A One-Sided Conversation.

Harmonic 4, Anti-node 102, Overtone 1621Hz.

The following conversation was found looping in an archaic radio broadcasting system near a spire. For more notes on what a spire is, see the end of the transcript.

-TRANSCRIPT NOTES-

001SP_: Assumed to be Grace Nishikawa, based on other recovered information in the same location.

002SP_: (not recorded) Assumed to be Darcy Jones, based on content of conversation.

AMBIENT: Electric hum. Wind in windowframe. Alarm beeping, distant. Insect flight (moth).

RECORDING BEGINS

001SP_: KPDX One-Two-One Point Niner, do you read?

001SP_: Yours too. Sorry, it’s been -

001SP_: I know, but it makes me feel better. I - I need something to feel familiar right now.

001SP_: Hah. Yeah. Something like that. (beat) How are things on your end?

001SP_: (sudden tone shift) Darcy. Your entire job is to watch what’s happening.

001SP_: (pause)

001SP_: (tired) I do. I understand. But - we can at least chronicle it, right? If nothing else?

001SP_: (pause)

001SP_: I don’t know. I wish I did.

A long pause. A moth flies particularly close to the microphone. Its wingbeats are heard clearly.

001SP_: Like the end of the world. I’m having trouble…it’s like - ugh, I don’t know how to describe this. It’s like physicality has stopped mattering. Like…everything has just come unmoored. The tide rose and lifted it all and now it’s going out again. I don’t know.

001SP_: (resigned) Only because I don’t really want to argue right now.

001SP_: (pause) Before you came up here, what did you do? Do you remember much of what it was like?

001SP_: No, thats ok. It’s pretty much the same for me. I used to try to keep track, but…well. You know how it works in this place.

001SP_: I have this one memory - I don’t even know if it’s mine, honestly. It doesn’t feel like it. But I’m driving to work early in the morning, and the sun’s already up but the chill hasn’t quite burned off. I’m driving down into the valley -

001SP_: Haha, I’m gesturing with my hands to describe it and you can’t see it. You’d think I would have grown out of that habit by now.

001SP_: But I drive down into this valley - really just a dip in the landscape, nothing all that dramatic. I probably wouldn’t have realized it was there otherwise, but there’s just a huge dense fogbank sitting in this little area. Maybe a mile across, probably less. I drive down into it, and the rest of the world just vanishes.

001SP_: Totally gone. Can’t see the sun, just this filtered grey light. Can’t see anything in my rearview mirror. I’ve got maybe ten feet to either side of me and it’s just a bit of field, totally featureless.

001SP_: I’m in there for ten seconds and I’m already thinking, like “You know, I could come out on the other side and the world could just be gone. I could just be somewhere else entirely.” Obviously it won’t happen, but I can’t stop thinking about it, right?

001SP_: Exactly! It feels so…I don’t know! But I keep thinking about that.

001SP_: Yeah, I did. You know, a car was coming the other direction and made me just realize like, oh, this is fine or whatever. But that moment when it wasn’t…

001SP_: Right. Everyone just…waiting for that other car’s headlights.

001SP_: Maybe. Maybe not. What’s that kid’s rhyme we heard once?

001SP_: That one.

001SP_: Maybe it’s like that.

001SP_: Neither do I.

A pause.

001SP_: Like the end of the world.

A pause.

001SP_: I wish I had gotten to see you.

001SP_: I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.

001SP_: There’s a wave coming towards me. Big one, if my readings are right.

001SP_: I’m glad you’re here with me.

001SP_: Me too. That one thing won’t change, I know that much.

001SP_: Impact in five, four, three, two -

The sound of cricket song suddenly rises in the background. Stridulation. Almost birdsong. Chirp, chirp, chirp…

Transcriber's note: I don't know why or how the other side of this conversation didn't make it to the recording. Local recorder maybe? But then it would have to be re-played to get onto the frequency that this one was found looping on. Maybe a strange version of signal decay, but it seems far too specific for it to be that. Who knows, maybe in the 4th harmonic they just had radio technology that was advanced in a very specific way.

Which is the odd thing about spires. If you haven't seen one before, they're pretty striking - miles high towers of black stone, irregular enough to almost look like they were, somehow, hand carved. The ones that are left standing can be seen for hundreds of miles, but in the course of their resonance, most of them fell. A fallen tower is essentialy a wall - the tricky part of exploring it is that the entire thing is solid stone except a single room at the top - but when they're all massive rubble chunks, it's pretty difficult to see where the 'top' is now. Biggest boulder choke you'll ever see. Takes some crawling to get through.

Our best guess is that spires were some sort of observation station for something or another. Primary has lighthouses like that to keep boats safe, but this seems to be an...extreme version of that particular innovation, so they would have had to be observing something pretty damn important. But back the odd part: Spires have radio technology in them that is near identical to our own.

They end up being great places to dig out first person accounts (like this one), because all you need is a radio to find the right frequency and a little bit of fussing with their old equipment (which is usually powered even after hundreds of years, I have no idea how) and you can pull out a handful of logs or old conversations in the buffer.

The downside of this is that all spires seem to be from the same harmonic, and there's very little in the way of other remaining structures from the 4th harmonic, so they're all we have to go on. Each spire can hold one, maybe two people, so we have to assume there were population centers elsewhere, but there's next to no remnant of them.

It's rather dissapointing. There's some fascinating stuff in this log (it appears to be a live account of a resonance as it happens), but it seems rather doomed to remain a mystery.

Ah, well. Maybe one day I'll find the other side of the conversation.

-SH