Venue: The Secret World
Created by: Funcom
Event: Samhain (Halloween 2014)
Mission:The Broadcast
Location: New York
Number Stations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station
You received a phone call from conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, Dave Screed. He's in a fluster over the Numbers Station phenomenon and strange things haunting shortwave radios. Strange voices and numbers, numbers, numbers...
Initial Phone Call
Dave Screed: Hello? Hey. It's Dave Screed. You know, Weird non-Fiction magazine.
Dave Screed: I got your number from...well, never mind that. I don't have much time. They'll triangulate this.
Dave Screed: You ever hear of numbers stations? You know, rogue radio broadcasts, around the world, just repeat numbers and codes.
Dave Screed: They started broadcasting after World war II.
Dave Screed: Some people think it's code for spies. Some think it's the governments communicating to your reptilian overlords.
Dave Screed: Okay, I think I found the truth. I-
Dave Screed: What was that? Shit. Shi-shi-shi-shit. OK. OK. OK.
Dave Screed: This mystery person kept in touch with me through my newsletter. Anonymous. Just called themselves "The Presenter."
Dave Screed: Knew their stuff about numbers stations, you know? Creepy stuff.
Dave Screed: So I got a shortwave. I dialled in on the wavelengths the Presenter told me about. Nights of static and Red Bull.
Dave Screed: Then I heard it. I heard...I heard... It was all... Christ.
Dave Screed: The static! Threw my radio away. Just threw my notes and all of the Presenter's notes away. Turned every fucking dryer on.
Dave Screed: B-b-bu-but maybe okay, maybe I was hasty. Kind of failed my sanity roll there. You know?
Dave Screed: Okay but you got steadier nerves. Maybe you could check it out you know?
Dave Screed: My radio. The notes. That's a start. Just don't-
Second Phone Call
Dave Screed: Hey, hey, yeah hi Screed again. Look if you need more information about numbers stations,
Dave Screed: check out my database at the laundromat, okay? It's all there.
You hear static and then voices and music in the background
Third Phone Call
Dave Screed: Hello. Screed again. You're still here, so I guess you survived poking the hornets' nest.
Dave Screed: I tell ya, I'll never be able to sit comfortably around a radio again.
Dave Screed: It'll be TVs next. I already have recurring nightmares of Rod Serling shiving me in the shower while smiling and monologuing-
Dave Screed: Yeah, just smiling and monologuing-smiling and mono-
Dave Screed: Okay, uh, anyway... Radio waves are a kind of purgatory. Think about it.
Dave Screed: What's a ghost? What's a ghost, but an echo of a living person?
Dave Screed: Radio waves are full of talking ghosts, flying off into the void, mumbling and repeating their follies in a loop. Forever.
Dave Screed: Hitler's still making his speeches in the void. The Shadow investigates evil in other solar systems.
Dave Screed: NASA keeps planning out how to send explorers into deep space. Right? Right!
Dave Screed: But we already have. We keep pumping out ghost astronauts into the cosmos.
Dave Screed: Hitler and the Shadow will find the next inhabitable planet long before any of the living do.
Dave Screed: Our ambassadors. They'll just keep going. Inverse square law means they'll get quieter and quieter,
Dave Screed: but you got to figure there's something out there, w-w-wa-way out there there, with big, goddamn ears.
Dave Screed: Makes me think that-Did you hear that? Listen, I-
Created by: Funcom
Event: Samhain (Halloween 2014)
Mission:The Broadcast
Location: New York
Number Stations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station
You received a phone call from conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, Dave Screed. He's in a fluster over the Numbers Station phenomenon and strange things haunting shortwave radios. Strange voices and numbers, numbers, numbers...
Initial Phone Call
Dave Screed: Hello? Hey. It's Dave Screed. You know, Weird non-Fiction magazine.
Dave Screed: I got your number from...well, never mind that. I don't have much time. They'll triangulate this.
Dave Screed: You ever hear of numbers stations? You know, rogue radio broadcasts, around the world, just repeat numbers and codes.
Dave Screed: They started broadcasting after World war II.
Dave Screed: Some people think it's code for spies. Some think it's the governments communicating to your reptilian overlords.
Dave Screed: Okay, I think I found the truth. I-
Dave Screed: What was that? Shit. Shi-shi-shi-shit. OK. OK. OK.
Dave Screed: This mystery person kept in touch with me through my newsletter. Anonymous. Just called themselves "The Presenter."
Dave Screed: Knew their stuff about numbers stations, you know? Creepy stuff.
Dave Screed: So I got a shortwave. I dialled in on the wavelengths the Presenter told me about. Nights of static and Red Bull.
Dave Screed: Then I heard it. I heard...I heard... It was all... Christ.
Dave Screed: The static! Threw my radio away. Just threw my notes and all of the Presenter's notes away. Turned every fucking dryer on.
Dave Screed: B-b-bu-but maybe okay, maybe I was hasty. Kind of failed my sanity roll there. You know?
Dave Screed: Okay but you got steadier nerves. Maybe you could check it out you know?
Dave Screed: My radio. The notes. That's a start. Just don't-
Second Phone Call
Dave Screed: Hey, hey, yeah hi Screed again. Look if you need more information about numbers stations,
Dave Screed: check out my database at the laundromat, okay? It's all there.
You hear static and then voices and music in the background
Third Phone Call
Dave Screed: Hello. Screed again. You're still here, so I guess you survived poking the hornets' nest.
Dave Screed: I tell ya, I'll never be able to sit comfortably around a radio again.
Dave Screed: It'll be TVs next. I already have recurring nightmares of Rod Serling shiving me in the shower while smiling and monologuing-
Dave Screed: Yeah, just smiling and monologuing-smiling and mono-
Dave Screed: Okay, uh, anyway... Radio waves are a kind of purgatory. Think about it.
Dave Screed: What's a ghost? What's a ghost, but an echo of a living person?
Dave Screed: Radio waves are full of talking ghosts, flying off into the void, mumbling and repeating their follies in a loop. Forever.
Dave Screed: Hitler's still making his speeches in the void. The Shadow investigates evil in other solar systems.
Dave Screed: NASA keeps planning out how to send explorers into deep space. Right? Right!
Dave Screed: But we already have. We keep pumping out ghost astronauts into the cosmos.
Dave Screed: Hitler and the Shadow will find the next inhabitable planet long before any of the living do.
Dave Screed: Our ambassadors. They'll just keep going. Inverse square law means they'll get quieter and quieter,
Dave Screed: but you got to figure there's something out there, w-w-wa-way out there there, with big, goddamn ears.
Dave Screed: Makes me think that-Did you hear that? Listen, I-
Lore 1:
Our wisdom flows so
sweet. Taste and see.
TRANSMIT - initiate
the broadcast day - RECEIVE - initiate bands 3 to 30 MHz - WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL
LURKS IN THE HEARTS OF MEN? - initiate that oldtime radio - I AM THE WHISTERL,
AND I KNOW MANY THINGS, FOR I WALK BY NIGHT - our buzz is your signal for the
Signal Oil program - WITNESS - the Number Station
Lore 2:
Listen, sweetling.
Listen.
Listen for the first
two bars of "The Lincolnshire Poacher." Listen for the music of Jean
Michel Jarre. Listen for "¡Attención!"
Lore 3:
We call upon their
names: Nancy Adam Susan, The Swedish Rhapsody, The Gong Station, the English
Woman, Magnetic Fields, Tyrolean Music Station, 3 Note Oddity, The Counting
Station, Papa November, and The Lonely Patriot.
Lore 4:
Entities made of
signals. Beings made of message. It tickles our empathy! We flirt with those
heady strings of numbers, those cosmic sonnets - we blush - we burn - a strange
melody - a beep - a child's voice - a woman's voice - synthetic - distant -
valentines in slinky static. We'll cop your cipher
Lore 5:
People noticed the
numbers sometime after World War II. Rumors breed like beetles under the floor.
No government has acknowledged the existence of these phantom stations, and
still they play. The numbers live and breath and move without paying much care
to the speculation of the ears.
Lore 6:
Two numbers station
enthusiast meet at a diner. They guzzle damn good coffee. They shiver at
electronic feedback. "Once you listen...it changes you," one says.
They show each other forearms filled with tattooed digits.
Lore 7:
They trade theories:
it's spy games on the air waves - it's extraterrestrial commandments - it's behavioral
programming from the queens, and every city is a hive - it's a century-long,
global prank - we are in a divergent universe, and it's the mother reality
trying to guide us home. They go back to tend their shortwave radios, listening
and dreaming conspiratorial dreams.
Lore 8:
Somewhere, a scientist
sits in his lab. He listens to Golden Age radio dramas to relax. It's how he
learnt English. He practices parroting the radio voices, the dramatic
intonations, the sinister laughs. His presenter voice. Radio waves! If he could
just find the right resonance, life and death could communicate. In despair, he
ends his life. As he dies, he realizes how he could make it all work.
Lore 9:
Somewhere, Dave Screed
listens in on his shortwave radio. Hissing, numbers, laughter. He hears
something that voids his bowels. No amount of thumping dryers or Q-tips can
remove it from his ears.
Lore 10:
RECEIVE:
623665877307462356034308570682039057
Listen for the voice.
"Jingle sung and
patter said - radio's more fun when you're dead."
Shows aired on the Number Stations:
Death Robbery
Ghost Hunt
Northern Lights
The Hitch Hiker
The House in Cypress
Canyon
The Shadow People
The Thing in the
Fourbleboard
Three Skeleton Keys
The War of the Worlds
Also:
1. The Horror! Podcast (http://www.relicradio.com/otr/show/horror/)
2. The Thing on the Fourble Board (http://www.relicradio.com/otr/2012/07/h437-the-thing-on-the-fourble-board-by-quiet-please/)
3. Northern Lights (http://www.relicradio.com/otr/2013/10/northern-lights-by-quiet-please/)
FROM: The Dragon
TO: Dante
SUBJECT: The Broadcast
The information in Dave Screed's publication forms an odd system. It is shotgun paranoia. Occasionally he is right, but not often for the reasons he things, and he is right more often than he should be by pure chance. But there is some bravery there. How frustrating it must be, to enter an endless cave with only a flickering, unreliable flashlight. His magazine makes for entertaining reading. I think I have had enough Time Cube theory. So much obnoxious noise to read through to get that one sentence of ultimate truth. Can you guess which one?
FROM: The Labyrinth
TO: Casstiel
SUBJECT: The Broadcast
Vintage old-timey radio show mp3s are so in right now. Red Hand projects going to Orochi, what could possibly go wrong? The new merged team could be called the Red Shirt project. Nice to see Screed is still at it. No batter way to obfuscate secrets than by inundating the world with conspiracies. Screed's latest obsession is the Berenstein/Berenstain Bears controversy. Spelling of a children's book title to prove parallel universes and the Mandela Effect. Don't believe me, Google it. Funny, I remember it as the Berestein Bears. Weird...
KG
FROM: Temple Hall
TO: Eos
SUBJECT: The Broadcast
I rater enjoy the Golden Age of radio drama. The mind has a limitless special effect budget. Much more elegant than badly performed CGI clumsily fondling the eyes. The implications of what these broadcast signals can accomplish is chilling - not just for the nefarious things a government or corporation might do purposefully, but hwat might be accomplished accidentally. This world is saturated in waves, rays, broadcasts, and signals. If even half a percent of them were to rip open the fabric of reality...well. And who is this Dave Screed person? I have read several issues of his Weird Non-Fiction magazine, and, while he functions much like an Illuminati shill, his manic paranoia feels very genuine indeed.
R. Sonnac
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