T-038 Tomorrow Radio

Threshold Institute · Case file T-038

Number

T-038 in the catalogue

Kind

Object

Class

Class I: harmless while it is left alone

Found

Year 36, month 10, day 5

Where found

The upward rain (T-021), on the upper floor of a building in which it rained toward the ceiling

Status

Contained

Now

At the lab and in the rift

Part

Part III: Going through (the objects)

Containment procedures

The radio is held in a soundproofed cell beside the echo's (T-005), and is turned only behind three closed doors, with every cell on the sealed level checked before and after. Its dial is kept at the low end. Only two named staff turn it. Every forecast and every reading is written down word for word. It is never carried into the rift again.

Description

A valve radio in a walnut cabinet, with no plug, no battery and no aerial, its dial lit. Turned to the low end of the dial, it reads out tomorrow's weather for wherever it stands, in the plain voice of a coastal service; it has not been wrong. Turned higher, it reads out the rooms of a place nearby, door by door, as if the speaker were walking them.

The cost is the static between stations. Each time the dial is turned it hisses, and the hiss carries far further than its loudness. In the rift the stalkers came to it, and then the choir (T-029) took up the hiss in the walls. On the sealed level every cell behind which something lived woke at once.

Discovery

The run heard it from the street, a man's voice reading a weather report to no one, through the rain falling upward past the windows. Rehn sent surveyor Ilja Korhonen in on a rope. Korhonen turned the dial to find out what it was, and the run spent the night on a roof, with stalkers in the street below. In the morning the radio was still playing, and it read out, in the same voice, the weather the run walked home through: grey, a little rain, upward only near the building. It was carried out in a sack, with its dial taped down.

The room readings were tested on the sealed level in year 37. Turned to the middle of the dial, the radio read out, room by room, the storerooms under the anteroom; it named one storeroom the Institute had no record of. The wall there was opened. Behind it was the storeroom that is bigger inside (T-011), a door further down than the one the Institute knew.

Addenda

Addendum T-038-A

Recorded forecast

Year 37, month 2, day 14. Turned by Technician Ruth Abel to the top of the dial, beyond any station, it read: "Tomorrow, over the field and the colony, a sky of rust and green. A thin cold wind from the hills. No rain in a hundred days. Two hours of sun at noon. Little change." The file noted it as a fault. There is no colony within the Institute's reach.

Addendum T-038-B

Note

In Kerstin Holm's hand, clipped to the file, Year 41, month 3, day 2, the eve of the space agency's flight that brought the skitters home (T-043): "Asked for the radio at the launch site. Refused. I've copied the forecast into my flight notes. Rust and green. Two hours of sun." The Institute did not answer the note.

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In the file

• People: Tomas Rehn, Kerstin Holm, Ruth Abel and Ilja Korhonen.
• Places: The sealed level, The cells, The land beyond the rift, The launch site and The colony.

In the game

The note you find in the game:

Year 36, month 10, day 5. Found in the upward rain beyond T-001, on the upper floor of a building where it rained toward the ceiling, its static heard from the street. The surveyor Ilja Korhonen went in on a rope and turned its dial, the run spent the night on a roof with rift stalkers in the street below, and it found nothing on the air until it was carried home through the gate, where a man's voice in it read out the next day's weather.

An old valve radio in a cracked case that picks up the day after. Switched on, it plays for 12 seconds and then tells what it heard: the plan of the nearest raid site within 64 tiles whose plan the bearer lacks, or else tomorrow's weather, midnight to midnight. Beyond the rift it finds nothing on the air. Every 2 seconds of the play its static is heard 25 tiles off, and the dead, the creatures, people and animals come for it. It tells once a day and is silent until midnight.

Held in a sealed cell, unplugged. Status: contained.

Today it is found at the lab and in the rift.

It is an item you can carry: Tomorrow Radio.