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Speaker 1: Hullo. I welcomed stories all the time, Glad you are here,

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Let's get into it. And by the time I forced

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the key into the lock of the old w Alexorbuth,

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my hands were shaking from more than the cold. It

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was late May, and the last of the town spring

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had stubbornly failed to warm the cinder block walls. As

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I swung open the door, Augustus stale paper centered or

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rushed out some combination of dust, decaying carpet, and a

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note of something chemical sharp, nearly metallic. I flicked in

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the single surviving lamp, spreading a one circle over the

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battered audio console and reel stack like tombstones across a

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battered folding table. Call at nostalgia a compulsion. But when

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the museum called me about archaving the old station's assets,

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I said, yes, some glimmer of the person I'd been

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twenty years and a dozen lives ago raised his hand.

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I packed up at dusk, closed the door of my

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overheated apartment, and left a note on the kitchen table.

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Back late to working the tapes, there were more reels

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than I expected, hundreds each marked by the pragmatic hands

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un labeling of midminute nineties radio red marker for advertisements,

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green festation id, black grease pencil for shows. Some more

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to wark to read. Others had been purposed so many

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times that old titles bled through. I started easy. There's

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a ritual to queuing up a reel. The tactile slip

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of the tape threaded onto the playback spindle, the mild

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resistance of splicing blocks and magnetic heads. The old air

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just seemed to settle once the plasma hiss of analog

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static filled the both my ears, recognizing three years of absence,

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the faint, cozy jingle that prefaced every night voices broadcast

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w lex R fourteen ten a m. This is night Voices,

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to stay with us in Sogniac travelers, We've got another

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iron in the dark. The tape wine at the end

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of the line, wobbling slightly, but it was all there

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at first, Jack voice, jack roll, and a settling into

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its familiar hammock of gentle psardonic warmth. The year stripped away.

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I remembered leaning against a console as a twenty two

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year old, watching the switchboard blink with calls. But about

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five minutes in the tape, he cut the music faded.

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What should have been a sponsorship jingle slithered sideways, overtaken

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by a pulsing burst of static. Not the friendly rounded

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his of dead air, but something oily, pressing at distortion

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in the bandwidth, as if the tape were being cheved midplay.

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I paused and wounded back, fingers flinching as the static

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prickled in my headphones. Back again. Jack's voice softer, now

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almost slurred, drouted by a peculiar cadence I didn't remember.

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There was an unnatural hitch to each word. He was

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reading a listener's letter routine, but his syllable stretched appoints.

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They stuttered and collapsed inwards, so that home became h

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h h holme, cracking into gasp. For a moment, I

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thought my memory was playing tricks on me. But then

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Jack began to whisper in a turn, both breathy and

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dead flat, sliding off into a register I'd never heard

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from him. My skin drew tight across my arms. Something

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knocked against the far wall, faint but rhythmic. I blinked

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at the booth window, half expecting to see how light

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sweep the gravel lot, but only the empty black miss

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pressed in my fingers hovered over the playback volume on

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the tape. The operator's board lights up. Frantic energy crossed

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up from the open lines. A woman's breathless voice flooded through.

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Or you getting this? Are you seeing them there? By?

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Your car of the words tangled with another collar amanska reply,

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there's someone out here, Jack, someone at the window of

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the overlap drawn in a rising interference, a low, undulating

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moan that pulls beneath the surface like a tidal on

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a toe. Slow down, folks, Jack tried to say. The

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word fooks pattered across several frequencies, decaying into reversed syllables,

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mouffled and stretch. Then the outside sound. A new voice,

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keening distant, as if picked up from the outside. Throwd

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it through. It's not safe tonight, don't answer, don't The

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line snapped. A ragged spike of static obliterated everything. A

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third light flared on the board. Call our id immutable.

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Jack breathed in and in the fuzzy silence, another voice

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came through, the same tone as before, neither male nor female,

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both flat and suggestive, echoing this is not for you.

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I couldn't move. My eyes went to the reel, circling

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and circling. The tip shuddered as if in protest, and

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then cut out midward. For a few endless seconds, only

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the watery his has remained. The boothsair grew icyy, condensation

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filmed the glass. I realized had begun to tremble. In

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that single instant, I knew I was not remembering the

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night correctly. The room, the booth, all of me had

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just tipped up into something that had never left. I

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wound the tape back and ejected it upon slick but unsteady,

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the label read only June fourteenth, nineteen ninety seven, final broadcast. Somehow,

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though I was alone, I had the unmistakable sense that

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something on the other side of the glass, some presents,

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was still listening ash For the first years after the shutdown,

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I lived in the shadows of a Uelix saw only

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by accident. The station was the old part of my life,

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the one I had set aside after they locked the

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doors and shut down the tower. A decade of small

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towns and smaller jobs followed. Box and groceries at Hawthorne's

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inventory in the back of the hardware store, freelance copy

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editing for the County paper. Nothing with irows after dusk.

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W u elix Saw had been a harbor for local

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oddballs and half chances, our little station that could. I'd

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started as a fill in producing my last year of

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college and then stayed mostly for the night shift camaraderie.

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That's what I lost when everything fell apart, the feeling

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that things made sense at three a m. With tie

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voices f in from places you could barely believe existed.

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The habit of being a nocturnal animal never left. Even now,

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I can't sleep much before midnight, and the shape of

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the world never feels quite right until the sky's gone

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black and silent. I haven't had a TV in years.

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What comfort I allow myself comes from the Persian shuffle

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of old radio cycling to empty frequency bands. There's a

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particular stripe of static to slippery to describe that sometimes

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makes me think for just a second that night Voices

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is about to return. My place these days is three

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blocks down from Maine, above a now defunct bakery. While

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pipper peels in the corners will a nullium bubbles in

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the kitchenette. The raind is small, and the air always

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faintly sweet. Vanilla burnt to sugar. I keep my windows

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open most nights, throwing in the low drone of cars

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headed for the highway that I live the rest of

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the town. These are the aftershocks of a life lived

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in some one else's echo. Main Street is more memory

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than living now, a straight line past empty shops, their

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signs sun bleached into unreadable ghosts. The old River Rooster

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Diner boarded up a dry cleaner as I'd used twice enough,

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estuned with yellow tape. No danger, just abandonment. The w

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Wilok saw a sign, a battered slab of metal that,

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once caught the early sun, sits prop behind a wall

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of thorny needles and peeling paint. The thing they never

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tell you about losing a job is that you lose

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a language. The peculiar shorthand motor mouthed and jokes, the

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way each of us could tell from a single lilt

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what kind of night it would be. That's what the

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booth was for, scribbling secrets to ourselves. The tower climbing

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out of the river fog like a mast head. It

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wasn't just a job, It was a town's pulse. One

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summer nineteen ninety seven, every polese here seemed to skip

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at once. People drifted, a friend's house went dark for

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the last time. Some just stopped returning Coll's ghost who

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left by walking into Sunday and never looking back. Even

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the ones who stayed changed faces, got longer, the air thin.

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The late shift at the safe right told stories about

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names they saw in the mirror after midnight, and then

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no one said them again. The museum gig wasn't part

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of any plan. Joan, the new director, had put the

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word of local history minimum wage. She wanted to digitize clippings,

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evidence of life in a county before the New century

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erased it. Sometimes that men scanning blurry photographs of nowray's homes.

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Other weeks it was letters from the war, sun faded receipts,

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or the smere minutes of failed town halls. W Reli

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Saw's ark off box arrived the week after a two

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day rain storm, accompanied by little more than a scold

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note handle with care. Museum only wants the clean stuff.

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I met the delivery driver in the hall. He unloaded

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a bat of cardboard crate, double taped and stamped with

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an inventory tag that curl from moisture inside reels wrapped

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and crumbled schedules, broadcast logs, pockmart by, spilled coffee, a

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handful of tape to win two tight. The box was heavy,

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too heavy from the stalgia full of strange promises. I

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left the box and opened just for an hour, enough

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time to make tea and contemplate old patterns, Running out

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to check if the boost lights still lit the parking lot,

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listening for voices, whispering through the window, even when I

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knew there was nothing there, catching the Barry's syllable of

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the old night jingle in an otherwise anti frequency. Some

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habits you never owed run the pass may stay locked

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in a box for a time, but given the smallest

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opportunity and kneels beside you, whispers something that never quite

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makes sense. That afternoon, as I set up to SA,

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I sought the tapes, a posed part of me, not

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quite believing the old ghost would stay put. Still, the

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boxwaded even in the hass new daylight felt heavier than

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it had of rye to bee ash. Over the next

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week I dipped in and out of the reels, chasing

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a half remembered sense of home. What I crave, if untruthful,

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was the restoration of some order, though night voices arcout

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should have been comfort free to mass to give the

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landscape of half cracked final tunes, late night animal rescue

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requests and callers anxious about minor hands, lights or lonely hearts.

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But as I transferred the early nineteen ninety seven broadcasts,

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a web began to form, something bent beneath the surface,

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never mentioned, but insistent in its repetition. At first, the

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tapes played as I expected, Jack's signature opening languid conversations,

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the reliable clockwork of AD's culture in hardware for all

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your fencer post needs. But in the midnight er, a

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cross multiple dates, discore creptain long droning tone snuck under

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the music glitches in the usual AD schedule, the host

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jokes landing off laughter smothered by silence is just a

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shade too long. I jot down time stemps twelve seven,

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background below blue valentious, can't tell if deliberate twelve eleven,

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Jack's voice clapped, slurs, iy, I just tune. In the

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twelve sixteen collar, anxious says, don't open it. Don't you answer?

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On the May nineteen reel, the scheduled weather break vanish

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replaced by a pulsing fron that reminded me of hearing

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the tower hum through the floor boards as a kid.

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The patterns sharpened over the sequence. In May's last week

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five nights in a row, night voices lost its soft

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rambing gait. Instead, the callers surged an urgency on tape

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after tape, somewhat sometimes irregular, sometimes unreadable, and the distorted

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call roster would plead we hear them again tonight. They

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are at the back staircase. Who are they, please, Jack,

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Just cut the feet just for once, please, just and

199
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then nothing abrupt silences with needles of static jam between

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static and some each please seemed to echo down a

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corridor from which the others tried to escape but couldn't.

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The archave loopbook, methodical in its before and after, went

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blank at those points. May twenty three, only eleven forty

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one p M recorded, then a long gap until sign off.

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June two guests call logged, then acted by a black tape.

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She n nine page torn one night, a regular voice trembling,

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spent most of a minute whispering that she didn't want

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to be here any more, not while the sounds are

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outside Her sentence bubbled into a warbling that the playback

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had strained to parse. When I checked her name against

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later a locks, she never called again. One tape late

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May ended, so suddenly it made my head front pop.

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The tape snat dead just as the new caller's line connected.

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There was never a formal goodbye from Jack, just a trailing,

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desperate note in the air. Whatever script we thought we

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followed in those days, something was someone had begun improvising

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USh a certain point, nostalgic gives way to obsession. Each

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evening I sat hunched over the walnut desk in the

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little study alcove, scrolling out time lines and color coding notes.

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I tried to bring process to what was essentially a

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shape in the fog, to try us that refused. The

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line up the airliest tapes from Spring nineteen ninety seven

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eight tenths. Then the logs grew in coherent coal records contradictory,

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and entire nights went and accounted for. I started by

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cross referencing the on air logs with the Museums program schedules.

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There were gaps, not just mistapes, but entire blocks, missing

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nights listed as having pre recorded content when according to

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what little documentation survived. Jack had been live in a booth.

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The more I looked, the more the seems frayed. To

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follow up, I called him Favors. The old faces of

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w LEX are within. On the ground, moose had drifted,

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found new stations, or simply moved away. But I started

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with the engineer Hank. Last I'd heard him tending bar

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at the Eagle's Lodge. The place was swollen with a

235
00:11:27,600 --> 00:11:29,879
kind of quiet that feels like warning. But he agreed

236
00:11:29,879 --> 00:11:32,360
to step outside with his lucky strikes and talk body alley.

237
00:11:33,039 --> 00:11:35,879
You really want to dig into those nights, Aanks quinted,

238
00:11:35,879 --> 00:11:38,679
his eyes tight with something more than cigarette smoke. We

239
00:11:38,759 --> 00:11:41,159
all heard things, sure, but the tapes don't show half

240
00:11:41,200 --> 00:11:42,960
of what was in the air. Sometimes you finished a

241
00:11:43,000 --> 00:11:45,200
shift and there was just a tunk missing, like something

242
00:11:45,200 --> 00:11:47,240
cut the night into snipped you right out. I lost

243
00:11:47,240 --> 00:11:49,720
a whole friday once got home, didn't remember the drive.

244
00:11:50,279 --> 00:11:52,600
He shrugged the memory off, but every new question found

245
00:11:52,639 --> 00:11:55,639
him looking elsewhere. On the way back inside, he added,

246
00:11:55,679 --> 00:11:58,799
if you find the tapes, just don't blame after midnight. Yeah.

247
00:11:59,279 --> 00:12:02,360
Next came Ale, who had been the receptionist, half office manager,

248
00:12:02,559 --> 00:12:05,519
half stationed inn mother. I caught her after lunch at

249
00:12:05,559 --> 00:12:08,519
Betty's Cafe, working through her crossword, and more interested in

250
00:12:08,519 --> 00:12:11,440
discussing the weather than anything to do with radio. When

251
00:12:11,440 --> 00:12:13,559
I pressed, she protested she'd been out sick most of

252
00:12:13,559 --> 00:12:16,639
that period. She assured me waves of flu. Her eyes

253
00:12:16,720 --> 00:12:19,559
darted away each time I pressed on strange nights, avoiding

254
00:12:19,559 --> 00:12:22,519
my gaze. All I remember is the calls people come

255
00:12:22,519 --> 00:12:25,519
back changed different, like they were still hearing something I couldn't.

256
00:12:26,200 --> 00:12:29,039
She stopped there abruptly, as if realizing she'd uncovered a nerve.

257
00:12:29,639 --> 00:12:32,919
The next clue, though, found me an anonymous envelope slid

258
00:12:32,960 --> 00:12:35,159
under the museum's door, just ahead of my first eight

259
00:12:35,159 --> 00:12:38,480
A m shift. Inside was nothing but a faded security

260
00:12:38,480 --> 00:12:40,919
by Jamie Caplan, the lost inton, hired before the summer

261
00:12:40,960 --> 00:12:44,360
of nineteen ninety seven. The back was sticky, faintly stained

262
00:12:44,360 --> 00:12:46,799
the color of old blood. There was a scribbled list

263
00:12:46,799 --> 00:12:50,399
of first names, Hank, Jack, Amy, Eddy Kem. Each name

264
00:12:50,480 --> 00:12:53,519
was crossed out in pencil except one mine. My hands

265
00:12:53,559 --> 00:12:56,279
ran cold as I scanned the return address. None. The

266
00:12:56,440 --> 00:12:58,759
envelope was of the kind tuct behind CHECKOK counters and

267
00:12:58,799 --> 00:13:01,679
overlooked for days. My instincts set to coal Joan at

268
00:13:01,720 --> 00:13:03,799
the museum, but something made me keep the badge and

269
00:13:03,799 --> 00:13:06,039
slip the list in a pocket of my coat. The

270
00:13:06,080 --> 00:13:08,919
following morning, had I come through the station maintenance logs,

271
00:13:08,919 --> 00:13:11,879
something else snagged my attention. In late May of nineteen

272
00:13:11,960 --> 00:13:14,720
ninety seven, some one had loved a service call emergency

273
00:13:14,720 --> 00:13:17,679
repairs signal Box three a m accessed by non staff

274
00:13:17,759 --> 00:13:20,639
per management, but the last entry from the maintenance man,

275
00:13:20,679 --> 00:13:23,440
Pete maclure simply read terror still humming, locked in hold,

276
00:13:24,039 --> 00:13:27,519
no signature, no follow up. Pete never returned to the station.

277
00:13:28,200 --> 00:13:31,240
Soon after, I found stacks of official forms gathering mold

278
00:13:31,240 --> 00:13:33,799
and the ark I've been withdrawn missing persons reports, all

279
00:13:33,840 --> 00:13:37,360
filed in the weeks after the final broadcast. Amy Caplan's

280
00:13:37,399 --> 00:13:39,600
was there, as well as Eddie's, a junior host who'd

281
00:13:39,600 --> 00:13:41,480
gone out for smoke and hadn't come back for her

282
00:13:41,519 --> 00:13:44,399
next segment. The Woodrow requests were signed, but in a

283
00:13:44,399 --> 00:13:47,240
handwritting I didn't recognize shakey letters press too deep into

284
00:13:47,279 --> 00:13:50,399
the page that after Iowa's visit, a log only deepened

285
00:13:50,440 --> 00:13:53,759
the unease. Entry after entry marked between midnight and four

286
00:13:53,879 --> 00:13:57,799
was scrawled easily faked signatures eddie jack, sometimes a dash,

287
00:13:57,960 --> 00:14:02,360
sometimes just an initial. No witnesses, no camera on the lot.

288
00:14:02,399 --> 00:14:05,240
Back Then that night, after a heavy dinner and free

289
00:14:05,240 --> 00:14:07,840
failed attempts at sleep, I dreamed of the booth. In

290
00:14:07,879 --> 00:14:10,759
a dream. It was always raining. I stood behind the glass,

291
00:14:10,879 --> 00:14:13,720
static swirling outside, watching a figure outline in the far

292
00:14:13,840 --> 00:14:16,279
edge of the lot. Every time the phone rang, a

293
00:14:16,360 --> 00:14:18,840
voice I knew but couldn't name, whispered only stay with us.

294
00:14:19,519 --> 00:14:21,879
It was cold in the dream. I wok equally called

295
00:14:21,919 --> 00:14:24,639
veydroom window clothes. But the winds touched still in my bones.

296
00:14:25,320 --> 00:14:28,480
Ash archevil work when you truly pursued, is not for

297
00:14:28,519 --> 00:14:31,679
the nervous. Each box you and pack multiplies the question,

298
00:14:32,159 --> 00:14:34,799
never the answer, but the truth. I was circling lay

299
00:14:34,879 --> 00:14:37,279
just beneath the surface of the official story. W le

300
00:14:37,279 --> 00:14:40,399
Exhauce shut down wasn't tidy, nor was it planned. On

301
00:14:40,480 --> 00:14:42,720
an evening weighed more by dread than curiosity. I on

302
00:14:42,759 --> 00:14:44,960
earth the battered on label tape from a crack plastic

303
00:14:45,039 --> 00:14:47,360
sleeve deep in the bottom of a stack, marked surplus

304
00:14:47,360 --> 00:14:51,240
to be destroyed. There was another note, faded pencil asterisks

305
00:14:51,240 --> 00:14:54,799
stress do not archive astrisk ASTRSK the real isssel felt wrong,

306
00:14:54,879 --> 00:14:57,159
the tape brittle, grain shedding to powder as I thredded

307
00:14:57,159 --> 00:15:00,759
it in the deck. My nurse crackled. The museum had

308
00:15:00,759 --> 00:15:04,320
given me leewe, but warned against salvaging lost causes. Still,

309
00:15:04,360 --> 00:15:06,960
I couldn't help myself. It seemed as if the tape

310
00:15:07,000 --> 00:15:09,919
had been waiting just for this moment. Getting the playback

311
00:15:10,000 --> 00:15:11,840
was a struggle. I had to gently cook the heads

312
00:15:11,840 --> 00:15:14,120
into alignment, pressing play, and holding my breath as the

313
00:15:14,159 --> 00:15:17,200
opening pop snap through the monitor. Instead of the usual

314
00:15:17,200 --> 00:15:20,080
station idea of the old familiar jingle, alow muttering filled

315
00:15:20,120 --> 00:15:23,240
the headphones. At first it was Jack's voice, but the

316
00:15:23,240 --> 00:15:26,399
weight was different, held like a string under tension. Good evening,

317
00:15:26,679 --> 00:15:29,360
night travelers, he said. Though the words choked, skipping half

318
00:15:29,360 --> 00:15:32,840
a syllable. The rhythm fell apart, sharp statics Byke slancing

319
00:15:32,840 --> 00:15:36,240
across the sound like grazor wires. Then a second voice entered,

320
00:15:36,240 --> 00:15:39,639
a calm, deliberate unheard. This was neither Jack nor any

321
00:15:39,639 --> 00:15:43,440
known caller. Its turn was measured decade and clien. It

322
00:15:43,519 --> 00:15:45,679
felt like listening to the first words of Afforms by

323
00:15:45,720 --> 00:15:48,519
code for only a few to understand where through now

324
00:15:48,639 --> 00:15:52,639
said the unknown were almost home, Jack stammering his speech,

325
00:15:52,679 --> 00:15:55,559
bending his own voice slowly overwritten, and not our words

326
00:15:55,559 --> 00:15:58,480
to night, not even my voice any more the tension

327
00:15:58,519 --> 00:16:01,279
crew from behind them. A violent pounding shook the door

328
00:16:01,279 --> 00:16:04,080
of the isolated sound of palm slapping heavy wood. I

329
00:16:04,120 --> 00:16:07,840
recognize molusy'll ProVoice a mistakable twisting into harsh, desperate cry

330
00:16:07,919 --> 00:16:11,080
stop for chow stop It an metallic scraping noise, and gulfed.

331
00:16:11,120 --> 00:16:13,600
The next few seconds, the air sucked out of the

332
00:16:13,679 --> 00:16:17,600
room and the tape warble dangerously. The unfamiliar voice pressed closer,

333
00:16:17,639 --> 00:16:20,559
as if speaking directly into my ear. We always find

334
00:16:20,600 --> 00:16:23,600
new hosts. Is at your turn? Now? On those words,

335
00:16:23,679 --> 00:16:26,279
the tapes screeched, melting down into a maelstrom of static,

336
00:16:26,399 --> 00:16:30,200
the edge's culling as escorched. I sat frozen, headphones clamped,

337
00:16:30,200 --> 00:16:32,039
the after image of those words echoing in the booth's

338
00:16:32,039 --> 00:16:35,399
haunted silence. Statics seemed to close in all around, as

339
00:16:35,399 --> 00:16:38,519
tangible as the aching bones in my knees. I realized

340
00:16:38,559 --> 00:16:41,039
with a clardy colt and unkind that someone, maybe more

341
00:16:41,080 --> 00:16:43,759
than one, had been systematically cutting over, dubby or erasing

342
00:16:43,799 --> 00:16:46,480
the crucial parts of the record. Each gap or botch

343
00:16:46,519 --> 00:16:48,720
tape wasn't an accident, but an intention to keep a

344
00:16:48,720 --> 00:16:51,679
truth insulated, to keep a message from escaping, And here

345
00:16:51,720 --> 00:16:54,440
I was chasing it. For an instant, I stared at

346
00:16:54,440 --> 00:16:57,360
the blinking console, wondering about the lines that had never disconnected,

347
00:16:57,399 --> 00:16:59,360
the voices that still waited to be heard, and just

348
00:16:59,360 --> 00:17:01,480
too or why was listening on the other side of

349
00:17:01,519 --> 00:17:04,480
the static. I pushed away from the console, knee steff

350
00:17:04,519 --> 00:17:06,559
the snap of my headphone cable smarting at my jar.

351
00:17:07,240 --> 00:17:10,200
I needed a real air. Not the dusty, history clocked

352
00:17:10,200 --> 00:17:13,200
atmosphere of the booth, but the station, even after all

353
00:17:13,240 --> 00:17:16,079
these years, had a way of pressing back. I left

354
00:17:16,119 --> 00:17:18,319
the light on behind me and crept down the central hallway,

355
00:17:18,400 --> 00:17:20,880
past the crack display cases of forgotten Lissner contesse and

356
00:17:20,920 --> 00:17:23,960
committee plaques, to the loading dock. The door steer latch

357
00:17:23,960 --> 00:17:26,480
still stuck, complaining with the rusty squeal as I shoved

358
00:17:26,480 --> 00:17:29,559
it open. Margie Knight met me for grapping the slow,

359
00:17:29,759 --> 00:17:33,200
sluggish parking lot. No saws, just a sliver of sodium

360
00:17:33,240 --> 00:17:35,960
vapor slice in the dark, painting oily walls on puddles

361
00:17:36,039 --> 00:17:38,640
left by early rain. I leaned into the open air,

362
00:17:38,720 --> 00:17:40,759
hart knocking and evenly in my chest, as if Towo

363
00:17:40,799 --> 00:17:42,599
remembered an old were the more night Long tried to

364
00:17:42,640 --> 00:17:46,079
erase night noises, drifted up, a lone dog barking two

365
00:17:46,079 --> 00:17:48,599
blocks down, the metallic tick of someone's bicycle chain in

366
00:17:48,599 --> 00:17:51,039
the alley. Out here, away from the booth. The world

367
00:17:51,079 --> 00:17:53,079
should have felt ordinary, but I couldn't shake the sense

368
00:17:53,119 --> 00:17:56,039
of being overheard. I popped a nicketine come square and

369
00:17:56,079 --> 00:17:58,039
traced the edge of the security badge in my pocket.

370
00:17:58,039 --> 00:18:00,759
The old inturn s name Amy raised in cracked plastic

371
00:18:00,799 --> 00:18:03,240
under my thumb. When I first met her a bred

372
00:18:03,240 --> 00:18:05,400
eye College gate, she shown up for her first shift

373
00:18:05,400 --> 00:18:08,680
carrying a batted thermis in a philosophy text. She was twenty,

374
00:18:08,799 --> 00:18:12,079
maybe so eager should volunteer for every night slot. Her

375
00:18:12,119 --> 00:18:14,759
absence hadn't made sense, but I had done what people do.

376
00:18:14,799 --> 00:18:16,839
I accepted the staff line that she'd gone home for

377
00:18:16,880 --> 00:18:19,839
the summer may be transferred. In the months after w

378
00:18:20,000 --> 00:18:22,599
Lexha's shuddering, I tried not to wonder about Amy, or

379
00:18:22,720 --> 00:18:24,960
Eddy or all the others whose stores slipped away into

380
00:18:25,039 --> 00:18:27,920
rumor and then silence. Back at the archive table, I

381
00:18:27,920 --> 00:18:30,400
flipped open my notebook, a basset five star, the kind

382
00:18:30,440 --> 00:18:32,599
we all used in the booth, Still washed faintly in

383
00:18:32,599 --> 00:18:35,759
ink from prayer hands, I set about transcribing portions of

384
00:18:35,799 --> 00:18:38,000
there do not okav tape, resisting the urge to skip

385
00:18:38,000 --> 00:18:39,640
the fragments where the voices of a laped in that

386
00:18:39,720 --> 00:18:43,079
broken off kidden style lines repeated we're home now. I

387
00:18:43,160 --> 00:18:46,319
confess what you hear on A mad impulse allayed them

388
00:18:46,319 --> 00:18:48,720
of a snippets from broadcast locks, reading aloud in a

389
00:18:48,720 --> 00:18:51,720
low murmur, trying to trianulate whatever pattern there might have been,

390
00:18:52,240 --> 00:18:55,039
but the sen shimid out of reach. Every time. Messages

391
00:18:55,119 --> 00:18:57,880
like that wornful listeners. They were for those who'd sat

392
00:18:57,920 --> 00:18:59,880
in the booth alone, with only the dull red glove

393
00:19:00,039 --> 00:19:03,119
the aorn Ai a bulb for company. Soon, each time

394
00:19:03,119 --> 00:19:05,279
I played an ark, I've reel any reeled background static

395
00:19:05,279 --> 00:19:09,119
began spitting out subtle, shifting noises. Once it sounded like

396
00:19:09,200 --> 00:19:13,160
fingers sliding slowly over glass. Another time a breath heavier

397
00:19:13,160 --> 00:19:16,440
than the tape could carry. I checked the equipment, no faults,

398
00:19:16,839 --> 00:19:19,319
no interference, no reason for the crawl of gosfluche I

399
00:19:19,359 --> 00:19:21,559
felt every time I rewound and replayed those minutes of

400
00:19:21,559 --> 00:19:25,599
mangled audio, sleep eluded me. There's nice. I thrushed beneath

401
00:19:25,640 --> 00:19:28,519
scratched sheets, pressing my front flat to my ear, cycling

402
00:19:28,599 --> 00:19:32,039
randomly through frequency bands fourteen ten A M gave back

403
00:19:32,079 --> 00:19:35,960
nothing but silence, interrupted every so often by jettery. Water repulses,

404
00:19:36,039 --> 00:19:39,319
almost like an underwater Morse code. If I concentrated, I

405
00:19:39,400 --> 00:19:42,160
sometimes caught a word, just one, repeated until I feared

406
00:19:42,200 --> 00:19:44,319
had slip out of reality. If I listened a moment longer,

407
00:19:44,920 --> 00:19:48,000
I started keeping a running list in my notebook. Never

408
00:19:48,039 --> 00:19:52,480
sign off, but let them inside. Voices don't end. A

409
00:19:52,519 --> 00:19:56,160
host is in host. It was meant to ground me. Instead,

410
00:19:56,319 --> 00:19:58,519
each new phrase tangled with the lass like a gnat,

411
00:19:58,559 --> 00:20:00,559
pulling me back towards something I knew. Soho I shouldn't

412
00:20:00,559 --> 00:20:03,480
try to name one. Afternoon, I returned to the museum

413
00:20:03,599 --> 00:20:06,160
box in hand, intent on asking Joan if she'd heard

414
00:20:06,200 --> 00:20:08,920
anything odd in her own rounds of tape digitization. The

415
00:20:09,000 --> 00:20:11,160
lobby was emptiq except for the faint smell of lemon

416
00:20:11,160 --> 00:20:13,920
polish and the hum of the ancient radiators in the

417
00:20:13,920 --> 00:20:17,400
Oddfact's office. Joan kept her headphone slung loosely around her neck.

418
00:20:17,440 --> 00:20:20,720
A gaze flicking between computer monitor and paper lock. She

419
00:20:20,839 --> 00:20:23,880
barely looked up as I entered. Did someone drop off

420
00:20:23,880 --> 00:20:27,000
the archive box personally or did it just show? I

421
00:20:27,079 --> 00:20:29,200
tried for casual, but my voice came out too sharp.

422
00:20:29,759 --> 00:20:34,039
Joan page backward through her calendar, delivery schedule, third party career,

423
00:20:34,200 --> 00:20:38,759
No signature, no idea, she paused, frowning, nothing odd about

424
00:20:38,759 --> 00:20:40,920
it unless he kept the box. Being thirty pounds of

425
00:20:40,920 --> 00:20:43,960
mold and headaches. I hesitated it, stuck between wanting to

426
00:20:43,960 --> 00:20:45,920
protect her from the ENnies pulsing from the tapes, and

427
00:20:46,000 --> 00:20:48,640
needing to share my own doubts. If any tape seemed

428
00:20:48,680 --> 00:20:52,000
damaged or strange, don't play them after dark, I finally said,

429
00:20:52,279 --> 00:20:54,960
circling Hank's warning in my mind. If you do, make

430
00:20:55,000 --> 00:20:58,000
a note of it for the records. That so, she smirked,

431
00:20:58,039 --> 00:21:01,160
then seemed to notice my tension and relented. I suppose

432
00:21:01,200 --> 00:21:03,160
you all had your share of storess Radio keeps its

433
00:21:03,200 --> 00:21:06,359
own ghosts. Back in the storeroom as a rearranged reels

434
00:21:06,359 --> 00:21:09,559
for scanning, I found my fingers drawn almost involuntarily, to

435
00:21:09,559 --> 00:21:12,519
a folder of after Iyo's incident reports, worked behind anonymous

436
00:21:12,519 --> 00:21:16,279
blueprints and forgotten from traising letters slit between pages a

437
00:21:16,359 --> 00:21:18,799
quarter page memo written in the old manager's briskrid pen

438
00:21:19,480 --> 00:21:23,200
Astoris Knight transmission must not be interrupted. Repeat All hosts

439
00:21:23,200 --> 00:21:27,039
remain in booth between midnight and sign off. If interruption occurs,

440
00:21:27,079 --> 00:21:30,559
follow the original script. Under no circumstances is the booth

441
00:21:30,599 --> 00:21:34,599
door to be opened during power fluctuations astors. It was

442
00:21:34,680 --> 00:21:38,480
dated me twenty eighth, nineteen ninety seven. I tried recalling

443
00:21:38,519 --> 00:21:41,519
that night, pinning the eye between what the official recroclaimed

444
00:21:41,519 --> 00:21:44,839
and what my memory supplied. The script I remembered lived

445
00:21:44,839 --> 00:21:47,400
in a lock drawer beneath the main console. We joked

446
00:21:47,400 --> 00:21:49,799
about the apocalypse, copy cribbed and safe in case of

447
00:21:49,839 --> 00:21:53,039
signal loss, just another part of old f CC compliance paranoia.

448
00:21:53,640 --> 00:21:56,240
I'd never read the whole thing, finding it mostly gibberish,

449
00:21:56,359 --> 00:21:58,960
with a worldly, repetitive refrain stay with us, speak only

450
00:21:59,039 --> 00:22:02,480
as heard. The restlessness inside me hardened into something urgent.

451
00:22:03,200 --> 00:22:05,599
Whatever happened those nights was more than a technical glitch

452
00:22:05,680 --> 00:22:08,599
or a local radio station's demise. If there had been

453
00:22:08,640 --> 00:22:11,160
any system, a ritual, even it was half lost, half

454
00:22:11,160 --> 00:22:14,240
intentionally deleted. I needed to see the booth by daylight.

455
00:22:14,279 --> 00:22:16,200
To rude out what clues it might surrender to some one,

456
00:22:16,279 --> 00:22:18,559
insisting on in varying what no one else wanted to touch.

457
00:22:19,319 --> 00:22:21,920
That next morning, I drove to w Relixor in sunshine

458
00:22:21,920 --> 00:22:24,359
for the first time in years. The lot rotted by weeds,

459
00:22:24,400 --> 00:22:27,720
the station windowless and hunched beneath drooping powle lines. The

460
00:22:27,759 --> 00:22:30,200
glass door yielded to my key hinge, a reluctant as ever,

461
00:22:30,839 --> 00:22:33,319
thus mote spun in fat columns over the clotted reception,

462
00:22:33,599 --> 00:22:35,519
the soul catch still burying the print of the last

463
00:22:35,519 --> 00:22:38,480
staff meeting years ago. I lingered in the operator's alco

464
00:22:38,559 --> 00:22:41,240
of find the corkboordvault schedules, a holiday card and a

465
00:22:41,319 --> 00:22:44,279
faded handwritten schedule for a night voices twelve two a

466
00:22:44,480 --> 00:22:46,799
m with initials beside each night. Mine scrolled on a

467
00:22:46,799 --> 00:22:50,319
handful of Tuesdays Hank's engineering cause it still reaked disorder

468
00:22:50,359 --> 00:22:52,960
and burnt insulation. I picked my way through the tangle

469
00:22:53,000 --> 00:22:55,319
of hardware to the main breaker, squinting at a yellow

470
00:22:55,400 --> 00:22:58,079
logbook taped to the pipe above, page after page of

471
00:22:58,079 --> 00:23:01,759
electricians handwriting, increasingly frinned. Close to that last summer feedback

472
00:23:01,839 --> 00:23:05,880
monitor cycling external access deny on the final entry compromised.

473
00:23:05,880 --> 00:23:08,880
Do not attempt to recite some unlikely Hank had written

474
00:23:08,880 --> 00:23:10,799
over it. A day or two later at Gunham, Stay

475
00:23:10,839 --> 00:23:13,599
out the air on the stairs with stuffiers still heat

476
00:23:13,680 --> 00:23:17,480
dragging through the thick still morning from above. The afternoon

477
00:23:17,519 --> 00:23:20,039
sun pierced through half shattered vent, displaying jagged light across

478
00:23:20,079 --> 00:23:23,359
the control boospatter carpet. I traced the lines to the

479
00:23:23,400 --> 00:23:27,000
consoles basin squaded, searching for the emergency script. It took

480
00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:28,920
a few minutes of grouping and cursing that my hand

481
00:23:28,960 --> 00:23:32,000
closed on a batted brick. Hold free. It yielded the

482
00:23:32,000 --> 00:23:35,400
script folder, a manilla envelope, rubber banded. Freeing with age

483
00:23:35,400 --> 00:23:38,240
and sweat, I sack cross legged under the desk and

484
00:23:38,359 --> 00:23:41,599
wrapping the envelope. The first page was the opening an

485
00:23:41,599 --> 00:23:44,680
event of transmission interruption. Read the following repeat from outpoint

486
00:23:44,759 --> 00:23:48,200
until the signal stabilizes or official communication is restored. The

487
00:23:48,240 --> 00:23:51,319
next sheets weren't much better blocks of text, Sometimes words

488
00:23:51,319 --> 00:23:53,680
repeated three times over as if to anchor the speech.

489
00:23:54,400 --> 00:23:56,440
It read more like a chant than a technical script.

490
00:23:57,039 --> 00:23:59,279
The refrain stay with us, stay with us, speak only

491
00:23:59,319 --> 00:24:02,839
as heard, Stay with us, repeat sections scratched with additions

492
00:24:02,839 --> 00:24:05,240
in different hands. If something knocks at the booth, do

493
00:24:05,319 --> 00:24:07,920
not open. If voices shift, do not just frequency, Do

494
00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:10,960
not change the skirt. Speak only as heard. The practical

495
00:24:10,960 --> 00:24:14,599
part of my brain rebelled. Scripts were for emergencies, a ceisy, regulation, daubery,

496
00:24:14,640 --> 00:24:17,039
but the pattern was immistakable. This was language meant to

497
00:24:17,079 --> 00:24:21,359
reinforce something circular, endless. Even as I sat there, legs tingling,

498
00:24:21,440 --> 00:24:23,960
I caught myself whispering stay with us under my breath,

499
00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:27,519
as though plugging into an ancient invisible loop. A shadow

500
00:24:27,559 --> 00:24:29,599
moved on the wall, just a trick of birds outside,

501
00:24:29,799 --> 00:24:32,920
or the sun shifting. I pushed myself up, folder in hand,

502
00:24:33,000 --> 00:24:35,200
whiched it under my arm, and scan the room once more.

503
00:24:35,799 --> 00:24:38,319
Out in the hallway, my phone bust unownumb flashing across

504
00:24:38,319 --> 00:24:41,880
the crack display. When I answered, static filled the line.

505
00:24:42,279 --> 00:24:44,960
The bursts of noise slicing high, resolved into a voice

506
00:24:44,960 --> 00:24:47,799
stretched and warped. You were not alone in the booth.

507
00:24:48,279 --> 00:24:51,160
I nearly dropped the phone. The breath behind those words

508
00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:54,319
was unmistakably estroskyinastrous the building, as if spoken only a

509
00:24:54,319 --> 00:24:56,759
few doors down. I held the phone out from my

510
00:24:56,839 --> 00:24:59,680
ear checking the walls in the empty foy, no one,

511
00:25:00,319 --> 00:25:03,519
just my own reflection wavering in the glass. When the

512
00:25:03,519 --> 00:25:05,839
lion dropped, I let the silence settle, before gathering the

513
00:25:05,839 --> 00:25:09,160
emergency script and returning to the booth. I sat trying

514
00:25:09,160 --> 00:25:10,880
to make sense of what I had heard. The exhaustion

515
00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:14,319
of days spent thriting through reels, pressing him for all sides. Still,

516
00:25:14,440 --> 00:25:17,799
my old training kicked in search for connections, sequenced the unknowable.

517
00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:20,720
I laid the script beside my notes, turning back and

518
00:25:20,799 --> 00:25:23,839
forth for any overlap, and phrasing the repeated lines from

519
00:25:23,880 --> 00:25:25,920
the tapes round with what was written in the margins,

520
00:25:26,039 --> 00:25:28,960
lending a creeping coherence to patterns I'd only barely suspected.

521
00:25:29,559 --> 00:25:31,599
The evidence was all laid out on nights when night

522
00:25:31,680 --> 00:25:34,039
voices went wrong. The script had been read aloud, sometimes

523
00:25:34,039 --> 00:25:37,880
by Jack, sometimes by others. Sometimes I suspected by Colo's

524
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:41,200
repeating rhythms, picked up from the broadcast itself, a feedback

525
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:44,000
loop of words and ritual, a signal engineered to hold something,

526
00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:46,400
a beg or to invite something in I thumbed through

527
00:25:46,400 --> 00:25:50,240
Collog's cross referencing voices. I recognize there was the old

528
00:25:50,240 --> 00:25:52,759
regular misss Perry, who always famed to talk about the

529
00:25:52,799 --> 00:25:56,039
weather and her cats. Her voice, by late May nineteen

530
00:25:56,079 --> 00:25:59,599
ninety seven rose and pitch, repeating can't sleep, not safe

531
00:25:59,640 --> 00:26:02,039
to stay with me? O, K stay on. It was

532
00:26:02,079 --> 00:26:04,680
followed by minutes of silence, then what sounded like breeding

533
00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:06,920
clothes to the microphone, as if she'd handed the phone

534
00:26:06,920 --> 00:26:10,920
to someone else. She was never logged again. Other voices,

535
00:26:11,119 --> 00:26:13,680
more distorted, seemed to stillip out a phase, losing names

536
00:26:13,680 --> 00:26:16,079
and whole chunks of thought, then all at once breaking

537
00:26:16,119 --> 00:26:19,039
back through with near identical intonations. It's not your voice,

538
00:26:19,200 --> 00:26:22,359
and the words keep changing. Recordings that should have been comforting,

539
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:24,920
summing up decades of slow country nights instead bristle with

540
00:26:24,960 --> 00:26:28,319
unaccountable tension. Each time I replied, they do not ockavit

541
00:26:28,319 --> 00:26:30,839
tip against any reasonable judgment, I heard new echoes in

542
00:26:30,839 --> 00:26:34,079
that unknown cadence at the end. In context, it sounded

543
00:26:34,119 --> 00:26:36,039
now not just like a threat, but a calling card.

544
00:26:36,759 --> 00:26:39,039
We always find new hosts. Is at your turn? Now?

545
00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:42,440
Technically that line couldn't have been recorded live. The tape

546
00:26:42,440 --> 00:26:43,880
would have needed to be running while I was in

547
00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:46,160
the buth at that very moment. And yet every instinct

548
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:48,680
told me. It was deliberate, meant to crawl forward in time,

549
00:26:48,839 --> 00:26:51,480
meant for me. Night came heavy over the river and

550
00:26:51,519 --> 00:26:53,599
I took the akave with me, shoving the folder and

551
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:56,720
most recent reels into my batted satchel. The idea of

552
00:26:56,720 --> 00:26:59,319
staying overnight at dou w Relixile was more than Night's handle,

553
00:26:59,400 --> 00:27:02,000
but sleep at her home didn't seem likely. Ada in

554
00:27:02,039 --> 00:27:04,799
the apartment, cutains drawn tight against anemic moon. I sat

555
00:27:04,839 --> 00:27:07,519
on the bed, radio resting on my lap, nobook opened

556
00:27:07,519 --> 00:27:10,799
to a fresh page. I started writing out the repeating freezes,

557
00:27:11,279 --> 00:27:13,400
matching them line by line with what I remembered from

558
00:27:13,400 --> 00:27:16,400
a script on what the unknown voice had said. Each time,

559
00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:18,839
the compulsive urge to finish each patten grew stronger, a

560
00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:21,680
strange sense of anticipation, as though aster as something asserusk

561
00:27:21,680 --> 00:27:25,079
awaited the completed list. Half Way through, my phone buzzed again,

562
00:27:25,079 --> 00:27:28,000
another known number, but this time when I answered, only

563
00:27:28,039 --> 00:27:30,440
my own voice came through, feigned and breathless, Are you

564
00:27:30,519 --> 00:27:33,599
ready to confess? It broke into static and the line

565
00:27:33,640 --> 00:27:37,000
went dead. Startled, I left the apartment, walking the deserted

566
00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:39,000
block past the shutter bakery, the street humming with the

567
00:27:39,039 --> 00:27:42,480
echo of power lines overhead, the air outside seen fresher

568
00:27:42,640 --> 00:27:44,480
with each step, the urge to return to the booth

569
00:27:44,559 --> 00:27:47,519
nod deeper, doub Alexar sat at the end of my rout,

570
00:27:47,599 --> 00:27:49,880
drowned in deep blue shadow, the sign of blur offiren

571
00:27:49,920 --> 00:27:52,880
and mildy. I forced myself to circle at only once,

572
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:55,279
settling at last in the curb across from the dark entryway.

573
00:27:55,799 --> 00:27:58,319
From here. In childhood, I'd watched the antenna blow from

574
00:27:58,319 --> 00:28:00,759
my window, a signal sent not just to County, but

575
00:28:00,839 --> 00:28:02,680
if you dream big enough to everyone, awaken all the

576
00:28:02,759 --> 00:28:05,759
dark places of the world. I closed my eyes, breathing

577
00:28:05,799 --> 00:28:07,640
in the metallic scent that always clung to the lot,

578
00:28:07,640 --> 00:28:09,480
a hint of ozen hovering in the air from somewhere

579
00:28:09,559 --> 00:28:11,799
up high. When I opened them, I saw a movement

580
00:28:11,839 --> 00:28:14,200
behind the booth window, just a flicker, like someone shifting

581
00:28:14,200 --> 00:28:17,720
from one microphone to another, a froze skin prickling. The

582
00:28:17,799 --> 00:28:19,599
longer I watched, the more I was sure that what

583
00:28:19,640 --> 00:28:22,799
happened in nineteen ninety seven was still happening, unresolved, paused

584
00:28:22,880 --> 00:28:25,640
like a signal waiting for permission to continue. Each night,

585
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:27,839
the words must be spoken, the ark must be completed,

586
00:28:28,519 --> 00:28:32,160
not a curse, not haunting, exactly, something else, an echo

587
00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:36,160
with agency. I checked the time, half past midnight, crossed

588
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:38,480
the empty lot. The feeble overhead light seemed to blink,

589
00:28:38,599 --> 00:28:41,799
as though someone had passed directly beneath it. No cars,

590
00:28:41,920 --> 00:28:44,759
no wind, just a sense of terrible, watchful patience hovering

591
00:28:44,799 --> 00:28:48,160
at the threshold, broadcast stirring into the glass. And sure

592
00:28:48,160 --> 00:28:50,240
if my reflection was only my own, I mouthed the

593
00:28:50,240 --> 00:28:53,200
words stay with us, speak only as heard. A shadow

594
00:28:53,200 --> 00:28:56,440
flickered deep in the booth, then studded. The air changed

595
00:28:56,480 --> 00:28:59,920
once more, without mercy, inviting beckoning in its disdain for endings.

596
00:29:00,680 --> 00:29:03,559
In that moment, the unfinished story of w Elixor didn't

597
00:29:03,599 --> 00:29:05,839
just belong to crumbling tape or vanished staff, but to

598
00:29:05,880 --> 00:29:08,279
anyone readless enough to seek it out, anyone unable to

599
00:29:08,359 --> 00:29:12,039
let the signal rest. And something I sensed was still listening,

600
00:29:12,160 --> 00:29:14,160
content to wait for the next night, the next voice,

601
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:17,000
the next host, willing to join the transmission. A sleep

602
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:19,200
stuff sun was just beginning to lift above the skeletal

603
00:29:19,200 --> 00:29:21,759
tree line when I snapped awake in my apartment, heart hammering,

604
00:29:21,839 --> 00:29:23,920
this still clenched around the pad of crumpled notes, from

605
00:29:23,960 --> 00:29:26,799
the night before. My dreams had turned violent. A thicket

606
00:29:26,799 --> 00:29:29,079
of cable and microphone arms clutching at my limbs, A

607
00:29:29,119 --> 00:29:31,519
biff door stuck shut as voices burrowed through the glass.

608
00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:34,319
The old radio approached on my dresser boasts with a

609
00:29:34,319 --> 00:29:37,400
tangle of soft static. Nothing discernible, yet certain snatches of

610
00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:40,039
cadence roaded the hush syllables I half expected to hear

611
00:29:40,079 --> 00:29:42,400
reflected back at me from my own mouth when I spoke.

612
00:29:43,079 --> 00:29:45,440
I hauled myself into the kitchen, flipped on the overhead,

613
00:29:45,519 --> 00:29:47,799
and watched the mercy light cut past peeling wall paper.

614
00:29:48,440 --> 00:29:51,799
The exhaustion, as ever, was not just physical. Something had

615
00:29:51,799 --> 00:29:54,960
splintered during those weeks strawling the tapes. My boundaries had blurred.

616
00:29:55,559 --> 00:29:57,200
I was starting to flinch at the sound of my

617
00:29:57,240 --> 00:30:00,319
own voice and recordings. I found myself lingering over the

618
00:30:00,359 --> 00:30:03,200
phrase not our voice, letting it echo the worst of it.

619
00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:04,920
I sought it to believe I was no longer alone

620
00:30:04,960 --> 00:30:07,240
in my own head. There was a kind of shivering

621
00:30:07,279 --> 00:30:09,720
clarity that comes with real fear, your mind jumping the

622
00:30:09,799 --> 00:30:13,680
rails of reasonable debt. I was past rationalizing. Now there

623
00:30:13,720 --> 00:30:16,559
were events in that booth, on those broadcast nights that

624
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:21,519
no ordinary process of memory or routine could explain. Chore coffee,

625
00:30:21,920 --> 00:30:23,960
a run of paye likes fried in thick oil, eaten

626
00:30:24,039 --> 00:30:26,839
standing up. I checked my phone, No voice mails, but

627
00:30:26,880 --> 00:30:29,279
a single miscall time stamped at three two a M

628
00:30:29,400 --> 00:30:32,279
no number, no message left in my in books. A

629
00:30:32,359 --> 00:30:35,680
digital recording had appeared from the museum system. I hadn't

630
00:30:35,680 --> 00:30:38,880
requested it. The file, labeled in I Caller's junior eleven

631
00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:41,960
Taco was just under fifteen seconds long. I loaded it

632
00:30:42,000 --> 00:30:44,680
on to my desktop and press play. A hiss, then

633
00:30:44,720 --> 00:30:47,440
the unmistakable loath of the night voices theme rendered eerie

634
00:30:47,480 --> 00:30:50,480
and distorted, as though funneled thrown to water glass. Then

635
00:30:50,519 --> 00:30:53,960
an overlaid voice, mine but cracked and distant, whispering, We

636
00:30:54,079 --> 00:30:57,400
just mirrored the words they're already inside, then louder, a

637
00:30:57,400 --> 00:31:00,759
phrase I recognized from the emergency script. Transmission is incomplete.

638
00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:03,839
Static closed it down like a door. My hand shook

639
00:31:03,839 --> 00:31:06,839
as I closed a file. Who was sending them? Was

640
00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:08,880
some one else trying to pass along a warning? Or

641
00:31:08,920 --> 00:31:11,359
was the system itself infected with what we'd carried twenty

642
00:31:11,440 --> 00:31:14,160
years ago? I called Joan at the museum, but the

643
00:31:14,200 --> 00:31:17,559
line rang endlessly before being cut by a gobbled mechanical chirp.

644
00:31:18,160 --> 00:31:20,440
I imagined her in the cramp record's office head Frond's

645
00:31:20,440 --> 00:31:22,359
clamp tight lost in some loop of sounds she had

646
00:31:22,400 --> 00:31:25,440
never asked to inherit. When the mail arrived, it brought

647
00:31:25,480 --> 00:31:28,519
worse which between a pete's coupon and past two parabill

648
00:31:28,599 --> 00:31:32,200
was a narrow envelope with no return address. Inside neatly

649
00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:35,279
typed was mine own name at the top, underneath a

650
00:31:35,359 --> 00:31:37,599
list of every night voices staffa prison in May in

651
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:41,240
June of nineteen ninety seven, Amy, Marla, Jack Hank, Eddy Cam,

652
00:31:41,240 --> 00:31:43,000
each name with a knee black line cross d row.

653
00:31:43,519 --> 00:31:46,799
Only mine remained and crossed below that a single line

654
00:31:46,880 --> 00:31:49,920
Confess what you heard between the museums noted about Clean

655
00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:52,640
Copper's ownly, the shadow coal loaks, and the scripting of

656
00:31:52,680 --> 00:31:55,079
emergency lines across tape. In memory, it was clear that

657
00:31:55,119 --> 00:31:56,839
what had invaded the booth had not left with the

658
00:31:56,839 --> 00:31:59,599
station's closure, or even without withdrawal from the business of radio.

659
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:02,640
It was a pattern with its own life, demanding repetition

660
00:32:02,640 --> 00:32:05,519
to anchor itself to find new mile's new hosts. I

661
00:32:05,599 --> 00:32:07,400
told myself to wake, to rest to shore up what

662
00:32:07,440 --> 00:32:10,680
little reserve I still had. Instead, I felt a compulsion

663
00:32:10,720 --> 00:32:13,799
burning inside me like a fever. There was too much unspoken,

664
00:32:13,839 --> 00:32:15,920
to many rules in the script that hinted at a system,

665
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:19,640
a rationale behind the madness. I needed physical evidence, something

666
00:32:19,640 --> 00:32:21,559
that hadn't been corrupted, A snip a boxed up from

667
00:32:21,599 --> 00:32:25,240
museum whitening that meant going deeper into the wreck. There

668
00:32:25,319 --> 00:32:27,400
was one place left, the cause bay storage under the

669
00:32:27,440 --> 00:32:30,720
old broadcasting tower, with a truly sensitive material emergency locks,

670
00:32:30,799 --> 00:32:34,440
unaired accordings, manager correspondence had sometimes migrated when the pressure

671
00:32:34,440 --> 00:32:38,160
of administration called for plausible deniability. I headed out just

672
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:40,960
as the morning market crowds were thinning, purposeful, hugging my

673
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:44,000
bat at Satchel and the emergency script folder. The walk

674
00:32:44,039 --> 00:32:46,920
to w Alexaw felt different in this light, brider but sharper,

675
00:32:47,400 --> 00:32:49,240
like the world was attempting to shook off the gloom

676
00:32:49,240 --> 00:32:52,160
around the station, only to be rebuffed the door. Since

677
00:32:52,200 --> 00:32:54,680
my first visit seemed heavier to open the creak of

678
00:32:54,680 --> 00:32:59,720
the hinges, more resistant, sunlight barely crept through the smeared gas. Inside.

679
00:32:59,799 --> 00:33:01,960
They smelled lass like dust and more like paper and

680
00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:05,000
ozon an electric fenceding lingered on the tongue as if

681
00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:08,279
the room's atmosphere was carrying a current. The crawl space

682
00:33:08,319 --> 00:33:10,359
was touched behind a collapsed partition in what used to

683
00:33:10,359 --> 00:33:13,400
be the Wreckers archive, done a sagging concrete step. I

684
00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:15,519
wedged a flashlight between my teeth and pride at the

685
00:33:15,559 --> 00:33:19,160
warped wooden panel, wrenching it aside. The blockmill beyond offered

686
00:33:19,160 --> 00:33:22,799
a chill. I felt through overtendon cardboard boxes collapsed under

687
00:33:22,799 --> 00:33:26,519
my gloves. I worked past spare receiver heads, tangled cores,

688
00:33:26,680 --> 00:33:29,319
and a crate of w lex R fun drivemugs until

689
00:33:29,319 --> 00:33:31,480
my hand snagged something hard of battered lock books, a

690
00:33:31,559 --> 00:33:34,039
kind management favored for petty cash or on noble tapes.

691
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:38,079
The lock was feeble. My screwdriver did the trick inside

692
00:33:38,279 --> 00:33:41,960
half a dozen pocket recorders, backuplowbooks with spines warped by damp,

693
00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:44,519
four hard drives and zippered freezer bags, and a stack

694
00:33:44,519 --> 00:33:47,759
of unlabeled cassettes, some regular, others were innately marked masking

695
00:33:47,799 --> 00:33:50,119
tape torn and written over until the label disappeared to

696
00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:53,839
noise the log books even before flipping through Whilbert reducted

697
00:33:53,839 --> 00:33:57,480
blocks and jittery handwriting some interest reference to signal anomalies,

698
00:33:57,680 --> 00:34:01,119
external transmission overriding pattern SWI which content or a host

699
00:34:01,200 --> 00:34:04,960
un responsive to false grip read GIN fourteen's page where

700
00:34:04,960 --> 00:34:07,519
a proper sign off should have been simply read. Connection

701
00:34:07,559 --> 00:34:10,599
maintained until signal loss were set denied. My heart drummed

702
00:34:10,599 --> 00:34:12,360
a rhythm I felt through my fingers as I lined

703
00:34:12,400 --> 00:34:14,679
up the tapes. I didn't dare play them on the

704
00:34:14,679 --> 00:34:16,840
station's equipment, in case the whole system had kept in

705
00:34:16,920 --> 00:34:19,880
self erased. I stuffed the cassettes and lock books into

706
00:34:19,880 --> 00:34:22,480
my bag, hauling aside enough old fliers to conceal the

707
00:34:22,519 --> 00:34:24,639
gap i'd dug and climbed out into a corridor that

708
00:34:24,679 --> 00:34:27,440
seemed even cold to them. When I descended behind me,

709
00:34:27,599 --> 00:34:29,840
the door is shut, the lock clicking home by itself.

710
00:34:30,519 --> 00:34:32,880
Back at my apartment, I stacked the cassettes and started

711
00:34:32,880 --> 00:34:34,559
with one, labeled only with the ghost of a call

712
00:34:34,599 --> 00:34:37,800
sign and a date no real identification. I digitized it,

713
00:34:37,840 --> 00:34:41,239
built careful lossless files, and looped up my headphones. The

714
00:34:41,280 --> 00:34:44,360
first few were fairly routined. Morning confessions psalms played and

715
00:34:44,400 --> 00:34:47,880
replayed Management's voice, dripping through a tired list of community bulletins,

716
00:34:48,480 --> 00:34:50,599
but in tape after tip marked between midnight and two

717
00:34:50,599 --> 00:34:53,559
oddities thickened like a fog rolling up a valley. On

718
00:34:53,639 --> 00:34:56,639
cassette four, long after midnight, a male voice, barely audible,

719
00:34:56,719 --> 00:34:59,159
speed altered by degraded tip, spoke beneath the surface static

720
00:34:59,199 --> 00:35:01,639
in a socato rhythm, rushing words that seen threaded through

721
00:35:01,639 --> 00:35:04,280
the night. Voices theme song were already inside repeat the

722
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:07,320
phrase confess transmission and complete don't use your own voice.

723
00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:10,239
Then a sudden splicio was missing, the jump, cutting back

724
00:35:10,280 --> 00:35:12,719
to the show, as if nothing had happened. I lay

725
00:35:12,719 --> 00:35:15,880
at these snatches and two separate digital slots, matching auditory

726
00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:19,599
fingerprints from one tape to another. At first nothing emerged

727
00:35:19,639 --> 00:35:22,400
except a heavy polarithm of tipes. But as I adjusted

728
00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:25,519
for frequency drift and channel bleed, frequencies matched and superimposed

729
00:35:25,559 --> 00:35:28,559
at the voices not overlain but orally after its mirroring asterisk,

730
00:35:28,639 --> 00:35:30,880
each other, sinking up in a course neither explained nor

731
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:35,000
resolved on. The three knights of Patten's match staff present

732
00:35:35,039 --> 00:35:38,480
were consistent Jack, Amy, Hank, occasionally Miless signature names already

733
00:35:38,519 --> 00:35:41,079
crossed out in the nerve from that morning. Tracking the

734
00:35:41,079 --> 00:35:44,519
log entries against town records. A realization had hard and immediate.

735
00:35:44,559 --> 00:35:47,280
Every staffer assigned on the affected knights was now relocated,

736
00:35:47,280 --> 00:35:50,320
with no known forwarding address or worse, lost scene at home,

737
00:35:50,400 --> 00:35:54,199
presumed to have left intense specially partan easy to overlook,

738
00:35:54,440 --> 00:35:57,280
most never seen again. After the last sprint tape, a

739
00:35:57,400 --> 00:35:59,159
chill ran up my arms, the same as when I

740
00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:01,880
first heard my own voice walked back at me, broadcast

741
00:36:01,880 --> 00:36:05,280
as both warning and welcome across decades. The next morning,

742
00:36:05,360 --> 00:36:07,360
I took the risk and reached out to Amy's parents.

743
00:36:07,360 --> 00:36:10,199
They'd never left the county. She'd lived on Oak Lane,

744
00:36:10,280 --> 00:36:12,239
a sleepy cul de sac with silent yards and the

745
00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:15,480
sound of lawn sprinklers drifting through open windows. They met

746
00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:17,960
me outside the porch Face's street with an enduring dinn

747
00:36:17,960 --> 00:36:20,480
as I knew at onces, parents forever waiting or resigned

748
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:22,159
to waiting for a sound on the stairs that would

749
00:36:22,199 --> 00:36:25,239
never come. Anything you can share about Amy's last summer

750
00:36:25,280 --> 00:36:28,280
she was here, My voice trailed, Uncertain how much risk.

751
00:36:29,079 --> 00:36:31,800
Her father shrugged, stepping aside to let me into Amy's room,

752
00:36:31,880 --> 00:36:34,639
untouched except for dust in a slow decaying line. Her

753
00:36:34,679 --> 00:36:37,159
mother lingered beside the door. Hand tied over a rosary.

754
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:40,639
She hardly slept that month, her mother said, almost dreamily.

755
00:36:41,159 --> 00:36:44,320
He used to write things, bits of shows, lists of callers, numbers.

756
00:36:44,400 --> 00:36:46,599
I catch her at the windows sometimes at night, talking

757
00:36:46,679 --> 00:36:49,360
under her breath, saying they're coming through the wires. They

758
00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:53,639
hear us. Her voice cracked. She started sleep walking, always

759
00:36:53,679 --> 00:36:56,239
going to the living room, always to the radio. I

760
00:36:56,280 --> 00:36:59,039
examined a desk, a battered spiral where Amy had scribbled

761
00:36:59,079 --> 00:37:01,599
line after a line in a furious hand. There was

762
00:37:01,639 --> 00:37:04,920
no narrative, just columns of time's names and repeatedly a

763
00:37:04,960 --> 00:37:07,679
looping phrase let them and don't let them in beneath

764
00:37:07,679 --> 00:37:09,880
her batt at radio or a weather desktop, travel along,

765
00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:12,480
always tuned to fourteen ten am. Now a monument to dust.

766
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:15,599
I've found one more spiral. It's inside pocket, bulging stuck

767
00:37:15,679 --> 00:37:18,719
inside Willis's radio show dates. Mike's checked out. Odd phrase

768
00:37:18,800 --> 00:37:21,199
is repeated over and over, some crossed hat and described

769
00:37:21,239 --> 00:37:23,840
in larger letters, as if to please someone watching. Hostes

770
00:37:23,880 --> 00:37:26,400
and host to confess stay with us, few have to finish.

771
00:37:26,719 --> 00:37:28,920
Our father spoke for the first time quietly as he

772
00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:32,079
reshelved the faded photo. After Amy went missing, we had

773
00:37:32,119 --> 00:37:34,360
police and tip on every box, but they always left

774
00:37:34,360 --> 00:37:36,480
this room alone. Said it felt off. The radio never

775
00:37:36,519 --> 00:37:40,199
did stop buzzing, not for weeks. I shuddered, thanked them,

776
00:37:40,320 --> 00:37:42,960
and retreated as something of amy, trailing behind a presence

777
00:37:42,960 --> 00:37:45,480
in the cracked wallpaper, waiting for a click, a syllable,

778
00:37:45,559 --> 00:37:48,440
a new voice to finish what she could not. That afternoon,

779
00:37:48,440 --> 00:37:51,920
the museum called Jones's voice was taught to feigning normalcy,

780
00:37:52,079 --> 00:37:54,719
but shivering with dread at the edges. We're pulling the

781
00:37:54,760 --> 00:37:57,920
plug on the archiving, she told me flatly, higher ups.

782
00:37:58,039 --> 00:38:00,880
Funding doesn't matter, tits. Go to regionals doorage on Friday.

783
00:38:01,039 --> 00:38:03,039
Anything weird, just put it back in the box and

784
00:38:03,079 --> 00:38:05,840
bring to my office. Got it in the background through

785
00:38:05,840 --> 00:38:08,199
the connection, I thought I heard the faintest form of static.

786
00:38:08,320 --> 00:38:10,280
I could tape left and spoiled on a cold console.

787
00:38:10,840 --> 00:38:13,679
As I stowed the cassettes, my phone vibrated, unknown collar,

788
00:38:13,840 --> 00:38:17,800
no number. Against my better judgment, I answered, the line

789
00:38:17,880 --> 00:38:22,079
was bared and static. But then a voice soft split, returning, stop,

790
00:38:22,239 --> 00:38:25,400
don't open any more, don't trigger another event. The last

791
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:27,079
word hit with the same aid in headance of the

792
00:38:27,119 --> 00:38:30,360
unknown voice. In the nineteen ninety seven tapes, intonation and inflection,

793
00:38:30,440 --> 00:38:33,920
precisely matching syllables, landing half a second behind where they blonde.

794
00:38:34,480 --> 00:38:36,880
Then a hiss, and the voice melted into a double decko,

795
00:38:37,039 --> 00:38:39,599
my own blurb with static speaking words I did not

796
00:38:39,719 --> 00:38:43,360
remember ever recording. You always come back, it whispered, But

797
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:46,039
you must not finish. My hands were shaking as I

798
00:38:46,079 --> 00:38:48,559
hung up. In the silence, the radio in the hall

799
00:38:48,599 --> 00:38:51,079
flared to life, a stammered blast of noise, then dead air.

800
00:38:51,719 --> 00:38:53,400
I kicked the plug out of the wall in a panic.

801
00:38:53,639 --> 00:38:57,960
Cold sweat prickling night brought only fresh violation. My answering machine,

802
00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:02,360
ancient used only for museum coordinatation, blinked once a message waited.

803
00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:06,880
I press play hullo, it's me or you, It's always us?

804
00:39:06,920 --> 00:39:09,719
Did you hear the words? Let them through? Confess? The

805
00:39:09,800 --> 00:39:12,960
message deteriorated into overlapping fragments my voice in Jackson that

806
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:16,239
are known terrifying second voice, each tripping over the last.

807
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:19,800
We're waiting. The lines are open. I jammed the or

808
00:39:19,840 --> 00:39:21,760
receis slash O F F switch and pulled the cassette,

809
00:39:21,760 --> 00:39:24,920
but the words remain hovering, indelible. The time had come

810
00:39:24,960 --> 00:39:26,760
to submit to the compulsion to answer. At last, we

811
00:39:26,880 --> 00:39:29,079
tever waited on the other end of the broadcast line.

812
00:39:29,719 --> 00:39:31,719
If what the stranger voice on the tapes kept saying

813
00:39:31,800 --> 00:39:33,639
was true we always find new hosts, then it was

814
00:39:33,679 --> 00:39:36,440
better at least to see what it wanted directly. The

815
00:39:36,519 --> 00:39:39,360
day before the broadcast, I left my apartment, stripped only

816
00:39:39,400 --> 00:39:41,360
closed in the battered satchel. With as many tapes as

817
00:39:41,400 --> 00:39:44,119
I could carry. I brought the emergency script, the last

818
00:39:44,199 --> 00:39:47,440
log book Amy Spyrol. I needed evidence, or at least

819
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:50,440
someone to witness the transmission's final hour. If I could

820
00:39:50,440 --> 00:39:52,800
speak with the thing at w Alexa, perhaps I could

821
00:39:52,880 --> 00:39:55,440
lay the past to rest. The sky was bruised the

822
00:39:55,480 --> 00:39:57,559
color of old copper. When I returned to the station,

823
00:39:57,679 --> 00:39:59,960
A slow broiling storm building at the room of the horizon.

824
00:40:00,679 --> 00:40:03,360
Wind battered the tower cables and stuttered through the broken eaves.

825
00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:06,400
I circled a lot once, no cars, no sign of

826
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:10,119
vagrance or nosey teens, only the station, hunched and dark, waiting.

827
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:13,400
I slipped my key into the lock, carrying portable recorders,

828
00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:16,559
a hand hell taped deck, and the old script in sight.

829
00:40:16,679 --> 00:40:18,800
The glimpress so thick I felt it against my roops.

830
00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:21,400
The static taste of the air was too sharp, as

831
00:40:21,440 --> 00:40:23,360
if the building had built up a charge over years

832
00:40:23,360 --> 00:40:27,239
of silence. The booth fell pretty naturally cold. A faint

833
00:40:27,280 --> 00:40:29,159
whird from the break of box signaled the town's pow

834
00:40:29,199 --> 00:40:31,320
still blood into the main console, though the on aiar

835
00:40:31,440 --> 00:40:34,719
sign was dark. I pulled the chain, flooding the booth

836
00:40:34,760 --> 00:40:38,599
with a sickly light. The control board flickered once, then steaded.

837
00:40:39,119 --> 00:40:42,000
I ran through a routine checks, adjusting levels, aligning every

838
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:45,119
portable mic to twin recorders, shoulders hunch. I set my

839
00:40:45,159 --> 00:40:48,679
watch for eleven fifty p m. Outside, wind battered the glass.

840
00:40:49,320 --> 00:40:52,199
A crawling sound began, first only a hum, then unmistakably

841
00:40:52,239 --> 00:40:55,039
growing the plural in discinct shuffle of something gathering outside,

842
00:40:55,199 --> 00:40:58,280
rustling against the trash blown lot. At midnight, I forced

843
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:01,039
myself to sit hands on the battered host mike throw dry.

844
00:41:01,679 --> 00:41:04,280
I had never hosted solo shown all my years, never

845
00:41:04,320 --> 00:41:07,760
spoken to the listening dark, but I pressed record. The

846
00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:10,400
old script opened in my lap. I greeted the air,

847
00:41:10,559 --> 00:41:12,920
my voice quivering. The speech tilted as I read from

848
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:17,119
the familiar emergency words try to laugh it off instead.

849
00:41:17,679 --> 00:41:20,159
The w alexir fourteen ten a m. This is this

850
00:41:20,239 --> 00:41:22,599
is night, voices stay with us in sunny acts. We

851
00:41:22,679 --> 00:41:25,320
were here for another hour in the dark. The moment

852
00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:27,920
the words left my lips, air pressure shifted in the room,

853
00:41:28,039 --> 00:41:32,039
A deep sullen heaven is clamp in the booth, I repeated, improvising,

854
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:35,920
invoking the rhythms from a hundred nights past. Lines are open,

855
00:41:36,079 --> 00:41:40,400
call and confess. The rooms temperature dropped sharply, the gloss

856
00:41:40,440 --> 00:41:42,800
of the inner studio filmed with condensation. The rest of

857
00:41:42,800 --> 00:41:45,119
the station beyond lost in black weather from shadows or

858
00:41:45,119 --> 00:41:48,800
something pressing tightly against the windows. My computer monitor flickered,

859
00:41:48,920 --> 00:41:52,239
resolving then losing signal. Before VH scratched. Lines raced upward.

860
00:41:52,800 --> 00:41:55,039
A warble swallowed me broadcast the subtle moment that had

861
00:41:55,079 --> 00:41:58,719
haunted all those tapes. Suddenly, every switch and indicate her

862
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:01,239
light on the control board pulse in sequence, as if

863
00:42:01,239 --> 00:42:04,440
a ghost hand were running diagnostics. The phone lines lit

864
00:42:04,519 --> 00:42:08,360
up all at once, acquire of static mixed with voices unreadable, overlaying,

865
00:42:08,519 --> 00:42:10,760
each sounding as if piped through miles of wire and water.

866
00:42:11,599 --> 00:42:13,960
I tried to answer one and then another, fumbling with

867
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:16,159
the pahne, but there was no greeting, just an inrush

868
00:42:16,199 --> 00:42:18,519
of breath in a sharp what phrase that repeated itself

869
00:42:18,559 --> 00:42:20,920
on every channel. Not your voice mirror the word, let

870
00:42:21,000 --> 00:42:24,639
us in. I press record. I tried to respond, if

871
00:42:24,679 --> 00:42:26,639
you're there, if anyone's listening, if you can hear me,

872
00:42:26,719 --> 00:42:29,559
But my own voice began to slip, loosening syllables, staggering,

873
00:42:29,639 --> 00:42:31,880
breaking into the halting, fragmented kidince I had heard on

874
00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:35,039
the donot ARKive tape. I felt my mouth moving ahead

875
00:42:35,039 --> 00:42:37,519
of my mind, repeating a phrase I didn't remember learning

876
00:42:38,079 --> 00:42:39,679
my voice on the tape. Now I going through the

877
00:42:39,719 --> 00:42:42,440
station itself smewed out into the terrifying life. As for them,

878
00:42:42,559 --> 00:42:45,000
houst isn't host. We're here for the confession. Stay with us.

879
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:47,920
Speak only is heard. A shape press against the glass

880
00:42:47,920 --> 00:42:50,559
of the sound booth, A human outline lowered, spoiling out

881
00:42:50,559 --> 00:42:52,480
a darkness so deep a blood color from the rest

882
00:42:52,480 --> 00:42:55,400
of the control room. My scalp prickled, every hair alive.

883
00:42:56,159 --> 00:42:58,400
I close my eyes, tried to snap out of the fugue.

884
00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:02,880
The storm outside rattle the windows. Lightning exploded behind black cloths,

885
00:43:02,960 --> 00:43:05,199
just enough to shadow a flock of figures standing scattered

886
00:43:05,239 --> 00:43:08,400
along the lot arranged in a quiet arc. The Watchers

887
00:43:09,079 --> 00:43:12,119
machinery sputtered in cough, then failed incrementally. A series of

888
00:43:12,119 --> 00:43:15,119
percussive clacks from the auxiliary equipment worn by one level

889
00:43:15,159 --> 00:43:18,760
meters dropped dead. The on aire light pulsed, feeble as

890
00:43:18,800 --> 00:43:21,920
a heartbeat, edge and collapse on the phone lines. More

891
00:43:22,000 --> 00:43:24,360
voices crowded in, some of them voices I recognized from

892
00:43:24,360 --> 00:43:27,880
Earler tapes and reels, Al Collars, Jack hank Amy, even

893
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:31,920
Miles's familiar laugh, now pinched and metallic, circling itself. They

894
00:43:31,960 --> 00:43:35,639
began to blend syllables, fusing then multiplying each line, picking

895
00:43:35,719 --> 00:43:38,400
up the phrase that the previous ended on. In the mix.

896
00:43:38,480 --> 00:43:41,000
My own voice joined, no longer under my control, thretting

897
00:43:41,039 --> 00:43:44,039
through their words, making hollow music of the scroup. We

898
00:43:44,199 --> 00:43:47,679
just mirror the words, mirror the words, mirror. Something caught

899
00:43:47,679 --> 00:43:50,039
my attention, hands on my shoulders, a presence behind and

900
00:43:50,159 --> 00:43:52,159
sat the old scent of foam and coffee and cologne

901
00:43:52,159 --> 00:43:55,519
and something other, all mingled. The temperature dropped even lower.

902
00:43:55,519 --> 00:43:59,000
Condensation dripping from the rim of the recording desk crossed

903
00:43:59,000 --> 00:44:01,480
the room. The studio door shivered a heavy scraping sound.

904
00:44:01,480 --> 00:44:05,599
On its far side, knocking, faint but insistent. Then a voice,

905
00:44:05,679 --> 00:44:08,400
Jacks or not, Jack's older. Now you have to finish

906
00:44:08,480 --> 00:44:10,960
the show. You have to finish. It's the only way out.

907
00:44:11,559 --> 00:44:13,480
I tried to speak, but the only words that came

908
00:44:13,480 --> 00:44:15,039
more from the script, as though com indeed by a

909
00:44:15,079 --> 00:44:17,719
muscle memory. I didn't on't We're not alone in the boots.

910
00:44:17,760 --> 00:44:21,480
Don't open the door, don't open the fingers cold, impossibly thin,

911
00:44:21,559 --> 00:44:23,639
brust the back of my neck, as if punctuation to

912
00:44:23,679 --> 00:44:26,760
the stammered phrase. Shadows used to cross the scene between

913
00:44:26,800 --> 00:44:29,960
glass and wood, thickening, seeking a seam, seeking the microphone,

914
00:44:30,559 --> 00:44:32,960
the compulsion to open the external line to broadcast straight

915
00:44:33,000 --> 00:44:36,199
to whatever was waiting outside for rosenside me swelling. I

916
00:44:36,239 --> 00:44:38,719
knew absolutely that if I did, something would fill the

917
00:44:38,719 --> 00:44:41,920
breech and never leave. Frantically mouthing the in line of

918
00:44:41,920 --> 00:44:44,119
the script to speak only as heard, Speak only as heard.

919
00:44:44,199 --> 00:44:46,719
I wrenched free, scrubbled beneath the console and found the

920
00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:48,760
main feed wire, the one emergency shut up and dated

921
00:44:48,760 --> 00:44:51,599
its lost resort. Ran my hand across it for the switch,

922
00:44:51,719 --> 00:44:55,480
finger shaking, another round of pounding. No longer polite, now urgent,

923
00:44:55,559 --> 00:44:58,920
rattled the door, finish it. The spectral course pressed, each

924
00:44:59,000 --> 00:45:02,159
voice tumbling through the ear, my own most insistent, I

925
00:45:02,280 --> 00:45:05,239
braced and yanked the cord. Every light died at once,

926
00:45:06,000 --> 00:45:08,519
the storm outside crash, blanketing the lot beyond in a

927
00:45:08,519 --> 00:45:11,679
stroke of pale fire. The presence in the corner withdrew,

928
00:45:11,840 --> 00:45:14,320
or maybe only grew still, a vacuum left in its aftermath.

929
00:45:14,920 --> 00:45:17,079
I sat in the dark, longs heaving so loudly I

930
00:45:17,079 --> 00:45:19,559
thought the booth mic would pick them up. The phone

931
00:45:19,599 --> 00:45:22,320
lines all at once blinked off. The deep reel spun,

932
00:45:22,400 --> 00:45:26,079
then halted silent. The arna our sign too went black.

933
00:45:26,760 --> 00:45:29,719
I waited for whatever consequence would follow, but there was

934
00:45:29,760 --> 00:45:31,639
nothing at all, just the slow resettling of air in

935
00:45:31,679 --> 00:45:34,440
my own rasping breath. When the power returned in a

936
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:37,000
few seconds, it was the hum of an ordinary empty building.

937
00:45:37,599 --> 00:45:40,320
No voices, no fountoms beyond what I had carried with me.

938
00:45:40,840 --> 00:45:43,679
The only evidence the live recording, so rolling silently in

939
00:45:43,719 --> 00:45:46,599
its deck, red light blinking, capturing only the shape of

940
00:45:46,639 --> 00:45:49,400
the storm feeding to quiet. I took the tape, locked

941
00:45:49,440 --> 00:45:52,639
the booth, and left out in the lot. The gathered watches,

942
00:45:52,639 --> 00:45:55,400
scattered fog gestures, hunched, and electric spill to assolved to nothing.

943
00:45:55,400 --> 00:45:58,079
As I approached just the wind, the smell of wet

944
00:45:58,119 --> 00:46:01,480
weeds might kick in my boots. Back in my cold apartment,

945
00:46:01,519 --> 00:46:04,719
I collapsed on to the mattress. The broadcast was done,

946
00:46:04,880 --> 00:46:07,840
something closed in space, if not in time. Yet the

947
00:46:07,880 --> 00:46:11,039
silence thus followed was a strained, uncertain thing. It did

948
00:46:11,079 --> 00:46:15,280
not feel like victory, just intermission. Ash sleep eluded me

949
00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:18,719
for nights. After the live broadcast, I lay on my side,

950
00:46:18,760 --> 00:46:20,840
tracking the echo of thunder and that warbling hum from

951
00:46:20,880 --> 00:46:23,880
the tapes, listening for the snap and jitter of phantom voices.

952
00:46:24,599 --> 00:46:26,840
Sometimes I caught my own voice blintering, and the age

953
00:46:26,840 --> 00:46:30,119
of consciousness finishing old sentences, sentences pinned to memory. Thatt

954
00:46:30,119 --> 00:46:33,519
seene false staged by some unseen author. My radio even

955
00:46:33,599 --> 00:46:36,559
unplugged his faintly. Each trip to the kitchen brought cold

956
00:46:36,559 --> 00:46:38,960
interference on the old land line, scraps of phrases in

957
00:46:39,000 --> 00:46:43,239
that Saint cadence, sometimes mine, sometimes Jack's, sometimes something in between.

958
00:46:43,800 --> 00:46:46,679
On a morning, hung over from sleeplessness, I checked my voicemail.

959
00:46:47,320 --> 00:46:49,679
A message waited Joan from the museum, her voice bertle

960
00:46:49,679 --> 00:46:52,119
in Heston, asking about the tapes, wanting to know if

961
00:46:52,119 --> 00:46:54,119
I'd finished sorting them, if there were any you didn't

962
00:46:54,159 --> 00:46:57,119
want to go public. Her tone shifted mid message, sliding

963
00:46:57,159 --> 00:46:59,360
up into a clip to bernstutter, we are waiting, work

964
00:46:59,440 --> 00:47:02,719
must continue, holsters. She cut off. When I called back,

965
00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:06,559
the number was disconnected. Two more calls followed that week, Hank,

966
00:47:06,679 --> 00:47:09,519
whom I hadn't heard from since the engineer's aliwee warnings.

967
00:47:09,559 --> 00:47:12,519
Now lucid bocleppt, his sentences full of apologies and desperate

968
00:47:12,559 --> 00:47:16,199
for something. He didn't specify what next. Marla's number a

969
00:47:16,280 --> 00:47:18,679
voicemail that at first seemed almost like her, but as

970
00:47:18,719 --> 00:47:21,039
she tried to say my name, her vocal inflection completed

971
00:47:21,039 --> 00:47:23,480
the phrase in the other worldly rhythm, voice slowing and repeating,

972
00:47:23,639 --> 00:47:26,280
stay with us, speak only as heard. The effect left

973
00:47:26,280 --> 00:47:28,760
me roar and uncertain. When I tried to sleep, my

974
00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:31,719
jaw clenched, awoke with fingers, pressing patents into the bed sheet,

975
00:47:31,840 --> 00:47:34,079
whispering lines from the script in the same broken cadence

976
00:47:34,079 --> 00:47:37,000
I'd heard through the worst tapes. A few former staffers

977
00:47:37,039 --> 00:47:39,639
reached up by email. They'd heard about strange interference or

978
00:47:39,679 --> 00:47:42,639
felt oft as of laid I read replied slowly, one,

979
00:47:42,760 --> 00:47:45,519
then two, then as well of similar notes. They said

980
00:47:45,519 --> 00:47:47,559
their own voices no longer sound of right to them,

981
00:47:47,559 --> 00:47:51,559
that sometimes radiostatics snatched syllables from their mouths. Some even

982
00:47:51,599 --> 00:47:54,320
claimed they heard conversations over open phone lines that neither

983
00:47:54,320 --> 00:47:57,280
party remembered. Afterward, I gave the clean tapes to the

984
00:47:57,360 --> 00:47:59,719
museums that lacked any scrap of the ritual's curt any

985
00:47:59,719 --> 00:48:02,400
back round hint of their visitors. I kept the live,

986
00:48:02,480 --> 00:48:04,519
poorcast tape, and I do not ock over reels, locked

987
00:48:04,559 --> 00:48:07,480
in a steel cash box, buried under this floorboard beneath

988
00:48:07,480 --> 00:48:10,400
my bed. Within days, the town quietly erased the last

989
00:48:10,400 --> 00:48:13,400
traces of w Alexar from its own record. The sign

990
00:48:13,519 --> 00:48:15,719
came down, one down without notice. The lot fence, a

991
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:19,159
schedule for demolition posted with no vanfare. Friends I'd known

992
00:48:19,199 --> 00:48:21,599
since childhood avoided the topic, changed the subject at the

993
00:48:21,599 --> 00:48:24,480
mention of the old station, or switched to brighton brittle tones,

994
00:48:24,719 --> 00:48:28,559
as if performing a collective forgetting. I grew more isolated, paranoid, tired,

995
00:48:28,599 --> 00:48:32,000
stratch thin. Sometimes my speech fell into the transmitter cadence

996
00:48:32,039 --> 00:48:36,000
without conscious effort, circular and repetitive, Sometimes late at night

997
00:48:36,039 --> 00:48:38,639
I'd catch my own reflection in the oven door, lips moving,

998
00:48:38,760 --> 00:48:41,719
forming phrases I didn't intend to say aloud. At the

999
00:48:41,800 --> 00:48:44,599
edge of sleep, the static and the earth thickened. I'd

1000
00:48:44,599 --> 00:48:47,280
hear chorus, thin and plaintive, urging, speak only as her,

1001
00:48:47,400 --> 00:48:49,920
don't break the pattern, stay with us. I'd run my

1002
00:48:49,960 --> 00:48:51,480
hand over the pad of paper on my nights, and

1003
00:48:51,559 --> 00:48:54,760
always more word, always newlest always trying to finish something

1004
00:48:54,760 --> 00:48:58,360
that refused to be completed. Ash On the night before

1005
00:48:58,360 --> 00:49:00,719
demolition was scheduled at the station, I could not stay in.

1006
00:49:01,320 --> 00:49:03,920
I wanted the empty streets, the clouded stars hushed behind

1007
00:49:03,920 --> 00:49:06,000
a half moon, the world holding its breath between one

1008
00:49:06,079 --> 00:49:09,159
century's failures in the next. I told myself I had

1009
00:49:09,159 --> 00:49:11,639
no business going back. Yet before I knew, I decided.

1010
00:49:11,760 --> 00:49:13,599
My feet took me down the block, past the shell

1011
00:49:13,599 --> 00:49:15,320
of a bikery, to the silent shape of what had

1012
00:49:15,360 --> 00:49:18,639
been w Elisar. A loose plunk rattled in the breeze.

1013
00:49:19,159 --> 00:49:21,719
I pressed my pump to the crap boart, listening the

1014
00:49:21,800 --> 00:49:25,719
hump fainted, the non tape but still present waldep furtive warbling,

1015
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:28,880
a living transmission. I pressed my ear to the cold glass,

1016
00:49:28,920 --> 00:49:31,159
turned my face toward the heart of the dark control booth.

1017
00:49:31,599 --> 00:49:35,280
The static was stronger there, Whispering in the background, voices

1018
00:49:35,320 --> 00:49:39,360
riffled through the frequencies, layered in old but distinct Jack, Marla, Amy, Hank,

1019
00:49:39,480 --> 00:49:42,400
my own, all pitched and tentacled into one, the repeated

1020
00:49:42,440 --> 00:49:44,599
lines that spark through the years. Confess what you hear,

1021
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:49,039
transmission is incomplete, and mirror the words overlapping, looping, humming.

1022
00:49:49,719 --> 00:49:52,159
I shifted jaw slack to listen for whom might be

1023
00:49:52,199 --> 00:49:56,280
leading the chorus. Then muskin froze under the static, a

1024
00:49:56,320 --> 00:49:58,639
shadow and spoiled itself from the host. Jerry dim outline,

1025
00:49:58,719 --> 00:50:01,480
body shaped by the lightless, hunt forward, face, never turning.

1026
00:50:02,079 --> 00:50:04,840
The voices continued, joined by my own, pitched and echoed

1027
00:50:04,840 --> 00:50:07,960
into infinity. Stay with us, speak only as heard. Are

1028
00:50:07,960 --> 00:50:11,119
you ready to confess? The final phrase, repeated, twined around

1029
00:50:11,159 --> 00:50:13,920
itself ad infinitum, lay in my own familiar register and

1030
00:50:13,960 --> 00:50:16,320
the voices of all who had gone before. On an

1031
00:50:16,360 --> 00:50:18,960
impulse morning, our defense of something between. I pulled out

1032
00:50:19,000 --> 00:50:21,400
my phone and dialed the old station number dead for years,

1033
00:50:21,480 --> 00:50:26,000
recycled a dozen times, never answered why n Then a click,

1034
00:50:26,760 --> 00:50:29,199
my own voice across the years across the tape, across

1035
00:50:29,199 --> 00:50:32,320
the breach, answered clear as day, the phrase leaping inevitable?

1036
00:50:32,840 --> 00:50:35,639
Are you ready to confess? The shell in my hand

1037
00:50:35,719 --> 00:50:39,199
radiated up my arm. The phoneslick in trembling against my cheek,

1038
00:50:39,239 --> 00:50:41,519
pressed its plastic ridges into my skin, so foreign and

1039
00:50:41,599 --> 00:50:44,039
yet into a connection as old as any memory. Ahead

1040
00:50:44,079 --> 00:50:47,960
of the station, static poles crossed the line. I swallowed once,

1041
00:50:47,960 --> 00:50:50,960
felt the drawing a slide down my throat. My mouth opened,

1042
00:50:51,039 --> 00:50:55,119
and against instinct, I whispered, who are you? For a moment, nothing,

1043
00:50:55,840 --> 00:50:58,960
then faintly a hush beneath the signal. My own voice

1044
00:50:58,960 --> 00:51:01,639
puzzled up into a hundred a thousand tiny delays, shrouded

1045
00:51:01,639 --> 00:51:03,840
in a cadence that had haunted me through every tape. Aunceed,

1046
00:51:03,880 --> 00:51:06,039
we are the echo. We finished what's left and finished.

1047
00:51:06,599 --> 00:51:08,760
It didn't sound quite right, didn't sound like I ever

1048
00:51:08,800 --> 00:51:11,320
had one speaking aloud, but it wore my patterns and laughter,

1049
00:51:11,400 --> 00:51:13,920
the slip of an old accent returning briefly into vowels.

1050
00:51:14,519 --> 00:51:16,760
I felt the urge to speak again, to confess something

1051
00:51:16,800 --> 00:51:20,199
not yet confess, but my tongue caught on the words. Instead,

1052
00:51:20,360 --> 00:51:22,639
I let the silence hang and annette through the crack

1053
00:51:22,679 --> 00:51:24,440
window and the dip of the booth shadow. I saw

1054
00:51:24,440 --> 00:51:26,719
a movement of shape of the mic, leaning in the

1055
00:51:26,800 --> 00:51:29,440
line stayed open. The course began to braid its off

1056
00:51:29,480 --> 00:51:31,719
old hosts, lost collars, the sigh of the tower, guy

1057
00:51:31,800 --> 00:51:35,199
Amy's bright laughter, a child's uncertain hello, stay with us.

1058
00:51:36,000 --> 00:51:38,760
It was a benediction and a threat. My mind felt

1059
00:51:38,840 --> 00:51:40,599
like a tight loap of tape running out its last

1060
00:51:40,639 --> 00:51:43,280
few feet. I shut my eyes, gravel digging into my

1061
00:51:43,400 --> 00:51:46,400
knees as I knelt to the glass. Each syllable vibrated

1062
00:51:46,440 --> 00:51:49,119
through bone. I wanted to pull away, but I could not.

1063
00:51:49,880 --> 00:51:52,199
Inside the shadow at the board moved, tracing the ark

1064
00:51:52,239 --> 00:51:55,079
where the control surface once scleamed beneath Jack's stone finger tips.

1065
00:51:55,719 --> 00:51:57,800
It reached for the battered mic, the one we cheered

1066
00:51:57,800 --> 00:52:00,360
across years and stories, and leaned forward just a little.

1067
00:52:00,960 --> 00:52:03,599
The chorus behind it and swelled, sometimes a woman, sometimes

1068
00:52:03,639 --> 00:52:07,239
a dozen men, sometimes a weeping child, the greeting always

1069
00:52:07,480 --> 00:52:10,440
night voices, Are you with us? I tried, for a

1070
00:52:10,480 --> 00:52:12,639
desperate minute to focus on my own breathing, to draw

1071
00:52:12,679 --> 00:52:14,840
a boundary between my thoughts and the ripple of voices.

1072
00:52:15,480 --> 00:52:17,599
I dug my fingers into the cold cell. But soon

1073
00:52:17,599 --> 00:52:19,920
the poll became impossible to resist, a compulsion older than

1074
00:52:19,960 --> 00:52:23,039
the first confession. My voice, live on the dead line,

1075
00:52:23,199 --> 00:52:25,800
rose again through the phone. If I say the words

1076
00:52:25,920 --> 00:52:29,239
I managed, what happens to me? The answer came instantly,

1077
00:52:29,320 --> 00:52:31,800
all the voices blending soft, a matter of fact, and

1078
00:52:31,840 --> 00:52:34,719
somehow loving son are venomous. You become part of the story.

1079
00:52:34,800 --> 00:52:38,000
The transmission never ends. The words need hosts. The wind

1080
00:52:38,039 --> 00:52:40,360
snapped a loose sign from the building, flinging it across

1081
00:52:40,400 --> 00:52:44,000
the lettered lot. Rain began, fat drops bursting like static

1082
00:52:44,000 --> 00:52:47,599
against the glass, each one a drumbeat. Inside. The beef darkened,

1083
00:52:47,599 --> 00:52:50,679
but the shadow did not fade. Instead, it seemed to

1084
00:52:50,719 --> 00:52:54,360
gather itself, drawing from the room, grown sharper. Lightning shuddered

1085
00:52:54,360 --> 00:52:56,920
the world, and briefly I saw it shaped truly my own,

1086
00:52:57,079 --> 00:53:00,840
only not a reflection assembled from memory and take hunched

1087
00:53:00,880 --> 00:53:04,000
over the console in perpetual listening. A surge of dissiness

1088
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:06,960
overtook me. Suddenly I was nowhere, I was everywhere, always

1089
00:53:06,960 --> 00:53:09,880
on both sides of the gas. I remembered that summer,

1090
00:53:09,920 --> 00:53:12,039
the pain of being awake too long, of holding a

1091
00:53:12,039 --> 00:53:14,199
hand over your mouth to keep from speaking aloud, whatever

1092
00:53:14,239 --> 00:53:17,159
wanted to emerge After midnight, I jerked the phone from

1093
00:53:17,159 --> 00:53:20,280
my ear, let it swing on the cord. Music or

1094
00:53:20,360 --> 00:53:23,320
memory of music crackled from the receiver. Three notes miner

1095
00:53:23,360 --> 00:53:27,159
and unresolved. The knife voices prelade fractured. My knees protested

1096
00:53:27,159 --> 00:53:29,719
as I struggled to my fetinum lidden. I walked the

1097
00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:32,840
length of the station's block, passing along the chainling fence.

1098
00:53:33,599 --> 00:53:35,679
The air quivered, and for an instant every hair on

1099
00:53:35,760 --> 00:53:38,519
my body stood stiff as wire. I passed under the

1100
00:53:38,519 --> 00:53:40,679
shadow of the tower, the ghostly impression of its bulk

1101
00:53:40,679 --> 00:53:43,039
against the stormy sky, and felt the whisper at once

1102
00:53:43,199 --> 00:53:47,000
signals in the bones. The cow passed, headlights slicing through rain.

1103
00:53:47,519 --> 00:53:50,119
I turned the driver, pale and blank, did not look

1104
00:53:50,119 --> 00:53:52,800
in my direction. The town was still tied its own

1105
00:53:52,800 --> 00:53:56,119
broadcast finished a home in the stillness, I entered the

1106
00:53:56,199 --> 00:53:58,679
kitchen and shed my silk jacket, peeling it from my shoulders.

1107
00:53:59,280 --> 00:54:01,519
I set the phone down on the crack countertop, trembling

1108
00:54:02,079 --> 00:54:05,480
across the room. Every appliance glimmered with iupulster spow cycling surely,

1109
00:54:05,519 --> 00:54:08,360
but my heart objected. I set up the batter tape deck,

1110
00:54:08,400 --> 00:54:10,760
slid the final live tape into the wheels, and press play.

1111
00:54:11,400 --> 00:54:15,079
Static laired with breathing somewhere in Americ. My own voice

1112
00:54:15,079 --> 00:54:18,639
greeted the others For half a minute. I listened, the

1113
00:54:18,719 --> 00:54:21,519
hair on my sculp tingled. The tape carried not just

1114
00:54:21,559 --> 00:54:24,360
my voice, but so many Jack's gentle caress of a phrase,

1115
00:54:24,440 --> 00:54:28,639
Aimy's novysalkism, Hanks eye in rough baritone. They told stories, meandering,

1116
00:54:28,760 --> 00:54:32,079
sometimes a reveling in mid sentence. On the second minute,

1117
00:54:32,119 --> 00:54:36,039
a break, a caller's voice low and feveredusss parry from

1118
00:54:36,119 --> 00:54:39,320
lon Ago, meaning for warmth. Then I don't remember how

1119
00:54:39,360 --> 00:54:42,480
I got here, she confess, and the line dissolved. There

1120
00:54:42,559 --> 00:54:45,000
was a space, a hush where words should have been.

1121
00:54:45,519 --> 00:54:48,320
A new voice emerged, unmistakably the stranger, the same one

1122
00:54:48,320 --> 00:54:51,559
from the do not Archive tape. Calm and hungry, confess

1123
00:54:51,599 --> 00:54:55,239
it commanded finish the story the right way. I sam

1124
00:54:55,239 --> 00:54:58,199
The tape stopped, chest heaving. For the first time in weeks,

1125
00:54:58,320 --> 00:55:00,159
I felt enough while a fury, not just a my

1126
00:55:00,199 --> 00:55:02,599
own helplesses, but at the end, this pattern, the predatory

1127
00:55:02,599 --> 00:55:07,119
persistence of unfinished broadcasts. My fist bold No, I whisper,

1128
00:55:07,320 --> 00:55:10,039
almost to myself, but it filled the room. You don't

1129
00:55:10,039 --> 00:55:12,639
get to have the last word, not this time. I

1130
00:55:12,719 --> 00:55:14,760
searched my drawers and found the padlock and key I

1131
00:55:14,760 --> 00:55:17,280
had kept from the station's mail cubby all those years before.

1132
00:55:17,840 --> 00:55:19,960
With deliberation, I wound the live tap and the do

1133
00:55:20,039 --> 00:55:22,320
not rcave a reel together, bundle tight with the last

1134
00:55:22,320 --> 00:55:25,039
piece of the script Amy had transcribed. I locked them

1135
00:55:25,039 --> 00:55:28,679
in the steel cash box, double checking the latch. Without ceremony,

1136
00:55:28,679 --> 00:55:30,800
I shoved the box deep under all his floorboard and

1137
00:55:30,880 --> 00:55:34,239
hammered the board snug. The act felt weighty, ceremonial. If

1138
00:55:34,239 --> 00:55:36,079
I could not rid myself of the story, I could

1139
00:55:36,079 --> 00:55:39,760
at least deny at new listeners, new hosts. Afterward, I

1140
00:55:39,800 --> 00:55:42,559
sat heavily on the kitchen floor, back pressed to the fridge,

1141
00:55:42,679 --> 00:55:44,440
alone except for the hum of the world and the

1142
00:55:44,480 --> 00:55:47,440
sawing static that never fully faded from my hearing. The

1143
00:55:47,519 --> 00:55:49,639
days have followed within him, bright, as if the world

1144
00:55:49,639 --> 00:55:52,760
had scrubbed itself too clean. I rarely left the apartment.

1145
00:55:53,360 --> 00:55:56,920
The radio stayed off, the tapes, untouched the phone and plugged.

1146
00:55:57,639 --> 00:56:00,039
Sometimes at night I thought I saw shapes in the

1147
00:56:00,039 --> 00:56:03,320
window glass. My own reflected, holding stands older than my body.

1148
00:56:03,840 --> 00:56:05,639
I did not answer when the phone rang, though it

1149
00:56:05,719 --> 00:56:08,360
rang often, always at three, two, at him, always from nowhere.

1150
00:56:08,960 --> 00:56:11,519
Warts bred that the station had finally gone. Demolition was

1151
00:56:11,519 --> 00:56:14,000
carried out, adorned with heavy equipment. The lot's grave raw,

1152
00:56:14,079 --> 00:56:17,159
vol but foundation and glass I watched from a distance

1153
00:56:17,320 --> 00:56:21,000
had drawn close. The stories dried up in town. People

1154
00:56:21,039 --> 00:56:24,360
moved on or pretended to the museums when on local

1155
00:56:24,360 --> 00:56:27,320
broadcasts shut down, files boxed away to regional apolite work

1156
00:56:27,360 --> 00:56:32,079
for buried Joan stopped calling Ianng's number, disconnected Marlus two.

1157
00:56:32,760 --> 00:56:35,039
In the diner, when somewhat spoke of the old days,

1158
00:56:35,119 --> 00:56:38,360
the whole room grew silent. The absence of w Alexa

1159
00:56:38,440 --> 00:56:40,920
became part of the landscape, another gap in the local memory,

1160
00:56:40,960 --> 00:56:45,239
another unspoken border. Sometimes, in sleepless hours, I found myself

1161
00:56:45,239 --> 00:56:48,119
for housing lines, stay with us, speak only as heard.

1162
00:56:48,760 --> 00:56:52,079
Sometimes I resisted. Sometimes the urge crept into my sentences,

1163
00:56:52,199 --> 00:56:55,559
even when ordering groceries were making idle conversation with strangers.

1164
00:56:56,199 --> 00:56:59,519
The patterns, once embedded, never left, merely waited for gats

1165
00:56:59,559 --> 00:57:03,480
and Wilpoe or moments of lapse. Spring came brought another

1166
00:57:03,519 --> 00:57:05,960
soft thaw, and with it the sounds of construction where

1167
00:57:05,960 --> 00:57:08,559
the old lot had been. Life pressed forward and small

1168
00:57:08,599 --> 00:57:11,280
in different ways. But when I passed the corner where

1169
00:57:11,360 --> 00:57:13,320
w leick Saw had stood, I still felt the tremor

1170
00:57:13,320 --> 00:57:15,679
beneath my feet, a vague interference, like two lives out

1171
00:57:15,679 --> 00:57:18,519
of phase, a transmission always threatening to break through. I

1172
00:57:18,639 --> 00:57:22,000
kept the box sealed. Papers and reels began to deteriorate,

1173
00:57:22,079 --> 00:57:24,840
as though time itself tried to consume them on rarer

1174
00:57:24,920 --> 00:57:27,199
nights and saw me deep and sharp. I'd paced the floor,

1175
00:57:27,360 --> 00:57:29,800
drawn to the patch of floorboards under which the box slept.

1176
00:57:30,480 --> 00:57:33,119
I never moved it. I learned to live with that small,

1177
00:57:33,159 --> 00:57:35,559
active resistance. My final sign off a denial of the

1178
00:57:35,639 --> 00:57:39,840
endless pattern. But the broadcast never truly ends, as Cadence

1179
00:57:39,840 --> 00:57:41,599
finds me in the hum of the refrigerator, in the

1180
00:57:41,639 --> 00:57:43,840
low cycling of the street lights outside my window, in

1181
00:57:43,840 --> 00:57:46,519
the echo at the edge of dream. Years may pass.

1182
00:57:47,119 --> 00:57:50,199
Eventually someone new will find a box, while not the

1183
00:57:50,239 --> 00:57:53,599
voices may choose another vector, another empty room, another confession.

1184
00:57:54,159 --> 00:57:56,880
My voice too is out there, layered with others, skipping

1185
00:57:56,880 --> 00:57:59,840
on the ghost lines, always reaching, And when ever saw

1186
00:57:59,840 --> 00:58:02,440
all my phone rings at that uncanny ire. I'll let

1187
00:58:02,480 --> 00:58:05,880
it play. Behind the static, my own voice hovers neither

1188
00:58:05,880 --> 00:58:09,360
invitation nor threat, just to promise, Halfulfelder, are you ready

1189
00:58:09,360 --> 00:58:12,599
to confess? And somewhere in the unspoiling dark, the show

1190
00:58:12,679 --> 00:58:16,960
goes ever on, and that is the end. Thank you

1191
00:58:17,039 --> 00:58:27,000
for listening, and I will see you in the next one.