Speaker 1: Hullo, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. Rain hissed and patted the old
tin roof as ern He laned up beneath the flickering
security light and slipped his key into the warped metal door.
It took a grunt and a shove of his shoulder
to force it open. Hint his shrieking and protest. The
whole building shuddered as it yielded, and Ernie paused just inside,
letting the heavy thunk settle through the bones of the floor. Somehow,
even the weather seemed defended by his return. He set
his stuffled down, blinking rain from his glasses, and felt
the musty air crawl over him, moth balls, mildew, a
trace of something sweeter from years of box candy left behind.
The stagrant mix had not changed in the fifteen years
since he last crossed this threshold. His left foot sank
into rutgudged in the carpet by generations of hurried steps,
beround him. The ghost of morning newsure and coffee seemed
to haunt the patch of thenoleum where an old brake
table had once stood. W RC Ane's narrow lobby led
straight to the broadcast room irony. His feet found the
rout instinctively. To his right stretched a row of grimy windows,
more white with grime than anything outside. Lettering feeded and reversed,
still declared this was radio for the region. Half the
letters had peeled, but in the glowing haze of the
security lamp it was still just legible enough to take
him back. He ran a hand along the plywood partition
as he moved, finger tips brushing over a thin spidery crack,
a quick, useless check. Yes, the power was still on,
or at least A weather of red light above the
on air signs still glowed faintly behind plastic It bathed
the room beyond in an nod fake sunset. You'd think
a ghost would rattle the chains. He muttered, and his voice,
dry and corroded, seemed a hum Here the main studio
beckoned a battered table, two ancient sher microphones, mismatch chairs,
mismatched everything really the war rack like a battered sentry.
Housing relics led to real decks, switch panels, analog meters
twitching at unseen frequencies, Papers and boxes stacked round in
artless towers made a warren of half forgotten intent. Ernie
set to work, tugging the heavy canvas over a stack
of dusty tapes. His hands had study fumbled the velcor
He dried them on his jeans and let himself settle
into the battered engineer's chair. The back driff of his scent,
cold sweat, and fabric soofnal laid itself over the years
of cigarette smoke already baked into the padding. He breathed
and measured, and exhaled into the hush all around him.
Water hammered the roof and ticked at the window frames,
masking the figned electricity that still ran through the boards
and consoles. As he began to unwrap the brown papered boxes,
the faintest were and rising hum came from the deck's pause,
which a memory sparking into life. Only fiddled with the
patch cables, mentally tracing their faded taped labels. He reached
for a reel and slotted it into place with a
precision bordering on reverence. There was a rhythm to it.
Feed titan chugged backward a half towest, a cue all
muscle memory his old bosses would have scoffed. Nobody cues
a reel anymore. Nobody even listens most days. But that
was what he was here to do, to listen, to
thread memory through magnetos tape and hope with every click
and flutter that something loss would fall into place, some
salvage of a name, a moment, some filament of what
he once meant to people before he began the ghost
in the wires. For a moment, the only sound was
the gentle feathering static from his headphones. It was familiar,
soothing in a perverse way. Static was honest. A little
after nine thirty, the blue disk outside gave way to
true night through the filmy window, the sullen skeleton and
ten a tower blink read against the rising fog. He
hunted through the log books, trailing the faded pen lines
of midnight news, late night requests, the breakfast show. There
a tape labeled nine slash fourteen slash ninety seven Evgen's block.
He lowered the stylus and press play. The tape hissed
into life, and the syruppy pianos thing tumbled out, the
signature jingle still echoing with the forced cheerfulness of suburban radio.
He could almost see Dottie, the night anchor, grinning at
the mic, her hair always far too high. A brisk
weather update started, only marked a node and frowned. The
jingle plate again, sharper fading unusually fast, and then nothing,
A smothered thunk, then half a breath, then silence, not
the scrape of dead tape, but a hollow even dead air,
not recorded, not broadcast, not anything. For nearly a minute,
Ernie let the headphones squeeze him, listening to nothing. Then abruptly,
a different voice began reading the news. It was familiar
and mistakably one of their own, but hollow, mechanical. The
cadence aggressive, as if the speaker had learned the script
by wrote, but understood none of it. Shillingly won a pulse,
feigned at first. When beneath the next few minutes, Ernie
set down his note bed. He didn't breathe. When the
segment ended, he grew wound and played it again. There again,
a stumble in the jingle avoid then voices, as if
something had shorn away their warmth. A muted shudder threaded
through him. He leaned forward to the microphone, whispering mentally,
as he always did on tapeer view nights. Something's not right.
Even the storm paused for a heartbeat, as if the
building knew what he'd found. He thumbed his notes twelve
minutes missing impossible but true. He sat back the cry
of thunder outside, answering his confusion, and let it growing
a mistakable chill, settle into his bones. By midnight he
had the first sensation that he was not alone. That sensation,
that ache of having intruded, clung to Ernie as he
trudged back to the motel on the edge of the
old industrial district. The rain tapered off, leaving only the
steady drip from every awning and the distance of cows
on wet, blacked up rivers. Are Town, once the Lancashire
Steel Hub, now barely managed to keep his street lights
on at night. The handful of buildings that smoldered with
some life, usually an all night diner, sometimes a bar,
never both in the same block, seen to draw back
in suspicion as he passed his motel was a low affair,
its faded sign flickering between orests and a nest like
a stammer. Ernie swung into the lobby, nodded worily at
the exhausted night clerk, and trudged to his shoe books
of her room. He hung his jacket over the old heater,
watched steam carl for a moment, and plugged in his
battered laptop. It wheezed a life, just as he wiped
the fog from his glasses and stared at the knot
of tapes he'd stuffed into an oversized zipluck. Each one,
he told himself, was a chance. He'd come back to
w RCN, because there were storers here that wouldn't let
him go. If he could salvage a few lost hours
of regional culture, maybe people would remember something besides his
dismissal and his false accusations at the city station. Maybe
his own history wouldn't grind him flat every more. Warning
or perhaps lurking beneath them hope, He just wanted to
know what really happened the stations clapped in nineteen ninety seven.
Was the ruin that were shaped every face in his
old memories. No one, not even the ones who had
stuck around, really explained where the laughter went. He'd spent
his days at the station, cranking the ancient boiler and
coaxing lights to life. Not for a living, no one
paid for this group, but as a ritual. He digitized
the old reels, scanned logs, labeled and re labeled, and
read every half legible, half delusional program guide. Most days
he hardly spoke up of a murmur to himself to
the walls, to the squeak of the tape as he
smoothed it by thumb n index finger. Sometimes near mid day,
Missus Dross would hobble in her coat, always buttoned up high,
her cloud of white hair bobbing as she navigated through
the piles of unsorta correspondence. She'd set her person the
old receptionist desk and glare at the fax machine as
if daring it to try again. She'd lost most of
her hearing, and her memory seemed to come and go
in bright nervous flashes. The phone rang again, she told
him once, voice quaking, but I didn't pick up. You
never know, Rone, It's always for the dead, Why else
would it rain. He'd offered her tea from their ancient kettle,
which she accepted with a tiny, perfunctory naw. In exchange,
she offered half remembered tales of the station's past, most
of which Ernie already knew. Be Howe of the funders
of marathon for local charities, Edson ms pronunciation that became
a running joke the summer of the power outage discut
when they played staying a live on loop for four
hours straight. It was all covered in a shifting haze
of affection, loss and something he couldn't quite name. Other days,
she only nodded and slipped away, speaking to the security
guard as it to prove to the world that she
had spoken to someone alive. The surrounding industrial block felt
equally haunted once hundreds had clocked in at the war
factory across the street. Now Patterson Kibbles had collapsed glass
in every empty window, peering back at Ernie's lone car
as if offended by his insistence on returning. The only
sign of life left was the over present baded billboard
up of the loading dock radio for the region, a
logo half peeled, the phone line disconnected. Ernie's daily ritual
became one of absences more than arrivals. The launch eyre
was a walk around the whee chop perimeter of the
main conversation with the stray cat, who liked the sun itself,
even in the filtered light. In the evenings, he returned
for the second secret half of the day, when the
old mixing desk was his lifeline. Here he could recalibrate
the meters, type out careful notes about which tips were stable,
which were flaking, and which were helplessly mangled. Sometimes, as
he worked, he found himself talking to no one, the
way you might keep an argument running in your head
after all the guests have left party. He apologized to
the static, tried its silence, thanked the machines for lasting
the lawn. Guilt was a constant companion, Old gilt for
not standing up when another staffer was bullied out, and
new gilt for perhaps never giving up on these hollow relics.
But always the tape pulled him back. The promise of
a lost moment, of something just under the trouble hiss
drove him on. He filled up log after log daytime
presenter air quality notes on damage. Slow punishing but honest work.
The first sign things were slipping out of the ordinary
cane in smaller artifact. The programmed log was wrong. Three
nights into his digitization run. Sitting in the Marion dusk,
Ernie was slogging through the September ninety seven aired it
locks when he found a curious dam typewritten rather than
pend like the rest twelve minutes an account of for
contact ops of freakers. He flipped the page, checking signatures. H. L. Walker,
the operation's manager had initialed it in a shaky hand.
A later note added confirmed not a timer error, possibly
automation fault. Ernie held the card up to the lie.
It looked genuine, exactly like the ear or so he
started rifling through the stacks for matching tapes. After twenty
minutes he'd found three label to have news block, all
showing run times twelve minutes, too short for the logged slot.
At first he assumed mechanical failure, but the cassettes were whole.
They spools, tight and unwarped. He keyed each one into
the deck, fast forwarding rewinding advancing minute by minute. Every
time the same anomaly, the new segment would play. Normally,
the jingle would fade, and then not a pop, not
a drop out, but a chilling gap, not tape noise,
but a hush, like a roof full of hell breath,
and after that the voices came back, drained and strange.
The present sometimes dotty, sometimes ed pronounced words with such
rigid neutrality it sounded like they were being read by
a faulty computer. Voice. Jokes didn't land. Music came in
at strange times. The whole atmosphere shifted from the easy
camaraderie he remembered, to something riddled with fishers. He paged
back through the staff rostos for that month. There were
names Brenda, Rakish Mav who were locked and for one
shift and gone by the next. The afternoon, after a
tape with the missing minutes, their signatures vanished from the logs.
No resignation, no hand of her ernie. Spine prickled. He
picked up the old phone by the editing bay, half
expecting to hit the busy signal, maybe even hoping for
her own number, just to break the tension. Instead, the
receiver clicked against his ear, and after a moment of silence,
then static began faint, with a hissing underlayer. Then if
he strained the s words barely above a breath winding
beneath the noise, it sounded like his own name, or
perhaps just his mind conjuring patterns. Eastpum strucked up his forearm.
He put the receiver back gingerly. He pushed his work
aside and paced the hall, his thoughts spinning a million explanations. Malfunction,
deliberate sabotage, a prank with a shifted voiceoule seem possible
but unlikely, the precision of the breaks, the imperceptible change
in the voices, the missing stuff it mapped on to
something he couldn't decipher. He made a note pattern twelve
mins miss in staff absence, all after one a m
voices all is there a master list of technical faults. Then,
just as he clicked off the desk lamp, the phone
rang again. He let it rain. No one else was around,
and some questions, he reminded himself, needed answers only in
the daylight. Restless only turned to the long list of
ex colleagues, looking for any whom I remember. Most numbers
were disconnected now or are listed to the wrong names.
When he called the handful that still rang, he used
his best radio voice, calm, clipped, not desperate. One by
one they shut him up. Some refused flutley, saying only
best to let it lie Ernie. Others offered polite nothings,
muttering about those days if memories were shrapnel working their
way to the skin. More than one simply hung up
before the question about September ninety seven, even left his
home late that afternoon for like a cloud breakfast counter.
He finally connected with Carol Dawson in the harsh light
of the window. She looked hollow cheeked, brighter hair now,
but the same nervous flick of her hands as in
the staff photo. On his work ide. She listened to
his pitch and guarded silence. I was darting between him
and the rain outside. It's not like I can remember
all the details, she said. But she didn't leave. People left.
There were rumors. None of it made sense to me,
then either. Did you notice anything strange about the broadcast themselves?
Irone pressed, She stared into her coffee. I don't know.
It was just cold. I remember feeling so cold inside
my own voice. I tried to make it sound normal,
but it felt like some one had wrapped I don't know,
plastic or tin around my throw. You get so used
to flow in banter and then nothing feels yours. You
say the same jokes, but people look at you like
your reading their eulogy. They lapsed into silence, broken only
by the sizzle from the kitchen and the scrape of
her spoon. Iony probed gently, but every answer slid away,
growing blurryal with each attempt. Her distress became obvious. After
ten minutes, she excused het herself, mumbling about needing to
check on her mother, and left before her toast was
even served. A kid at the next booth, old enough
to remember the nighties, watched Rownie pack up. He poking
the old station. Ha. The kids said, mar was not there,
not unless the lights are out. My uncle says, some
signals just want to keep sleeping. Ye let em people
who poke at him, they get static in the head an.
He offered a dry nod and left a tip he
couldn't afford. He was drawn to the public library. Next
one of those post wormit rises. Its lower floor now moffled,
but the stacks captain pride for Lorrider. Local newspapers from
nineteen ninety seven filled a drawer, but when Ernie searched
for incident reports surrounding wsc Aid in September, he found nothing.
Back out the paper ran the local parade, a dog's shore,
but no mention of the staff shakeout or strange service interruptions.
A minor note on scheduled maintenance was as close as
anything came to explaining it. He dug deeper, sifting through
his cognation files, marred by water stains and three kinds
of paper clip, but found only a single unsent transfer letter.
It was typed in a nervous, blocky hand with two
lines underlined and shaking pen frequency blead caused incident, never again,
even if they ask, please destroy this evening Preston Throughout
the main station, cassette reels began clicking on seemingly, and
scheduled Anie whipped round to see a player not plugged in, whirring,
spreading out a storm of warped fragments, bits and pieces
of his new digitizations and dispersed with radiostatic, no timer,
no cue. Yeah here it was. Paranoia ran its fingers
up the back of his neck. He shut each machine off,
only to hear one on somewhere deeper in the stacks.
The lamps flickered. He locked the studio, careful to check
each exit. When he got home that night, a new
email blinked at him from an address he'd never seen.
Frequency believed ninety seven. Drop this, you don't want what
we found. For the first time since his return, it
entered his mind to simply walk away. Maybe he done enough.
Maybe some stores wanted nothing more than to rock quietly
in the dark, That something obligation, pride, the old anger's
conviction that every silence was merely waiting for the next worst,
drove him to stay. Rain found him again the next morning.
Instead of the station, he was on the road out
by the river turn of Ware. According to half remembered Scuttle,
but Lenny Grinds had told up after the ninety seven breakdown,
Lennie had ridden the graveyard chief, made sandwiches at three
a m. And played harmonica on the brakes when nobody
was listening. If anyone remembered that night, it would be Lennie.
His trailer looked like it had been part fifteen years
and deliberate defiance of logic, three wheels instead of four,
an upten dish in tenna, propin tanks leaning like in
certain sentinels, and most oddly, fore tuning fork's nail to
the port trail. Lennie answered knock, only after Ernie called
out both his full name and Lennie's. When the door
finally cracked, Lennie's eyes were glassy, his cheeks freathed in
an even beard. The shadows inside were thick. The small
lamp by the stove did little to beat back the gloom.
You're digging up tunes, Lennie opened, voice trembling. I just
want to know what happened, Ernie said, not moving from
the rain slickstep. I know about the tape gaps, about
the resignations. Something happened, Lennie, and it wasn't just stress.
Lennie licked his lips, fingers trembling over the loch. He
talked to Marvillette or Carroll. They refused to talk about it.
You're the only one who hasn't broken off the hook.
For a moment, Ernie thought Lenny would shut him out anyway,
but then the latch fleck in. Ernie was ushered inside.
The door closed softly behind him. There amid stacks of
radio parts in a portable generator. That hunt even went off.
Lennie finally gave in. It wasn't my fault. None of
us should have been there that night the emergency tones
went out, but I didn't send them. No one did.
I checked everything. They were coming in through the overid panel,
but we didn't even have that one until a week after.
It's impossible, but it happened. Ernie nodded, turning his foond's
recorder on. With the faintest movement, A tremor endered Lennie's voice.
When the jingle played, it went all sharp, like metal
in my mouth. Then this fuseshel coded. I couldn't follow it.
The room it changed, fuff, crushed like pressure or sound
under order, colors, rum faces melting if he looked too hard.
Next thing, I remember, it was morning, twelve minutes black oat.
He pressed his fist against his brows, shaking. I told
them it's not safe. Something came fridyer. Don't let them
make us try again. I don't remember the drive home.
People change, even myself. Ernie sat frozen. He'd expected exaggeration, panic,
but not this raw terror. What does frequency plead mean?
Is that real? Lennie started, his sowed, knuckles white as
he grabbed the edge of a battered radio. Some suns
he can't put back in the box. The frequency it's
not hires, They never should have tried to use it
for public broadcasts. We were the test. He begged Ernie
to leave. As Ernie stepped off the porch, he saw
the tuning forks again, humming in the wind, all Mars whistling.
Lennie called after him, voice ragged, desperate, stay off the
night frequency. Ernie drove away through sheets of rain, headlights,
catching the uneasy shimmer of water in every ditch. His
mind turned that there had to be an explanation, some
rational path through dis maze, but Lenny's broken, insistent please
echoed in his chest. Back in the stations made Edith
in Bay, Ernie began a new phase of his obsession.
He pulled the September tight and digitized them again, this
time boosting the playback volume to the highest levels the
equipment could stand. Analyzing the dead air periods, he ran
everything through spectral tools, and there it was a pulse,
low and determined, registering far beneath the threshold of human hearing.
No accidental edit, no gap in the date. This was
something encoded, deliberate functioning in a layer meant never to
be heard online. Their research was slow. Frequency Plead turned
up few results, but only drudged up military debriefs on
interrupted public radio, ominous warnings about the emergency allout systems,
and tested psychological tones rumors not facts, but chilling regardless,
there were suggestions, half paranoi, half authoritative, that a local
test might have been ordered for regional response mapping. If true,
it would never have been cleared for civilian use. Marv,
the engineer, still lived in town. Ernie tried twice by
phone and was told with flat finality, leave it lying.
I set my piece of years ago. But the third
time Marve relented, offering a time, come midnight, transmitter shack,
don't be late, don't bring any one. I'll bring the logs.
Word had gotten out late one afternoon at the boulger,
A clerk eyed Ernie's warm badge. They say you're digging
up the station, she said, barely above whisper. My brother wasn't.
Right after that year, Cat screamed all night radio's click
when they were off. He put that back to bed,
mister lng. Ernie left quickly, clutching his groceries and the
weight of her words. As the night for the meeting
drew near, he sat in the editing bay recording his
thoughts by habit as much as for future evidence. I
don't know what's at the bottom of this. Maybe it's
just fear or gill or nothing at all, but I
have to see. I have to know. Maybe the tape
is just broken, maybe it's me that's broken. But if
this is something more, if it was done to us,
not by us, then the story needs telling, doesn't it.
He rewound the tape. His hand shook as he closed
his notebook. The rain resumed, sharp and insistent, as if
marking a warning. The transmitter shack was half collapsed, decades
behind on repairs, and hugged the farthest edge of the property.
At midnight, Ronie parked his car and walked the last
hundred yards through sheeting rain, hot, stumbling at every flash
of lightning inside the machines gave off a trembling the
living ham. He rapped once on the door, then slid
inside as it cracked open. Marv was older, heavier, set,
his jaw shouded by a gray beard, but his eyes
were the same, quick, worry and deeply tired. He checked
the window blinds, glanced at Ernie's digital recorder, and nodded
for him to sit keep your voice down, no phone calls,
and if you hear anything that feels wrong, we stop clearer.
Marv handed it a battered folio, its ches buckled from down. Inside.
Careful notations jotted the timing of every event he'd loved,
every gap, every substitution, every name that dropped from the Rosser. Afterward,
there's an archive, Marv whispered, hand shaking, lockfall, one master reel.
Do not broadcast again? Ever, Only I kept the coat
still in the basement all these years. They wanted to destroy,
but I couldn't bring myself to do. I needed proof
for when someone finally came asking, lightning stuttered. A sudden,
heavy thumping at the door startled them both. Ernie tensed,
expecting a shadow or worse, but instead it was miss
estross Ays wide, breathless and panicked, clutching a batter transistor
radio to her chest. It's back, she gasped, thrusting the
radio at Marv the midnight news. It's coming through, but
the station's off air. Marv twisted the dial. A blast
of static, then underneath the unmistakable signature jingle, the one
Ernie had heard on all those tapes, but warped, elongated
echoing off itself. Then voice is fragmentary, shivering, almost recognizable.
Dotty's pitch flat and mutilated by layers of static, had
lines the weather, and under it all, something that called
through the signal, not spoken at all, but felt a pressure,
a pulse, the same sincision Ernie remembered from Lenny's trailer.
Marv's hands not did as he slowly turned up the volume.
Now in the overlapping signals came Ernie's own, named astored, repeated,
stitched into the mesh of transmission. He felt the pulse
slicing through him, a bone deep vibration. Missestross clamped her
hands over her ears. Is sem again their calling us.
They never stopped. The jingle repeated, then ended with a
violent snap. All three sat stand, but even as thunder
cracked and rain battered the roof, and new realization grew
between them. Whatever had started that night in nineteen ninety
seven had not ended with missing air or staff departures
or government de nails. Something someone was still broadcasting across
a frequency they should never have touched. Electricity stuttered, light
snapping out. The last thing Ernie heard before full darkas
was the jingle again now no longer recorded, now live.
Crawling through the static, the last broadcast's remain on the line,
remained on the He groped in the darkness, his breath
ragged as the world seemed to slip backward into that
ire of dead air, waiting for something final to merge
from the noise. But nothing emerged, not at first, not
from the darkness, not from Ernie's lips, not from the
rain that drove even harder overhead. The transmission was gone,
as if it had been yanged from the air. Midward,
the after image of as if he could call it that,
it sound echoed beneath any skin withceestros frantic panting breasts
with the loudest thing in the world. For one hot second,
Marv's hand found a boxy flashlight being trembling with the
tremor in his wrist, and flicked it on. The tiny
pool of yellow light stuttered against a pile of brow
contuining equipment and gathered dusts. Nobody moved, all free, braced
for the next voice or alarmed, but the rain reasserted
its rhythm and the machines went quiet. There hum flattened
by the power loss, It was just the three of
them huddled in a metal box, breeding hard. We're going
to the vault, Marv said. At last, his voice had
gone host squeezed flat, and for a second scene, Ticko
the saint in foil Thinness that only heard in the
post gap broadcasts that real needs to be found if
it's still there. Missestross mood the front of her wool
cut in shaky, absent gestures. He said it would never
play again. He promised us. They made you promise. Marve
ignored her. He motioned for Ernie to keep his lights
steady and led them out through the puddling mud. Backs
hunched against the spearing rain. Inside the station proper, their
shoes trailed water across tiles that looked even grim out
by flashlight. Most evenings, Ernie barely noticed the hole, but
now each inch crawled with shadows, stretching and clutching. Thoughon
out light. Dead with up power, looked in comprehensibly bleak,
assigned for a world that no longer existed. Marve led
the way down the storage corridor, muttering under his breath
as he unlocked the battered door to a narrow flight
of stairs. The air changed at the threshold. It was denser, thicker,
each breath rasped by a hint of corrosion, and something
ranked beneath the damp. They descended cautiously, miss estross one
tramping hand in the rail. The banister was sticky with
years of condensation and spilled coffee. At the landing, Ernie's
flashlight piked out a steel vault door, its pink curled
and flaking in white bistows. The dead bowl oversized an
achin required a labrary cranking. Marv produced a key from
around his neck on lanad no newer than the Clinton administration,
and forced it in biting off a cause when a
tumble is stuck. It finally yielded doorswaining open with a
drawn out metallic groan. Beyond was a concrete box, barely
larger than a closet, lined and the haphazard way of
items meant to be forgotten. Four box files, a broken chair,
a stack of surplus were radio's gun, slick with rust,
and against the back walla wooden cabinet stor fitted for
magnetic reels. Hasn't been touched since the day after Marv
muttered manager's orders. Only we had access, but the cabinet
was ajar and a tiny scrap of white taped dangle
from the lock, nearly torn. Mars's face crumpled with something
near panic. No, some one got in. He aanked the
drawer up and the little metal tag Redmaster do not broadcast,
But the slot was empty. He dropped his knees, shuffling
through the drawer in a mess on the floor. No, no, no,
it was here. That has to be something glinted behind
a pile of radios. Ironie snaked his arm back and
came up with a miniature tape Standard nine as my
crooksett black plastic faded to navy. The sticker on it
had worn then with age, the handwriting barely legible test
night nine slash fourteen slash ninety seven. Marv clutched at it,
almost dropped it, then handed it to Ernie. That's not
the master, but maybe a copy, maybe something. There wasn't
a player in the vault, but Ernie's woar, he'd seen
one upstairs among the engineer's collection. They retraced those steps,
each of them different now, Ernie with the throbbing pulse
of anxiety. Marv hollow chested and muttering massesstross trailing as
if regretting ever stepping into this part of the world again.
I remember the night, she said, in a thin, walked tone,
half way up the stairs. It seemed to come from
the bottom of a well, or maybe the bottom of
memory itself. My husband, he was laughing at the news.
Then the sound went wrong. He looked at me, but
it wasn't him. His smell low. I thought he was
going to She shivered, cut herself off. Then everything caught
fire inside my own ears, but there was no fire.
The words logical as they were hung between them as
they heard upstairs, Marv found the bat of radio shackmacrookcept
player jowned new batteries in and thrust the tape into
the slot. He cranked the volume as they huddled together
at the engineer's desk, crowned side by. Some only pressed
record on his digital deck, some part of him, scholarly
or just desperate, needed to capture whatever would come next.
The tape began with a brief horror, a man's voice, staticky,
thin book calm. It was off the Jemison, the station manager,
long dead, as Ernie remembered, he was dictating a memo
at the date, a summary of the planned regional eas
test explicit mention of being off the books for the
purpose of this experiment, Jemison said, staff will follow instructions
posted near the on air booth. No warning will be issued.
Do not deviate from automation survey data to follow. Reminder
this is confidential and must not be discussed as a
real emergency. For thirty seconds more, the tape chronicled a
flurry of technical steps, checks at a precise clip manner,
and then Jemison's force crackton to or shut no, no,
that's too early killed before the rest of the phrase
was lost to chaos. Suddenly the tape felt to mechanical madness, stuttered, shrieks,
chair legs scraping, someone sobbing in the background, and then
twelve minutes of low, almost subliminal pulsing. The sound was
not music. It was a wharfing, a hythnic rumble, with
almost's voices threading through, always just past recognition. Only realized
he'd been holding his breath. It was hard to listen,
not because the turt thoe it did some were deep
in his jaw and spine, but because it felt wrong,
like reading words written in your own hand, but in
a language you could never speak. The name Lang fizzled
up his name or some one else's, then vanished beneath
another folk of static. Marv shut the player off, ashen
and sweating. Missestros shoulders slumped her stare vacant, as if
something vital inside her was farther away. Now we we
went the broadcasters, Marv whispered, dizzy. We were to test
all of us. It was never about the news or
the town. It was training, and they didn't care what
it did to us. Half my crew gone over night.
No resignation, no part is just a black van and
empty desks. All three sat silent, the sound of lost
years and the throb of old machines and the stomach
churning base of remembered trauma. Beneath it. All Learning could
swear though his rational mind foot back there was a
familiar jingle warded and bear, a deep promising again and again,
this is the last broadcast. Remain on the line. In
that dreadful moment, above the storm battering the world outside,
Ronie felt the story's terrible gravity, pulling them further in.
Every question opened another cryptic door, and the line between
living memory and signal began to dissolve thread by careful threat,
a scraping whine off when threaded through every crack in
the old day and transmitter Shkismov's flashlight beam wavered uncertain
a crossed a row of battered lockers and wide tangles.
Missestross huddled in the nar aisle, one gloved hand white
knuckled around her radio, the other trembling against her chest.
Ernie pressed his own hand to the core concrete of
the entry wall, struggling to swallow the reverberating pressure that
still polls through the skull left of her. Maybe or
something more from the transmission that had justus straaded the silence.
No one spoke. The little group, ragged and disjointed, moved
on muscle memory alone. Mauf checked the main switch, doubt
it would take him time to cook the generator online.
The machines, themselves powerful as anything in their day, gave
off a ghostly after hum, barely detectable since more through
bone than air. Above the wind batted a loose guttle,
like some demented metronome, keeping time for a history Nun
wished to remember. Ernie's first coherent thought was a simple
childish wish that the world outside a certain ruined as
it was, might have shifted since they lost surface, that
time or fate would forget them here and move on.
But the storm crushed as violently as ever, and the
sallow filament of massestros flashlight only made the gloom that
crept behind a denser. We should go to the vault,
Marv managed, his voice, row as a scrape wire. Whatever
started up again, its coming from here or from something
left behind. We need the master. Ronie could see the
strain around MAV's eyes are worry that someone or something
had slipped into the vault before them. Massestross seemed to
shrink with each step, as if some part of her
already remembered what lay in the sub basement, or perhaps
felt it now as he did. As a pressure behind
the eyes. The small procession pressed through the rainy station. Marv,
leading the building familiar by day, felt the shape, and
by candlelight, shadows thickened at every turn, Twisted by years
of neglect. The vuon ere signed strewing in darkness, seemed
now a warning rather than an invitation. Down the stairs.
Each rise of groaning, each breath laced with the tinne
of old steel. They reached the basement vault. MAV's every
motion was rushed and brittle. He fumbled through his reign
of keys, and after a moment, forced to open the
great metal door. Inside, the air was frigid, carrying the
scent of aged paper and machine oil. De smote swirled
in their light. But something was wrong. The inner safe,
once tightly shut, stood cracked. The wooden box meant for
the master of real gaped empty. Marv let slip a
muffled cuse and tore through the drawers, panic sharpening every motion.
It was here, I checked it last month, he muttered,
for his gravel, flecked with fear. I someone's been done here.
Ernie scanned the wreckage, ragged folders, a jumble of heap reels,
yellowing locks, and in the debris a tiny glint. He
crouched and drew out of my crook set smaller than
his palm, lebeled and faded ink test night nine slash
fourteen slash ninety seven. The date nearly made his finger spasm.
His hand shook as he passed it over. Marv snatched
it up, knuckles blotched and shaking. For a moment. None
of them moved. Miss Estrost still as the dead began
to keen softly, a tune flattened by age, wordless and circular.
Ironie felt low subsonic frob beside the safety after image
of some broadcasts that had soaked into the concrete itself.
We play it upstairs, Marv said, at last, eyes locked
on Ernie. If it's what I think, it's all lost chance.
But if the master is loose, he couldn't finish above
wood and plaster groaned. Ernie led the others upward, flashlight
painting the filthy stairwell. Miss Estraws paused, clutching at the handrail.
Do you hear that? She whispered, though no one else responded.
On the engineering bench, while slipped the microok set into
a batter player and pressed record on a secondary deck,
the machine spool to life. The hiss of old tape
is familiar to Arne as his own heartbeat. A male
voice Jemison, a misickable even through the years, began his
words cackling. Test Memmer WSN nine slash fourteens last ninety
seven Regional eest hone scheduled staff not informed all locks
to be secured after monitor subject response for survey repeat
did not reference event on air, and memo wereun tested.
A thin scream, the sound of a microphone tipping flooded
the tape in a sudden chast Desperate voices blurred together,
a woman, a high, sharp bark, Jemison muttering no stop off, off,
its running, Then another sound like metal folding under pressure.
Then quiet. Twelve interminable minutes of sub bass oscillation, almost
below consciousness, ride beneath the silence. Ernie fought the urge
to rip off his headphones. Though barely audible, the pulsing
tone courag its way into him. If he focused, he
could almost almost make outstretched syllables, half familiar, grushed by riverb,
names blurring, dreussed, Marvin lying, miss cestraw, swimpered fingers digging
into her temples. It's not just as staff, as she stammered.
Everyone who heard that broadcasts somethings inside my head, echoing
him my husband's face. That night he stared through me,
then he started crying. Afterwards, he wouldn't talk about it,
and then all those weeks gone. Marv wrestled with the
stop button, finally slapping the deck. Silent his arms trembled.
For a beat. All anyone could hear was the tick
of rain and the windows, and under that a light
clicking from the tuning radio on the desk, flaring then fading.
We never had a chance, did we, Marv breathed. They
filled us up with something we couldn't name. He dropped
his forehead into his hands. The government interviewed the threats
to stay quiet, Oliver, is so much for the old world.
Ernie's thoughts careened between pass and present. This is not
just staff, but loved ones. The listenership flitted through his mind.
What had happened here had seeped outwards, bled into countless
ordinary lives, even Missus Dross's absent husband. The blank haunted,
staring old photographs seemed marked in retroactive horror. There had
been no exercising the signal. It had simply gone dormant,
waiting for someone to tune in again. And now, somewhere
nearby the master reel, whatever itked, was free. The storm
outside abated, were replaced by dense, a natural hush. Somewhere
beyond the reach of their light, a door banged. Ernie's
nerves barked, the sense of watchless, returning more acute with
each feety second. Somewhere someone moved in the building above,
a slow, dragging steps, deliberate missestross, radio whine, fuzzy flapper,
broadcasting something. It was static, not now, but ady echo
of the jingle, stretched by distance, as of pipe from
the other side of a wall, neither sound nor tank
of breech. Her mouth twisted in pain, she cranked the
volume with jerky fingers. A slice of silence was followed
by a soft, metallic echo of Ernie's own voice. Stay
tuned for Then the sund collapsed. Ione's skin crawled up
his spine. He scanned the room, Marv hands white on
the deck's edge, and misestrussed, humming again involuntary. The pulse
from the broadcast was less a soumn than a gravitational force,
Now impossible to ignore. He had the sense that every
second the building held together was a struggle. Yet still
beneath all a terror, Ernie recognized in himself a terrible
kind of relief, as if the truth, the dreadful though
it was, was finally curling open before him. That was
when he realized the PA system, long ago declared dead,
had begun to interfere. It issued a pop, then a whine.
Then through the main hallway speaker recited whether forecast, his
own name and place of the town, old slogans corrupted
with during precision, Ernie's hand clamped the table, a world
threatening to reverse itself at the unbedded substitution, A shivering
overtook him, and then from the ceiling the building's lights
flickered on, just for a moment, bright as a searchlight.
Then they died in the darkness. Someone or something water
above them, in slow, decisive steps, get the doors open, marveised,
his voice, no louder than the click of the tape.
Deck us out now. Missest Ross pressed her hand to
the wall, her others still grip in the humming radio,
her lips working silently in soil or prayer. Ernie scrambled
for the basement exit, but the heavy fire door ab
of them banged shut sharply, a finality that rung through
the cold stern like a verdict. The speaker above their
heads relayed another voice, his own, again warped as if
it were how someone else remembered him. Remain on the line,
Remain in the line. This was no longer a necko
of a pastran's mission, Ernie realized, but a new one,
folding memory and voice and fear into a single metronomic broadcast.
Dread thickest, blood pulled in his limbs, yet he found
his hands moving with an urgency and bidden the deck
still spawn, still captured everything. The three survive as if
they could still be called That sat breathless as the
first signs of dawn trickled through the boardroom window. Then
together beneath the buzzing for us and bulbs striving to
kick on, they experienced it, a synchronized memory superimposed over
the prisent. Annie was at the news desk reading headlines,
but none of the words seemed to have meaning. He
sends Marvet the console, wild eyed, yanking cables and finding
only more of the same headache pulse. Miss Estrost hovered
at the whole way Fahn, begging someone not to answer,
please just let it ring and ring and ring. Time dielated,
the voice in the pia thrumbed with a thousand overlays,
all their own, all versions of them, forced to relive
the same twelve minutes, over and over, each word peeling
away a measure of their will. Surface world fell away
as the PA voice began to listen, names, presenters, operators,
texts now new names. Names Ernie didn't recognize, but felt
twisted deep in his gut. The looping jingle, cheerful but warp,
poured down on him with the weight of a dentist drill,
impossible to ignore, boring further than hearing should allow. His
mind convulsed at the intrusion, the line between n and
now dissolving entirely. Instead of panic, a kind of numb
is settled in. He clamped his eyes shut. He remembered
at last what it had felt like in those years
after the station's collapsed, A low level interference, as if
every voice on the dial broadcast the same ghostly message.
The sub basement became a cocoon of soft static, the
heavy doorub of refusing to budge somewhere the tape still
spun on reels no one had touched, capturing and radiating
the signal in his spot siral that would not resolve.
Ironie forced himself back into the presence. His forstery all cracked.
Mortal broke the spell. We lived through this, We finish
it with the digital recorder between them, and the bat
of microok set still in his breast pocket only led
Marv and missest Rost, not panicked, but driven by the
hard one clarity of the truly desperate, toward the old
supply closet. He remembered there should be a fire axe,
maybe even a prie bar. The humm rose beneath their
feet as they moved, the signal pounding forcing gaps into
each thought. The station's ghostly memory battered at them with
every step, broadcasting not just through the hardware or the
air itself, but directly into their minds. Marv was first
to the closet. Together they heaved aside a collapse stack
of all phone directories, revealing the red handled axe in
its cradle. The air pressed tighter against Ernie Sinus's blood
rising in his ears, a taste of orozen and copper
thick on his tongue. As Marv swon at the heavy door,
Ernie swore he could feel the brook ast itself gnashed
with anger, lights flickering, pa blowing with random shouts, the
building shuddering in protest. Missestosk cowered, repeating the old jingle
under her her breath, as if to contain a radio
for the region, Radio for the region. The axeplinted the
upper hinge. A gout of cold wind rushed in, not
quite outside air stale, but free from the close pat
memory of the basement. They collapsed together, panting, and the
landing Irone helped Mauv's shoulder. The drew rig door aside,
light finally streaming up from the lobby. The storm outside
had passed, were replaced by a bruised, gratdnrain tapering to
a prickly drizzle, the distant sound of early delivery trucks
growing awake somewhere past the river bank. No one spoke
for a moment. Marv gripped on his shoulder a gesture
of gratitude, sorrow, and gills, all mixed. Missestros stumbled into
the morning, fog, legs warbling, the radio pressed to her
chest as if it were a shield. They left the
building together, all three batter wet and changed in ways
that had nothing to do with age or fear. Irone's
voice did not return that day, not the one men
for speaking, not the one tune for the air at all. Instead,
he listened for iOS, caught between the hush of the
living world and the whine of a frequency only he
seemed able to hear. The reconvened wordless in the side lot,
Marv was the first to look back. The task stood
stark and silent, red bulbs still blinking in futile warning
against the pale sky. Each of them carried the mock silence,
the aftershock of revelation, and the cost paid for knowing. Finally,
Miss Estross set the radio gently in the curb. I
won't take it with me, she said, softly. It listens,
not just broadcasts, like a hole in the world waiting
for you to speak. Marv nodded, then in a raspy,
nearly childlike ton, I can't stay this place as a
tuning fork shakes you up inside, sets things loose. Not
all of them want fixing. Ernie told them he would
stay one more knife, tidy the archives, back up what mattered.
The old anchor's impulse, part duty and part pennance kept
him moving. As the others drifted off Marvcha's car and
out of town. Misses Dross into her daughter's waiting arms alone,
Ernie did just as he said, cleaned, cataloged, recorded one
last piece for the archive. He double checked padlocks on
every door, stowing a robe tape, steep in a box
marked only with a question mark. Yet even these rituals
could not dispel the sense that each time he blinked,
he wristwack into the gap in the world he'd spent
so long circling in a still dark editing bay, he
recorded a final halting ration. It wasn't gorse or numbers
or a curse. That was a test to weapon point
to astoriskinward asterisk on us for reasons never meant for explaining.
I can't fix the years we all lost, or the
harm done to every quiet kitchen that tuned into the
night news. But now I know I was part of it.
May be still, he hesitated. The demptation to delete everything
nearly undid him. Who'll believe it, he murmured, When you
have a story like this, does it ever end? He
clicked off the recorder before the oge to cut the files,
crested past guilt, and circled back to shame. The day
scroll passed, Marv Trouch's word packed and left no dress,
no numbers to call. Ernie found the engineer's locker empty.
By sunset, Massestross's daughter came for her. The reunion awkward
and oddly joyful. Before leaving, Massestross called Ernie from her
daughter as Volvo voice of this. She apologized for a
drifting and static He did not correct her, only remained
in Riverside longer than he promised to, swapping the station's
keys for bureau keys at a sub but above the
corner bakery, watching the billboard club of Patterson cables, the
air thick with a sense of unresolved echo. At the
station itself, nothing moved. The radio for the regions simply
faded further, one flake of paint at a time. The
transmitter was never reactivated, but strange after image is followed
durny for days, some nights through crackling headphones. He caught
a needle with sliver of the station's A bit and
jingle throated into the static kiss between drivers on a
m or read his own name scrawled almost playfully on
receipts and look books that he swore he'd never handled.
Calls and texts from Massestross trickled in. Sometimes there were words,
did you hear the forecast? It's getting warm again? Sometimes
only silence with the faint exale of someone forgetting for
a moment that nothing on the other end will ever
speak back in the right voice. Even in the safety
of the motel, life was a clock or cake of
waking headphones, notes, strange dreams. One rainy midnight, Ernie set
up his batt fields acorder on the motel's end table.
He placed it next to the last set, marked the
dead Air ninety seven, and played the digitized seed men again.
He listened, headphones clamped, heartbeat loud as the subsonic el
is worn through him, and he heard, beneath the electrical
hiss a pattern distorted but deliberate, a voice faint and far,
but inskippably his own. It's not over, stay tuned. His
eyes darted to the window, where his reflection doubled in
the radio dial grinned back, all shadow, muff moving just
before his own lips voic a shade too flat. Two
rehearsed his self, phone buzzed, screen blank. When he pressed answer,
only static responded, then a jingle looping in unbearable clarity.
He sat frozen, caught between dreading what would come next
and the knowledge that maybe it had already come and gone.
As dawn approached, Aknee sat by the dim glow of
the radio. The room remained quiet except for that trace
of old music, and in that hush, he realized he
couldn't tell if he was still listening or already part
of the broadcast himself. As dawn approached, Ernie sat by
the dim glow of the radio. The room remained quiet
except for the trace of old music, and in that hush,
he realized he couldn't tell if he was still listening
or already part of the broadcast himself. He sat there, unmoving,
one hand hovering over the recorder in the silence. When
near the persistent hum in his ears gave him any
sense of time passing. The storm outside faded to a
distant memory, but the memory inside, the pulse that thrombed
on the edge of perception, felt impossible to shake. A
crossed the motel's stained carpet, the edges of shadow met
the thin blue light seeking through one curtains. His eyes
ached gritty from exhaustion, but sleep clung to the periphery,
never settling in. He tried switching off the radio, first
by the dial, then by pulling the cord from the wall.
The signal cut out, but the sensation persisted, a pressure
inside the skull, not outside it. He closed his eyes
and pressed fingertips to his temples, willing himself back into
his own life, his body, his room, the ordinary ache
of a night spent and reraveling other people's secrets. The
phone buzzed, he thought twise, then answered, only silence and
static as before, no trace of voice. He hung up
and set the phone aside. The fear did not recede. Rather,
it settled like humidity. He left the window, crackt from
morning air, letting riversides washed out summer stretch into the
small sacking space thanon. Fatigue drove him out of the room.
He walked to the bakery, lingering at the corner window
with a cup of weak coffee. The wall seemed thinner
after the vault, The people in line, the staff behind counters,
all slightly out of step. Though chatter hethnic. He kept
searching for some further sign. A jingle from a passing car,
of voice on a transistor outside, a look of recognition
in a stranger's eyes. For once, it was all dull, uneasy, yes,
but ordinary. Back at the station, an ambulance saddled outside.
Two meddics moved a stretcher through the front doors. Ernie's
heart dropped until he saw Missestross upright and breathing, sitting
on the curb in her raincoat, face toned to the light.
She watched the ambulance go without speaking. Marv's car was gone.
The building for once seemed truly empty. On air signed
dead tarredim. He approached quietly, hands John into his coat.
You are right, he asked. Miss Estross looked at him, blinking,
as if she had just woken in a new place.
I don't know what day it is, Ione. I keep
dreaming about music in the walls. Sometimes I hear people
saying my name from rooms I know are empty. Her
voice was smaller, nile, unfocused. But I remember what happened.
That's something. Ernie nodded and sat beside her on the curb.
The city, or the part of it that endured, creaked
slowly to life around them. The livery trucks rumbled by overhead.
The radio toussed its lack in the fog. A broken
metronome counting down years he studded. The building's facade. Yellowed
letters flaked off the station sign, a hint of blue
underneath some bread paint from me is forgotten. There was
no hint that anything within it changed, or ever would change,
but Ernie knew it had irrevocably. He offered a hand
pulled Missus drassed up, She steadied herself, the radio cut
tightly under her arm. In that moment he saw how
old she truly become, the hair Gounsilvo, the way her
fingers curled in self protection. I am going to stay
with my daughter a while, she said, not really looking
at him. You call me if anything else happens, I will,
he said, not trusting himself to promise. As she left,
Erny Linger, he circled the station twice, listening for murmurings
and the electrical wires, the scuff of phantom footsteps in
the stairwell. Nothing replied, only the hollow echo of door settling,
a low drone of a town to multa high, gursefulng.
The vault below sat tightly closed, silled again with Mars's
old chain. He did not go inside. With the keys
boxed up, the tape block ark out, he had little
excuse to stay, but he wandered upstairs, back to the
engineering office, and found only absence Mars's locker cleaned out,
the binder's gone, the old battery tester abandoned in the drawer.
He thumbed through the pages one last time, but even
the residue of fear had dulled what power out the station,
once wielded, had leaked await or gune on the ground
deeper than bolts and stacks and recal could ever bring
it up. Night blared down again. This time there was
no rain, only a thin cellular wined rattling stray leaves
against the glass. Ernie stood at the newsroom window that
transmitted tower black against Bruce sky and wondered what it
would mean to walk away once and for all. He
called misses strawstat dusk. She picked up on the second ring. HULLO,
did ye get there safe? There was a pause, distant
clatter in the background, someone laughing faintly. Yes, it's quite here. Quiet,
and I expected. My daughter wants me to sleep in tomorrow,
She coughed. Boy's turning odd. Sometimes the static picks up
again when it gets dark, but I don't think it
will last. I hope not, Ernie said gently. Mav never called.
His truck's absence was noticed the local dinamensioned, he settled
his tap, left his engineering tools for anyone willing to
dig through the closet. A week passed, then another Ernie
drove by MAV's lost address, a blue trailer on the
edge of town, blinds tight and to canstat by the porch.
No name on the mail box alone. Ernie began recording again,
ritual the only salve he made. Duplicate files, copet locks
to numbered thumb drives, stash transcripts with no explanation but
a generic do not raise historic. The boxes of tape's
crew lighter, the wrecks more comprehensible, orderly Again, Nearly every night,
he caught himself listening for the signal, sometimes in moments
just before sleep. The low frequency pulse returned an author
of speakers, but in the base of his skull, he'd
grown almost comfortable with it. If this was the price
for knowing, he would pay. His hands recovered the microcassette,
the one from the station vault. He considered mailing it
to a university, a journalist, even a government archive, but
he never wrapped it, never addressed an envelope. In the end,
it sat in his laundry bag for weeks, the mail
brought strange things, junk fliers, bank statements, and unsigned postcoud
featuring the w R c Enter from the mid eighties.
The postmark was blowed, the messy simple the line is
still open, keep listening, no signature. His breath hitched, but
he tucked it away, pretending for a time that it
had simply been forwarded here by chance, an old friend
cleaning out at desk. After several weeks, the story shape
changed again. The local newspaper emailed blandly interested, and he
looked back at regional media. Ernie did not reply. He
began to haunt the city library, scanning faces. Sometimes certain
he spotted an next staff member slinking through non fiction
Carol Dawson by the silhouette of Lenny Grinds, hunched over
a periodical stable. He thought to interview them, finished the
archive rye, but shied away. Some things were best left
at rests, their outlines blowed by time and distance. Yet
every so often a headline would surface referencing short weave
outages or new public test of the emergency alert system,
and Ernie would stiffen, nots her returning in a way
of cold and sickly the radio station faded from chatter.
No one bought the property, no one tried to launch
a w or's ear. Locals passing the site heard their steps,
crossing themselves in reflective habit. They were Radio for the
Region's slogan vanished as the billboard weathered, flaking to bare aluminum.
All that remained after all the interviews, the taped logs,
the sleepless nights, was growing stillness inside Ernie. But in
that quiet he became aware of how much had changed
for the town, for the station. For himself, it was
in peace. It was simply ann or something close to it.
Then one night, as he scanned between frequencies in an
aimless search for static, a thin slice of voice stuttered
through his headphones. Remained on the line. Not the old
jingle this time, but an inversion, crooked yet intimate, as
if some one behind his own eyes waited for permission
to keep going. He took off the headphones and placed
them on the window sill. They buzzed faintly of vibration,
chasing down the cord like a haunted telephone line. That evening,
unable to sleep, he ran through the last of the
digitized dead air segments, looping the microcassette into his field deck.
This time his focus narrowed the rest of his life,
Shrinking around the sound. He slowed the playback, scanned the
spectral analysis frame by frame. A new pulse resolved underneath
the routine. His pacoda phrase emerged by fractions, test and progress, then,
with a sigh, his own voice undeniably in accadence. He
never recorded final survey, reporting for Judy stand by. He
recoiled from the deck. The voice continued metallic and thin,
until the phone at the bedside rattled with static. The
machinery of a world tape whire ere memory had encircled him.
At processes old as the station itself. He let the
recorder run, documenting every fragment, numbering each take. Each time
the phrase mutated, delayed, layered with his own infliction. It
began to feel as though the line between listener and
speaker had gone, leaving only the old news unca cadence downstairs.
Someone knock once at his door, gentle rap. He waited,
hot knifing his chest, but no one called his name.
No selware creased the frosted class. He did not answer.
He fell asleep with his shoes on. The headphones still
around his neck were corridor blinking red. In his dreams,
he saw the transmitted tower rise from the earth, its
cables twining out through every house, every earpiece, every second,
old kitchen with a lane. News still played. There was
no center, no safe place, only the broadcasts leaping aiming
for a response. Morning came raw and overcast. The world
reluctantly carried on. Ernie shower dressed, made another week cup
of coffee in the motel's rickety kitchenette. He checked the
morning news, but the segment was blunted on familiar voices
where his would have been the same headlines, but somehow colder.
Out on the street, traffic resumed and remarkable reel, but
only stepped carefully, as though the ground itself could shift
with a single tone broadcast from some visible source. The
persistent hum became simply another form of company, never trustible,
never gone. He rarely entered calls. Sometimes the display showed
only a strain of zeros or the name of a
staff member he'd lost. Sometimes silence. Occasionally he picked up
in time to catch the loop remain on the line.
Broadcast continues it. He started talking back at first bit,
and then resign finally, with the broken humor of the survivor.
You have the story, he said one night. That's all
I've got left, Now let me go. The reply was
a dial tone, but the feeling state of pulse softer,
not done with him. All Throughout these days he continued
to record, continued to listen. Each time he finished a tape,
he copied a thumb drive, stash it in a new envelope,
labeled them in careful block letters, archives, last control, slash, instant.
He mailed some to himself at new addresses, or hid
them beneath foe boards at different motels, as if dispersing
the evidence could plunge its impact. He alternated between dread
and a strange comfort. Well, Once the static promised only fear,
Now it promised continuity, a persistence of memory, however violated.
He visited the old station grounds at dusk. No one
else lingered. The stull tasted faintly metallic, and a towers
becon blinked at intervals that felt, for the most part random,
but sometimes, if he counted carefully, if he let himself
fall into the rhythm, the light match impossibly the old
jingle phrase endings. He walked until his feet eight, then
returned to the motel. There he'd sometimes catch missus Dross
in the line. She always seemed to know when he'd
been back. Her voice was in or now, more like
a water mark than a live signal. Any news from Marv,
she asked him. Last time, No, Ernie replied, But I
think he'd want it that way. I keep thinking I'll forget,
she said softly. But then the radio comes on and
there's my husband's laugh somewhere between channels. It's not quite right,
but it's close, and I listen, even though I shouldn't.
They'd say good night, not quite comforted, not quite alone.
So the days ticked by. The story he chased was over,
but the signal that name was pressure orbiting. The silence
remained a living thing. He doubted it would ever die.
Not really. It had slipped out of the frequency into them,
and now it weighed, patient, whirling whatever came next. One
last time, Ernie set the recorder down. In the hush
of his room, he pressed record, watching the red light blink.
He did not speak, nor did he play the tape.
He simply sat breathing with a low level hum feeling
the room shape itself around the possibility that even now
at the broadcast was waiting for its cue. Outside Riverside
resumed its little routines. Letters slid through doors, newsby's Lord
of Bacorno stores, the sky rotating toward another in different night.
He finally turned off the radio, but nothing in him
believed it was gone for good. He waited and listened
and let silence frighten him, not because it threatened, but
because a promised memory could return with the flick of
a dial of voice, his owner or another's echoing. We
now return you to regular programming. But if you hear us,
if the signal slips through, remain in the line, the
broadcast never really ends. And that is the end. Thank
you for listening, and I will see you in the
next one.