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Speaker 1: The cardboard box has been wedged into the far corner

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of my guest room closet for almost fifteen years, beneath

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a wrinkle stack of forgotten sweaters and a half unraveled

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Halloween scarf. The box sits with a distinct weight of

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something deliberately left alone. One corner dended it's lid. Some

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bleach from decades in daylight on station shelves then shadowed

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his since of that night I hawl it into the gloaming,

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does plumme out my knees, protesting the effort more than

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they did back at WKDL. In the silence, every miner

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sound is magnifat the low hum of my refrigerator down

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the hall, my own soft breathing. My hands hesitate at

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the box flaps. A part of me expected the tapes

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to have dissolved over the years, or for time to

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have shifted something from themental within, maybe shrank their voices

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or erased the unease he sends that clings to them.

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But the boxes, as I remember, stenciled a w kdlocka

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of two thousand and nine blocky black shop have faded

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to ghostgray. Inside the scent of old paper, a stale

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cigarettes and magnetic tape rises up. There's a stack of cassettes,

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mostly Maxell and t DKA have positively labeled Jamie Blues,

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its lash twenty post midnight requests, a log term test signal,

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and a torn envelope with a scattering of yellow fan mail.

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To night sleep is a memory. The ghost of the

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last week at the station, which I never speak of,

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even to Lizzie when she used to check in has crone, heavier,

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decades of humming circuits, the late nights, and seven cups

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of burned coffee have left me with the kind of

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permanent static in my bones. Others might call this nostalgia.

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I know better. There's comfort in rituals. I retrieve my

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ancient workmen from the box, its foam, heavr and stiff

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one air bespandashed with electrical tape flick and fresh batteries,

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and select the tape marks simply Jamie Final Blues. The

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machines motor protests, spooling the tape forward with a thrudy

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war headphones in place, I lower myself on to the

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edge of the guest bed, squinting in the dinners as

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the wheels turn. For a time, nothing but his blank air,

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the soft shudder of magnetic particles, then weaving through static.

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Jamie's voice murmurs to life, good evening, blue lights. This

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is Jamie coming to you from w k D L

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your home for late night solace to Night's first track

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of his tambo, all honey and late chift, fatigue, unlock

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something sharp in my chest. I haven't heard him in years.

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Beneath his greeting a thread of long, slow beats and truths,

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faint regular out of tempo, with the easy blues gutar

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bleeding through. At first, I think it's just h taped

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to a gradition, a natural artifact. But the beats persists,

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space precisely, cutting through the soft minor chords. When Jamie

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lets the track breathe, dead air fills with a deeper strangeness,

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almost under the tit's noise floor. Another voice, just a mutter,

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as if someone's hiding in the static itself. It's so

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faint I have to close my eyes concentrate in the

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lays music noise, another voice that seems to hover just

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outside comprehension. My handshake only slightly. For now. It's a

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familiar tremor. I remember Jamie's last night at the station,

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the way he lingered by the break room, knuckles white

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around his batter at thermos for refusing to meet my eye.

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I remember Marty, the station manager, calling at dawn when

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Jamie didn't clock out, the police lights dancing beyond the

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transmitted tower, sweeping the parking lot, fronzes that would never come.

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I rewind the tape, straining to catch the barest fragments

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between the tracks, in the gaps behind the music, the

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beeps repeater code. Surely, if someone cared to notice, there

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is an impression of voices then blended into the end

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of midnight at the cross roads, a phrase that might

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be a name, my name, or Jamie's time plattens. I

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set the head phones aside and run my hand through

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the box until I find the fan letter is envelope,

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torn but legible, purse, not barely a week before Jamie vanished,

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the scold note inside. Here are the only ones who

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know I hear more than you think they are listening

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to below a string of numbers in the sentence, nearly illegible.

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Play it backward. It's all there so many things I'd

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let myself forget, at least until now the tape seemed

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to hum with anticipation. There seekers pressing against one another,

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as if complicit in their own concealment. I'm not young

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any more, but to night the unfinished business is louder

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than the years. I thread through the next tape, the

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urge sharpening from a nast to something else. Whatever Jamie

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tried to show me, it's still waiting somewhere between the

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music and the static. I press play in return for

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the first time in years, to w kitd L. Before

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the mystery, there was only the routine memory brings me

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back and spoiling in reverse to the deep country dust

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that always enveloped the station. W k DL sawd alone,

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square cinder block, its paint the color of spilled coffee

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and broken promise on the sliver of forgotten highway. Car

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had lights might pass out front, but mostly it was

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the relentless dock feels gone to see, pressing clothes and

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tend a spiking skyward like a warning. I pulled my

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battert to Dan into the rutted lot at nine fifty six,

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engine clicking as it cooled under the glow of the

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one reliable security lamp. The air always smelled of summer

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hay and nozone, as though the towers lol Hum had

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its own weather system. If Jamie's krr was still there

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that rosterabuke were three bumper stickers and a crack windsheld,

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I knew I was on time. Inside the station was

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a world depart The front office bristled with neglected filing cabinets,

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an empty display for a Djay of the month metals

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nunnawoarded since two thousand three, and a trophy case devoted

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mostly to dead flies. The lawn linoleum hallway sloped toward

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the control rooms. I always constant at the supply closet,

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where Gerald's cart perched amid coils of cable and a

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collection of creasy tools. Gerald himself, the night shift maintenance man,

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was rarely seen, but often felt his critic. Notice in

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shop had posted everywhere warning do not rewire booth three

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or astro as gusterisk waves are not friendly. Asterrois gasterisk

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in all caps. Lizzie the Intern would sometimes camp by

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the coffee machine Herbert's in, peering into battered laptop as

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if expecting government agents at any moment. Her laugh was contagious,

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but her fixation on radio conspiracies made everyone elsewherey, especially

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when she suggested our frequency could be a bachel for

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more than music. Mardy, our station manager, was a relica

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Warr's mustache man, allergic to change and stubborn about keeping

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us on a m even his listenership plummeted. He shuffled

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through after the apum news, checking logbooks and asking always

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if the transmit a hump seemed hotter than normal. Tonight,

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my shift began at ten Pums Shop, spelled by Jamie.

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Our hand of us were brief, a lean in the doorway,

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a half smirk from Jamie as he spun out of

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his chair, sharing private jokes about the ghost in Boothouan

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or the supposed midnight audience of truckers and insomniacts. Seamie

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was a study and contradiction, wiry, with wild calls always

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escaping his head, fond scars around his finger nails from

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nervous speaking. His playlists were erratic old gospel, one night

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turky sic fook the necks, always with hidden themed songs

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about crossing over. He once winked his love for the oddum,

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the forgotten, to find the light shift to nights for

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those who can't sleep, he'd say, too softly for the mic.

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Alone at the controls, the world seemed to flatten into routine.

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I'd read the ad slowly, savoring the odd poetry in

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Otto's feed, and see up and all night o'er the

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fade and jingle for a king's pharmacy where the knight

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never ends. I'd line up records vinyl mostly a CD

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player only half functional, double chick transmit of meters, and

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mark every action in the bat of green Lockbrook. The

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station at night was lonelier than any church, a hiss

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of live hair and crackle of vinyl. The only constant company.

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Moss battered themselves, tobliving against the exteriors Judi or glass.

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The silence outside felt absolute. Inside the station was its

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own drifting island, afloat upon layered static. Every so often

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Lizzie's sneakerd shuffle would pass outside the booth. Sometimes she'd

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leave me a fresh cup of metallic over brewed coffee.

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Once a shift, the phone would stutter to life. Ninety

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percent of calls cross wires forks asking for a free

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dog night on mis style Pete's orders. But there were

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stranger messages left as voicemails, indistinct voices requesting songs that

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barely existed, or muttering short clit sentences, sniffets of other

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conversations half swallowed by static. Those always made me uneasy.

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Marty waved it off as cross lines. Maybe somebody with

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a shot with hammeringscrewing around. Jamie more than anyone, thrived

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on the strangeness. He lived for it. In fact, after

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midnight during his set, he'd sometimes had his own echoing

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reverbor pitch songs down to make a collar shiver. He claimed,

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our frequency hit a run note, but reality at once

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it passed to him. He called this the slipshift. At

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first I thought it was a joke. Then there were

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the knights. He lingered, staring out into the unbroken blackness

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past a parking lot, pausing mid sentence in his log enters,

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did you hear that? He'd ask. By then the moment

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had passed. Gerald when he surfaced, left gold notes in

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the transmitter closet warning of voltage spikes, or would slip

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into just cables while muttering, you keep the waves happy,

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they keep you. Despite all this, our routine sustained us

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nights stacked a top nights, songs blending into each other

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at waking me at random intervals, with nothing in particular

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out of place. I treasured the rhythm, flipped the record,

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led to fader answered the phone once on a dare,

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Jamie and I tried to see who could build the

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stranger's playlist without losing the audience. He always won. There

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is a specifical loneliness as for anticipation to such work

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you present for everyone and no one. A storm crept

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over the fields, the well trunk to the skip of

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the stylus and the amber bulb of yon air sign

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any unease, every odd crackle or line of garble speech

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felt exaggerated by the iro. Sometimes that edge was comforting,

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Sometimes it lapped at the corners of dread. I can

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still name every weey complaint we fielded. The farmer who

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claimed our station dropped in and out at the same

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minute each night only when he set his radio a

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top a particular window ledge, the woman who swore to whom

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show played in reverse in her kitchen but not anywhere else.

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Jamie laughed it off, as did I. Still in the

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pitch black, I wondered whose voices invaded IROs and whether

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we ever truly broadcasted alone. The first time I noticed

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the pattern, it was deep in the present, sitting alone

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with the headphones, pinching my scal reviewing Jamie's final blues

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taper and stuttering midnight on. The beeps pulled at me, soft, regular,

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almost soothing in their repetition, never overlapping with the schedule

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that breaks the station id. I trot at the interval's

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bell ringing regular, but each shee could subtly different, complex

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enough not to be the result of cross talk or

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failing relay. I loaded a second tape, Jamie's slip shift requests,

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dated three nights prior, and the beep's surfaced again, further

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down in the spectrum, barely oldible, beneath the notice Russello

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drag number. Here they skipped in threes and fives, syncopating

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in a deliberate fashion. Dizzy with focus, I spun through

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the tape, rewinding to listen, pushing volume and trouble both.

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During one quiet moment, a long before the station jingle,

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a murmur or emerged, brushed across the ground in the

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hess words if words could be under water, I shivered

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my name or Jamie's by then it was hard to

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tell an easy I went searching for an old cream

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broadcast Love Eyed stash in the box routine enters everywhere

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twelve son, the thrill is gone a twelve ten ins

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or it ad copy k an entire nowhere, Not even

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in the margins was there a note about the beeps

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or coded transmissions. I checked the coal logger, just the

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usual misconnections and the late night ramble of a lonely world.

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Then buried in the back of Jamie's outbox. On an

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old Windows backup disc labeled a WKDL Jamie drafts, I

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found a half wretten email to me that had never

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been sent. Saw it again tonight ways got rough you

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ever hear numbers in the static. His phrasing jumps around,

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but there is a frantic edge. Mardy says, ignore it,

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but some of us hear more right. Some day I

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think they'll want to speak. He never finished the message.

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The end is just a string of random, out of

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place numbers, and then nothing. Something in my chest tightened,

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a memory resurfacing Jamie and the break crom near the end,

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wild Eyed complaining about phantom signals. I told him kindly

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as I could to get some rest that overnight radio

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always frayed your mind with shadows, he'd half laughed. It's

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not the loneliness, it's what comes through when you leanin

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to listen. I didn't understand then, maybe deep down I

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didn't want to. My pen hovered. I noted the first

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significant time stamp, one forty four am, the same moment.

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The beats appeared in both tapes. The time repeated across logs,

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never shifting by more than a second over three nights.

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That kind of precision doesn't happen by chance. Determined, I

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set the tapes aside and began cross referencing. Jamie's locks

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half scrolled in his jacket's kirked my own cleaner enters

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right after, searching for any sign that these beaps and

233
00:11:33,600 --> 00:11:36,600
voices might line up with real events. The more tapes

234
00:11:36,639 --> 00:11:39,720
I played, the less I could dismiss it. Patten was deliberate,

235
00:11:39,919 --> 00:11:42,679
waiting to be found. Most of the old cassettes sound

236
00:11:42,799 --> 00:11:45,480
just as I remembered, the scratching static a velvet blues

237
00:11:45,519 --> 00:11:49,159
guitar and Jamie's warm practice cadence. But for every late

238
00:11:49,279 --> 00:11:51,240
night's show of his I review, never in the drive time,

239
00:11:51,399 --> 00:11:55,039
never on daytime, playlist thus coadd beats through a true, unfailing, relentless.

240
00:11:55,720 --> 00:11:58,240
I pile old station logs across my table, flecking through

241
00:11:58,240 --> 00:12:01,399
each page with growing obsession. On the night of August twentieth,

242
00:12:01,440 --> 00:12:04,519
two days before Jamie vanished, I find something beneath the

243
00:12:04,559 --> 00:12:07,639
tightly ordered playlist. A rush pencil scribble runs along side

244
00:12:07,639 --> 00:12:10,919
the meter readings power serge one forty four, two nine,

245
00:12:11,000 --> 00:12:15,200
two forty seven. Ask Jerrel why my pulse quickens? I

246
00:12:15,279 --> 00:12:18,360
remember Jerrel, rarely seen, but always present in traces, his

247
00:12:18,480 --> 00:12:21,240
utility belt, the smell of burned sawder in the law.

248
00:12:21,360 --> 00:12:24,000
Beneath Jamie's handwriting, Gerrel's and you. The hand has left

249
00:12:24,200 --> 00:12:27,919
interference transmitter ran hot. Don't ness with ground ring. Elsewhere

250
00:12:27,919 --> 00:12:29,720
in the tipok I have two old apece stand out

251
00:12:29,720 --> 00:12:32,039
among the batter jacket, one mot with a culing sigil

252
00:12:32,080 --> 00:12:34,840
that looks like broken radio waves, penn and fading silver ink,

253
00:12:34,919 --> 00:12:37,679
the other with the jagged ex Tucked inside the first

254
00:12:37,799 --> 00:12:40,519
is a slip of paper. Don't record, just listen. The

255
00:12:40,559 --> 00:12:43,080
handwriting is nervous, press so hard it newly cuts the

256
00:12:43,080 --> 00:12:46,720
thin paper. I recall Jamie making jokes about finding curse final,

257
00:12:46,840 --> 00:12:49,399
but this is no joke. Did we ever play these

258
00:12:49,399 --> 00:12:52,639
on air? I don't remember. I failed to supress a

259
00:12:52,639 --> 00:12:55,919
creeping sense of unreality. As I continue, there's another uncent

260
00:12:56,000 --> 00:12:58,279
draft from Jamie, save the two twenty five AM on

261
00:12:58,320 --> 00:13:01,399
the night before his disappearance. He starts out referencing some

262
00:13:01,399 --> 00:13:04,360
one in the parking lot saw him again, saying, black coat,

263
00:13:04,480 --> 00:13:07,120
headlights off in the service lot, just watching. Lizzie says,

264
00:13:07,159 --> 00:13:09,159
don't worry, but I see him most nights after two.

265
00:13:09,639 --> 00:13:11,759
The message cuts off half way through a sentence about

266
00:13:11,759 --> 00:13:15,240
courtive messages in the left channel between ats, turning now

267
00:13:15,279 --> 00:13:18,159
to the station's digital visitor look kept for insurance reasons,

268
00:13:18,360 --> 00:13:21,399
but rarely enforced. I scroll through the weeks before Jamie vanished.

269
00:13:22,120 --> 00:13:25,879
Most knights no entries, but three times during his shifts

270
00:13:25,919 --> 00:13:28,159
there was a wreckor back door open, slashed close too

271
00:13:28,279 --> 00:13:31,240
while being ore service hall motion detected two forty five m.

272
00:13:31,519 --> 00:13:34,679
No staff schedule, no explanation in official shift roster, and

273
00:13:34,759 --> 00:13:37,559
always dismissed as probably jerreal, even when Jerrold's own sign

274
00:13:37,600 --> 00:13:40,960
in is absent. I decide to reach out. I opened

275
00:13:40,960 --> 00:13:43,759
my laptop and fire and email to Lizzie. I remind

276
00:13:43,759 --> 00:13:46,039
her of a late night stat puzzles Jamie dropped about.

277
00:13:46,080 --> 00:13:48,879
I ask, has she ever noticed the beeping pattern? Did

278
00:13:48,919 --> 00:13:52,080
she know about the parking lot visitor? Her reply when

279
00:13:52,120 --> 00:13:54,480
it comes as brief, heard something odd, thought it was

280
00:13:54,480 --> 00:13:57,039
a busted Really only ever happened to Jamie show I

281
00:13:57,080 --> 00:13:59,840
think got worse the last week before than stopped completely

282
00:14:00,480 --> 00:14:03,600
two sentences. But inside that stopped completely is something un

283
00:14:03,639 --> 00:14:08,080
set The tapes continue to unsettle. One night, desperate for clarity,

284
00:14:08,240 --> 00:14:10,399
I queue up the infamous slips of tape, hoping for

285
00:14:10,399 --> 00:14:13,399
some one dane technical floor or failing transformer, a colon hookser.

286
00:14:13,960 --> 00:14:16,399
But at to ninim the static deepens, a rap calling

287
00:14:16,480 --> 00:14:19,200
up from underneath a slow blues number. At the edge

288
00:14:19,200 --> 00:14:21,320
of perception comes a voice so faint it might be

289
00:14:21,360 --> 00:14:23,759
an odd a fact of sleep deprivation. Help me. I

290
00:14:23,879 --> 00:14:27,960
rip the headphones off. Hard pounding sleep becomes impossible, and

291
00:14:28,039 --> 00:14:30,519
caught between guilt and fascination, between a wish to let

292
00:14:30,559 --> 00:14:33,039
him rest and the sense that Jimmie reached out, failed

293
00:14:33,080 --> 00:14:35,879
and left me holding the thread. The moilis in the

294
00:14:35,879 --> 00:14:39,759
more patterns creeping from the periphery. It's never once, never random,

295
00:14:40,399 --> 00:14:43,279
always in the little eyres, always under his show, always

296
00:14:43,279 --> 00:14:45,639
settling in the dead space, nobody listens to unless they're

297
00:14:45,639 --> 00:14:48,840
desperate for company or warning. One night, as dew fogs

298
00:14:48,879 --> 00:14:50,879
my window, when I sit hunched over the boxes, a

299
00:14:50,960 --> 00:14:55,080
real as if started charting everything times, songs, code, transmitter jumps,

300
00:14:55,200 --> 00:14:59,000
even atmospheric shifts. My home feels contaminated by the stations,

301
00:14:59,039 --> 00:15:02,799
goes signals. Even now, I keep returning night after night,

302
00:15:02,879 --> 00:15:05,480
determined I'll find something that spells out not just what happened,

303
00:15:05,519 --> 00:15:08,399
but why. Thus, when the box gives out its final secret,

304
00:15:08,480 --> 00:15:11,279
the tape that contains the last shift, my hand holds

305
00:15:11,360 --> 00:15:13,879
Jamie's final broadcast, and in this moment, the act of

306
00:15:13,960 --> 00:15:16,519
listening becomes an invocation, whether I wish for it or not.

307
00:15:17,240 --> 00:15:18,840
It is on this final tape the one mark to

308
00:15:18,879 --> 00:15:20,879
Jamie final blue slash eight in his twenty two and

309
00:15:20,919 --> 00:15:23,799
ring with the nervous line impen that everything changes. I

310
00:15:23,840 --> 00:15:26,240
wait until midnight, Headform's press two, tight to my ears,

311
00:15:26,360 --> 00:15:28,440
A grow an ache in my jaw, and load the tape.

312
00:15:28,919 --> 00:15:31,799
As Jamie's familiar sign unrolls up blue lights. Wherever you are,

313
00:15:31,919 --> 00:15:34,799
You're never alone. At w kdel the sequence begins to unfold.

314
00:15:35,399 --> 00:15:38,679
The beeps which I now expect to seem agitated, even insistent,

315
00:15:38,840 --> 00:15:42,320
Arriving in a rigid, almost militant cadence for the first time,

316
00:15:42,440 --> 00:15:44,720
I bewed up my old network, open a terminal, and

317
00:15:44,799 --> 00:15:47,200
start typing out every lawn in short intervals. They occur

318
00:15:47,320 --> 00:15:50,679
hand sweaty breath jacket. I'm no code breaker, but even

319
00:15:50,720 --> 00:15:53,600
I recognize the pattern, a dash dotted language of halted urgency.

320
00:15:54,200 --> 00:15:57,240
It takes me several passes cross referencing the lopsided rhythm

321
00:15:57,279 --> 00:16:00,799
before certainty creeps in. The beeps Amore's coat. Jamie right

322
00:16:00,879 --> 00:16:03,000
under the music, under the noses of any one who

323
00:16:03,039 --> 00:16:06,039
cared to listen, was sending in so o s working

324
00:16:06,080 --> 00:16:07,919
line by line, my pulse thrumming as if there were

325
00:16:07,919 --> 00:16:10,039
still operating the booth. I had to code the message

326
00:16:10,080 --> 00:16:13,480
Hans trembling so fiercely, and nearly missed the reveal. There

327
00:16:13,559 --> 00:16:18,159
here not staff booth. Three shock sharpens my mind. My

328
00:16:18,240 --> 00:16:20,000
chest grapes the four as I lutch to the box

329
00:16:20,000 --> 00:16:22,279
and dig out the station security summaries from that week.

330
00:16:23,000 --> 00:16:25,000
I zero in on the time stamps, each a door

331
00:16:25,039 --> 00:16:27,519
open warning and brief flicker of the exterior parking lot

332
00:16:27,559 --> 00:16:30,759
camera lines up exactly with the curded beeps, the grainy

333
00:16:30,799 --> 00:16:33,519
print out shore only blurry stills, one possibly a figure

334
00:16:33,519 --> 00:16:36,080
cat mid turn distorder just past the glass doors. Then

335
00:16:36,080 --> 00:16:38,039
a blurt of white static rite as the time hits

336
00:16:38,039 --> 00:16:40,960
two nigh and the screen's margins forced out in strange interference.

337
00:16:41,600 --> 00:16:43,759
In the background of the tape, the music seems to receive,

338
00:16:43,799 --> 00:16:47,200
as if retreating a pill through water. Suddenly, following the

339
00:16:47,240 --> 00:16:50,799
code burst, a second, hurried burst of numbers repeats, not

340
00:16:50,919 --> 00:16:53,840
a song cue, not a colophone in, but something relentless

341
00:16:53,840 --> 00:16:57,679
and intentional, a string of digits, possibly coordinates, possibly an invitation.

342
00:16:58,279 --> 00:17:01,240
The voice, almost certainly Jamie's, cracks and distorts, as if

343
00:17:01,240 --> 00:17:04,680
it's fighting a tidal force. The pieces scay together, dread

344
00:17:04,720 --> 00:17:07,759
blooming like a fever behind my rips. Jamie had noticed

345
00:17:07,759 --> 00:17:10,920
what the rest of us chose to overlook. Every coded burst,

346
00:17:11,000 --> 00:17:14,519
every irregularity in the transmitter lined up with documented power surges,

347
00:17:14,640 --> 00:17:17,119
just where Gerald's hands gold notes won something round hot,

348
00:17:17,160 --> 00:17:21,319
precisely when security glitches suggested unauthorized visitors. What if these

349
00:17:21,319 --> 00:17:24,160
weren't random, What if the hot transmitter was never just

350
00:17:24,200 --> 00:17:26,640
a maintenance issue, but a deliberate boost a moment that

351
00:17:26,680 --> 00:17:29,559
allowed some frequency, something or somewhat to punch through burrows

352
00:17:29,599 --> 00:17:32,279
that should have held. I stare at the scold messages,

353
00:17:32,319 --> 00:17:36,200
the security images, the swirling lines occurred. My breath freezes.

354
00:17:36,880 --> 00:17:39,599
Jamie wasn't just recording oddities or teasing out anomalies for

355
00:17:39,599 --> 00:17:42,000
the fun of it. He was trying to send a warning,

356
00:17:42,119 --> 00:17:44,880
routed beneath the music through the nighttime static, one last

357
00:17:44,920 --> 00:17:48,000
call for help, buried inside to routine. Nobody checked on

358
00:17:48,039 --> 00:17:50,559
the final lock, right before everything ends. He writes, if

359
00:17:50,599 --> 00:17:53,759
anybody hears this Booth three is compromised, not staffed, I'm

360
00:17:53,759 --> 00:17:56,519
not sure it's even listening any more. With a growing

361
00:17:56,559 --> 00:17:59,039
certainty and a deep tremor of fear, I understand the

362
00:17:59,039 --> 00:18:01,599
station are batter That island was never just playing music

363
00:18:01,640 --> 00:18:05,319
for the lost. It was being used, maybe by someone

364
00:18:05,519 --> 00:18:07,640
or something that I picked Jamie out as the only

365
00:18:07,680 --> 00:18:11,079
one who noticed something that needed the music, the repetition,

366
00:18:11,160 --> 00:18:13,559
the ritual of night and static, and signal to masket's

367
00:18:13,559 --> 00:18:16,880
real purpose. Jamie's lost courted message of their here rings

368
00:18:16,880 --> 00:18:18,640
in my head as I pulled the tape from the machine,

369
00:18:18,720 --> 00:18:21,759
sow what slick across my palms? Whoever or whatever came

370
00:18:21,799 --> 00:18:23,519
for him was never just a voice in the static.

371
00:18:24,200 --> 00:18:26,519
I am left with only the tapes, my incomplete log sheets,

372
00:18:26,559 --> 00:18:28,480
the whiff of ozon that now seems to permeate my

373
00:18:28,519 --> 00:18:30,720
little house, and the certainty that I am listening to

374
00:18:30,759 --> 00:18:32,880
the ruins of something deeper than just a vanish man.

375
00:18:33,480 --> 00:18:35,920
And for the first time, I'm truly afraid to press

376
00:18:35,920 --> 00:18:38,559
play again. I set the tape down, a thin sheen

377
00:18:38,599 --> 00:18:40,480
of sweat holding to my opulep. Though the house is

378
00:18:40,559 --> 00:18:43,720
chilled against a muggy august, The words and the cotesu

379
00:18:43,799 --> 00:18:48,599
behind my eyes. Booth free, not staff. I drug in

380
00:18:48,640 --> 00:18:50,680
a stading bread and worked steady my hands enough to

381
00:18:50,759 --> 00:18:53,599
organize the spread before me. The yellowed logs found letters

382
00:18:53,680 --> 00:18:55,640
tapes in their cases, each one marked with a date,

383
00:18:55,680 --> 00:18:58,599
a song reference, or a nervous sounding and joke. The

384
00:18:58,640 --> 00:19:00,960
clotter takes on new gravity, now, now a suggestion of

385
00:19:01,039 --> 00:19:04,359
hidden signals pulsing beneath the ordinary. The house, outside my

386
00:19:04,400 --> 00:19:07,039
little circle of lamp light falls away. I'm not in

387
00:19:07,079 --> 00:19:10,119
my living room. I'm back in w kd L's control booth,

388
00:19:10,160 --> 00:19:12,799
familiar dials and worn out faders under my finger tips.

389
00:19:12,799 --> 00:19:15,519
The abroad been with that low, uneven humlet sometimes made

390
00:19:15,559 --> 00:19:17,480
your teeth ache if you spend too long in a building.

391
00:19:18,039 --> 00:19:20,119
I swear I can still smell the old, heavy crackle

392
00:19:20,119 --> 00:19:22,799
of ozone and overheated dust, old molt sunk so deep

393
00:19:22,799 --> 00:19:24,839
in the carpet that no chemical ever scrubbed it out.

394
00:19:25,440 --> 00:19:27,640
I rub my eyes hard enough to see purple squares

395
00:19:27,680 --> 00:19:29,480
behind my eyelids, and strap back into the work the

396
00:19:29,480 --> 00:19:31,799
way I did back then, when the only option was

397
00:19:31,839 --> 00:19:34,400
to keep spinning the wheel. I dig out Jamie's logs

398
00:19:34,400 --> 00:19:37,279
from the last month. Each page reveals its own mood.

399
00:19:37,400 --> 00:19:39,559
His handwriting grow and jagged the closer it gets to

400
00:19:39,559 --> 00:19:42,240
the volgarst, as if his nerve stretched tighter across the days.

401
00:19:43,000 --> 00:19:45,200
Some nights are blank, the log folled in SEB with

402
00:19:45,240 --> 00:19:49,039
sketches looping radio waves or lines I can't parse. One

403
00:19:49,079 --> 00:19:51,119
page abruptly ends in the middle of the playlist, with

404
00:19:51,240 --> 00:19:53,519
only two forty seven. It's here then, a thick scrubble

405
00:19:53,559 --> 00:19:57,880
blocking out what follows. My pulse stodters two forty seven.

406
00:19:58,400 --> 00:20:00,519
It's the same time echoed in those doors. Alert's the

407
00:20:00,519 --> 00:20:02,400
same ire that keeps cropping up in the beeps and

408
00:20:02,440 --> 00:20:06,279
in Gerrel's warnings. I remember how during weeks of double shifts,

409
00:20:06,440 --> 00:20:08,839
I blamed any oddity on exhaustion that humming and saw

410
00:20:08,880 --> 00:20:11,200
me a contensity that shapes the world into something both

411
00:20:11,240 --> 00:20:14,720
sharper and more dream like. But this, this is something calculated.

412
00:20:15,319 --> 00:20:18,160
Shamie was following a system, noting the frequencies and marking

413
00:20:18,160 --> 00:20:21,400
the times. My body aches as years of memory rise up,

414
00:20:21,440 --> 00:20:23,839
and I remember how near the end he barely joked

415
00:20:23,880 --> 00:20:27,119
any more. How sometimes after wrapping his show, he double

416
00:20:27,119 --> 00:20:30,160
locked the booth door with handshaking and mutter never alone, right,

417
00:20:30,440 --> 00:20:34,119
not really? That nervous energy seeps into me. Now I

418
00:20:34,160 --> 00:20:36,279
turn from the papers and retrieve that X marked you'll

419
00:20:36,319 --> 00:20:38,559
be from the stack at sleeve sticky with old recidue

420
00:20:38,640 --> 00:20:41,960
label long since lost. I don't own a working turntable,

421
00:20:42,039 --> 00:20:44,119
but I run my fingers over at tracing the jagged

422
00:20:44,119 --> 00:20:47,480
marker strokes he left behind. They don't record, just listen.

423
00:20:47,559 --> 00:20:50,279
The paper inside warns again. Was it just a private

424
00:20:50,359 --> 00:20:53,440
joke or a desperate attempt to draw attention without stirring

425
00:20:53,440 --> 00:20:56,960
Marty's suspicions? Behind my hesitation sits an instinct boorn not

426
00:20:57,079 --> 00:20:59,079
of logic, but of long nights in the booth, these

427
00:20:59,079 --> 00:21:01,880
odd objects on to try to stare warnings, bread combs,

428
00:21:01,880 --> 00:21:05,160
calls for connection from some unburied in interference. I hunt

429
00:21:05,160 --> 00:21:08,160
through my phone, scanning photographs of the old station for clues.

430
00:21:08,799 --> 00:21:11,000
Never before did I notice the folding cher set just

431
00:21:11,039 --> 00:21:14,079
outside Booth three in the group shots, always unoccupied, always

432
00:21:14,119 --> 00:21:17,079
just out of sight. Pattens revealed themselves now that I'm

433
00:21:17,119 --> 00:21:21,240
listening for them. Jamie wasn't imagining things, he was noticing.

434
00:21:21,400 --> 00:21:23,640
Maybe it drove him out past the safe edges of reason,

435
00:21:23,759 --> 00:21:26,680
but he was right to notice. Another thought claws at me.

436
00:21:27,200 --> 00:21:29,319
The so called visited The figure in the long coat,

437
00:21:29,640 --> 00:21:33,200
noted by Jamie, caught only in security sistants flickers. I

438
00:21:33,279 --> 00:21:35,200
remember my owner knees. Atime, I stepped out for a

439
00:21:35,200 --> 00:21:37,079
cigarette and the back steps and caught a glimpse of

440
00:21:37,079 --> 00:21:39,119
movement past the tower, too far away to call out,

441
00:21:39,119 --> 00:21:42,079
too quick to identify. Everyone brushed it off as a

442
00:21:42,119 --> 00:21:45,839
service contractor a late arriving delivery, or sometimes just nerves.

443
00:21:46,480 --> 00:21:49,880
Even Gerald's notes in Retrospects seem less like technical ramblings

444
00:21:49,880 --> 00:21:52,599
and more like oblique warnings. Waves are not friendly. They

445
00:21:52,599 --> 00:21:54,799
don't trust the meter At one forty four let the

446
00:21:54,839 --> 00:21:58,000
frequency pass through. Do not return call. With growing dread,

447
00:21:58,160 --> 00:22:01,359
I lay the fact Jamie hearing not in static security

448
00:22:01,400 --> 00:22:04,799
alerts at odd Eyre's possible Morse code transmissions embedded in music.

449
00:22:04,880 --> 00:22:07,240
A figure no one claims passing through the lot transmit

450
00:22:07,279 --> 00:22:10,640
a running hot then cooling abruptly, all converging at two

451
00:22:10,680 --> 00:22:13,160
forty seven, always just before his show ends for the night.

452
00:22:13,759 --> 00:22:16,880
I glanced at the clock. It's only twelve thirty two.

453
00:22:17,480 --> 00:22:19,559
My own home feels less certain by the minute. Every

454
00:22:19,599 --> 00:22:22,640
wind gust of presents, every floor creak a consequence. My

455
00:22:22,759 --> 00:22:26,039
laptop pings a response at last from Lizzie. She's brief

456
00:22:26,079 --> 00:22:28,440
but direct. Looked up the logs. You asked me to

457
00:22:28,519 --> 00:22:31,039
check your senses allogit. The doors shouldn't open those nights.

458
00:22:31,119 --> 00:22:32,960
Also at the relay in Booth three kept tripping during

459
00:22:33,039 --> 00:22:36,440
Jamie's last week. I always thought someone was inside beneath

460
00:22:36,440 --> 00:22:38,440
her signature. She adds a link to an old w

461
00:22:38,640 --> 00:22:41,039
kd L playlist dark I've one I've forgotten for years.

462
00:22:41,720 --> 00:22:44,519
I clicked through and listened to samples Jamie uploaded degraded audio,

463
00:22:44,920 --> 00:22:49,079
mostly the same patterns. Some tracks sound normal, others warp

464
00:22:49,119 --> 00:22:51,440
when played at double speed, revealing behind them the faint

465
00:22:51,440 --> 00:22:54,119
exhale of someone whispering a sibilant age. The mic shouldn't

466
00:22:54,119 --> 00:22:57,559
have captured fuse bumps. I'm not sure my mind is

467
00:22:57,559 --> 00:22:59,960
fabricating half of it, or if these are genuine artifacts,

468
00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:02,319
shadows left in the circuitry by too many voices, too

469
00:23:02,319 --> 00:23:06,920
many sleepless nights, and maybe something else too. I text Lizzie, impulsive, abrupt,

470
00:23:07,039 --> 00:23:09,359
you ever see anyone strange at the booth? After ires

471
00:23:09,440 --> 00:23:13,640
real answer, please, She doesn't reply right away. Instead, I

472
00:23:13,640 --> 00:23:16,000
pour a second cup of coffee, the mug trembling faintly

473
00:23:16,039 --> 00:23:18,599
in my hand. By now, our rhythm has set in.

474
00:23:18,680 --> 00:23:21,359
Play a tape, listen for the beats, cross check with logs,

475
00:23:21,519 --> 00:23:25,519
matched security records, scan for times, attempt to decode brown meat.

476
00:23:25,519 --> 00:23:29,119
Snippets of fan latters, requests in complete playlists, and announwered

477
00:23:29,119 --> 00:23:31,960
emails build a nest of obsession. Most normal, some I'm

478
00:23:32,000 --> 00:23:35,160
truly odd, a child's handwriting. I hear the music in

479
00:23:35,200 --> 00:23:37,599
the dark. One I'm not near my radio. Is that normal?

480
00:23:38,160 --> 00:23:41,240
I read it again, not near my radio. I dig

481
00:23:41,240 --> 00:23:43,000
into the bottom of the fan mail stack and pull

482
00:23:43,039 --> 00:23:45,960
out Maddy's old members. Mostly policy some tight, some hastily

483
00:23:46,000 --> 00:23:49,359
scribbled during overnight phone ends with corporate. I noticed one

484
00:23:49,359 --> 00:23:52,240
I'd skinned before, now striking in its directness. No one

485
00:23:52,319 --> 00:23:54,880
uses Booth three alone after to him tell Gerald news

486
00:23:54,920 --> 00:23:58,440
full power, isolated and Baseline Rosette last summer, Wheely malfunctioned

487
00:23:58,480 --> 00:24:01,160
during request, show fixed for next season and look after ires.

488
00:24:01,680 --> 00:24:04,000
The memo is indeeded, but the handwriting match is Marty's

489
00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:06,480
pre retirement skull from two thousand seven, the year before

490
00:24:06,559 --> 00:24:10,759
Jamie started at w kd L. Everything circles Booth three.

491
00:24:10,799 --> 00:24:12,519
Even now, The hair at the nape of my neck

492
00:24:12,559 --> 00:24:14,240
prickles when I think of it. The one booth with

493
00:24:14,279 --> 00:24:17,000
a second narrow window facing the lot, always a little

494
00:24:17,000 --> 00:24:19,000
too coal, always just out of range of the main

495
00:24:19,039 --> 00:24:21,880
security camera. The only place at the station you couldn't

496
00:24:21,920 --> 00:24:23,720
hid the others if they called your name in the hallway.

497
00:24:24,319 --> 00:24:27,960
Lizzie's reply comes through, startling me one line, only her

498
00:24:28,039 --> 00:24:30,279
breathing outside Booth three once no one there but me

499
00:24:30,319 --> 00:24:33,559
and Jamie. We both left early that night, Remember, I

500
00:24:33,599 --> 00:24:36,759
do remember Jamie silent on the drive home, refusing to

501
00:24:36,759 --> 00:24:39,279
pop under the station lights, checking constantly in the review.

502
00:24:39,839 --> 00:24:41,680
I'd assumed he was just warmed in, But now I

503
00:24:41,680 --> 00:24:44,000
see it differently. That night sit seem I got like

504
00:24:44,079 --> 00:24:47,119
an unresolved cord. With the clock ticking forward. I line

505
00:24:47,160 --> 00:24:49,039
up all the pieces before me, scanning for links I

506
00:24:49,119 --> 00:24:52,200
might have missed. I pull up a public SEC database,

507
00:24:52,279 --> 00:24:54,680
searching for anything out of place during those final weeks.

508
00:24:54,720 --> 00:24:58,920
The station's engineering flags, transmit our licensing anomalies. Nothing that

509
00:24:58,920 --> 00:25:01,519
fits until I stumble on a brief maintenance file scanned

510
00:25:01,559 --> 00:25:03,839
into a government system years ago. W kdel of the

511
00:25:03,920 --> 00:25:07,039
night transmit of voltage spikes, cause are known. No scheduled

512
00:25:07,039 --> 00:25:09,960
maintenance for set logs at two fifty four m. Interference

513
00:25:09,960 --> 00:25:14,119
suspected but source undetermined. The blocks say nothing else, No

514
00:25:14,200 --> 00:25:18,119
official follow up, no troubleshooting report from Geral, whose handwritten

515
00:25:18,160 --> 00:25:22,000
warnings stop appearing after that date. Did he quit? Was

516
00:25:22,039 --> 00:25:25,319
he fired? Or did he sense? As Jamie hinted that

517
00:25:25,400 --> 00:25:27,519
to ask too many questions as to risk getting lost

518
00:25:27,519 --> 00:25:30,960
with the answers, something sharp and half remembered. Noase at me.

519
00:25:31,039 --> 00:25:33,799
I rifle deeper for the original stations schematics thread boblue

520
00:25:33,799 --> 00:25:36,680
prints marked up with Geral's blocky script BOO three is

521
00:25:36,680 --> 00:25:39,039
an unusual notation. The grounding loop not shared with the

522
00:25:39,079 --> 00:25:41,079
rest of the building, tied directly to a tower RelA

523
00:25:41,200 --> 00:25:44,640
unique to w KDEL, a redundant system, according to Gerald,

524
00:25:44,680 --> 00:25:47,440
installed for its special segments back when the station's reputation

525
00:25:47,519 --> 00:25:50,519
for strange request shows began. I don't bridge it. His

526
00:25:50,640 --> 00:25:54,160
note reads, circle twice, Let it float. Let whatever wants

527
00:25:54,200 --> 00:25:56,880
out go out. I close my hands into Fie, then

528
00:25:56,920 --> 00:25:59,960
force myself to breathe. It's the slow, methodical procedure that

529
00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:02,279
helps her rill a cabot from running automation by hand.

530
00:26:02,359 --> 00:26:03,960
When the fade is stuck and you had to slow

531
00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:07,359
down or risk killing the signal. In my chest, something thrums.

532
00:26:08,079 --> 00:26:10,480
Is it guilt or something older, something called up by

533
00:26:10,480 --> 00:26:13,400
the act of listening itself again. I turned to the

534
00:26:13,440 --> 00:26:15,720
fan mail addities cott in decads of cheap on the loops.

535
00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:20,319
One card stands out a warbly, slantid block print to Jamie,

536
00:26:20,400 --> 00:26:21,920
you play the songs that let the night in and

537
00:26:22,039 --> 00:26:24,680
on the road outside your window, see you soon. There's

538
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:28,160
no return address. The postmark is smudged, stamped on a

539
00:26:28,240 --> 00:26:30,880
day with heavy ray. Now remember, because the transmitted nearly

540
00:26:30,880 --> 00:26:33,960
blue during a thunder storm that August. That night, Jamie

541
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:36,319
ran late covering for a sick coworker and didn't stop

542
00:26:36,359 --> 00:26:39,279
by the office. The car's message sinks in among the

543
00:26:39,319 --> 00:26:42,640
road outside your window. A memory comes, vivid and unbidden.

544
00:26:43,200 --> 00:26:45,119
I'm in the booth, time blurred, near the end of

545
00:26:45,119 --> 00:26:48,000
a shift. Jamie's show is winding down. There's a blues

546
00:26:48,039 --> 00:26:50,279
truck drifting out across the static. The sword of song

547
00:26:50,319 --> 00:26:53,079
that feels endless, but is only four minutes long. I'm

548
00:26:53,079 --> 00:26:55,839
prepping out, copy dialed into whatever menial task keeps you

549
00:26:55,920 --> 00:26:58,960
awake after thirty. Then through the glass, I see him

550
00:26:58,960 --> 00:27:00,480
at the whole way in, pressing his face to the

551
00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:02,759
second booth window, looking out through the night at something

552
00:27:02,759 --> 00:27:06,359
I can't see. He isn't moving, barely breathing. When I

553
00:27:06,400 --> 00:27:08,440
knock on the glass, he jumps and spins, as if

554
00:27:08,440 --> 00:27:11,559
waking from a dream. Later I'll find an unsent email

555
00:27:11,599 --> 00:27:14,200
in his drafts, dated the same night. Felt like someone

556
00:27:14,240 --> 00:27:16,160
else was in the booth watching me watch them. Not

557
00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:18,680
sure if it was reflection or something more. That is

558
00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:20,440
the image I can't quite shake as I pour through

559
00:27:20,440 --> 00:27:23,359
the debris of our former lives, seventeen years removed. Jimmy

560
00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:25,920
call between the glass and the black not certain which

561
00:27:25,920 --> 00:27:28,640
side he's on. No matter how much evidence I pile,

562
00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:31,400
the question thickens in my mind. What precisely was using

563
00:27:31,519 --> 00:27:34,039
w kd l's late shift to reach out? Was it

564
00:27:34,079 --> 00:27:36,559
a person as by tapping the ionosphor edge, as Lizzie

565
00:27:36,599 --> 00:27:40,200
once theorized, or was it something older, lest knowable that

566
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:43,119
required music and human repetition as part of its broadcast ritual.

567
00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:46,720
I begin to catalog every anomaly, drawing lines between shift

568
00:27:46,720 --> 00:27:50,000
logs found, male postmarks and send emails, and Jamie's beeping

569
00:27:50,000 --> 00:27:52,440
morse code. When I lay it up by hand the

570
00:27:52,440 --> 00:27:55,039
old fashioned way, the answer takes shape. Every spike, every

571
00:27:55,039 --> 00:27:57,799
coated burst happens at times when the radio audience is lost,

572
00:27:57,880 --> 00:28:00,720
the music most forgotten, the field round the station most silent.

573
00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:03,480
There's a kind of invocation to it, a pattern of

574
00:28:03,519 --> 00:28:06,400
inviting something to cross the gap. And Jamie, more than

575
00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:08,599
any of us, stood too close to the open frequency.

576
00:28:09,200 --> 00:28:11,680
As the IROs drag gun and condensation turns my water

577
00:28:11,720 --> 00:28:14,319
glass lick in the outside, I find myself fighting a weary,

578
00:28:14,559 --> 00:28:17,400
nervous agitation. There is a sense that if I listen

579
00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:19,839
long enough, some new message will arrive, distinct from all

580
00:28:19,880 --> 00:28:23,240
the others. Personal unmistakable that if I tune in just right,

581
00:28:23,359 --> 00:28:25,160
the beeps will spell out my own name, and the

582
00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:27,359
doors that flicker open and close, and the old security

583
00:28:27,440 --> 00:28:29,799
log will be opening even now, just down the hall.

584
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:32,960
I set the decoder aside and sit quietly. Music off

585
00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:35,599
a line, a hush to engulf me again. My heart

586
00:28:35,640 --> 00:28:38,799
is loud in my ears. The isolation is nearly total.

587
00:28:39,359 --> 00:28:41,559
I imagine for a moment, a presence outside my thin

588
00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:44,079
kitchen window, just out of sight, waiting to be led

589
00:28:44,079 --> 00:28:46,640
in the same presence Jamie feared, or found or began.

590
00:28:47,319 --> 00:28:49,400
The titch remains scattered on my coffee table. There are

591
00:28:49,400 --> 00:28:52,839
plastic shells catching lamp light. I fill myself, drifting back

592
00:28:52,839 --> 00:28:54,640
into the memory of the last time Jamie and I

593
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:57,119
exchanged more than a handful of words, the penultimate shift.

594
00:28:57,200 --> 00:29:00,480
Not long before he vanished, we sat in the crumped hallway,

595
00:29:00,519 --> 00:29:03,400
sharing a waning thumbers of coffee, trading tired platitude about

596
00:29:03,400 --> 00:29:06,880
the Johncad copy and the low hump from outside. Without preamble,

597
00:29:06,960 --> 00:29:09,920
he asked, very quietly, you ever feel like someone's waiting

598
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:11,960
for you to finish your shift before they start theirs?

599
00:29:12,519 --> 00:29:15,000
At the time, I just smiled and made a stupid joke.

600
00:29:15,759 --> 00:29:19,319
Now reevaluating the question, I wonder if he meant something literal,

601
00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:24,079
not a DJ, not Gerald or Lizzie, someone else who

602
00:29:24,079 --> 00:29:26,119
took up position and began their own show only after

603
00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:29,440
the human's clockter I show no one but the static attended.

604
00:29:30,039 --> 00:29:32,440
The depth of Jenney's desolation is certainty that something was

605
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:34,640
whispering just for him haunts me. I know now that

606
00:29:34,720 --> 00:29:37,599
paranoia can be a reasonable response to noticing Patten's others

607
00:29:37,680 --> 00:29:40,559
choose to ignore. I recall that last night the final

608
00:29:40,680 --> 00:29:43,160
entry in his log. If you're reading this, I'm still here.

609
00:29:43,319 --> 00:29:45,799
Some are play it backward. It's all there be three.

610
00:29:46,279 --> 00:29:48,200
A chill overtakes me the sense that some part of

611
00:29:48,279 --> 00:29:50,680
Jamie remains embedded, not just in the tapes, but in

612
00:29:50,720 --> 00:29:53,440
the patents, the repetitions, the things that never made sense

613
00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:56,319
and so were deemed unimportant. He had built himself a

614
00:29:56,319 --> 00:29:59,519
library of evidence, which, like a forgotten frequency, can only

615
00:29:59,559 --> 00:30:02,119
be received at odd iris after the world's guard has dropped.

616
00:30:02,640 --> 00:30:05,000
As Stolen threatens to gray the sky, I force myself

617
00:30:05,039 --> 00:30:07,519
to rest, not from fatigue, but from the overwhelming presence

618
00:30:07,559 --> 00:30:10,000
of something trying even now to push through the static

619
00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:13,119
I stack the tapes and papers in neat piles, hands trembling,

620
00:30:13,279 --> 00:30:16,400
resolve only sharpened. If Jamie's warning is real, then I

621
00:30:16,400 --> 00:30:18,119
believe now that it is. Then the only way out

622
00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:20,680
is further in. Before I sleep, I write a note

623
00:30:20,720 --> 00:30:22,160
of my own and slip it into the box where

624
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:23,799
if I mail used to be. If you find this,

625
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:26,960
listen closely. Don't record, just listen. Some patterns are only

626
00:30:27,000 --> 00:30:29,319
safe when you stop trying to capture them. Then I

627
00:30:29,319 --> 00:30:31,240
sink into an unrest that feels like listening with my

628
00:30:31,279 --> 00:30:33,880
ass closed, my mind attuned to the possibility that something,

629
00:30:33,960 --> 00:30:35,839
someone might yet try to contact me from the other

630
00:30:35,920 --> 00:30:39,119
side of the frequency. Above all, I understand, playing a

631
00:30:39,160 --> 00:30:42,039
tip again is not just nostalgia, not idle curiosity, but

632
00:30:42,079 --> 00:30:44,160
an act that completes the circuit Jamie started the night

633
00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:47,720
he vanished fifteen years ago. Daylight comes thin in colors,

634
00:30:47,759 --> 00:30:49,759
barely dilude in the taste of ozen that lingers on

635
00:30:49,799 --> 00:30:52,559
my tongue. But I know when the next night comes,

636
00:30:52,640 --> 00:30:55,079
I'll fead the tape again, and in a hush before

637
00:30:55,079 --> 00:30:57,400
the music, I'll be waiting, ready to hear whatever Jamie

638
00:30:57,440 --> 00:31:00,839
needed someone to finally receive. When daylight ekster my blinds.

639
00:31:00,880 --> 00:31:03,279
It brings only the exhausted taste of failure and shreds

640
00:31:03,279 --> 00:31:06,960
of silence. I don't remember falling asleep, only the jarring moment.

641
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:08,839
I wake, with my cheek against my kitchen table, the

642
00:31:08,880 --> 00:31:11,920
old station lagitude into my skin. I can't say how

643
00:31:11,960 --> 00:31:14,359
long I've dozed, but the tapes are still there, neat piles,

644
00:31:14,440 --> 00:31:17,200
like tombstones, lined across the wood grain. A faint ache

645
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:19,720
blooms across my jaw as I sit up. My house

646
00:31:19,759 --> 00:31:23,480
too quiet, swallows every movement, No birds, just the intermittent

647
00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:24,799
tick of the fridge and the push of my own

648
00:31:24,839 --> 00:31:28,039
pulse against my ears. I test my limbs, making sure

649
00:31:28,079 --> 00:31:30,799
every joint is still under my command. When I rise,

650
00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:33,039
I half expect old bones to rebel, but they move.

651
00:31:33,200 --> 00:31:36,519
Gravity at least hasn't changed for a long moment, I

652
00:31:36,559 --> 00:31:39,640
pretend nothing is different. I fill the kettle, study the

653
00:31:39,680 --> 00:31:41,759
water as if it could tell my fortune said it

654
00:31:41,759 --> 00:31:44,440
to Boyle. The urge to turn away, to show everything

655
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:48,960
as harmless. Nostalgia is almost overwhelming. I have errands, the

656
00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:52,160
car needs all. A neighbor's dog is barking itself. Horse

657
00:31:52,240 --> 00:31:54,960
too lots over. These are the mundane shaped my life

658
00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:57,680
once took. I stare across my kitchen to the tapes

659
00:31:57,720 --> 00:31:59,759
and the list of coated tines on the sheet of newsprint.

660
00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:03,640
Even in daylight, it draws the eye. Nothing about last

661
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:07,319
night's revelation fields washed out. I approached the table, laid

662
00:32:07,359 --> 00:32:10,160
deliberate palm atop the most heavily notiative Jimmy's last show,

663
00:32:10,200 --> 00:32:13,400
though final blues. I sensed the edges of yesterday, culling

664
00:32:13,400 --> 00:32:16,720
at my mind, sharper now stripped of sleeps, interfering gauze

665
00:32:17,200 --> 00:32:19,799
my morning rituals, rinsing a mug, thumping grunds into the

666
00:32:19,799 --> 00:32:22,839
French press. Mundane is dot. Don't calm me. My hands

667
00:32:22,839 --> 00:32:25,200
only stopped shaking once I pressed the mug to my lips.

668
00:32:25,880 --> 00:32:28,039
I drink, burn my tom and scan the log for

669
00:32:28,079 --> 00:32:30,759
any hint that it could all be coincidence. It can't

670
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:35,839
be free More's code parwasurges, unexplained, door entries, a figure

671
00:32:35,880 --> 00:32:38,240
in the nigh. Even the fan may are the suspect

672
00:32:38,279 --> 00:32:40,240
for note from some one who heard more than you think.

673
00:32:40,640 --> 00:32:42,759
There's a logic to the unease chick cut from the

674
00:32:42,799 --> 00:32:46,079
negative space of every overlooked night. I try imagining what

675
00:32:46,160 --> 00:32:48,640
Jimmy felt walking to his car after the shift, glancing

676
00:32:48,680 --> 00:32:52,200
over his shoulder. There's more clarity now, he was documenting

677
00:32:52,359 --> 00:32:55,119
fighting the urged surrender to whatever press from the other side.

678
00:32:55,599 --> 00:32:59,400
He was alone and right both. The phone vibrates for

679
00:32:59,480 --> 00:33:01,400
a heartbeat. I hope for Lizzie, but it's only a

680
00:33:01,400 --> 00:33:04,400
spam call. After lingering with the dial for a moment,

681
00:33:04,440 --> 00:33:06,559
a cave and call her anyway, letting the ring run

682
00:33:06,599 --> 00:33:09,480
as I watched the sun ride up, burnishing the eastern horizon.

683
00:33:10,039 --> 00:33:13,400
Voice mell as always, you've reached Lizzie. Radio silence is golden.

684
00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:16,119
Leave it. After the beep, I hang up without a message.

685
00:33:16,640 --> 00:33:19,920
The static feels thicker. I imagine thus Smote swirling in the

686
00:33:19,960 --> 00:33:22,279
slants of weak light, fragments of sund trying to reach me.

687
00:33:22,920 --> 00:33:24,920
Though the first time since the tapes enter my house,

688
00:33:24,960 --> 00:33:26,839
I feel watched it, not by the pass but by

689
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:29,880
something else. The sense of pressure grows throughout the day,

690
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:33,039
settle at first, then underne bull. My skin prickles at random.

691
00:33:33,079 --> 00:33:34,920
The back door rattles, though the sky is clear, and

692
00:33:35,000 --> 00:33:36,880
any time I move past the closet where the tapes

693
00:33:36,920 --> 00:33:40,400
once hit, I pause, almost waiting for a reply. I

694
00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:43,599
keep the volume low on everything TV, radio, kettlesteam trying

695
00:33:43,640 --> 00:33:46,119
not to miss whatever else is reaching. There is no

696
00:33:46,119 --> 00:33:48,920
comfort in routine any more. Even the shape of my

697
00:33:48,960 --> 00:33:51,240
home feels altered, slightly warped, as if I'm seeing it

698
00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:54,519
from a slant I never noticed before. Afternoon brings the

699
00:33:54,640 --> 00:33:56,640
urge to act, to finish what Jamie began, or at

700
00:33:56,720 --> 00:33:59,200
least put a period to the endless lipses he left behind.

701
00:33:59,839 --> 00:34:03,119
I gathered the logs a digital recorder, charged the wapman's batteries,

702
00:34:03,200 --> 00:34:06,680
and start pulling up all contacts my fingers. However, over

703
00:34:06,720 --> 00:34:09,519
the string of numbers Jamien coded. Is it a message

704
00:34:09,519 --> 00:34:11,159
meant for some one else? Or a bread from my

705
00:34:11,239 --> 00:34:14,480
meant to follow? I copied them down again, incoleading into

706
00:34:14,480 --> 00:34:17,119
the grooves of my wood grain table. One number sticks

707
00:34:17,119 --> 00:34:19,800
out an odd frequency, not w K d l's, followed

708
00:34:19,840 --> 00:34:23,119
by time to forty seven m, the precise spike documented

709
00:34:23,119 --> 00:34:25,239
by locks and fine complaints. The eye of the booth's

710
00:34:25,280 --> 00:34:28,480
recorded voice always seemed to fracture into static. Is there

711
00:34:28,519 --> 00:34:32,320
in the FCC maintenance flag in Gerald's warnings, I circle

712
00:34:32,360 --> 00:34:35,280
it in red, Unable to help myself Jamie's attempts to

713
00:34:35,320 --> 00:34:38,400
reach someone, me, anyone, were deliberate, built on layers of repetition.

714
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:41,320
His handwriting trails from certainty, interfere and then to a

715
00:34:41,360 --> 00:34:43,760
final dense cluster, as if squeezing the last of his

716
00:34:43,840 --> 00:34:46,519
nerve into the text. The closer I read, the more

717
00:34:46,519 --> 00:34:49,039
it seems like he's beckoning me or someone past the

718
00:34:49,079 --> 00:34:52,199
last safe boundary, as thus creeps through the windows. I

719
00:34:52,239 --> 00:34:54,960
finally call another old contact, Bill Harper, to form a

720
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:57,280
regional tech who retired before w k d l's gear

721
00:34:57,320 --> 00:35:00,039
was fully digital. His was the first friendly face I

722
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:01,960
I met in a business, a man who could quote

723
00:35:01,960 --> 00:35:04,039
any blues lyric and had a soft spot for under

724
00:35:04,079 --> 00:35:07,039
dog frequencies. I only half expect him to pick up

725
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:09,719
He answers on the third ring for s gravelly, but

726
00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:13,280
amused you gone back to chasing ghosts, kid. I don't

727
00:35:13,280 --> 00:35:16,199
answer him directly. Instead, I pitch him the question this

728
00:35:16,280 --> 00:35:19,920
old habit, half casual, half confessional, Bill, you ever see

729
00:35:19,920 --> 00:35:22,719
cooded beats running under music, midnight show, old tapes more

730
00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:25,280
spuried in the carrier. There's a hitch in his breath,

731
00:35:25,880 --> 00:35:30,320
long pause. Not by accident? You got a tape I stammer, Yes,

732
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:33,360
describe the situation with each detailed pressed exact only in

733
00:35:33,400 --> 00:35:36,000
midnight hour's power surges, and the codes that never made

734
00:35:36,039 --> 00:35:39,760
the load book. He grows sober fast. You digitize it,

735
00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:42,519
he asks, you can get me a file. I might

736
00:35:42,559 --> 00:35:45,199
know a thing or two. As we talk, I hear

737
00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:48,280
shuffling and the scrape of a lighter. Listen. In the

738
00:35:48,320 --> 00:35:51,079
Cold War, some folks sent number stations over commercial bends,

739
00:35:51,079 --> 00:35:53,159
even paid for late slots to high short wave covert

740
00:35:53,199 --> 00:35:55,559
traffic help. We used to run oddburse when the Feds

741
00:35:55,559 --> 00:35:57,800
wanted no records, but that was always planned, and never

742
00:35:57,840 --> 00:36:00,440
slept in the margins, never under the music. El's got

743
00:36:00,559 --> 00:36:03,880
us on this. I keep things tight. Not many the

744
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:07,119
djaed outlogged. Most of it's gone, may be more. Don't

745
00:36:07,119 --> 00:36:09,360
dig on your own, not at night, Bill Gruff's, but

746
00:36:09,400 --> 00:36:11,239
I promise a copy, pushing the file over to his

747
00:36:11,320 --> 00:36:14,159
email with tramping fingers as we hang up. His parting

748
00:36:14,199 --> 00:36:16,920
words linger. Most ghosts on tape don't mind being played.

749
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:21,079
Sometimes they mind being found. Evening falls fast, the kitchen

750
00:36:21,079 --> 00:36:23,000
grows chill, and each tick of the clock grows thick

751
00:36:23,039 --> 00:36:26,280
is blood. The tape's weight full of pressure. It feels

752
00:36:26,280 --> 00:36:28,840
as if the whole house is charged, humming with residual voltage,

753
00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:31,840
holding its breath for the next movement. I cannot stop.

754
00:36:32,400 --> 00:36:34,480
I set up my old portable receiver by the window,

755
00:36:34,519 --> 00:36:37,000
tuning w k d l's frequency through the station's been

756
00:36:37,039 --> 00:36:40,880
dead for years. The scanner crackles all static, no music,

757
00:36:41,119 --> 00:36:44,079
just as I expect. But as I sit waiting, locking

758
00:36:44,079 --> 00:36:47,199
the urge to listen, deeper returns. With my eyes closed,

759
00:36:47,239 --> 00:36:48,679
A press play and allowed the wave of his to

760
00:36:48,719 --> 00:36:51,960
spill out. At midnight, Bill calls back, his voice clipped

761
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:54,880
and nervous. I ran your file through my old analzi.

762
00:36:54,920 --> 00:36:57,360
There is a carrier burst, all right. You got something

763
00:36:57,360 --> 00:37:00,199
pickaback in your signal, not normal static, not blue leave

764
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:02,960
through from another station. And the morse that's not for ratings.

765
00:37:03,039 --> 00:37:05,480
That's a signature, A handshakes, something that wants to say

766
00:37:05,480 --> 00:37:08,239
it's here. Kid. You'll want to watch your back. I

767
00:37:08,320 --> 00:37:10,199
try to laugh it off, his old superstition, but the

768
00:37:10,280 --> 00:37:15,480
unease only coils tighter. What about the spikes, I ask, anything?

769
00:37:16,079 --> 00:37:19,119
Thill sighs distant. Now, spikes like that with a low

770
00:37:19,119 --> 00:37:21,280
power aim shouldn't reach half a mile. But you he

771
00:37:21,360 --> 00:37:25,000
cuts off. Check your locks against solar conditions, tropospheric acting,

772
00:37:25,079 --> 00:37:27,679
those aren't Rhandam that someone making an opening using your

773
00:37:27,679 --> 00:37:31,360
station as a door? He hesitates. Don't replay the last

774
00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:34,119
tape to night, he says, not unless you are ready

775
00:37:34,119 --> 00:37:36,599
for whatever comes through. The line goes dead in a

776
00:37:36,639 --> 00:37:39,239
way that feels final as a clock calls to two

777
00:37:39,360 --> 00:37:41,559
Zeroam I realize I have a choice spelled of views

778
00:37:41,559 --> 00:37:43,639
of habit and betrayal, to keep the tape coiled tight,

779
00:37:43,920 --> 00:37:45,639
or to play it through and invite the rest of

780
00:37:45,679 --> 00:37:48,440
whatever haunted Jamie into my home. The urge to know

781
00:37:48,519 --> 00:37:51,000
it weighs any remnant of caution. I thread in the

782
00:37:51,079 --> 00:37:54,000
last set, mute the lights, and set my recorder running.

783
00:37:54,480 --> 00:37:57,079
If there is anything left to understand, it lies past

784
00:37:57,079 --> 00:37:59,320
the line across the tables of ghosts in the radio band.

785
00:37:59,360 --> 00:38:01,840
At midnight, I double check the locks in weight, no

786
00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:03,960
stretched to breaking for the time to come round, half

787
00:38:03,960 --> 00:38:07,119
hoping nothing will happen, half treading confirmation that Jamie's warning,

788
00:38:07,199 --> 00:38:10,360
his final desperate reaching, was always meant for someone like me.

789
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:13,960
I two thirty, Fatigue and eagerness commingle until I'm unsure

790
00:38:13,960 --> 00:38:16,800
if I'm awake. The house creeks, and a warm, slow

791
00:38:16,880 --> 00:38:19,920
static fills my ears on awhim. I step out the

792
00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:22,559
back and scan the street. Far off a pair of

793
00:38:22,599 --> 00:38:25,719
headlights crawls pass without slowing, swallowed by tree lined dark.

794
00:38:26,360 --> 00:38:29,239
I check every window. It's clear, yet the tapes on

795
00:38:29,280 --> 00:38:31,880
my table look disturbed, shifted between the careful stacks, as

796
00:38:31,880 --> 00:38:34,760
if some one's rifled them in my absence. I searched

797
00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:38,679
the house for draft or intruder. Nothing but one envelope

798
00:38:38,679 --> 00:38:41,400
fan nail unopened to lies on its side, facing up

799
00:38:41,519 --> 00:38:43,599
with the same slantid block print as before. Are you

800
00:38:43,639 --> 00:38:46,440
still listening? The urge to flee hit strong, chased by

801
00:38:46,480 --> 00:38:49,360
the realization it's far too late for that. If I

802
00:38:49,480 --> 00:38:51,880
run the signal, the story, the force that took Jamie,

803
00:38:51,920 --> 00:38:54,639
whatever waits beyond the sound will follow. It's an old

804
00:38:54,679 --> 00:38:57,440
logic and finis storas don't stay buried, and open doors

805
00:38:57,480 --> 00:39:00,639
eventually invite entry, whether you intended them or not. As

806
00:39:00,679 --> 00:39:04,039
the Minihan lands on two forty seven, my receiver shivers

807
00:39:04,159 --> 00:39:07,039
and the static flexes deeper are rhythm pulsing under the hiss.

808
00:39:07,639 --> 00:39:10,679
There is a tone, three notes, structured deliberate. I draw

809
00:39:10,679 --> 00:39:13,320
in breath crossway arms over the table and press play.

810
00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:16,239
The world narrows to the width of headphone drivers, and

811
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:18,239
the warble of a blues erfof dances just above the

812
00:39:18,239 --> 00:39:22,400
threshold behind the music. The coated beeping returns harder, now insistent.

813
00:39:23,159 --> 00:39:25,840
My pens getters as I turns, grab hands no longer steady.

814
00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:29,039
I whisper the words scread by Jamie, willing myself to

815
00:39:29,079 --> 00:39:30,960
hear without being hurt. But in the breath between the

816
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:33,079
second and third refrain, a thin voice walks out of

817
00:39:33,079 --> 00:39:35,920
the ether. You hear us, Now they will too. The

818
00:39:35,960 --> 00:39:40,519
tape garbles, My receiver shrieks, overloaded for an instant, the

819
00:39:40,559 --> 00:39:43,320
living round dims. The bulb of her head buzzes, then fades.

820
00:39:43,960 --> 00:39:46,159
The house stiffens, cutted by a pressure drop that makes

821
00:39:46,199 --> 00:39:49,639
walls vibrate in the air tas metallic. The tape spoils faster.

822
00:39:49,760 --> 00:39:52,679
They hiss, mutates more than hiss. Now the music is wrong,

823
00:39:52,760 --> 00:39:55,719
a blue scale that never resolves. I look up hard,

824
00:39:55,760 --> 00:39:58,639
juttering in the hallway. A shadow brushes the corner of

825
00:39:58,679 --> 00:40:01,519
my vision. Something passes by my closed door as motion.

826
00:40:01,599 --> 00:40:04,599
Un Kenny, no waight, just flicker. The fridge hums, then

827
00:40:04,639 --> 00:40:08,000
cuts every appliance with the cloth flickers two forty seven.

828
00:40:08,480 --> 00:40:10,639
It's as if the entire house ticks in synchrony with

829
00:40:10,679 --> 00:40:13,719
a broadcast from somewhere unsecene. My phone lights up color

830
00:40:13,719 --> 00:40:16,199
i'd blinking and none, then flatly cycling my own number,

831
00:40:16,800 --> 00:40:19,639
I let it ring out. A message arrives, garbled audio,

832
00:40:19,679 --> 00:40:21,840
a tune. I recognize cross Roads, the very one that

833
00:40:21,960 --> 00:40:25,199
played before Jamie's last coded message. When I set the

834
00:40:25,199 --> 00:40:28,000
phone side, it vibrates by itself, a rhythm that matches

835
00:40:28,039 --> 00:40:30,719
the beeps on the tape. Its flat dampens my collar.

836
00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:33,800
Something presses outside the window, now an impression of shape,

837
00:40:33,880 --> 00:40:37,440
as though the blackness itself has thickened. Interested waiting, I

838
00:40:37,559 --> 00:40:41,400
resist looking, focusing instead on the tape. The voice returns, layered,

839
00:40:41,440 --> 00:40:44,639
almost in human. Play it back, listen, they're waiting. It

840
00:40:44,679 --> 00:40:46,760
takes every reserve of wilter not eject the tape and

841
00:40:46,760 --> 00:40:49,440
smash it. I want all at once to hear, not

842
00:40:49,519 --> 00:40:51,079
to hear it, and do the last fifteen years in

843
00:40:51,079 --> 00:40:54,239
surges in code. Instead, I hold the headphones tight as

844
00:40:54,239 --> 00:40:56,639
the beeps stood out a new sequence, which I write down.

845
00:40:56,679 --> 00:41:00,679
Hand shaking booth through door, open step inside. I stop breathing.

846
00:41:01,239 --> 00:41:02,960
A crash in the hall way of photo frame, off

847
00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:06,119
the wall or something heavier. I rise, legs and stable.

848
00:41:06,719 --> 00:41:09,440
When I look around the corner, all is still no

849
00:41:09,559 --> 00:41:13,320
open doors, and yet the impression lingers. Someone's just stepped through.

850
00:41:13,920 --> 00:41:16,320
I think of the fading polari tucked in the evidence box,

851
00:41:16,559 --> 00:41:19,440
depicting Jamie's stricken face, the night of his vanishing controls,

852
00:41:19,480 --> 00:41:22,280
lit by the spectral green of the booth. I hurry back,

853
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:24,679
opening the box, expecting the photo to have shifted, o

854
00:41:24,760 --> 00:41:27,800
the tapes to have rearranged. Nothing's utworthy changed she had

855
00:41:27,840 --> 00:41:29,559
on the back of the polaroid, and news out of

856
00:41:29,559 --> 00:41:32,440
digits has been pressed, indented with such force nearly tears

857
00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:36,320
through two forty seven, not alone. As I hold the photo, shuddering,

858
00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:38,719
the phone hums again a low wabble stat a cup

859
00:41:38,760 --> 00:41:41,400
with my own recorded voice, simple from an old ud spot.

860
00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:44,400
I listen. It is me saying the station's call sign,

861
00:41:44,440 --> 00:41:47,920
but slurred out a phase. It ends with Jamie's force whispering.

862
00:41:48,199 --> 00:41:51,719
Hear it. Yet every surface pulses with static, each tape

863
00:41:51,719 --> 00:41:53,559
and peeper buzzing as if a low current is running

864
00:41:53,559 --> 00:41:56,679
through the table top. I circle the kitchen knocking into

865
00:41:56,679 --> 00:41:59,760
stewls and bracing myself against the wall. My home isn't

866
00:41:59,760 --> 00:42:02,599
my own. There are presents that edges of pressure, not

867
00:42:02,599 --> 00:42:05,480
physically felt, but inferred, like someone tugging at my thoughts

868
00:42:05,519 --> 00:42:08,719
just beyond the visible. In desperation, had grabbed my recorder,

869
00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:10,679
jam in a blank tape and set it to record

870
00:42:10,719 --> 00:42:13,599
the room's silence and hum. The machine protests, but then

871
00:42:13,639 --> 00:42:17,159
it takes wheels, turning, counting out the minutes. The air

872
00:42:17,199 --> 00:42:20,199
grows cold, the window glass fogg despite summer thickness, and

873
00:42:20,239 --> 00:42:22,960
at the moment the recorder's counter takes past to forty seven,

874
00:42:23,039 --> 00:42:25,559
a rushaves weeps th rough a soundless wind that makes

875
00:42:25,599 --> 00:42:29,199
every heat stand on end. The signal crests overwhelming music

876
00:42:29,239 --> 00:42:32,480
and voice in all else. The beeping becomes rapid, urgent,

877
00:42:32,559 --> 00:42:34,559
as if in answer to some question I cannot frame.

878
00:42:35,119 --> 00:42:38,599
The next phrase emerges, recording isn't safe listen? Only listening

879
00:42:38,639 --> 00:42:42,119
is opening. I scrabble for my phone, dialing belong instinct,

880
00:42:42,679 --> 00:42:46,079
he answers, agitated, if you're broadcast, what the hell you're

881
00:42:46,079 --> 00:42:48,320
transmitting from somewhere? The signal got a skip all the

882
00:42:48,320 --> 00:42:52,360
way to my end, I'm hearing he breaks off. Not possible.

883
00:42:52,480 --> 00:42:55,519
Did you wire into the old tower? My voice is hoarse.

884
00:42:56,239 --> 00:42:59,960
I'm at home, only playing tapes. Bill curses, static fuzzing,

885
00:43:00,159 --> 00:43:03,239
call ear carriers alive, getting bursts like nothing I've seen

886
00:43:03,280 --> 00:43:05,920
since eighty nine. Does not local. Damn it, kid, stop

887
00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:08,599
playing it. Cut it off before the line splits open

888
00:43:08,599 --> 00:43:11,440
with white noise and all connection fails. My house is

889
00:43:11,440 --> 00:43:13,920
a storm front, now shimmering at the edge of something imminent.

890
00:43:14,679 --> 00:43:18,440
The old receiver wines feedback, screaming, then collapses into near silence,

891
00:43:19,199 --> 00:43:21,559
just beyond the threshold of hearing. There is one last phrase,

892
00:43:21,639 --> 00:43:23,840
beautifully clear, spoken over the tape by a voice that

893
00:43:23,920 --> 00:43:27,360
part Jamie pots something else. Step outside and see who's waiting.

894
00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:31,280
The ouse snaps to normal, The fridge resumes its rhythm.

895
00:43:31,519 --> 00:43:33,719
The lights blink up to full power of digital clocks

896
00:43:33,679 --> 00:43:37,239
stuttering to catch up, but nothing feels the same. My

897
00:43:37,320 --> 00:43:40,039
body is ringing, alive, with the certainty that some boundary

898
00:43:40,079 --> 00:43:43,039
has been crossed. A new envelope lies on my table,

899
00:43:43,119 --> 00:43:45,039
not there a moment ago, its edge still warm as

900
00:43:45,039 --> 00:43:49,199
if recently held. Hans trembling. I tear it open inside

901
00:43:49,280 --> 00:43:51,719
a fan mail script, another set of numbers fifty one

902
00:43:51,719 --> 00:43:54,960
point twenty three minus ninety eight point three to forty seven,

903
00:43:55,119 --> 00:43:57,400
and a single poorer at this time, me sitting at

904
00:43:57,400 --> 00:44:00,320
the table, I sunken, headphones on time, stump just now

905
00:44:00,960 --> 00:44:04,599
Nausa punches through me, sweat forums icicles on my upper lip.

906
00:44:05,119 --> 00:44:07,119
I stagger out to the window, scanning the street for

907
00:44:07,159 --> 00:44:09,599
any sign of life, but it all appears still, save

908
00:44:09,679 --> 00:44:12,679
for one car hiding two houses away, headlights off in

909
00:44:12,760 --> 00:44:15,639
the driver's seat, a black coat silhouette, head lowered, unmoving.

910
00:44:16,159 --> 00:44:18,559
The beeping resumes, this time from the tape still playing,

911
00:44:18,639 --> 00:44:21,480
but also impossibly from the air itself, resonant as a

912
00:44:21,480 --> 00:44:24,440
bone vibration. The house has become a lighthouse, and from

913
00:44:24,480 --> 00:44:27,039
the static I realize I'm no longer the only one listening.

914
00:44:27,599 --> 00:44:29,679
There is a call coming in, one sounding out through

915
00:44:29,679 --> 00:44:32,360
the miles, another frequency, one I never wanted to answer.

916
00:44:32,960 --> 00:44:36,199
The phone rings I pick up, unable to stop myself.

917
00:44:36,800 --> 00:44:39,719
There is no voice, only the beep sequence now spelling

918
00:44:39,880 --> 00:44:43,480
booth three. It's open, step in, then a click. I'm

919
00:44:43,519 --> 00:44:47,559
not in control, my movements slow, inevitable. I gather the

920
00:44:47,559 --> 00:44:50,199
logs and the tape, the wapman still running, my record

921
00:44:50,199 --> 00:44:52,000
a humming. I slip on my shoes, as if pulled

922
00:44:52,000 --> 00:44:54,400
by a leash of certainty. I pull the main tape,

923
00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:57,039
the final blues from the player. At some level, I

924
00:44:57,079 --> 00:44:58,679
know what I am about to do while split whatever

925
00:44:58,800 --> 00:45:01,079
line I have walked for seventeen year, safe listener or

926
00:45:01,119 --> 00:45:04,880
active participant, Jamie disappear because he kept the circuit unbroken.

927
00:45:05,400 --> 00:45:07,000
Who is to say what you become if you finish

928
00:45:07,079 --> 00:45:10,480
the loop? Outside the street smell strangely sweet like burnt

929
00:45:10,519 --> 00:45:13,280
ozen and cut grass. With my keys in one hand

930
00:45:13,280 --> 00:45:15,360
and all the evidence under my arm, I step into

931
00:45:15,360 --> 00:45:18,000
the night. The chill is absolute. Moist in the air

932
00:45:18,079 --> 00:45:19,880
is the taste of all vinyl and the scium metallic

933
00:45:19,880 --> 00:45:22,639
head from the tower's shadow. My car's headlights flicker as

934
00:45:22,639 --> 00:45:25,440
I approach the drive to w k D L even

935
00:45:25,480 --> 00:45:28,559
now is measured by degrees of courage. As the station

936
00:45:28,719 --> 00:45:30,760
rises from the fields, little more than a box of

937
00:45:30,760 --> 00:45:32,840
cinder block in the night, I spot the battered sign,

938
00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:35,639
half fallen w k D a hum of the late shift.

939
00:45:36,079 --> 00:45:39,960
The windows are black no cause. The wind whips, but

940
00:45:40,000 --> 00:45:43,599
not a leaf turns nearby. I park engine, chugging into silence,

941
00:45:43,840 --> 00:45:46,480
and sit for a moment bargaining with myself. I do

942
00:45:46,559 --> 00:45:50,039
not check my phone, I do not hesitate with tips

943
00:45:50,039 --> 00:45:52,880
in hand. I walk to the station door. It's unlocked.

944
00:45:53,559 --> 00:45:56,000
The door's wings open, as if weighted to obedience. Hinges

945
00:45:56,039 --> 00:45:59,960
groaning inside. The rot has worsened, a plaster flaking most's orbit,

946
00:46:00,159 --> 00:46:02,639
a dying bulb in the hallway. The air is ripe

947
00:46:02,639 --> 00:46:05,760
with the staleness of forgarden electricity. I make my way

948
00:46:05,760 --> 00:46:07,960
past the old trophy case. Shrove is gone. Only fly

949
00:46:08,079 --> 00:46:11,079
husks remain down to Booth three. My footfalls line up

950
00:46:11,079 --> 00:46:15,039
with remembered rhythms. No one greets me. The office is empty.

951
00:46:15,119 --> 00:46:18,000
The break croom's clock long dead, stuck at two forty seven,

952
00:46:18,079 --> 00:46:21,119
its hands frozen like a warning or a dare. Booth

953
00:46:21,159 --> 00:46:23,880
three's door is ajar. I force it wide at the

954
00:46:23,880 --> 00:46:26,440
same bat at chair Jamie always used its angle toward

955
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:29,199
the glass on the desk. The sticky note old and

956
00:46:29,239 --> 00:46:32,960
bleeding through it reads, if you read this, it's already started.

957
00:46:33,039 --> 00:46:35,960
Some songs never end. I slide into the chair, load

958
00:46:36,039 --> 00:46:38,880
the tape and push play. The consol flickers and a

959
00:46:38,960 --> 00:46:41,000
batted meet as surge, as if the old transmitter is

960
00:46:41,039 --> 00:46:44,239
trying to come to life. My reflection splits some multiplies

961
00:46:44,239 --> 00:46:46,159
in the window glass, showing only the hint of my

962
00:46:46,199 --> 00:46:48,639
own shoulders, and a shadow just beside them that shouldn't

963
00:46:48,679 --> 00:46:52,119
be there. I shudder. The lights above me flicker, casting

964
00:46:52,119 --> 00:46:54,800
the room into pale, blued and brown. The tape plays

965
00:46:55,559 --> 00:46:58,159
Jamie's was cleaves from the speakers, all honey and exhaustion,

966
00:46:58,239 --> 00:47:01,920
mixing with fear beats from under the blues. The outside

967
00:47:01,960 --> 00:47:05,199
world fails. Phone signal gone, no engine starting, no traffic

968
00:47:05,400 --> 00:47:08,719
m There is only the broadcast, now looping, burrowing in

969
00:47:09,400 --> 00:47:11,559
on the console. A note appears under my palm, as

970
00:47:11,559 --> 00:47:14,039
if placed by ansteen. Hands do not speak, listen only.

971
00:47:14,719 --> 00:47:17,679
I obey. The tip spowls, and as I strained through

972
00:47:17,719 --> 00:47:21,000
the sand, Jamie's last encoded words become audible over the system. Hum.

973
00:47:21,119 --> 00:47:25,159
If you play this, you'll see not staff don't answer. Suddenly,

974
00:47:25,239 --> 00:47:27,719
a presence pushes into the rum are tightening, a cold

975
00:47:27,719 --> 00:47:30,440
spot forming at my back. There is a scraping at

976
00:47:30,480 --> 00:47:33,199
the male slot, and the fan mail box rattles. An

977
00:47:33,280 --> 00:47:36,840
envelope tumbles to the floor. My breath goes shallow. I

978
00:47:36,920 --> 00:47:39,360
reach for it with mechanical precision, tearing it open with

979
00:47:39,440 --> 00:47:43,280
numb fingers inside. A new polaroid snapped from above me

980
00:47:43,400 --> 00:47:45,440
at the boar time stamp now and the numbers spelled

981
00:47:45,440 --> 00:47:48,360
out in ball point fifty one point twenty three mineus

982
00:47:48,400 --> 00:47:51,400
ninety eight point three two forty seven. Behind me, the

983
00:47:51,400 --> 00:47:55,599
glass whispers Jamie's voice. No, A thousand voices, all laid

984
00:47:55,599 --> 00:47:58,239
fade right through the music. Are you listening? They need listeners?

985
00:47:58,239 --> 00:48:03,079
Don't answer. The transmitter howls. The console glows white. The

986
00:48:03,159 --> 00:48:06,320
air is full of coated beeps, now translating to one word,

987
00:48:06,360 --> 00:48:09,320
but repeated in the voice in the head funds multiplies.

988
00:48:10,119 --> 00:48:11,599
I see movement at the edge of the window, a

989
00:48:11,639 --> 00:48:15,199
figure outline, wrong coat, flickering like bad tape, one hand

990
00:48:15,280 --> 00:48:18,800
up as though waving a warning. The song peaks, warps,

991
00:48:18,880 --> 00:48:21,599
and the studio drowns in a soundless wind. My chair

992
00:48:21,599 --> 00:48:25,519
wrenches backward, weightless, then slams to stillness. All the machines

993
00:48:25,559 --> 00:48:27,320
blink off, a power cut that leaves the room in

994
00:48:27,400 --> 00:48:31,199
sudden tune, black silence. I fumble for my recorder, desperate

995
00:48:31,239 --> 00:48:34,679
for contact, but it's dead. A feint vibration from underfoot.

996
00:48:35,400 --> 00:48:38,360
I sense, more than see, another presence Jamie or something

997
00:48:38,400 --> 00:48:41,559
in his absence, seated just beside me, breathing time and counterpoint.

998
00:48:42,239 --> 00:48:45,960
I sit waiting every autem's training from the speaker, barely

999
00:48:46,000 --> 00:48:49,239
a whisper now comes the final phrase, now you're the broadcast.

1000
00:48:49,840 --> 00:48:53,199
I make no sound, only listen. Tan staggers for stop.

1001
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:55,840
I wake with the first glare of dawn, stabbing through

1002
00:48:55,840 --> 00:48:58,400
the booth's glass, head pinned to the console, stiff with

1003
00:48:58,480 --> 00:49:02,480
cold takes. Bulls have unspooled entirely across the boar. The

1004
00:49:02,559 --> 00:49:05,280
chair beside me is empty. My hands are covered in

1005
00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:07,480
graphite and ink, as if I've been writing all night,

1006
00:49:07,519 --> 00:49:09,960
and in the console, scribbled over and over, not alone,

1007
00:49:09,960 --> 00:49:13,119
not staff. A thin layer of misclings to the inside

1008
00:49:13,159 --> 00:49:15,679
of the window, obscure fingerprints arcing outward from where my

1009
00:49:15,719 --> 00:49:19,239
own hands never went. I fumble to my feet. The

1010
00:49:19,280 --> 00:49:21,679
fan mail envelope by grab last night is gone, But

1011
00:49:21,800 --> 00:49:23,880
in my shirt pocket is the poloid and an unlabeled

1012
00:49:23,880 --> 00:49:27,000
tipped brand new The outer holes are still desmote cutting

1013
00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:30,159
through sunlight. My phone, tucked deep in my pocket blinks

1014
00:49:30,159 --> 00:49:33,119
free Emerate two forty seven on no subject. Each is

1015
00:49:33,119 --> 00:49:36,960
an unplayable audiophile. I step outside the parking lot painted

1016
00:49:36,960 --> 00:49:39,480
with frost. My car sits where I left it, but

1017
00:49:39,519 --> 00:49:42,199
the black coat figure is gone. The tower above a

1018
00:49:42,199 --> 00:49:45,559
building is silent, an empty skeleton against the sky. Before

1019
00:49:45,559 --> 00:49:48,320
I leave, I locked the booth door behind me. Old habit,

1020
00:49:48,360 --> 00:49:52,440
pontous reflex. The keys feel heavier. As I drive home,

1021
00:49:52,519 --> 00:49:55,639
the road reconstitutes itself, fence by fence, mail books by

1022
00:49:55,639 --> 00:49:57,920
mail books, unremarkable except for the throm of something low

1023
00:49:57,960 --> 00:49:59,840
in the engine, a ghost note missing from the morning's

1024
00:49:59,840 --> 00:50:02,840
co In my front seat. Tucked amid the tapes, I

1025
00:50:02,840 --> 00:50:05,280
find one more noted fan mail script for the last DJA,

1026
00:50:05,440 --> 00:50:10,039
listening underneath another coat. I refuse to play it. The

1027
00:50:10,159 --> 00:50:13,320
urge is so enormous I almost cave. Instead, I walk

1028
00:50:13,360 --> 00:50:15,400
my evidence box into the garage, set it on a

1029
00:50:15,400 --> 00:50:17,719
battered stool, and lock the door behind me. I keep

1030
00:50:17,760 --> 00:50:20,800
the keys on my body. I'll never play, only listen,

1031
00:50:21,079 --> 00:50:23,559
just as the note said. The drive home leaves the

1032
00:50:23,559 --> 00:50:25,480
tapes and touched in the sea beside me. But as

1033
00:50:25,519 --> 00:50:27,639
the car takes in my driveway, I realize the quiet

1034
00:50:27,639 --> 00:50:30,880
has changed. The fridge's hummon entering is familiar and foreign

1035
00:50:30,880 --> 00:50:33,599
all at once. I flick on the radio out of

1036
00:50:33,599 --> 00:50:36,679
habit tuning absently through dead frequencies, and at two forty seven,

1037
00:50:36,760 --> 00:50:38,519
every dial and screen in the house gives a brief

1038
00:50:38,519 --> 00:50:41,000
static light and shadow, dropping the lights for a second

1039
00:50:41,079 --> 00:50:44,199
before resuming as if nothing happened. I put the polaroid

1040
00:50:44,199 --> 00:50:46,639
in the mantle upside down and sweep the remaining evidence

1041
00:50:46,639 --> 00:50:49,519
into a crate. Mark do not play. Only the encoded

1042
00:50:49,559 --> 00:50:51,920
slip sits in the table. The numbers swimming a lining

1043
00:50:51,960 --> 00:50:54,840
spell out the right time, over and over. I returned

1044
00:50:54,840 --> 00:50:56,679
to my place at the kitchen table, sitting amidst the

1045
00:50:56,719 --> 00:50:58,639
relics of fifteen years, in the living hush that now

1046
00:50:58,679 --> 00:51:02,000
feels charged with secret eltrich. The day outside is bright,

1047
00:51:02,079 --> 00:51:04,480
almost indifferent, but my attention hovers just at the edge

1048
00:51:04,480 --> 00:51:08,480
of every small, unexplains sound. I notice, without meaning to,

1049
00:51:08,639 --> 00:51:10,840
the urge to tune in, to try a frequency Jamie

1050
00:51:10,920 --> 00:51:13,239
ever name, to answer a message meant for anyone willing

1051
00:51:13,239 --> 00:51:16,360
to pay attention. Instead, I do nothing but listen as

1052
00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:18,559
the clock takes toward the next midnight, the last line

1053
00:51:18,599 --> 00:51:20,360
necking softly in my head. I am not alone in

1054
00:51:20,400 --> 00:51:22,800
the booth. I sit with at last thought, no longer

1055
00:51:22,840 --> 00:51:26,079
alone in the booth, circling refusing to settle every routine

1056
00:51:26,159 --> 00:51:28,559
sounds sharper, the fint drip from the sink, a telephone

1057
00:51:28,559 --> 00:51:31,920
pain that doesn't belong to any device. Iron shadows contract

1058
00:51:31,920 --> 00:51:34,400
and stretch along the baseboats. As the day passes, like

1059
00:51:34,480 --> 00:51:38,320
moving without warmth, there's no reprieve from vigilance. I monitor

1060
00:51:38,400 --> 00:51:40,800
the mundane, acutely, aware of a double layer in everything

1061
00:51:40,840 --> 00:51:44,360
surface normalcy and the current beneath. Alive and waiting that day,

1062
00:51:44,480 --> 00:51:47,440
I try to operate as if nothing has shifted. Dishes

1063
00:51:47,559 --> 00:51:49,800
this disdusting. Even an attempt at reading a book whose

1064
00:51:49,800 --> 00:51:52,559
plot now seems trivial, but all action happens in a

1065
00:51:52,639 --> 00:51:55,519
kind of fugue. My eyes fleck and voluntarily toward dark

1066
00:51:55,519 --> 00:51:58,039
spaces and doorways, my focus drawn back again and again

1067
00:51:58,079 --> 00:51:59,679
to the crate locked in the garage and the note

1068
00:51:59,679 --> 00:52:02,800
on the tea. I resist a pull, knowing already that

1069
00:52:02,840 --> 00:52:06,519
resistance is limited. It lives in the wiring, the floorboards,

1070
00:52:06,639 --> 00:52:09,639
the intervals between clock ticks, every time. It all has

1071
00:52:09,679 --> 00:52:11,719
grown lands just before I expect it. I feel as

1072
00:52:11,719 --> 00:52:13,599
if I'm hearing a pear range signal, and my hand

1073
00:52:13,599 --> 00:52:17,280
trembles over nothing. Sleep will not come. That night, I

1074
00:52:17,320 --> 00:52:19,559
find myself at the kitchen table. In the early IROs

1075
00:52:19,559 --> 00:52:22,039
head in my hands. They is ringing faintly. The odd

1076
00:52:22,119 --> 00:52:24,840
radio on the countermin inherited artifact from my first apartment,

1077
00:52:24,880 --> 00:52:28,360
crackles unexpectedly, as if testing its own range. The digital

1078
00:52:28,400 --> 00:52:31,599
displays stutters, slides back to two forty seven, then blinks forward.

1079
00:52:32,280 --> 00:52:35,760
I watch cot pulse accelerating, but it rights itself. Just

1080
00:52:35,800 --> 00:52:37,960
a power quirk, I tell myself, though I no longer

1081
00:52:38,000 --> 00:52:40,440
have the luxury to believe it. Just a power quirk,

1082
00:52:40,480 --> 00:52:42,639
I tell myself, though I no longer have the luxury

1083
00:52:42,639 --> 00:52:45,679
to believe it. After sitting there for some indeterminate stretch,

1084
00:52:45,760 --> 00:52:47,880
the faint hiss in my ears merges with outside quite

1085
00:52:47,960 --> 00:52:51,679
except now and then the scizzle spikes at intervals. The

1086
00:52:51,719 --> 00:52:54,719
house's infrastructure flickers, The fridge compressor cuts out, a lamps

1087
00:52:54,760 --> 00:52:57,199
clow throbs wants. The digital clock by my bed drops

1088
00:52:57,239 --> 00:53:00,519
three minutes, then corrects itself. Each shift coincides with a

1089
00:53:00,519 --> 00:53:04,400
slipping of stat across the radio band. Beneath these mechanical hiccups,

1090
00:53:04,440 --> 00:53:07,440
a steady drum of expectation bills each malfunction another signal.

1091
00:53:08,039 --> 00:53:10,800
I get up, Unable to remain a passive observer, I

1092
00:53:10,840 --> 00:53:12,960
fetch my note pad and begin tracing a timeline on

1093
00:53:13,000 --> 00:53:15,840
the kitchen table, writing out events in columns, power surges,

1094
00:53:15,880 --> 00:53:19,800
poldergeist flickers, coded messages, Jamie's last schiff, my own recent interventions.

1095
00:53:20,400 --> 00:53:23,000
The evidence feels linear, but it's all spirals, s drawing

1096
00:53:23,079 --> 00:53:25,239
back toward the moment of the booth T forty seven,

1097
00:53:25,280 --> 00:53:28,719
that unrelenting time. By mid morning, the exhaustion gives way

1098
00:53:28,719 --> 00:53:32,079
to single minded intent. I make calls again to authorities.

1099
00:53:32,679 --> 00:53:35,519
The FCC email systems oughto respond to Bounds's my query.

1100
00:53:36,119 --> 00:53:38,599
The police receptionist asks about my welfare, but says the

1101
00:53:38,599 --> 00:53:42,760
station's been condemned and no further investigations pending. She suggests

1102
00:53:42,760 --> 00:53:45,800
sometimes memories are worse than what actually happened. I hang

1103
00:53:45,880 --> 00:53:49,000
up before I say something regrettable. Even as bureaucratic dead

1104
00:53:49,079 --> 00:53:52,360
ends pile up, small intrusions keep coming. A neighbor's cat,

1105
00:53:52,519 --> 00:53:55,039
always worry, is now pointedly absent from its post on

1106
00:53:55,079 --> 00:53:57,920
my port trailing. The mail arrives later than usual, and

1107
00:53:57,920 --> 00:53:59,960
the mail books when I check it pulls no ordinary

1108
00:54:00,159 --> 00:54:02,840
lett is just an unsolicited envelope, thin mark with the

1109
00:54:02,840 --> 00:54:05,880
same blocky script from fan mail reply not required. I

1110
00:54:05,920 --> 00:54:08,599
sit on my front steps, envelope trembling in my hands,

1111
00:54:08,679 --> 00:54:11,760
and way whether to open it. The compulsion's familiar now

1112
00:54:11,840 --> 00:54:15,400
Jamie's old obsession taking route. The handwriting inside is neither

1113
00:54:15,440 --> 00:54:18,039
that nor confession, just a string of numbers and a phrase.

1114
00:54:18,199 --> 00:54:21,000
Two forty seven to night, blue set booth. Three last

1115
00:54:21,000 --> 00:54:25,320
requests don't answer. I pocket the note. Why now routine

1116
00:54:25,400 --> 00:54:28,000
to recognize instructions, not men, for any one in particular,

1117
00:54:28,079 --> 00:54:30,159
just the next puzzin, stubborn or foolish enough to keep

1118
00:54:30,199 --> 00:54:33,960
listening As afternoon dims with low stubborn cloud. I resolved

1119
00:54:33,960 --> 00:54:36,960
not to stay idle until the ire the booth calls,

1120
00:54:37,159 --> 00:54:39,960
whether from Leyton Guild or the inscapable tug of unfinished business.

1121
00:54:40,039 --> 00:54:42,679
I know my next step. I prepared by copying all

1122
00:54:42,679 --> 00:54:45,960
the tapes, one last digitized version stored on the USB drive.

1123
00:54:46,519 --> 00:54:48,960
I detail a handwritten note of my findings for Lizzie

1124
00:54:49,000 --> 00:54:50,960
order of a may some day want an explanation, and

1125
00:54:51,079 --> 00:54:53,679
tape it inside a kitchen drawer. There's no need for

1126
00:54:53,719 --> 00:54:55,519
a will, just this arc. I've burden, and I hope

1127
00:54:55,559 --> 00:54:59,800
the information lands safely elsewhere. A proper meal feels almost adversarial,

1128
00:55:00,039 --> 00:55:02,199
but I force myself to cook, refusing to concede. The

1129
00:55:02,280 --> 00:55:05,920
data shadows still as I eat, the house remains plainly aware,

1130
00:55:06,000 --> 00:55:07,960
so charged to expect the phone to ring with another

1131
00:55:07,960 --> 00:55:10,039
burst of codor for the lamps light to shiftly white

1132
00:55:10,119 --> 00:55:15,119
like transmitter serge. Any second, darkness inevitably comes. The Iro

1133
00:55:15,159 --> 00:55:18,599
approaches with pitilesstead in a snow crescendo, just a pervasive certainty.

1134
00:55:19,199 --> 00:55:22,400
I check my phone's battery. I pack instead of just

1135
00:55:22,440 --> 00:55:25,079
the tapes of flashlight, the USB paper map folded to

1136
00:55:25,079 --> 00:55:27,599
show the roads around WKDL and a wind up radio,

1137
00:55:27,760 --> 00:55:31,199
new batteries whichhed in the compartment. The old keys feel heavier,

1138
00:55:31,320 --> 00:55:34,119
more ominous. They press down in my pocket, as though

1139
00:55:34,119 --> 00:55:37,519
magnetized once more against my own better sense. I drive

1140
00:55:37,559 --> 00:55:40,360
out to the station, stripped to bravado, not expecting answers.

1141
00:55:41,000 --> 00:55:43,559
The corn fields lining the route of spectral, each passing

1142
00:55:43,599 --> 00:55:46,480
light standard mimicking the pulse of a transmittter. In the

1143
00:55:46,480 --> 00:55:49,320
mirrors behind the world is saturated night. In the windshield,

1144
00:55:49,440 --> 00:55:52,760
the ruin of WKDL sign emerges, metal bones edged against

1145
00:55:52,760 --> 00:55:55,400
the sparse bill of my head lights. The parking lot

1146
00:55:55,440 --> 00:55:58,159
is unchanged, but that itself is strange. De glazes the glass,

1147
00:55:58,360 --> 00:56:01,119
and the booth windows reflect only my own outline. I

1148
00:56:01,159 --> 00:56:04,480
cut the engine. The silence is vast, densely physical, the

1149
00:56:04,519 --> 00:56:07,599
sort only the edge of broadcast territory can host with

1150
00:56:07,679 --> 00:56:10,719
trip edition. I unlocked the side door and step inside.

1151
00:56:10,719 --> 00:56:13,280
My footfalls carry too loud, past a brutal welcome hat

1152
00:56:13,400 --> 00:56:16,199
and into the central hallway. Dust hangs in the air

1153
00:56:16,400 --> 00:56:19,199
for recent bulbs flicker awake with the guttural wine. The

1154
00:56:19,239 --> 00:56:21,639
break room is undisturbed. A mug with Jamie's initials still

1155
00:56:21,679 --> 00:56:24,400
in the dishracker. Trace of the ordinary smash into the extraordinary,

1156
00:56:24,480 --> 00:56:29,400
almost comical emplacement. Each motion feels formal, preparatory. I make

1157
00:56:29,440 --> 00:56:32,079
my way to Booth three. The door is shut tightly,

1158
00:56:32,079 --> 00:56:35,599
a rare occurrence, even in those last ten months hand trembling.

1159
00:56:35,599 --> 00:56:37,880
I pressed my pum against the panel, then push it open.

1160
00:56:38,320 --> 00:56:41,159
The room is as before, but sharper. Every detail illuminated

1161
00:56:41,159 --> 00:56:43,760
by the overhead glow is rendered with almost surgical clarity.

1162
00:56:44,159 --> 00:56:46,320
The old chair, the freight's schedule taped to the wall,

1163
00:56:46,400 --> 00:56:49,760
the broadcast console with its sun bleach dials on the desk,

1164
00:56:49,840 --> 00:56:52,000
A stack of sticky nut blank found as if riffled

1165
00:56:52,039 --> 00:56:55,119
by a nervous hand with intent. I fit the main tape,

1166
00:56:55,159 --> 00:56:57,360
the one never aired after Jamie vanished into the deck.

1167
00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:01,119
Static bursts out, reminiscent of the turbulent errors in my

1168
00:57:01,159 --> 00:57:04,599
living room, but more tightly wound. Before I can press play,

1169
00:57:04,719 --> 00:57:08,119
my phone buzzes new message, a number, no sender. I

1170
00:57:08,199 --> 00:57:10,599
check it, just a strain of beeps rising and falling.

1171
00:57:11,239 --> 00:57:15,159
The timestamp reads two forty six. I sit, bracing elbows

1172
00:57:15,159 --> 00:57:17,719
on the battered counter. Every part of me is waiting

1173
00:57:17,719 --> 00:57:20,519
for rupture. I thumb the play button, and the tape lurgies,

1174
00:57:20,519 --> 00:57:23,079
a patchwork of Jamie's sinon mixed with a low musical drone.

1175
00:57:23,559 --> 00:57:25,920
There are no words at first, just the heavy presence

1176
00:57:25,960 --> 00:57:28,559
of the house and the console's read led pulsing as

1177
00:57:28,559 --> 00:57:32,639
though alive. This is not a listening act, It's an invocation.

1178
00:57:33,280 --> 00:57:35,599
The blues riff and spools, pained and sweet than behind it,

1179
00:57:35,679 --> 00:57:38,960
the same canon's mysterious beaps morsel like. I decode them

1180
00:57:39,000 --> 00:57:42,679
as they come, not translating, but experiencing paroxysm of comprehension.

1181
00:57:42,719 --> 00:57:46,639
Somewhere beneath language, something shuffles in the periphery of my awareness,

1182
00:57:46,639 --> 00:57:49,639
A presence just outside the narrow booth window. The message

1183
00:57:49,679 --> 00:57:53,440
is insistent to booth open, listen only suddenly the lights gutter.

1184
00:57:54,119 --> 00:57:56,559
The sound from the speaker thickens, a surge coiling through

1185
00:57:56,599 --> 00:58:00,000
the air. I hear behind the track Jamie's voice, different news,

1186
00:58:00,360 --> 00:58:03,480
devoid of warmth, threaded with lonning and warning, end a show.

1187
00:58:03,719 --> 00:58:07,800
He says, welcome, whoever's left. The cock blisters to ward

1188
00:58:07,800 --> 00:58:10,559
two forty seven, and everything in the booth console Mike

1189
00:58:10,679 --> 00:58:13,239
phony rops with layer of sand, a multitude of Puss's

1190
00:58:13,360 --> 00:58:16,880
coded bursts blending to form language that is terrifyingly almost

1191
00:58:16,920 --> 00:58:20,079
comprehensible at the peak. A coldness lash is the nape

1192
00:58:20,119 --> 00:58:22,480
of my neck. Out of the corner of my eye.

1193
00:58:22,480 --> 00:58:25,360
A figure passes beyond a glass indeterminable bow line, but

1194
00:58:25,400 --> 00:58:27,920
the coat is black. The posture neither Jamies, nor Geralds,

1195
00:58:27,920 --> 00:58:30,760
nor any one I've ever known. I keep my gaze

1196
00:58:30,800 --> 00:58:33,679
fixed forward, refusing acknowledgment, holding on to some last deck

1197
00:58:33,719 --> 00:58:37,400
of Jamie's written plea don't answer. The fan mail slot rattles,

1198
00:58:38,039 --> 00:58:40,320
paper spill forth as if from a collapsed dark cavern,

1199
00:58:40,360 --> 00:58:43,519
mocked letters, each samped with the same nonsense numbers. A

1200
00:58:43,599 --> 00:58:47,280
Polari tumbles out face down, glossed with dew. I hesitate,

1201
00:58:47,320 --> 00:58:50,239
then retrieve it. The image. When I dare to look,

1202
00:58:50,360 --> 00:58:52,719
booth three seem from the ceiling's angle, with a figure

1203
00:58:52,760 --> 00:58:55,239
hunched over the board. It takes me too long to

1204
00:58:55,280 --> 00:58:57,960
recognize the photo of showing me here and now. A

1205
00:58:58,039 --> 00:59:00,400
pressure bills both inside the booth and within me, as

1206
00:59:00,440 --> 00:59:03,920
if the room's dimensions are shifting minatly, inching me toward inevitability.

1207
00:59:04,519 --> 00:59:07,679
The blue som scrapes to an unnatural end, reversing momentarily,

1208
00:59:07,800 --> 00:59:11,000
then writing like its correcting itself. There's too much signal,

1209
00:59:11,079 --> 00:59:14,639
now not enough signal. The receiver picks up a new frequency,

1210
00:59:14,800 --> 00:59:18,280
my own breath, hyper amplified, fused with an undo lying whisper.

1211
00:59:19,000 --> 00:59:21,880
Now you know it says, it's the listening that matters.

1212
00:59:22,000 --> 00:59:25,280
The door is sound. All sense of self orientation wanes.

1213
00:59:25,960 --> 00:59:28,400
The room feels like a capsule in orbit, sealed away

1214
00:59:28,400 --> 00:59:31,719
from both time and place. The darkness behind the glass

1215
00:59:31,719 --> 00:59:34,039
has teeth. I sense the shape of something enormous and

1216
00:59:34,159 --> 00:59:37,679
unhurried moving beneath the carrier wave. The console meter spin

1217
00:59:37,800 --> 00:59:41,800
out somewhere inside the static. Jamie murmurs, thanks for playing

1218
00:59:41,800 --> 00:59:45,719
the request. My skin erupted with goose flesh. A hush falls,

1219
00:59:45,760 --> 00:59:48,039
no tape, no music, just the fans, weak grind and

1220
00:59:48,079 --> 00:59:51,039
my own lungs rasping. The clock clicks to two forty seven,

1221
00:59:51,119 --> 00:59:55,039
its hands halting in silent compress. The buffer settles. All

1222
00:59:55,159 --> 00:59:57,519
is heavy now, with waiting, the last swarps of frost

1223
00:59:57,519 --> 01:00:01,159
at eye level, my breath hands. A final signal comes,

1224
01:00:01,159 --> 01:00:04,800
pulse code words. I write it unconsciously on the line

1225
01:00:04,840 --> 01:00:08,000
memmo belonging to Jamie, my handwriting overwriting his booth. Three

1226
01:00:08,159 --> 01:00:11,079
night open, next, guess please, I don't recall moving, but

1227
01:00:11,119 --> 01:00:14,440
the chair is empty. The soundproof glass fogs a fleeting

1228
01:00:14,440 --> 01:00:17,360
print suggesting a hen, then nothing. I'm in the corridor,

1229
01:00:17,440 --> 01:00:19,800
the tape resting in the deck, my own clothes misshapen,

1230
01:00:19,920 --> 01:00:22,840
damp with cold. I stagger forward. I'm sure if I'm

1231
01:00:22,840 --> 01:00:25,280
awake or reliving Jamie's lost passage out of this building.

1232
01:00:25,880 --> 01:00:28,880
I reach the exit. The air beyond is lighter, bows

1233
01:00:28,920 --> 01:00:31,920
and pricking. At dawn. My phone sits dead, battery dropped

1234
01:00:31,920 --> 01:00:35,559
to zero. All Polaroid's tapes and notebooks are worthy, belong

1235
01:00:35,679 --> 01:00:38,920
exactly as they were, but subtly re arranged against the

1236
01:00:39,079 --> 01:00:42,199
urge I checked the booth one last time. Nothing remains

1237
01:00:42,239 --> 01:00:44,400
save for a blank note waited perfectly in the center

1238
01:00:44,440 --> 01:00:47,559
of the desk. I leave it where it falls. I

1239
01:00:47,639 --> 01:00:50,280
unlock my car, start the engine, and dragged breath after

1240
01:00:50,280 --> 01:00:53,440
breath into lungs sore from holding, I back out, headlightes

1241
01:00:53,480 --> 01:00:56,199
slicing across the empty lot. For the first time in

1242
01:00:56,239 --> 01:00:58,159
all these weeks, there is nothing in my rear view.

1243
01:00:58,840 --> 01:01:01,840
I drive home, not startled, not a piece, simply emptied.

1244
01:01:02,320 --> 01:01:05,400
The tapes rattle on the passenger seat. My pockets hold

1245
01:01:05,400 --> 01:01:09,239
no new notes, no attempt at communication. Everything has ceased transmission,

1246
01:01:09,239 --> 01:01:11,880
at least for now. Back in my house, I set

1247
01:01:11,880 --> 01:01:13,920
the tapes and notes on the low shelf in the closet,

1248
01:01:13,960 --> 01:01:16,320
lay my keys on top, and closed the door. I

1249
01:01:16,400 --> 01:01:19,639
do not lock it that evening after, as twilight settles

1250
01:01:19,639 --> 01:01:21,320
over my street and the radio sits dead on the

1251
01:01:21,400 --> 01:01:24,119
kitchen counter, I allow the hush to settle. I do

1252
01:01:24,199 --> 01:01:26,400
not tune, I do not press play. I do not answer.

1253
01:01:27,000 --> 01:01:30,000
In the stillness the voice mind Jamie's someone Else's lingers

1254
01:01:30,000 --> 01:01:32,519
in the charged to air are you still listening? And

1255
01:01:32,599 --> 01:01:48,960
I realize finally that I am