Vignette #4 — Cal (2)

Cal sat at his desk and started to tune his radio setup. It's now a desk, It was once the checkout counter of the café. Once, people queued here for hot chocolate and pastries. Now, It's a place for Cal to work. The walls are turning green with lichen growth, spurred by the humidity. The remains of the old food counters are still there. Over time he's ripped out equipment, shifted It, repurposed it.

The radio is why he's here. High enough to keep signals reliable above the constant electrical storms. More on than not, the cloud cover is still below the Alguille, leaving clear skies for broadcast and receiving.

Communication is fragmented, difficult. Not many have working radio equipment. It was redundant for decades, so what people have is either built from scratch or repurposed from old, primitive machinery.

Cal's too young to properly remember a time before the world went dark.

The great Internet blackout. It happened quicker than anyone could have imagined.

Content filtering, algorithmic distribution and Al chatter led to a wholesale collapse of meaning. Competing powers used dragnets and explosives to cut the sea-based interconnectors. Alt–networks sprang up, grew and died. Everyone on different subnets linked only by censorship, filtering and Al The last best bet, satellite networking, too disrupted by heavy cloud and storms.

So Cal sits at a terminal, with a radio. Text and voice communications to — to wherever there are others he can reach. His network, such as it is. Seekers.

There's a message buffer. Comms are sent in bursts, repeated, bounced around. His set up stores them while he's away. He reads through. A jumbled mix of noise and signal.

–AN 231SF5W AA S5 AM––

––924209234 1 2J11 K. 436NNS M–

–MASTODON MOVEMENT ERRATIC IN CHASE BBL–

–AN 436NNS ASHBB……….;.;;AS. –

–SOM@$£! MO–ED–

– ASN ANASMVCXBWQQWE QWW QQQKLSFN 436NNS –

–SOMETHING MOVED–

–AN AJFKLSFN 436NKS AM–

–UPDATE ON ANALYSIS NO RESULTS YET–

–D;;S–A–45GNNG 5A –

–BB WE HAVE SOMETHING–