Ascension: Invocation (4 page)

"Why have we not yet explored the vortex?"

"As we speak, pilots are preparing to visit the tear."

The room began to grumble. Milan spoke up. "Forgive me, sir, but isn't that incredibly dangerous? If this is, in fact, a traversable wormhole, we don't have ships capable of entering it. That's a suicide mission to say the very least."

"We don't intend to enter it. We simply want to get a closer look."

Another scientist spoke up. "That's just the thing, General. This isn't an 'object', per se. It's not something tangible. It is literally nothing. You'll be trying to get a closer view of..."

Suddenly, the hum in the air became almost unbearable. The Earth began to shake, and screams could be heard both inside and outside the building. It lasted for less than thirty seconds, but it felt like an eternity. When it subsided, it was utter chaos. Shots could be heard outside; more screaming. Everyone at the table followed the General outside to the front porch of the house.

In the sky, what appeared to be a bright, yellow cloud was emerging from the black tear. Very slowly it began making its way across the sky. A soldier came up to the general from inside the house.

"Sir, Mr. Barry has contact."

The shouting outside began to silence as Graham's voice could be heard over the loudspeakers as it had been before. "Will you please explain to us what is happening? What is this yellow cloud?"

"Soon, we will be visible to you. Your world must first be cleansed. Do not be afraid."

"But what do you mean 'cleansed'?"

"An elemental rain will fall. Bathe all biological life in this rain."

"Everything? Animals, plants... people?"

"All that wishes to progress forward."

"What will become of anything that doesn't get washed in this rain?"

"These things will not advance."

"You mean these things will die?"

"There is no death as you believe it, but these things will not coexist."

"When will this rain fall?"

"Soon."

The transmission concluded, and silence fell over the planet. Within hours, the world would be plunged into war.

CHAPTER TWO

The Rock radio
station in Tuscumbia that the world was listening to was owned and operated by Mike Gregory. It coexisted alongside two sister stations, a Top 40 formatted station and an AM talk radio station that aired continuous, right wing national programming and news. Mike had inherited the properties from his father, the founder of the stations. All three frequencies had been long-standing members of the North Alabama community and were generally successful. It was a rarity in American radio, however. Privately owned stations hardly existed outside of small-town America and those that did were barely able to hang on due to the exceptional operating costs.

Mike was an accomplished salesman, though, and an engaging personality. He was well liked in the community, and when the offers came in from the radio conglomerates to purchase the stations during the radio boom of the 90s, Mike refused to sell. As a financial decision, he sometimes regretted this; but as a matter of integrity, he wore it as a badge of honor. Most stations that had been swallowed up by corporate America during the boom were shadows of their former selves. Mike's stations still functioned as they always had, since his father first flipped the switch on the first one in the early 1950s. He was proud of this.

Mike paid better than most small town operators; that is to say that his employees were slightly above the poverty line. Radio DJs were not unlike musicians, writers and other artists. They were willing to accept a small salary in exchange for the creative freedom Mike allowed them on the air. As Wall Street had taken over most U.S. radio stations, creativity had been exchanged for profits. This led to voice tracking stations with generic talent, homogenized play lists and typically bland radio. A lot of talent had been displaced, and many Djs were willing to work in markets once thought below their stature, for smaller salaries, in order to avoid selling used cars for a living.

To a degree, Mike benefited from this, of course. Yet, he made a point of treating his employees well. Whatever he couldn't provide in the way of financial stability, he tried his best to make up for with hospitality and a genuine sense of family amongst his team. He often had his employees over for Sunday dinner, he gave bonuses for a job well done and he had even been known to trade out necessities like groceries for jocks down on their luck.

Radio was certainly not the lucrative business it had once been. Gone were the days when even small town clusters were million dollar profit centers. The Internet had happened, and radio had been slow to react. Rather than embracing the technology immediately, the corporate monoliths relied on their outdated Wall Street strategies to turn a profit and, consequently, had left behind an entire generation of potential listeners. This trickled down to private owners like Mike as well. As advertisers discovered new, more cost effective ways to advertise via the Internet, the newspapers were rendered irrelevant. Radio was next in line to fall, and while it wasn't dead yet, most owners were scrambling to play catch up with technology in a last-ditch effort to survive. Couple this with the fact that a great deal of the industry's talent pool had migrated to satellite and online radio gigs and a perfect storm of mediocrity had crept in.

Graham didn't know Mike from Adam when he applied for the gig. He had just been unceremoniously let go in Georgia thanks to budget cuts, and he began shot-gunning tapes and resumes. Mike was the only one who called. Graham was immediately struck by his smooth, Southern charm and his penchant for telling long, compelling stories about his adventures in the industry. As they swapped philosophies and anecdotes, something seemed to click. Mike hired him over the phone. It was the first time that Graham had accepted a gig sight unseen, but he was behind on his rent in Georgia and eviction was imminent. It was best to high tail it out of there, and Mike was the first to throw him a paycheck.

When Graham arrived in Tuscumbia, he was impressed. It was a beautiful small town. There was an enormous park with a waterfall, a big fountain, and even a train for the kids to ride. The town actually had an old time drug store with a malt shop inside. When he drove up to the address Mike had given him, he was surprised to find the yellow Victorian house. He was even more surprised to find Mike on the front porch, wearing an apron and flipping ribs on a large grill, surrounded by billows of white smoke. It was lunch time, after all. When Graham introduced himself, Mike smiled, gave him a slap on the back and handed him a tall glass of sweet tea.

"Welcome home, Graham," he said.

It did feel like home. In fact, for a few days it actually did become Graham's home. He had not yet found a place to live, and since Mike was unable to arrange a hotel trade, he had set up a cot in what was to be Graham's office. It could have been weird but given the fact that this office was actually a former bedroom in the home, it felt somewhat appropriate. There was a complete kitchen downstairs, his office had cable TV, a fireplace, and a large desk with a computer. After 10pm, all of the stations were on the bird, so Graham had the place to himself. The only inconvenience was the lack of a shower at the station. Mike had solved this problem by insisting that Graham join him and his wife for dinner at his home every evening until he found a place to live. He could shower there.

The two became fast friends as Mike toured Graham around the town, introducing him to local business people and showing him the sights. He visited the Helen Keller homestead, which was located only a block away from the radio station and saw a live performance of "The Miracle Worker". He went to the Alabama Music Hall of Fame and learned about the region's vast musical heritage. He and Mike even went fishing on the Tennessee River one Saturday, and Graham caught a fish for the first time. It was fun, and the work was rewarding.

Graham's major market knowledge was an asset, and he soon became a mentor for the rest of the on-air staff. He had been hired to host afternoons on the Rock station, but, in time, Mike put him in change of the format. This eventually led to him also overseeing the other two stations and while he didn't see an increase in pay for the new responsibilities, Graham was content. He eventually had a small apartment in a complex not far from the stations. He could pay his bills and thanks to Mike's introductions he had a close circle of friends. It was a pretty good gig, and it was relatively quiet until recently.

In the fall, the Rock station was coming off a lousy book. The ratings had dipped considerably and although Graham insisted that poor diary placement in the market was the cause for the slip, Mike was adamant that the station needed something to build Cume. They needed to cast a wider net. He had given Graham the responsibility of coming up with a promotion that would propel the station back to its dominant, Male 25-54 share. Without these ratings, the station would suffer financially as the regional advertising dollars would go elsewhere. Mike was confident that he could maintain the cash flow until the next ratings period but he needed Graham to make a splash in the spring book; otherwise they were all in for a grim holiday season. So, Graham began to brainstorm concepts.

He approached Mike with a number of ideas ranging from outdoor marketing and direct mail to insured promotions, wherein the station would give listeners an opportunity to win one million dollars. Mike hated the last idea. Of course, no one ever won these things. Graham argued that while this was true, the spike in listenership might be just the thing to increase the numbers. Mike didn't want to do this with a sham so he sent Graham back to the drawing board.

Shortly thereafter, the interference began. When Graham first noticed the problem, he immediately alerted the station engineer and Mike. It was, at first, assumed that this was just another station bleeding in to their frequency. Someone in Memphis, perhaps, had throttled up their power. It may also have been inversion. Atmospherics could sometimes be just right for a far off frequency to accidentally interfere with another. When Graham worked in South Carolina, for example, he had received a call from a listener in Florida who was able to pick up his station clear as a bell, albeit temporarily. Radio hobbyists loved this trick, but broadcasters were less enamored of the phenomenon although there was little that could be done to prevent it.

When the interfering broadcast began to call Graham by name on the air, things changed. Mike had called Graham into his office. He was all smiles. "You sonofabitch! What have you got goin' on?"

"Mike, I think we have a pirate in the area..."

"Yeah, and I think that pirate is you! What have you got planned?"

"No, Mike...”

"Wait. You aren't changing the format up, are ya? You know I told you that we have to discuss things like that prior to going on the air with them. I've got sales packages I have to change and stuff."              

"It's not that. The format stays. I think we've got a listener playing a gag here."

"All right. All right. I'll let ya run with it...”

For a time, there was no convincing Mike that the pirate broadcast was anything more than a brilliant plan concocted by his favorite employee. Graham became incredibly frustrated. His past had come back to haunt him. During his heyday in the big markets, he had become rather famous for stunts not unlike this one. Except this wasn't a stunt and, for a time, no one would take him seriously. Word on the street was that the cross-town competition was even listening intently to see what he'd do next.              

Over the years, following the decline in his career, Graham's on-air persona had changed quite drastically. Partly, this was because Graham had grown up. He was no longer the drunken kid in his mid-20s shouting insults at callers and locking listeners in dirty porta-johns for the chance to win Ozzfest tickets. Also, that sort of radio had become tired. Listeners eventually got fed up with shock jocks and, as Graham had discovered, shock jocks lost their jobs. He had adapted his style over time to become a much more sophisticated jock. He was 40 years old, after all, and there came a time when it was no longer "cool" for him to have the naked, 19 year old strippers in the studio with him; it instead became "creepy". Graham didn't want to be that guy.

As the pirate broadcaster became more cryptic in his messages to Graham, word began to spread via the web and eventually he was contacted by the syndicated late-night, aliens and monsters radio talk show. It was only following this appearance that Mike began to understand that Graham was not responsible for the broadcasts. During the interview with the talk show host, Graham continued to insist that it was a pirate broadcaster; not a stunt on his part and certainly not a representative from outer space. It wasn't the interview the host was hoping for, and it seemed to suddenly click with Mike that this was something the FCC needed to investigate.

Thereafter, things really got strange. Despite the lackluster interview, Graham's program became one of the most listened to broadcasts on the Internet. He received absurd fan mail from all over the world and as the FCC launched their investigation only to come up empty handed, one conversation in particular catapulted his program into the mainstream national spotlight. It occurred one afternoon when Graham was particularly exasperated. The pirate flipped a switch in his brain and shadows of Graham's former self began to appear.

"105.5, the Point. We-"

"Good afternoon, Graham."

"Yeah, I figured as much. Hello. You... just... just hello."

"You appear weary."

"Do I? I wonder why that might be. Maybe it's because I'm trying to do my job and you keep making my life a nightmare."

"This is regretful. That is not the intention. You should not feel sad."

"Sad? Is that what you think I feel? Sad? How about pissed?!" Graham was genuinely losing his temper. "You know what? Look, I don't know what your deal is. I'm not going to pretend to understand what's going on inside your crazy head. For you, this is just a prank. It's a good laugh. I get it. But, for me and for everyone else listening to this station, it's an annoyance. I can't make this any more clear. Go. Away."

"The Dark Age is nearly complete. Your progression is dependent upon this broadcast. It is predetermined."

For a moment, Graham said nothing. It was obvious that the pirate had no intentions of calling off the gag. Graham gave a glance at his phone bank. Once again, the lines were lit up. "Fine," he thought. "This guy wants to be a radio star? I'll throw his ass in the fire."

"All right," Graham said to the voice. "If you're not going to go away, we're going to do this my way."

"I understand," said the voice.

"You're on my show and I say we take some calls from the audience."

"This is acceptable."

Graham half-expected this. Every green jock he knew thought that working the phones was a breeze. It was one of the toughest parts of the job if you did it live on the air. It was like walking through a mine field wearing clown shoes. Like a stand-up comic, dealing with some callers was not unlike handling a heckler. You only got skilled at it with practice. Everyone sucked at their first at-bat.              

"Good. I'm glad it's acceptable to you," Graham said sarcastically. "Got a question for the little green man from outer space? Pick up the phone, listeners. 1-800-256-POINT. Go ahead. Ask it anything. For, it knows all." Graham punched line one and potted up the caller. "Hey, The Point, who's this?"

"It's J.D.", said the caller.

"Where you calling from, man?"