The sky was angry.
Atop a signal tower somewhere unknown and staring into the abyss of distance, an engineer named Talbot shivered in the frost-touched wind and drew his coat tighter around his shoulders.
It was hard to remember the air before it was this broiling knot of rage and static, the coiling sprawl of a horizon that shifted forward and backward as if it was a tide.
There were other stations, out beyond that horizon, he had been to one in a panic long ago after an operator had signalled for help, three days of driving and it was always going to be too late. Talbot remembered just being scared that they’d ask him to take over, someone had to run the transmitter and he was already there. His station needed him though and through design unbothered by wisdom the ring stations had always been built to be complex, prone to failure. It seemed to Talbot that for all the critical parts, all the new whistles for bells and alike, nothing was really able to improve what could just be done with a simple wire.
Components can be replaced but today, as he threw another blown fuse off the gantry-way, it felt like he was now part of the system that was no longer in production.
The cold brought challenges, looking down at the tripped breaker Talbot took a moment to pray. He wasn’t much for praying, time had gone where he claimed that he’d turn religious when the dirt turned to gold, but for anyone who were asked to rack-in a heating coil at full load it paid to point yourself toward heaven beforehand.
Talbot hated working up on the towers, but who else was going to do it.
His air-head recordist, or whatever they call themselves, was probably off thinking again. She was a nice girl, Talbot thought, but she had a way of holding a conversation that always made him feel itchy, it was as if his every word were transformed into plague rat and the girl was too afraid to bolt or think about running away: maybe she was just a nervous sort.
It didn’t pay to be unfriendly out here on the plains though, and by every grain of salt that collected in his beard, Talbot was trying to be friendly. He had always been told by past colleagues that he was gruff, that his temper was short and his replies often too blunt; Talbot felt that his lot was to be left at odds with someone–usually whoever was nearby. He wasn’t a fighter, he hated fighting, but something deep inside his cast-iron gizzards always kept him from letting something go unspoken. An off-hand comment, someone acting like a dolt, Talbot would speak up to these people and would often end up having to square off afterward.
Mel was fine, better than most, but she was too young to be left in a station this far out.
He had said that to her when she first arrived, he barked a shout at the departing car, ‘you can’t leave someone like her here.’ It was probably taken the wrong way, most things he said were. He didn’t mean that she couldn’t, it was more that she shouldn’t; she had a life, so much time in front of her and a station like this was for people who had run out of time, nothing is fair anymore.
The station here used to be a lot stronger before static took out a repeater to the south.
You could hear the distant stations all the way out on the edges chatting on the shortwaves if you knew where to dial in. They had a story of their own, their equipment suffered more problems than there was time and supplies were always getting thin. Talbot used to enjoy listening to the operators and he often wondered if there were still out there, clinging to the edge of the horizon like a sapling who didn’t get a choice to where it should be able to grow.
He had asked Mel to dial into an old bandwidth he had half-remembered one morning. They searched and played around with the frequency but could only find that familiar hum of static and ESR feedback. He was impressed by her that day, she seemed to know things that the recordists before her were always too scared to: A dial with the words ‘NEVER TO BE TOUCHED,’ turned out to be a gain adjustment, the blinking light of the radio tower apparently was supposed to be stable and thus needed fixing. In a burst of enthusiasm she had even managed to reactivate the old public log that recordists once used when coms went bad.
A few years ago she probably would have gotten a promotion for he work, but it seemed that whoever gave still promotions was missing in action, it was as if a belt had slipped and the prop it controlled was just left spinning freely in a steady wind, appearing to be operating but achieving nothing.
Squinting into the distant white, Talbot saw the passing crackle of static flash cold anger some way out beyond the lighting strikes. Grunting to himself with a dissatisfied yawn, the old engineer clapped the arc-dust from his gloved hands and made for the ladder off the tower and back down into the station below; It looked like a storm was brewing over the 84’s way, he thought, hopefully they had managed to find all their roof shingles this time.
Climbing down into the workshop, Talbot hung his tool-belt up on its hook and opened a hatch down into the signal bay below. A cacophony of clattering and electrical hums escaped into the workshop through the unsealed port and the flicker of dissonant EMF caused the lights to dim slightly. Better be friendly, he thought knowing that she was waiting for him, apparently keen to learn how the receiver worked.
‘They always make that noise,’ he called out, closing the hatch and descending the rest of the way down the ladder; it wasn’t really a hello but if was going to have to teach something he’d rather be succinct, ‘It’s the cutting in and out of the filter relays that really helps you enjoy the silence.’-
…had he just made a joke? That was unexpected.
Sunday Short Stories 