hear them, 641 00:32:35,799 --> 00:32:37,759 and I would think about the seven recordings we had 642 00:32:37,759 --> 00:32:41,799 found in the archive seven calls for help, Seven times 643 00:32:41,799 --> 00:32:44,680 someone had spoken into the line expecting an answer, and 644 00:32:44,759 --> 00:32:47,039 seven times the system had recorded the call without any 645 00:32:47,079 --> 00:32:49,880 one responding. The worst part wasn't the idea that the 646 00:32:49,920 --> 00:32:52,640 tower might have been hearing those calls ali. The worst 647 00:32:52,680 --> 00:32:54,799 part was the possibility that those people had been real. 648 00:32:55,359 --> 00:32:57,920 At somewhere along that stretch of road, someone had reached 649 00:32:57,920 --> 00:32:59,640 out for help when the signal had arrived in the 650 00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:03,079 system days before. The event itself, ever, occurred long enough 651 00:33:03,079 --> 00:33:05,720 for someone to have done something, long enough for someone 652 00:33:05,759 --> 00:33:08,400 to answer, but no one had ever heard them in time. 653 00:33:09,039 --> 00:33:11,359 Years later, while cleaning out some old files on a 654 00:33:11,359 --> 00:33:13,640 hard drive from the arch of Migration, I came across 655 00:33:13,640 --> 00:33:17,079 a folder I didn't recognize it contained a single audiophile. 656 00:33:17,720 --> 00:33:21,079 The time SEMP attached to it caught my attention immediately because, 657 00:33:21,079 --> 00:33:23,559 according to the system clock embedded in the file metadata, 658 00:33:23,680 --> 00:33:25,880 the recording had been created nearly three weeks after the 659 00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:28,480 day I was looking at it. At first, I assumed 660 00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:30,880 the date was corrupted, but the rest of the file 661 00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:34,599 information looked normal. The routing pathmatched the old repeated tower. 662 00:33:35,119 --> 00:33:38,119 The operator idea listed in the metadata was mine. I 663 00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:40,200 stared at the file for a long time before finally 664 00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:43,400 opening it. For a moment, there was only the familiar hissystatic. 665 00:33:44,000 --> 00:33:48,000 Then a voice came through the speaker, distorted, reading hard, 666 00:33:48,680 --> 00:33:51,960 and it hollo. The sound made the hair on the 667 00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:54,400 back of my neck stand up because the voice on 668 00:33:54,440 --> 00:33:58,079 that recording wasn't the stranger's. It was mine. And in 669 00:33:58,119 --> 00:34:00,480 the background, just beneath the static, I could hear the 670 00:34:00,480 --> 00:34:04,400 distant wail of a siren that hadn't started yet. And 671 00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:06,920 that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I 672 00:34:06,920 --> 00:34:08,880 will see you in the next one.