DEAD AIR
By Thomas Stone
Jim Lybeck didn't enjoy his job, but he didn't retire to his home in the late evenings dreaming of butchery or mass homicide either. Instead, he dwelt somewhere between those two zones in a pitied, self-absorbed discontent. Jobs were supposed to give you a sense of self worth, or at the least a mean facade to that effect. His didn't.
Didn't even pretend to.
There was a definitive lack of value attached to his job descriptor. It was the lack of respect that was the wellspring for his grief; the "I'd rather handle radioactive isotopes than do this" aspect that bothered him.
Jim sat at his cubicle like he did every day, with his headset draped loosely over his left ear. In his experience, people were prone to yelling at him, especially early into the evening. The earpiece sat a good inch away from his ear canal, and made everyone seem a lot happier than they actually were. He hit the Enter key on his keyboard and a new number began to dial.
He heard a click as the line came alive, and then a female voice asked, "Hello?"
"Is Mrs.," He paused and looked at the name on his computer screen. "Grouter in?" he completed.
"Speaking," the lady said, still in that harmonic place of someone has called and asked for me. This must be important, and he still had precious seconds before that turned into something more along the lines of eat shit and die!
"I'm glad I caught you," he said. He always liked to start out with something personable. He liked to keep the appearance of good will for as long as possible. "If I could just have five minutes of your time I'd like to tell you about a fabulous offer from..."
Click. The sound of dial tone filled his head.
Jim hit the enter key and the next number dialed. He continued down his list. There was a quota. There always was, and for the fifth week straight, he was in jeopardy of missing his.
The was a sudden break in the dial tone as the line was picked up again, and this time it was a man's voice that spoke.
"Hello?" the man said.
"Is Mr. Linfield in," Jim asked, and then he added a "please," in his most professional, yet sincerely pathetic voice.
"Just a sec, I'll get him," the man said, and Jim heard the rattle as the receiver was placed down.
In the background he could hear a television playing, a child wailing M O M M Y, a dog barking, and a doorbell ringing. He thrummed his fingers against the desk as he waited. Finally, after many minutes, he heard a voice, this one female, ask, "Why's the phone off the hook?"
"It's one of those damn telemarketers," a man's voice called from the background.
Jim hung up and dialed the next number, and then the next, and....
Two hours later, three hundred and forty-nine numbers, and he still hadn't made a sale. Three people had asked him to call back later, saying that they were really interested but were too busy to talk right then. Another person had turned the conversation on him, and before he knew what had happened, had found himself listening to the man go on about a new wrench he'd just designed. It could ratchet any size bolt, was made of the finest stainless steel...
At seven-thirty, he pulled his headset off and laid it down. He kicked his chair back, and propped his shoes upon the edge of his desk. He wasn't scheduled to get off until eight, and if George caught him shamming before the end of his shift there'd be hell to pay, but the fact was—he didn't have the energy to call anyone else.
Dislike didn't begin to legitimize his feelings for his job. He didn't remember how he'd landed the telemarketer gig in the first place, not an longer. He supposed it had been a way to make money in his off semester, but like any malignant disease, it had quickly spread and consumed his will for anything other than the mundane.
He closed his eyes. The action was an automatic response to the erythematic pounding in his head. Too many hours staring at the low light of the monitor. Too much frustration, and too many damn names. They flashed in his head like a great big, nightmarish Rolodex. Sometimes, when he went to bed at night, he'd dream of them. The Allgoods, the Brandywines, the Calhoons, the Drekels, the Erinbecks, the Faukners, they would all materialize before him in alphabetical prophecy, faceless names that bespoke words of denouncement.
If only he could just make some sales. That was the real problem. His classes started in another two weeks, and from the small pittance he'd made on his hourly wage he might be able to afford half the semester. What he really needed was some commissions, but for that he'd have to actually make some sales, which meant conning people into things they really didn't need, and that went against everything he believed in.
Sighing, he looked at the screen and focused on the name highlighted. It read, "Julie Swanson" and he tapped the keyboard and waited. The phone rang once. It rang twice. He drummed his fingers along the desk, hoping the person on the other end picked up soon. If he had to pin his frustrations on one single aspect of his job, then it would surely be span of time between calls, while waiting for someone to pick up.
The dial tone grew in span, filling every inch of his perception. It amassed and congealed within his synaptic center, coiling through his stringy epitome, through the gray matter of his essence, and he became momentarily lost within it. The sound enshrouded his senses, encased his will, and erected a wall of solid incongruity.
Since the first day on the job he'd been delivered unto a new phobia, and for the last few months had found himself afraid of that sound—and questioning it.
Where did it come from?
He began using the words "dead air" to describe it to his friends. They all knew what it was, of course they did, because everyone had heard it before; the sound of a dial tone, but he wondered if anyone had really heard it before? Sometimes he pictured voices cracking in the dim aether of the dead air, and the longer he listened to it, the more sure of it he became. On the other end of the phone, there was still no answer, and he continued to let it ring as he adjusted his earpiece and strained his hearing, but there was nothing except the dead air.
And finally, after months of listening, he heard it. In that same instant he felt his stomach knot into a ball as the dead-air voice spoke.
It was such a small sound, but it carried the levity of a thousand quasars.
"Yesssss," he heard the dead-air say.
He jumped, startled by the sudden strangeness of it. He was fearful—not of the sound itself, but from the image it erected in his head. It was like a three-dimensional puzzle. Tens of thousands of multihued dots converged over the tapestry of his mind's eye, merging to form the picture of a slightly unfocused mouth with red, cracking lips. The static of the dead air united to from the voice. An odd feeling crept through him, and he knew in that moment that the voice had been there all along (the dead air) and that he'd never been able to hear it before because his angle of perception had always been just a little too far left.
"Hellosss," it said in a patchwork voice, neither seeming to have pitch or tone. Jim's hands began to tremble.
"Wh-Who is this?" he managed to ask.
"Justsss ah fah-ren-desss, Mr. Lybecksss" the voice grated.
"Who the fuck is this? What do you want?" he said.
It knew his name. The dead-air knew his name, and that upset him, it upset
him a lot.
Before it could respond Jim slammed his hand over the keyboard, killing the connection. He remained sitting, expressionless, as he listened to a new voice: "The number you have dialed is not in service. Please check your number and try again. If you need assistance please dial the operator. This is a recording. The number you have reached is not in service..."
#
When he got home his first action was to jump into the shower. He'd come straight from work with that one intention planted firmly in his mind. He felt dirty, and wanted to be rid of the feeling, and even more than that he wanted to be rid of his job. He hated it, and couldn't take it anymore. He was cracking up.
Today had only cemented that idea.
Whatever he did, he vowed, would be as far away from phones as humanly
possible. He'd read somewhere that airwaves could fry your brain; of course, he thought that was mostly to do with cellular phones, but he wasn't ruling anything out, just yet.
He spent the better part of an hour under the hot spray of the shower. He shampooed his hair three times, and in between had spent a good portion of time kneeling over the tiles, water rushing over the back of his neck, and wondering what the hell had happened to him earlier. He got out of the shower, grabbed the towel sitting atop the toilet's lid, and as he dried himself decided that it was as good a time as any to quit. It was just after nine, and he knew George would be in the office until eleven. George would stay until the last telemarketer left; that was his level of dedication, a level Jim knew he would never be able to live up to, himself.
He picked up the phone and dialed the number for the office. When he placed the receiver against his ear, he didn't hear the normal sound he associated with a correctly dialed number. Instead, he heard...
Dead-air.
It filtered though the earpiece and seemed to invade his mind. He wanted to drop the phone, but found it had become rooted to his head in the same manner an electrical shock can seize hold of your muscles, and he couldn't let it go.
"Hellossss," the dead-air said in a quiet compendium.
Jim didn't reply, but his ear remained alert to the soft shifting static that conformed itself into the dead-air language.
"Wesss hasss ans off-erencesss ifs youzesss ish in-ter-estedess?" Jim felt a bead of sweat proffer from his brow and slip down his cheek. He wanted to tell the voice no thank you, he wanted to say he wasn't interested, that it was late and it should call back at a more reasonable time, but found he couldn't. He was locked in the dead-air, and all he could do was listen.
"Wesss willsss changezess youzess," it went on in the same toneless way. Jim felt the expulsion of words more than he heard them, and was held hard to his fear. He could feel the muscles in his neck begin to seize, and the sensation it produced roved all the way down his left side, leaving him in a near state of despondent numbness. With each syllable, each utterance, he could feel some essential piece of him ebb.
#
He felt his consciousness slip into a void of nonactuality. His eyes beheld no sights, no colors, and no shapes. There was no up nor down, but there still existed in his mind an idea of being. He felt that he was still alive, though its predilection was evasive to him. It was nothingness, as he had always pictured it to be, and so—and only in those terms—could he say he truly remained with definition.
The dead-air-spoke to him for a long endlessness, and he remained its attentive listener.
#
He did not know how long he continued in that state, only that without Sensation, and without a means to chart time's progress—it had felt long indeed. When he found himself in the clutch of native surrounds once again he felt a wash of relief envelope him. Wherever the dead-air had transported him to (and Jim felt certain that it had transported him somewhere—to some other strange eventuality), it had finally brought him back.
Back to his own home.
In his mind, there was no question as to the ill effects of phone usage any longer. All the studies on memory loss, the statistical charts showing an increase of brain tumors...it was all a bunch of bunk. Earlier, he thought he was on the verge of cracking up. That too much time with electronic gadgets plugged into his head had started to wear thin his gray matter, and he had thought to get away from that. It had been a logical assumption, and for all that, a normal conclusion.
It was far easier to believe that he had imagined it. It was simpler to accept the idea that he was going crazy than buy the notion of what had really and truly happened. Crazy was something people could get over. It was something you could be prescribed drugs for, something a psychiatrist could base a thesis on, and most of all, it was perfectly normal.
He knew he wasn't crazy, and he knew it wasn't memory loss or a brain tumor he had to fear.
It was the dead-air.
Jim yanked the phone cord from the wall, picked up his car keys, and left. He had to get out, to get away, and it didn't matter where he went as long as it wasn't near a phone.
As he jogged down the hallway of his complex he could hear the muffled ring of phones begin to beckon.
He ran quicker.
#
He'd driven for just over fifty miles when he noticed his fuel gauge hovering on empty. He hadn't had a destination in mind when he left, just the extreme urge to get away, and now that he was away—he didn't have the slightest idea of where he was, and as such, not the slightest clue whether he was near a gas station or not.
He hadn't remembered passing any stores since the last city. Schmitzville, that was the name, and that had been over twenty minutes ago. Considering the needle's position, he didn't think he had enough fuel to turn around and make it back before he stalled. He decided to press on. The law of population told him a gas station had to be coming up soon.
He was able to drive for another five minutes before the engine gave its first sputter. It sounded like a wet hiccup, and the vehicle began to regurgitate upon its own vacant tank; a fit of shuddering dry heaves soon followed, which forced him to veer to the road's side and shift into park.
The engine gave a great shimmy, and then a miserable lurch. Finally, it died into silence.
A few minutes later, he found himself walking down the roadside, keys in his pocket, and a smile over his face. In view of the events that had led him there, he still considered himself in a far better place than previous. He wasn't bothered by the fact that he didn't know where he was. The night was warm, the sky friendly, and best of all—there were no phones around anywhere.
Potentially, the most important detail of all.
As he sauntered down the road, a rough-looking Suburban passed him by. He had no hopes that it would stop. He wasn't worried about being anywhere, or even how to get there, and when he saw its brake lights and heard the engine wind down, he wasn't especially overjoyed at the driver's good Samaritan attitude, but he didn't feel bad for it either. He watched as the brake lights shifted intensity, and a set of small white lights flash to life aside the red. He could see that the truck was traveling in reverse, and before too long the driver had pulled up next to him.
"Need a lift?" an older man with a snow-covered lid and more lines on his face than a city-map said. He put Jim in mind of one of those old world doityourselfers. The kind of man who could McGuyver a tree branch into a matching living-room suite. Jim looked into the truck (he couldn't see a cell-phone or charger anywhere), and found it inviting enough, even as warm and hospitable as the man driving.
"Sure," he said, and climbed into the cab.
"Name's Joe." The old man offered him his hand.
"Jim, Jim Lybeck," he replied, taking the hand and squeezing it firmly. The old man returned his grip, ounce for ounce, which caused Jim a warm amount of good feeling. As soon as he was seated comfortably Joe shifted his truck into drive and they began to move forward.
"So, what happened?" Joe asked after a moment.
"Ran out of gas."
"Don't want to do that round in these parts. Closest gas station is twenty miles away."
"I was driving along and you know, just lost track," he said for an explanation.
Joe seemed to consider that for a moment, but decided it was all right.
"Tell you what. I keep a drum on hand at the farm for my equipment. Let's say we run you back to my place, have the wife fix you up something to eat, and get you some juice for that car of yours?"
"Sounds all-right to me," he said.
On the drive to Joe's, they talked for a bit. Jim found himself growing fond of the man. Joe had told him that he'd spent two tours in Korea, that he had eight grandchildren, and he farmed now, not because he needed the money, but because it kept him right in the head. When Jim had admitted to being a telemarketer, Joe had given him a suspicious look, and said, "That's not a job that'll keep you right in the head," and Jim hadn't disagreed with him. Time passed in a pleasing manner, and about fifteen minutes into their ride was when Jim heard it.
The unmistakable sound of a cell-phone ring.
He watched in apprehension as Joe reached into his coverall's pocket and produced the tiny instrument. In a very short time Jim had been able to develop a righteous fear of the things, and his face began to twitch uncontrollably as he watched Joe maneuver the truck with one hand, and fumble the phone with his other.
"The wife, I 'spect," he explained with a smile, not noticing the stitched horror in Jim's face. "Reception is piss poor out here, and she gets on if I don't check in regular like. Probably been trying to get me for the last half-hour." He held the phone next to his ear, "This here's Joe," he said. A strange look clouded Joe's expression. His smile went from authentic repute to something along the lines of animated confusion. He looked at Jim, his eyes seeming to swivel in their sockets, and his bottom lip trembled with a slight shudder. Jim thought he had the air of a man who had never known surprise. Of a man who'd been able to go through all his years without ever experiencing that feeling, the feeling of genuine revelation; and suddenly—in the twilight of his days, surprise had found him with his pants down around his ankles and no paper nearby.
"It's for you," Joe said, and handed the phone over.
#
At a little past ten he found himself back in Schmitzville, his tank on empty once more, and he quickly located a convenience store to top off. He pulled the vehicle through the plaza and then up to the pumps. When he saw that they were all automated, he felt a charge of relief. It meant he wouldn't have to go inside to pay, that he could do everything out by the island, where there were no phones around.
He hadn't noticed the group of pay phones huddled together in disrepair, the ones in a darkened corner of the station's lot. As soon as he unscrewed the cap and inserted the nozzle into his tank they began to ring. All three of them, together, and in a chorus of clamor so abrupt that it caused him to jerk.
Jim peered inside the store and could see that the cashier was talking to a customer. The man behind the counter was young, and the lady in front even younger. He assumed they knew each other because they seemed comfortable together. The phones outside continued their loud bray, and it didn't look like the people inside could hear it, which was all he was concerned with.
The nozzle in his hand clicked. Jim looked to the read-out and saw he'd pumped thirty gallons. He hung the hose back in its cradle and slipped his credit card into the machine. It flashed a, 'One moment please' at him, and then asked for his pin identification. He punched the four numbers, and waited for the receipt.
"Hey, buddy, is your name Jim Lybeck?"
Jim turned around very slowly. He saw that the cashier was now standing in the store's entryway, one foot propping the door open, and in his hand he held the business end of a telephone.
Jim could see its cord snaking over the counter where the young man had been talking to the girl, and the tension on that line was just as tight as the tension inside his chest.
"Phone call," the store clerk said, holding up the receiver and pulling the cord even tighter. "For Mr. Lybeck."
"Never heard of him," Jim lied, slipped into the truck, and sped away.
#
Jim decided to head in a different direction. He took a county road, which led west from town, and the further he traveled along it, the less civilization he saw. Houses that were side by side began to spread apart, and he could begin to count them in terms of the miles that separated them. Sometimes he would see a light cut on as he drove by, and that didn't give him a good feeling.
In place of human habitation, fields now stretched darkly under the night's watchful stare, silhouettes of animals: cows, horses, sheep; dotted that tapestry, and every so often he spied a grain-silo looming out of the shadows.
He hadn't passed one car while on the road, and in the absence of population he began to find the solitude of his thoughts a little too exclusive. There were no distractions whatsoever. It left him feeling utterly alone, and that was too close to the fact for his likes.
He turned the radio on.
The sound of music began to pump through his speakers, it was 'Comfort Eagle' by Cake. His tapped his fingers along the steering wheel, and began to sing along. When the song ended he found himself feeling moderately better.
"That was a dedication," the DJ said, picking up at the end of the song. "Going out to Jim Lybeck. Your friends want you to know they appreciate everything, and wanted me to remind you there is no return policy, whatever that means. Now here's another three in a row..."
Jim didn't hear anything else. He shut the radio off, and stared out his windshield in a catatonic state of disbelief.
#
After thirty minutes of silence he couldn't stand it any longer. The deserted highway, the endless fields, it felt so lonely. It was even worse than the nothingness the dead-air had shown him. It was worse because he could see it, he could touch it, but he couldn't be a part of it.
He shouldn't, no he really shouldn't be a part of it, but...he gave into his fears and turned the radio back on. The station it was tuned to flashed in green numbers from his dashboard, but no music arose from his speakers. There was no DJ signaling call letters or running promos, no best of and no worse of--there was nothing...nothing but static.
Nothing but dead-air.
Deep down it didn't surprise him, and when he changed the station and the next DJ announced a special dedication going out to him, that didn't surprise him either. He decided to leave it on, and to enjoy the sound of human voices for as long as they lasted. There would be another station when it went dead.
And another after that.
There were phones everywhere—there was dead-air everywhere. He couldn't escape it. No matter where he ran, it would be there. He could have said no, but he had listened to the terms and thought he could beat it. That he could get away. He figured if there weren't any phones around, then they wouldn't be able to come through.
They had needed a vessel. Someone to carry their message, and he had said yes. Now he was nothing more than a great-God-damn-God-loving-repeater. He was a dead-air amplifier, their roving antenna.
Everyone had phones these days.
And everyone would be picking up his signal.
Everyone.
He'd given the dead-air five minutes, and a deal was a deal. Jim Lybeck didn't enjoy his job; he didn't retire to his home in the late evenings dreaming of butchery or mass homicide. It just followed him wherever he went.
>>back to Dead Air page