Amateur Radio 2011 Field Day by Azgard2274 via www.DeviantArt.com

Trapped in the radio. Not the actual device, but the ether, the sound, the waves that carry the message. Lois had been pinging around the world for the last twenty years. She wanted to reform but how?

After she’d been transformed, she tried talking to people. There were more radios then. She could talk to the listeners, overwhelming whatever signal they’d been listening to. All she managed to do was scare the crap out of them. They couldn’t talk back, most radios are receive only.

Ham radio was best. She could hold a conversation with a ham operator but they always thought it was a joke from some buddy. Joke or not, some operators talked with her about how to reform. Waves seemed to be the most likely theory. How to turn her radio wave form into the physical matter wave form? No one had an answer.

“How’d that happen?” was the first question they would ask.

“I was a web radio presenter, working out of my home. My producer worked out of his home four states away. I was in the middle of my show, interviewing an author about her just released book, and, I don’t know. I guess I was really into the conversation. At the end I went to click off but I couldn’t. I wasn’t there any longer.”

“You didn’t notice? You could still see, right?”

“I can still see. I can see you.” That always freaked them out. Every one of them would spin around in their chair and scan the room.

Once they calmed down, brushing the comment off as part of the joke, they’d ask, “Doesn’t your signal die out? Usual radio signals are fairly short range.”

“I guess not. Maybe because I was a human, not an actual radio wave.”

“Have you tried to turn into some other wave, like a microwave or a light wave?”

“I have. Microwave towers are everywhere. I’ve also tried becoming an electron because they are both particle and wave, but I just couldn’t do it.”

Then they go back to my question, “Just exactly did you become a radio wave. Was there a bomb or something?”

“No.” If I had a head I’d shake it. “I suppose I thought myself into this state, I was so involved in the interview.”

This is about the time the majority of operators would get bored with the conversation. They’d get up to go get a beer or go to bed and I would drift away. A rare few would stay and we would talk about how thoughts are things and trying to think myself back to my human form.

I wonder if I talked to a psychologist or physiatrist if they could help me. But in all these years I’ve never been able to reach one to talk to. So, here I drift with less and less human contact because technology and society have changed. There are fewer and fewer receivers or Ham operators. I have found a radio telescope. I’ve been studying its transmissions. It has occurred to me I could hitch a ride out to space. I could be an astronaut, of sorts. I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut.

Today is the day. I’m telling this story and sending out into the ether. Maybe a few Ham operators will hear it. The telescope is powering up, I can feel it hum as I balance myself at the apex of the transmitter.

Goodbye.

The End

576 Words

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