|
Signing up, and go ahead and give me a flash rule too.
|
#
¿
Oct 15, 2018 17:44
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 21:52 |
|
|
The Numbers Station (1900 Words) A soft northern breeze picked up off the sea, and Miguel took a moment to enjoy the warm air. By his count, it was May, and warm days were growing scarce. His potatoes would need harvesting soon, but not today. Today was spent at the top of the lighthouse, it's lens casting little rainbows of sunlight around the top of the tower. From deep inside the lighthouse, he heard a speaker crackle to life, and a female voice begin to speak a stream of numbers. It was 18:00. Miguel looked out to sea, and he saw nothing but the waves and the reddening of the western sky - lavenders and maroons that were beautiful until he remembered why. Five years ago.. had it been six now? No matter. One evening like this one, Miguel had stood atop the lighthouse, three months into a six month rotation, and he'd watched the missiles trace blazing arcs across the sky. Then the contrails of the big bombers could be made out in the dusk light. They flew out across the ocean, never to return. All the horrors of mutually assured destruction were let out of their box in one cathartic evening: atom bombs and doomsday devices and all the things they swore they'd never built, and would never use even if they had. Miguel sighed and looked down at the tower's walkway. Twinkling little shards of glass still were lodged in crevices where his broom couldn't reach. Sometime during that awful night, there had been a sound like the world being ripped in two. Huddled by the radio in the basement of the lighthouse, he was convinced the old cement and masonry structure would fall and bury him alive – but it stood. Whatever had caused the noise had shattered the great storm windows that shielded the lens, and the massive light bulb as well. At a hand's width thick, the lens survived, but the lighthouse would never again keep a ship off the rocks. Still, no ship ever returned to the sea around Miguel's lighthouse, so the rocks were wreck-free. In the weeks after the end of the world, Miguel listened to his radio. He heard McMurdo base on the ice shelf, and Scott base at the pole – both spared the initial destruction, both isolated and watching their food supplies dwindle daily. He heard Johannesburg and their talk of the terrible Pluto missiles that screamed along at hypersonic speeds, tossing atomic bombs in their wakes until they ran out. Then they flew down to treetop level, flying circles around the Transvaal and spewing out hot radioactive death from their unshielded reactors. Montevideo claimed that something had fallen from the sky onto Buenos Aries. Not a bomb, but something that left a trail of fire in the sky and cracked the earth so deeply that a pillar of lava was visible for days. The Rio de la Plata had boiled away before the Atlantic swept back into cover the sea floor. Miguel listened to Auckland and Christchurch, and heard them describe the pillars of dust they saw in the West, and no one spoke from Sydney or Canberra ever again. And slowly, over the course of months, fewer and fewer voices carried over the airwaves. Miguel tried to talk to them when he could – to learn of where they were and what had become of the world. More often than not they spoke languages he did not understand, so he tried to learn a little, mostly fruitlessly. He would count out, slow and steady, from one to ten, then twenty to a hundred. Sometimes they would count back to him, and he'd take notes. Sometimes he could pick up a few simple phrases – “Hello,” “How are you?” “Sick and hungry.” Then after a year or so, almost all the living voices vanished. Miguel expected to sicken as well – he'd heard the calls from Peru – the stories of how Lima became a city of ghouls with sunken eyes, wiggly teeth, and hair that fell like autumn leaves. The winds from Brazil had blown fallout across the Amazon and Andes. Through some trick of the winds and the currents, Miguel stayed healthy. He had a small garden, and the fish were still biting along the shore. Was it a miracle or a curse? As the voices of the living vanished from the airwaves, the numbers stations still broadcast. Miguel knew these were recordings of the dead. With monotonous drones, the radio let their voices drift around the lighthouse, speaking one number at a time in long strings. Were they reading off authentication codes, on the off chance that a submarine commander might still have a boat full of missiles? Was there a spy still alive somewhere, in need of an encryption key? Miguel didn't know, but at least it was a voice that was not his – something to break the terrible silence of the sea and the lighthouse. His favorite was the Russian station – a young woman's voice that sounded slightly lonely and tired. Every day at 6pm, the station would crackle to life, and she would read out a string of numbers. Then she would pause, and a tone would play. It wasn't like a digital beep, but rather it was like some sort of analog acknowledgment. They were slightly musical, a chorus of two-note angels that spoke their own language but would answer her numeric calls. Miguel wired up speakers across the lighthouse. He could listen to the voices from the top of the tower, or while he weeded his carrots and beans. All through the day, the sound of counting echoed across the little island. The American station in the morning, which he didn't much care for because he suspected it was synthesized. The Chilean and his absurd accent went on the air around noon, and he would giggle to himself and imitate the speaker. His 'd's were swallowed and every 's' turned into an 'h.' But that warm May evening, Miguel stood atop the lighthouse, gazed off at the setting sun, and listened for the Russian girl. He ran his hand across the big lens with a soft cloth, polishing it out of habit, and heard her say in her precise, measured, and slightly weary voice: “Shest chetyre odin dva vosem tri dva odin dva sem.” Six four one two eight three two one two seven. He liked to try to translate the numbers to himself before one of the tones sounded, marking the end of her string and clearing her to begin the next. He'd done this countless times now. “Odin odin sem...*achoo* vosem devyat pyat...” Miguel started - listening and agog - because never before had a numbers station sneezed. He listened to the Russian girl rattle off another string, and another tone, before he ran down the spiral steps heading to the radio room. Frantically reaching for the microphone, he thumbed the transmit button, and plead into the ether. “Hello? Hello? Is there anyone there?!” Nothing responded but another string of numbers, and the answering musical tones. Miguel tried again, desperately, and again. The Russian station reached the final string of numbers for the night, and fell silent. That night was sleepless. His mind reeled, knowing that somewhere another person was still alive, and talking. Even if it was just numbers, she was there. And if she was Russian, it stood to reason she was half a world away. Was she in Vladivostok, or Moscow, or were those places wiped from the face of the Earth like so many others? Was she at sea, or in space, or so deep in Siberia that no bombs landed near her? To reach through the airwaves and seize her, shake her, hug her, and talk to her endlessly. His only words of Russian were the numbers, but that is where he would start. The next morning he shuffled through the tool room, and found a roll of thin steel cable. His transmitter was only meant to talk to the ships that delivered him to the island, or ferried him away when his relief was rotated in. So, Miguel set to work, stringing an antenna from the top of the lighthouse to the shoreline, and wiring it to the little radio set in the basement. Each evening, between strings of numbers and tones, he keyed up. Each evening, no response came. The warm evenings of early May turned into the chilly nights of mid-July, and every night Miguel murmured into the microphone, telling her of the fish that he caught, the beans that were now drying in the stairwell, and how he'd sell his soul for either a piece of fresh baked bread or just a call back from a Russian woman who spoke in numbers. On a cold, moonless night in August, she began, “Pyat tri odin tri dva vosem...” Miguel keyed the transmitter and quietly repeated, “Pyat tri odin tri...” in response. She paused. “Shto?” Then she went back to her numbers. Miguel gaped at the radio. Had she heard him? She must have. He didn't know what she said, but it was obvious that she had listened. “Hello. Please, please can you hear me?” Another pause, longer this time, then a sigh, “Ochistite etot kanal.” “Who are you? Where are you?” “Mohlchyats!” It was useless. He could not say anything that meant anything to her, and likewise, she could not speak anything but the numbers to him. The numbers. The numbers! While she resumed her usual broadcast, Miguel ran to a map hung on the wall of the radio room. Fumbling with a pencil and a piece of paper, he scratched down numbers one at a time, first for the latitude, then the longitude of his tiny island. He ran back to the radio console, just as she finished a string and a tone sounded. Miguel keyed the microphone and spoke, “Pyat chetyre odin sem pyat shest pyat dva sem sem.” “Nyet! Zakroy rot!” He could not understand her, so again he keyed and spoke his co-ordinates. “Zatknis!” Now she almost sobbed – but Miguel was insistent. She must know that someone else still lived, that someone else was listening. So once again, clearly and slowly, he spoke his numbers into the mic. “Pyat chetyre odin sem pyat shest pyat dva sem sem.” And then a tone sounded. It was the same two little boops, the angel's notes that answered her calls. “Nyet! Blyat!” and then the station closed with a crackle of static that persisted a moment before the squelch silenced it. Miguel sat in front of the radio, dumbstruck. Heart pounding, he tried transmitting several more times, in hopes that she was still listening - that someone, somewhere would hear him. All he heard in response was dead air. He climbed the steps of the lighthouse, sat heavily against the remains of the light fixture, placed his face into his hands and sobbed. The stars wheeled overhead, and through his tears he caught a glimpse of something sparkle as it broke the horizon and streaked toward the little island. It passed overhead with a flash, and he only felt the crushing shock wave for the briefest moment before the lighthouse toppled like a sandcastle washed away by the tide.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 24, 2018 04:52
|
|
|
 Glad you guys enjoyed the story, I enjoyed writing it. I had a longer version planned that teased out more of what was going on behind the Russian transmissions, but the pacing was all off and so I opted to take a knife to a lot of it. Maybe I'll do a revision on it and try to get that right. Translation of her transmissions: She's basically stunned that someone else is on the channel. First she asks "Sto?" which means "What?!" Then she asks Miguel to clear off the channel. When she realizes he's trying to read his co-ordinates to her, she panics and starts begging him to shut up. Finally she curses, and closes the line in grief when she realizes that the doomsday device has locked on to him. Spoiler of what I cut: tl;dr version is that the Russian woman on the other end of the transmission is isolated and alone as well, but she's the communication officer that sends co-ordinates to the semi-out of control Pluto-type missiles. She's been trying to keep them flying over the oceans, well away from herself and other landmasses. Miguel is a native Spanish speaker, and between them they only have a little broken english in common, other than his knowledge of how to count to ten in Russian. A miscommunication leads him to believe she has asked him for his co-ordinates, and he thinks she will come to his location, so he gleefully blurts them out in russian, while she attempts to silence him. The missile which is listening in on the transmission signals it's assignment of a new target, and an hour or so later Miguel is killed by the missiles shockwave when it streaks overhead. Thanks for the crit, and I'll write some this weekend - probably Sunday.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 2, 2018 02:34
|
|