(Part 6 of 6)
Elmer has almost finished slurping down his noodles when Louis hands him a cigar—a Garcia Y Vega. Elmer can feel the texture of it—it’s still supple, not ready to crumble into dry pieces like most of what he’s smoked as of late. It wasn’t easy to get: at Louis’s request, the Three Stooges had spent days tearing through abandoned law offices to find it. Elmer rubs the cigar lengthwise under his nose, and he can still smell the aroma of tobacco through the cellophane. He looks over to Bigfoot.
“So, what’s the special occasion?”
“We finished the towers!” Elmer’s best guess is that Bigfoot is smiling—her tone suggests it—but he can’t tell. His vision is turning kaleidoscopic. Closing his eyes doesn’t help. He just sees the inside of his eyelids flash and twist. If it’s not one thing, it’s . . . Wait?
“You finished it? Today? Already?” Elmer puts down his cigar.
“Them! All 90 feet of them.”
“Them? You were just going to build . . . ”
“Two, but we went for three instead!”
“I thought you and the Three Stooges were just going to build one.”
“You think small!” and even as Bigfoot says it, it occurs to Elmer that she and Louis didn’t do all this work for fish and shoes, for a cut of the transmission fees, or even for Kim’s training, although all three probably had something to do with it.
“Bigfoot,” Elmer considers his words, “what are you really after?”
***
I can hear so far away that it’s strange. I can code to people everywhere—Japan, Korea, Thailand, Russia, Alaska, and far into the ocean. The sky is bright again—the ionosphere is charging up—and signals are bouncing everywhere. I wonder how energized the sky will get. Today, everything is okay. Today, everything is good. Tomorrow, things may be even better. But if the charge gets too strong, that will be bad. A strong sun—an active solar cycle—is great, but not too much: That’s how we got the green waves in the first place. That’s how we ended up with our problems.
I look at my list of friends, and I can see that there aren’t as many operators as there were before. The density per square mile keeps decreasing. So I hear more people, but there are fewer people to hear. I guess some of them are running out of fuel and parts. That’s sad for my friends. That’s sad for me. I hope they can come back.
Messages don’t take up much time. I’m faster—K1M is as fast as anyone. Mom tells me I should be proud. Dad does too. But that’s not all of it. Time passes and memories fade, says Mom. But I still have many things to do. That’s okay. I want to be busy. Busy is good.
Mom’s wrong, or at least she’s not right all of the time. Something like that. I don’t forget. Mom doesn’t forget. Dad doesn’t forget. He doesn’t say much around Mom, but when he says things, I know he remembers.
I hear static. It must be time to change directions.
***
Elmer is having a harder time keeping down food than he was days before. It’s not his stomach. Pho, raw fish, shit on a shingle, the occasional deep-fried candy bar of questionable provenance, and cheap tobacco, all washed down with cheaper Scotch and purified water reeking of chlorine or iodine—six decades of gut-rotting food and drink had done him no harm at all. The problem is the damned motion sickness, which gives him the sensation of forever being on rough seas—a storm of nausea, just for him. My own personal hell—don’t I feel special.
So Elmer sits in the camp chair that Bigfoot placed outside for him, the rain gently landing on his head, reminding him that he once had hair.
“Two hundred and twenty degrees! West-southwest! They all need to be pointed in the same direction.”
“Yes, Mr. Elmer!”
Elmer has no idea of what the boys are doing. He can’t see them, just as he can’t see the antennas. But he’d inspected them by touch—the three giant Yagis now pointed towards the Pacific—and they all felt solid: Louis had proven to be an astoundingly good welder.
So Elmer has to trust—the Three Stooges, Louis and Bigfoot, and Kim—but what other options are there? And they’ve not put me out to pasture. Yet.
The plan—the Phan family effort—is so outlandish, so impractical, so hopelessly beyond hope, that Elmer can’t but help admire it. Searching for a needle in a haystack doesn’t describe it.
But you’ve got to respect the persistence, and the old man doesn’t mind the company (not that he’d tell anyone as much). And someone needs to take over the station when Elmer’s gone. K1M seems as good a fit as anyone.
So life could be worse—if only I could do something about the constant vomiting.
***
Jack stands in the bunker, not quite certain of what is before him. The sun is low on the horizon, and it casts a warm red light through the machine gun port. Jack passed by the bunker several times, before finally walking over it and hearing the thump thump of hollowness beneath his feet. The sound reminded him of his mother.
There’s an old rifle with a few characters written on it—九九式—Type 99. It might be repairable, but there are no bullets to be found. If nothing else, I can club something with it. There are canned goods as well—some rusted and leaking, a few still apparently intact—but they’re all so ancient that Jack would rather stick to coconuts and fish, diarrhea and parasites be damned. Jack steps forward, and something crunches beneath his boat shoes. He looks down.
Parts? He picks one up. These used to be the components of a functioning radio, telegraph key included. Maybe I can do something with these. Or maybe not. Even then, there’s no battery, and Jack can’t remember what’s left on the ship. He tries to recall his Boy Scouts-level knowledge of Morse code: It’s still rattling around his head, somewhere, possibly.
High in the atmosphere, up where the green waves had washed across the sky and turned the world dark, there’s a signal—bursts of perfect code, being hammered out at superhuman speeds—and it’s calling out for information about a man long lost at sea. There’s nothing else as fast. There’s nothing else as powerful. The signal—it’s the loudest voice in the world. And there’s almost no one left to hear it.
Jack looks out the port, and he catches a glimpse of something, something far in the distance—lights, perhaps, flickering on as the sun sets. But he can’t be certain. He’s never paid all that much attention—What would be the point? There’s nothing out here in the middle of the ocean. What could it even be?
A city?
A city of light?
Buy Foresight (and Other Stories) today.
The Rules
The Rules is a philosophy and self-inquiry text designed to help readers develop mental discipline and set life goals. It does this by way of guided readings and open-ended questions that facilitate the rational and systematic application of each Rule.
Put another way: The Rules is a book designed to help men survive and thrive in the West.
Foresight (And Other Stories)
Four tales across time and distance. Always satirical and frequently dark, this collection considers the breadth of isolation and the depth of connection.
Brant von Goble is a writer, editor, publisher, researcher, teacher, musician, juggler, and amateur radio operator.
He is the author of several books and articles of both the academic and non-academic variety. He owns and operates the book publishing company Loosey Goosey Press.
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