Two men were sitting in the Control Room. Various TV monitors, computer plasma flatscreens, adult-sized mainframes and portable laptops were strewn every which way. The flickering of various satellite feeds filled the room with a blue-tinged hue, as different audio feeds interpolated in and out of aural consciousness.
Spud was playing a game of Pinball on his computer. Spud was young, in his mid-twenties, with horn-rimmed glasses and a shocking tuft of bright blonde hair jettisoning from his balding scalp. He had his mind on several tasks at once, and so his pinball gaming wasn't as efficient as it could have been.
Next to Spud, with his eye on a growing list of incoming and outgoing relay closures, sat Drake Nimbus, a weathered veteran of decades upon decades of technical training. His long red hair pulled back into a ponytail, he resembled a grizzled-out rocker more than he did a shift supervisor.
Spud and Drake were the night shift. No one else was around, save for the extensive security guard coverage and a few other owls hooting about in their cubicle nests.
"I got a mix CD," Spud said to Drake, after his last ball dribbled down the pinball drain. "Wanna hear it?"
"Sure," Drake said. "But not too loud. We need to be alert tonight. Boss' orders."
"That's what they say every night," Spud said. "And every night, we wait around for things to happen.... and nothing ever does."
"Need to be alert," is all Drake said in reply.
Spud popped in his MP3 CD. The disc spun around as the player read its contents. Then, it started to play a song. "Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA" by DEVO.
"What the hell is this?" Drake asked, laughing. "You always have some far-out shit to play."
"This is old shit, man. It ain't new." Spud sipped on his coffee mug.
"Sounds new," Drake said.
"That's 'cause it's DEVO," Spud said. "They're my favorite band ever. This song reminds me of work. Listen to the lyrics."
The song sounded like a group of broken machines trying to tap out some sort of primitive orchestration.
"Weird shit," Drake said. "I like it-- but it's weird. All that new wave shit passed me by. Back in the day, I was too busy listening to AC/DC and doing coke off of chicks' asses to deal with that shit."
Spud sang along with the words. "Afraid nobody around here.... understands my potato..."
"Listen to you. Songs about potatoes? No wonder they call you Spud."
"You know what DEVO is all about, don't you, Drake?"
"They're a band. What's there to be all about?"
"The whole concept of de-evolution. The human race is moving forward towards entropy. Things fall apart, that kind of stuff. Only they wrap it up in quackery. Books by German authors about how apes ate other apes' brains and acquired self-awareness, spawning the human race... It's funny stuff."
"Now I know why you like it so much," Drake smiled.
Drake saw a closure that didn't come back. He immediately got on the phone to Denver.
"Yeah, Drake here. How ya doin', Tom? Relay 001 didn't come back. Just lettin' you know. Thanks a bunch. Talk to you at the top of the hour."
"Tell 'im I said what's up." Spud sang another line from the song: "Smart Patrol... nowhere to go... suburban robots that monitor reality..."
"Spud sends his regards, Tom." Drake laughed at whatever it was Tom Collins said on the other line. "Later." Drake hung up the hotline.
"Yeah, Bart Ailes won't be happy to know his local commercials aren't airing properly," Spud remarked. "But then again, all he has to do is tell his listeners that UFOs are responsible, right?"
"Hey, it's all entertainment," Drake said. "You ever hear about that classic War Of The Worlds broadcast in the '30's?"
"Hell yeah," Spud said, enthusiasm swelling in his oversized brain. "Orson Welles. People thought it was real."
"Radio back then was the only form of mass media," Drake said, in an instructing tone. He liked talking to Spud because Spud had a thirst for knowledge. No factoid was too trivial for Spud to pass on, and Drake had enough useless information inside his eggshell skull to spread like anthrax. "Imagine if there was a news interruption in the middle of a show like the season finale of Survivor, telling you that a space craft was found in some rural hick town somewhere. You'd think it was real, right?"
"I don't believe anything I see on TV or hear on the radio anymore, especially from doing this line of work," Spud said. "I'd go online and try and find corroborating reports first."
"Yeah, well, not everyone is like you, Spud. They'd probably buy it. The bigger the lie..."
"We've been over this before," Spud said.
"You know, Bart Ailes has a copy of that broadcast, on his site somewhere. We should download it and give it a listen."
"I've heard it. Boring."
"Boring? Dated, yes, but boring? Come on..."
"For its time, I'm sure it was riveting. But nowadays... you'd need to sell it more. Plus, I read the book. It's much better."
"The movie, with... what's his name... Gene Barry. Awesome."
"Yeah, that movie is sick. I used to get nightmares from the way those creepy aliens looked."
"Sick... is that the new word in vogue?"
"Actually, it's already out of style," Spud said. "But that doesn't mean I don't use it anymore. Fuck, I still say 'tight' and 'dope' all the time."
"Fresh stupid wack funky?" Drake didn't understand rap lingo.
The conversation dipped as Spud sipped on a Fresca and ate a ham sandwich that he'd packed for himself. Drake wasn't hungry-- rather, he was in constant pain, the residual aftermath of a near-fatal motorcycle crash that almost rendered him unable to walk over ten years ago. What he really needed was some pain killers, but he hated prescription pills and didn't want to be drinking on the job.
"Speaking of dope," Drake asked Spud, "you got any of that shit you had last week?"
"After I finish this sandwich, we'll go on break. Call up Syd, so he can watch the screens," Spud said, in between bites.
On "The Bart Ailes Show", the host was having a monotone discussion with his guest on the topic of quantum music.
BART: So you can actually hear what a quantum system sounds like?
GUEST: You need a quantum computer for that, but yes, Bart, you can hear it.
BART: How does it sound? What's it sound like?
GUEST: The thing is, in the presence of an observer, the music changes. What I hear by myself will not be the same as what you hear when you enter the room, nor will it sound the same when I leave the room, or if someone else enters, and so on.
BART: How do they track it? I'm no physicist, but I am in radio, and I know that in order to even playback something from any acoustical system, you need to at least track it onto some sort of...
GUEST: A special MIDI interface was built that was capable of containing up to 100 billion tracks.
BART: 100 billion MIDI tracks? Why so many?
GUEST: Because of Schrodinger's Equation, the number of different sound combinations that can be generated is endless... infinity plus one, if you will. Once the quantum computer has been programmed to spin variations on the Equation, it needs to be housed somehow. The MIDI interface allows for seemingly endless virtual tracking...
BART: The guest is Earl B. Hawkins, and the topic is quantum physics as applied to music and sound. You're listening to the Bart Ailes Show, and we'll be right back after these messages...
The circuit relay went out and refused to return once again. This time Drake got a call from Bart Ailes himself.
"Nevada's on the line," Drake said to Spud, as he motioned to Syd, the backup engineer, to wait outside of the Control Room. "Mr. Ailes? Drake Nimbus here. I know, it seems like it's our fault, but it's not. Denver doesn't know either. An anomaly, I suppose. I'm going to have to ask you to run the commercials by hand. The cart machine still works, right? I know, it's almost the 21st Century... Hey, blame it on Y2K, what can I tell ya? We'll have it fixed in no time."
Drake hung up and shook his head. "Fuck Bart Ailes. I need to smoke. Let's go, Spud. We'll handle this later. Nothing we can do from our end. It's up to HAARP to handle this one now... Syd, come inside and watch this for about half an hour, will ya?"
*/*
Andre's in Burbank was Robert's favorite place to have breakfast. He had a crush on one of the waitresses, a woman named Jojo in her mid-thirties, Vietnamese or Thai possibly, with luscious curves and a bodacious bottom. He always sat outside, so he could smoke a cigarette, and she always greeted him and flirted in her stunted, broken English.
"You order coffee?" Jojo asked him, as he waited for Fabian Rourke to meet him.
"You know how I do it, Jojo," Robert said, smiling.
"No cream?"
"No cream. And I'll have the special-- I already know what I want to eat."
"Always same," Jojo said. "Why not pancakes? Why not waffle? French toast?"
"Someday," Robert said, making cow eyes with Jojo and feeling attractive. She walked back inside, glancing at Robert over her shoulder as she strutted off with his order.
At that moment, a tall, lanky man with glasses and a beard sat down in front of Robert.
"This place better be good," the man said, daring Robert to recognize him.
"Fabian?"
"Good guess," Fabian Rourke said, smiling. "What's up?" The two stood up, gave each other a long bearhug, and sat back down.
"Fuckin' A," Robert said. "Good ol' Fabian Rourke. Shit. You look different. Once again, you look different. You look like... a hippie. You look like a fucking hippie."
"I like to change my style every six months," Fabian said, leaning on the table with one elbow. "Keeps me on my toes."
Robert laughed. That was something his father, James River, used to say: "Keep 'em on their toes, son!"
"So," Robert asked, "how you been?"
"Well, despite my appearance, I'm doing great, Robert. Work has been keeping me busy. So busy, in fact, that I need help. And now that you've got some technical skills, I can hire you on. I always knew you had it in you, man, but you needed to float on your own for a while."
"It's a trip," Robert said. "Who'd have ever thunk that I'd be doing what I do? I would've never guessed it, in a million years."
"Well, your dad was a musician, and he liked to dabble in sound recording. Face it-- you were born with a predisposition for it. It's in your blood, man, don't deny it."
Robert pointed at Fabian, grinning. "Yeah, but you... you're the man, Fabian. I'm not surprised to see you're doing good. You're the smartest person I ever met, man."
Fabian still didn't know how to take a compliment, even after all of these years. "Anyway, let me tell you what I do right now. I've chilled out on the road managing-- I can only take so much trendy Top 40 pap before I have an aneurysm. Now, I run programming for Council Corp."
"Council Corp? Sounds important."
"It's just the company name. I have no ideas what it means. I just do what they tell me. I run ISPs, satellite receivers, fiber-optic feeds, all sorts of information engines and data sources for Council Corp. They have their thumbs in every piece of the communications pie: radio, TV, cable, satellite, the Web, telephone lines, you name it... if it can be compressed and streamed, we manage the data flow. In fact, the place you work for-- we handle their T1 lines. We stream their shows through our network centers."
"No shit?"
"You work on Rayburn's show, right? He's one of them. Bart Ailes? Through us. Dr. Lepinski? Through us. Biff Hadley? Us. All of those guys at your network, their shows go through us in some way, shape or form."
"I didn't know that."
"Well, now you do. And in a way, I've been keeping tabs on you, Robert."
"Tabs?"
"I mean, I've been following your work history from afar. Ever since I stopped going out on the road, I've been watching your progress. You're doing good, as far as I can see. I like what the reports tell me."
"This is weird, man. You've been watching me work?"
"Not literally, you dumbass! I ask around. Tom Collins, in Denver? He knows you, he knows your people. You ever talk to him?"
"Once, a long time ago. I came in on Father's Day to fill in. I had to call Denver every hour to confirm that the signal was still up."
"Well, you might be having to talk to him a lot more if this all goes through. I'm just waiting to get the green light, but I want you in the bullpen, warming up. You'll be working with two guys who are real good at what they do. Drake Nimbus and Charles Francis. I know them well, they're basically my crew. They'll train ya. Unfortunately, my present duties keep me very occupied, so you won't see me that much. But you won't need me around all the time."
"What exactly will I be doing?" Robert asked, as Jojo came out with his breakfast order.
"Babysitting," Fabian replied. "Sonic babysitting. If you get bored, you can read a book or something."
"Sounds good to me," Robert said. He started to eat his meal.
"You're okay with working nights, aren't you, Robert?"
"I can do it. It won't take long for me to adjust."
Fabian ordered a Denver Omelette with pancakes instead of home fries. He then offered to pay for both his and Robert's meals up front, and gave Jojo a fat tip. She smiled and batted her long eyelashes appreciatively.
"Man, it's gonna be so good, having you on the team. You won't regret this, Robert."
Fabian smiled, the sincerity and goofiness showing through his scruffy beard and Coke-bottle glasses. Robert couldn't help but laugh, as a mouthful of egg almost bursted from his grinding jaw.
CHAPTER FOUR COMES NEXT FRIDAY-- Have A Nice Weekend, Folks!!
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