The Long List Anthology Volume 7, page 8
“We would make do if necessary,” said Viana, magnanimously. “The show must go on, you know.”
Ereni shot her an incredulous look from bloodshot eyes.
Viana sighed, and delicately moved a coil of wire aside with her foot. “I knew you’d be awake,” she said, “and I needed to talk to somebody. I’ve had an offer.”
“How exciting for you,” said Ereni.
“It’s the General,” said Viana. “Apparently we’ve inspired him. He wants me to come and help him with managing communications on Zesar.”
Ereni paused, thin red and yellow wires caught between her fingers; then she laughed and set them down. “I really must have made you sound good that day.”
“Well, you always do,” said Viana, matter-of-factly.
“What communications has he even got to manage? I thought he was in hiding.”
“The Zesarans want to trot him out for a propaganda tour, apparently. Balm the souls of restless refugees, tweak the nose of the new government, you know.”
Ereni made a rude noise and turned back to her work.
“He really is an important person,” Viana informed the back of Ereni’s head. “Maybe not in and of himself, so much, but he’s what we’ve got left. He’s a symbol. And there’s thousands of Gehesrans on and around Zesar. Whatever their motives, the Zesarans are offering a guaranteed audience, a real opportunity for impact–”
“Working mics,” agreed Ereni. “A normal broadcast schedule. Regular meals. Piles of Zesaran money. I hope you have fun, it sounds wonderful.” She stuck the red wire back into position.
“Ereni,” said Viana, wounded.
“And if you did leave, I suppose Brun or Geti would have to do your interview segment, too, and then we would need one less mic, so that’s good news for me –”
“Ereni!”
“Look,” said Ereni. “I understand that you’re very important and in demand, but we both know you’re not going anywhere, you love this show more than most people love their children and it needs you more than most children need their parents. Go away and tell Lor about your offer when he wakes up. He’ll beg you to stay properly, it’ll be a balm to your ego.”
Viana blew air out her nose. “I don’t need my ego balmed.” She folded her arms and leaned back against the door of the recording-booth. “Of course I want to keep doing what we’re doing, I just don’t know that it’s right to. There’s a real opportunity being offered to me, with real resources. Are we just the doomed last stand all over again, shouting that we’re Gehesrani forever and pretending it means something? It’s all very well for us to call out, but if nobody’s listening –”
“Oh, gods,” said Ereni, “it’s the midnight maudlins.”
“Thanks,” said Viana, “that’s truly helpful. Thank you.” She turned and put a hand on the door.
Ereni looked at the set of her shoulders, and sighed. “Hang on.”
Viana glanced back at her, one eyebrow raised.
“Sorry,” said Ereni, and frowned back down at the disassembled microphone. “I’m tired. And no good at this. But –do you really need to hear people are listening? You know they are. We get the letters, sometimes –at least a third of the guests we invite have heard of us, and –and, you know, I’m listening. I’m always listening. I hear everything you all do. I’m Gehesrani too, aren’t I? I count, right?”
“Well,” said Viana, after a moment, “now if I say you don’t it will certainly make me sound a villain.”
“That’s was the point, of course,” said Ereni.
There was a pause, and then she rubbed her eyes with the back of her knuckles. “And now I’ve really desperately got to get back to working on this piece of shit, because, unlike some people, we don’t have any funding at all and we’re not going to get another one, so please will you leave before I murder you and ruin the whole show myself? Thank you. Goodnight, Vi.”
• • • •
“Tune in next time, and thanks for listening. This is New Gehesran, signing off.”
The copy-tape clicked, startlingly loud, and then whirred as it spun itself to its end.
“Well?” Tir crawled up next to Suki, who was wedged next to the radio in the back of the intrasolar doublewide. “Did it work? Did you get it all?”
Suki shoved him aside with her shoulder. “Lay off! Let me see.” Reverently, she detached the reel of copy-tape from the wires that connected it to the radio and moved it over to the playback deck she’d cobbled together from spare bits and parts. She unwound it from its spool and carefully threaded it through the assembly of guides and gears. Tir held his breath.
Suki pressed the rewind button. The copy-tape began to wind backwards. Tir, desperately impatient, slid his hand in below hers and hit ‘Play.’
“–the Zesaran government,” crackled Viana saBrihesi’s voice from the speakers –distorted, imperfect, but clearly audible. “We’ve already heard from the General, so for a counter-perspective, I’d like to welcome –”
Suki slammed the stop button. “Leave off! It’s not a real test unless we test the whole thing. Do you want to send Uncle Arker a bad copy? It’s not his fault his orbit’s got him on the wrong side of Zesar to catch half the shows.”
Tir waved an impatient hand. “It started dull today anyway. Who cares about the gardening segment?”
“Well, Uncle Arker for one,” said Suki. “Ma says he’s trying to get –oh, we’re at the beginning again. Moment of truth!”
She took a deep breath, reached down, and pressed play.
There was a click.
There was a hiss.
There was a terrible static sound, like something tearing, and Suki and Tir turned to look at each other, faces agonized –
And then the static resolved itself into a rich, jazzy voice. “This is New Gehesran calling!” said the tape, as Suki punched Tir’s arm in triumph, and Tir shouted along with it, slightly off time: “This is New Gehesran calling!”
• • • •
“Thank you once again, sir, for your fascinating insight on Petivan adoption of Gehesrani poetic forms.” Ereni saw Viana give the thumbs-up that signaled the end of an interview through the plastic door, and moved to switch off the poet’s mic. “Now,” Viana went on, “I know you’re all looking forward to the Geti baHeti comedy segment in just a few minutes, but first, the –”
Viana’s warm voice suddenly dissolved into static, and Ereni let out a string of profanity as she dove for the soundboard –but the mic was still coming in green, not showing any errors. She cursed again, reached for the transmitter, and looked up to see Lor storming down the corridor just as the static resolved, hissing and stuttering, into the sound of a voice:
“Hello? Is this the show, is this New Gehesran Calling?”
Ereni nearly dropped the transmitter.
“Hello?” crackled the voice again. “Hello? Sorry to bother, only I had just a few questions about that intrasolar gardening segment from last week –”
“Boost the frequency!” shouted Lor, now standing in front of her, windmilling his arms to make sure he caught her attention over the sound coming in through her headphones. “We’re being drowned!”
In the sound booth, Viana was still speaking; there was a line of confusion in her brows as she watched the chaos through the plastic, but she was, of course, a professional. Ereni reached out to tune the transmitter –and then, as the static swelled again, switched broadcast from Viana’s mic to her own before she could think better of it.
The static died. They were broadcasting once more.
“Sir!” she yelled, and heard the sound coming back to her over the headphones, tinny and harsh; she’d never learned to modulate her own voice for the airwaves. Her heart pounded in her ears. “What’s your name and your question?”
“What are you doing?” hissed Lor, as she recklessly spun the dial down again, rolling through that dreadful static on the way.
The voice crackled back: “I’m Arker baRahenna! I’ve been trying to grow dort-root in my engine room, but it just won’t thrive! I hoped if I told you how it was laid out, you might be able to sort out what’s gone wrong!”
The dial spun once more. “Well, sir,” Ereni shouted, watching Lor turning purple in front of her, “we won’t have our garden expert back until next month, and we’re running out of time right now –but call back, all right? Call back! I mean, not this way, please gods don’t do it this way, but we’ll tell you how –we’ll figure out how! Thanks for calling –thank you so much for calling –and now, back to the show!”
She switched to private, yelled, “Geti, you’re live!” and transferred the audio.
Then she flopped back into her chair and took several gasping breaths, as she attempted to bring her heart rate down to normal.
“Well,” said Lor. He shook his head, apparently at a loss for words. “Well.”
Viana, squinting through the plastic, had apparently decided that she’d waited long enough. She threw open the door, marched out, and demanded, “What was that all about?”
“Ereni,” said Lor, with the air of a person hanging onto his calm with both hands, “appears to be in the process of inventing us a new segment.”
“What?” Viana stared from one of them to the other. “What segment?” she demanded. “Whose time is it coming out of?”
“Viana will have to host,” Ereni told Lor. “Nobody can manage people like she does,”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Viana, plaintively.
“That was New Gehesran, Vi,” said Ereni. She looked from Viana, perfect brows arched high, to Lor, still slightly purple, and began to laugh. “That was New Gehesran calling back.”
* * *
Rebecca Fraimow is an author and archivist with a personal and professional fondness for community broadcasting. Rebecca's short fiction has previously appeared in venues such as PodCastle, Daily Science Fiction, The Fantasist, and Diabolical Plots.
The Cold Crowdfunding Campaign
By Cora Buhlert
Short Story Long List
Save the Girl and Save Me From Having to Toss Her Out of the Airlock
Organised by Captain C. Barton
Started on August 4, 2178, 08:48
Category: Accidents and emergencies
My name is Barton and I’m the pilot of an EDS (Emergency Dispatch Ship) currently en route to the frontier world of Woden to deliver some desperately needed medical supplies.
I have a problem, because I just discovered a stowaway aboard my ship, an eighteen-year-old girl named Marilyn Lee Cross. Upon questioning, Marilyn explained that her brother Gerry works on Woden as part of the government survey crew. She wants to visit him and since there is no regular passenger traffic to Woden because of the current medical crisis, she snuck aboard my ship. She did see the big red UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL KEEP OUT! sign, but chose to ignore it.
Now anybody who is familiar with the Emergency Dispatch Service will be familiar with Paragraph L, Section 8, of Interstellar Regulations:
“Any stowaway discovered in an EDS shall be jettisoned immediately following discovery.”
So you see my dilemma: The law requires that I throw Marilyn out of the airlock. However, I don’t want to do that. Sure, Marilyn may be a little stupid, but that’s hardly a reason to kill her. Not to mention that our security measures are way too lax, as I’ve pointed out time and again. And, besides I’m just not the killing type. If I were, I’d have joined the Starship Troopers, where the pay is better.
Once I discovered Marilyn, I immediately commed my superior Commander Delhart, who yelled a lot and then demanded that I throw the girl out of the airlock at once.
I asked about emergency refuelling –which is possible, if rare and expensive. Delhart said if I requested an emergency refuel without an emergency (as if this wasn’t an emergency), I’d have to pay for it out of pocket. Oh yes, and I should consider myself fired, if I refuse to follow orders.
So in short, I need twenty thousand solar credits and I need them in the next ten hours or poor Marilyn is doomed.
So save Marilyn! And save me from becoming a murderer!
Donate
Share
Updates:
August 4, 2178, 08:54 by Tom G.:
Don’t do it, Barton! A few years ago, they forced me to do it and I never managed to forget or live it down.
PS: Donated what’s left of my unemployment pay. Because they will fire you anyway.
August 4, 2178, 09:02 by Brett:
Thank you for serving. Donated.
August 4, 2178, 09:15 by JWC:
The cold equations of physics and the laws of space know no mercy. Out of the airlock with her now!
August 4, 2178, 09:18 by Ursula in reply to JWC:
You, sir, are an unempathetic arsehole!
PS: Donated.
August 4, 2178, 09:20 by JWC in reply to Ursula:
Overly emotional and knows nothing of science. How typical of a woman!
August 4, 2178, 09:23 by Ursula in reply to JWC:
Oh, so you’re a misogynist, too. Why am I not surprised?
August 4, 2178, 09:22 by Michael M. in reply to JWC:
Way too soft, Ursula. He’s a fascist arsewipe.
Donated as well.
August 4, 2178, 14:19 by Jeannette in reply to JWC:
Ursula and Mike are right. You’re a fascist, a misogynist and probably an arsewipe, too. Also why do you even bother to comment, if you’re not going to help?
Donated and shared.
August 4, 2178, 09:35 by Gary W.:
I have a question: What idiot designed a spaceship (and an EDS at that) that has zero margin for error? It’s not just a mass increase due to a stowaway that will cause problems. Fuel loss, meteor strikes, system failures, pilot errors could all easily cause an EDS to fail.
Donated, because bad engineering shouldn’t cause deaths.
August 4, 2178, 09:44 by Captain Barton (Organiser) in reply to Gary W:
Tell me about it, Gary. I’ve been complaining about the inadequacy of our ships and security measures for ages now. Maybe now they’ll listen.
August 4, 2178, 09:46 by Tom G. in reply to Gary W.:
Can confirm. EDS ships are crappily engineered and our security measures are a joke. How many more must die before somebody does something?
August 4, 2178, 09:55 by Cory D. in reply to Gary W.:
I agree. The engineering is just plain bad. Also, why just a simple “Keep out” sign with no notice that the penalty for ignoring the sign is death?
Donated as well.
August 4, 2178, 11:09 by Richard H. in reply to Gary W.:
In my opinion, the Emergency Dispatch Service is looking at a lawsuit for criminal negligence here. Captain Barton will probably be on the hook for manslaughter as well (sorry). I advise the family of Marilyn to get a lawyer asap.
Donated and started a legal fund for the Cross family.
August 4, 2178, 11:12 by Captain C. Barton (Organiser) in reply to Richard H:
Dude, I’m just following orders here. I no more like this than you.
August 4, 2178, 11:23 by Richard H. in reply to Captain C. Barton (Organiser):
The “I was just following orders” defence didn’t save Korvakian, the butcher of Telos V, and it won’t save you.
August 4, 2178, 11:25 by Captain C. Barton (Organiser) in reply to Richard H:
Great. Now you’re comparing me to one of the worst war criminals in galactic history. Thanks a lot.
Why do you think I started this GoFundMe? Because I don’t want to do this.
August 4, 2178, 12:45 by JWC in reply to Richard H.:
The laws of physics and the cold equations of space know no mercy.
August 4, 2178, 12:49 by Richard H. in reply to JWC:
Shut up, troll! We’re talking about the laws of man here.
August 4, 2178, 14:56m by Neva of Gelania:
By the Stars of Zod, I fear this may all be my fault. I met Marilyn, whose Gelanese is excellent by the way, aboard the Stardust, where I work as a cleaner. She told me all about her brother and I told her that there would be an EDS leaving for Woden that very day.
I’m so sorry, Marilyn. I honestly didn’t know that they kill stowaways. I thought the penalty was just a fine.
Oh please, Captain Barton, don’t kill Marilyn for something I did. I donated my entire pay and the rest of the Stardust cleaning crew chipped in as well. It’s not much, but I hope it will help.
August 4, 15:15 by SadPuppy3:
Girls don’t belong in space. Out of the airlock with her.
August 4, 15:23 by Jeannette in reply to SadPuppy3:
Shut up, misogynist troll!
August 4, 15:45 by Gerry Cross:
Hi, here’s Gerry, the brother of Marilyn. Me and the boys of the survey crew all donated, of course.
Mari, sweetheart, don’t do something stupid like that ever again, do you hear me? The frontier worlds are not like Earth. It’s the Wild West out here. Also, why aren’t you on Mimir like you promised?
Barton, if you throw my sister out of that airlock, me and the boys of the survey crew will rough you up, understood? And they’ll never find your body.
