Pirates of the Electromagnetic Waves (Yankee Republic Book 1) by Fenton Wood

Author:Fenton Wood [Wood, Fenton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-09-03T05:00:00+00:00

14. THE BROADCAST

Philo rode his bicycle up the trail and stopped at the foot of a twenty-foot cliff. From the top came a voice.

“What is the direction of an electric current by convention?”

“From positive to negative!” Philo called back.

“What is its true direction?”

“No one knows, no one knows.”

“You may pass.”

The password was changed once a week, and it always involved questions of scientific fact. The penalty for disclosing the password to unauthorized personnel was “a fate worse than death,” the nature of said fate yet to be determined.

A rope ladder snaked down. Philo left his bike chained to a tree, and climbed up the ladder. At the top of the cliff was a grove of trees, and hidden in the trees was a shack, built of wood so weathered and gnarled that it blended with the trees. Fifty feet behind the shack, a small electric generator chugged away, outfitted with a small canopy to keep off the rain while allowing for ventilation and cooling.

He entered the shack. It was rough but serviceable, sufficiently weatherproof for the region’s mild winters, and large enough to hold eight or ten people. It was the work of two dozen boys. They had spent weeks hauling scrap lumber up the cliff and nailing it together, under the supervision of Ralph Enderby, a rangy youth who assisted his father in the construction trade.

The ladder was the fastest way to the top, but it wasn’t the only way. There was a trail, half a mile long, that snaked around to the other side. The boys had worn the trail with their own feet, hauling equipment and materials on various bike trailers, unhitched and pulled by hand.

Ralph himself was seated at a wooden desk. There was microphone and a small mixer in front of him, a small pair of loudspeakers behind the mixer, and a turntable and cassette player at his right hand. An electric clock, a floor lamp, and a small electric fan completed the ensemble.

The microphone, donated by a local church, was the most expensive thing in the room. It was an original Unidyne, a heavy object with a chrome-plated grille, made fifty years ago by a company in Chicago. It was known as the “Elvis mic,” because of its close association with a singing radio preacher who was famous throughout the South.

“Advertising Department, status report,” said Philo.

Pete replied, “We put up two hundred posters all over town, and put twelve hundred flyers in mailboxes. We would have made more, but the mimeograph ran out of ink.”

“Good job. Programming Department, status report.”

Randall replied, “We have forty disk jockeys trained and signed up for one-hour shifts. That’s enough to cover our planned broadcast schedule, four to nine PM seven days a week.”

“Fantastic. Engineering Department, that’s me. I report that all equipment is functioning properly, several test broadcasts were successfully carried out, and our signal meets expectations for range, signal strength, and sound quality. This was personally verified by the Chief Engineer, that’s me again, by riding my bike all the way from the mountain to the other side of town, carrying a portable radio.

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