The Retrograde Radio: A Short Novel on Paradoxical Signals and Lost Frequencies
The rain tasted of static electricity, a faint buzzing on the tongue. Not the sharp, clean crackle of a summer storm, but the lingering hum of a shorted wire, a discordant note in the city’s symphony of sirens and shouts. I hunched deeper into my threadbare coat, the damp wool clinging to me like a second skin, heavy with the city’s accumulated grime.
The radio, an ancient Philco with peeling veneer, sat on the milk crate beside me, its dial glowing with a faint, ghostly light. It was a relic, a fossil from a forgotten age, and yet, tonight, it was my only companion. I’d found it abandoned in the alley behind Mrs. Rosenblatt’s boarding house, its tubes shattered and its wiring a tangled mess. Most people would have dismissed it as junk, but I saw something in its broken face, a hint of something…else.
I’d spent weeks nursing it back to life, scavenging parts from discarded appliances and forgotten electronics. It was a labor of love, a desperate attempt to fill the void that had been growing inside me since…well, since it all started. Finally, after countless hours of tinkering, I’d managed to coax a faint signal from its dusty innards.
At first, it was just static, a white noise sea of crackles and pops. But then, a voice emerged, faint and distorted, like a whisper from across a vast distance. It was a woman’s voice, speaking in a language I didn’t recognize, yet somehow understood. The words resonated within me, triggering echoes of memories I couldn’t quite grasp.
The Message
The broadcasts came nightly, always at the same time, always the same voice. I started recording them, painstakingly transcribing the strange sounds into a language I could comprehend. Slowly, painstakingly, I began to decipher the message. It was a warning, a desperate plea from someone trapped in a loop, reliving the same day over and over again.
She spoke of a machine, a device that could bend time, that could alter reality itself. She spoke of a catastrophe, a terrible event that had shattered the timeline, leaving her stranded in this endless repetition. And she spoke of me.
According to the broadcasts, I held the key. I was the one who could break the loop, who could restore the timeline to its proper course. But I didn’t know how. I was just a nobody, a forgotten face in a forgotten city. What could I possibly do?
The Paradox
The more I listened, the more I realized the terrifying implications of her words. She was not broadcasting from the future; she was broadcasting from the past. The catastrophe she spoke of hadn’t happened yet. It was going to happen. And unless I did something, it would happen again, and again, and again, forever.
The radio hissed, its tubes glowing brighter. The woman’s voice crackled through the static. “You have to stop them,” she pleaded. “Before it’s too late.”
Then, a new voice joined the chorus. A deep, guttural voice, laced with malice. “He can’t stop us,” it growled. “He’s already too late.”
The radio fell silent. The static returned, a deafening roar that filled the room. I reached out to turn it off, but my hand froze. On the dial, the needle had shifted. It was pointing to a frequency I didn’t recognize, a frequency that didn’t exist.
And then, I heard it. My own voice, echoing from the radio. “She’s right,” I said. “You have to stop them.”
The rain outside intensified, drumming against the windowpanes. The taste of static electricity grew stronger, a metallic tang that burned my throat. I looked at the radio, at the glowing dial, at the reflection of my own terrified face. The loop had begun.
