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The coast is flickering weakly as the Aerostatic slips inside the Pale. A light rain still clings to the window of the recording booth. It had been improvised from whatever was available. Dusty cables wrapped around table legs and old mattresses nailed to the wall that *mostly* block the blaring anodic music. Pictures of graffiti under various climates have been pinned on top of it: “DNR the old world”, “Work or die is not a free choice”, “If Insulindian Phasmid could talk to cops, they wouldn’t”...
An old radio computer is sitting in one corner. With their bad leg propped up on the mixing board, the radio host is tearing open letters with paint-stained fingers.
“Marg from Révachol wants to know where we are right now. Well, dear listener and Moralintern officers, I’ll give you a clue,” they say as they grab the microphone and several meters of cable.
Hundreds of kilometers to the northeast, behind Boogie Street, in an old dilapidated hospital that has long lost its purpose, an ungodly sound fills the local Frittte. It’s scratching at eardrums, like radio static sung by dying lungs. Long sequences of syllables form into it before falling apart. The sound constantly swells and collapses on itself.
And then absolute silence. A bespectacled young person in a red nylon jacket has their hand on the volume knob.
“I was saying,” says Emery, “that you can go home. I’ll take the rest of the night.”
Eha had not heard them at all. “I am not done with the inventory.”
She gestures at the containers of pure empathogens lined up on the counter. Enough to bring (temporary) peace between Skua’s and Lion’s supporters. Emery looks at them as if they had just discovered that they were selling those.
“Doesn’t matter, nobody buys me raw materials anymore. Niko left, Sam’s brain is definitely fried, and…”
Eha knows they’re thinking about Olly, but the words are not coming out. That wound is still too raw.
“...And Idili has disappeared,” offers Eha as an act of kindness.
Everybody forgets that Idili was part of the Experimental Drug Therapy. It was always Olly, Niko, and Sam, the three of them like peas in a pod: working together, living together. They probably never paid Idili for their service. But Emery seems grateful to be reminded of the discreet Semenese immigrant rather than their sister's tragic end.
Eha has been working the night shift at Frittte for the past ten months. After the fight, Emery needed support, and Eha needed a break from activism. A break from art, protest, and seeing people. Only Emery shows up at odd hours of the night in pajama pants or yesterday’s clothes to “take it from here”. Eha suspects they hadn’t had a full night's sleep since they got Olly out of the Morgue.
She turns up the volume of the radio computer, and the raspy, threadbare voice laughs over the static:
…somewhere in the Pale. Hope your curiosity is satisfied.
“What are you even listening to?” Asks Emery, eager to change the subject.
Eha shrugs. “Questions and Answers on the Pirate Radio. It keeps me company.”
There is a blank spot on La Cage’s graffiti-covered walls. More like a blind spot: street artists glance at it but forget to paint over it. Eha had been watching it slowly fade away, but she can still read the message “They said pick yourself up by the bootstraps”. Or maybe it’s just a phantom image, burned on her retina. For ten months this blank spot had been at the back of Eha’s mind at all times. The Pirate radio helps a bit. She likes to hear the host talk about the graffiti he painted all across Elysium. When no one is around, which is most nights, Eha rests her elbow on the counter, buries her face into her folded arms, and just listens to the familiar voice. If she focuses on it hard enough and long enough, she might feel, for a split second, that everything is just like before.
That was a bang-bang cockatoo, a type of bird endemic to the Semenese Island. It’s also the only living thing that can find its way in this jungle. I thought I would find my way to a good painting spot, but the plants grow so fast here that if I stop moving, the jungle will swallow me whole.
“*That’s* the Pirate radio broadcasting from the Pale?” Says Emery as they poured themselves a cup of coffee. “*That’s* what the Moralintern is getting so worked up about?”
“The Moralintern or *our* Moralintern?” Asked Eha.
She is still not completely sure that they had nothing to do with Idili’s disappearance. The only reason they’re not fully convinced they’re behind it is that Bragi's disappearance at the same time makes it *just a little bit* more likely that Idili left with the traveler. At first, Eha waited for that message or that sign, but after ten months of nothing. She believes it less and less. She should have told them how she felt that night when Idili showed her the bootstrap graffiti. Or at the party. She had a million occasions, but she thought she had time.
We’re getting a lot of questions about how we managed to paint on the Moralintern HQ: turns out that if you have a security jacket, nobody will question what you’re doing on that furniture lift.
“The new antenna in the yard?” Says Emery. “It’s a scrambler. Apparently, Pirate radio can give you Pale irradiation.”
That is such bullshit. You cannot go anywhere in La Cage without stepping on a health hazard: crumbling immigrant wing, chemical leak in the Morgue, Mold spreading everywhere, but the *radio show* is the problem. Still, Eha cannot say she hadn’t seen it coming. The Moralintern's growing hostility has been a theme of the show for the past few weeks.
Mirova, Vredefort, and Co Hoi have refused us access to their port; supplies are running low.
Eha stirs the cup of hot coffee that Emery just placed between her hands. She watches the dark swirl blur her reflection. Hesitantly, she says, “If it comes to it…”
But I heard a whisper on the Pale about a house behind Boogie Street and someone there who would need to pull herself up by her bootstraps.
Eha dropped her spoon into the cup and splashed scalding coffee over her hand. She feels like crying, but not because of the burn, no, out of relief. She glances at Emery, but the shop owner is busy throwing empathogen containers under the counter. They have not heard the radio.
“If it comes to it, you’ll buy the radio computer from me, right ?”
Emery springs up from behind the counter. “But you love this thing.”
Eha conceals her smile by getting a sip of coffee. It was never about the radio or the serenity of a late-night shift. It was about clinging to the memory of the bootstraps’ night. But now she got their message loud and clear.
“I might want to travel, and it would weigh me down,” says Eha, putting down her empty cup on the counter. “If you want it, I will sell it to you. Not tonight, though.
Tonight I’m buying some spray paint.”