She could practically feel Falkous’ eyes rolling up and down her body.
Helms felt her baton itch.
Not in an official capacity, she reminded herself.
Helms turned on her flirtiest smile and giggled.
“Hi, Andy!” She said, putting some ditzy pep in her voice.
A big sloppy grin stumbled around Falkous’ face.
“I heard a neighbor of yours was making a lot noise a few weeks ago?” Helms said, carefully avoiding any mention of a report or the authorities.
“Hmm? Oh, yeah, that. Listen, I’m not one for calling the pigs. No offense,” he gestured at Helms with the beer can, sloshed a little out and onto her shoes. “But that guy was at it with his bullshit MTV crap every night for near a week. I tried to settle it like a man, gone over there and knocked right on his door. I ain’t no pussy. But he is – he wouldn’t answer. So, ipso fatso, the pigs.”
“Right,” Helms said, imagining herself on a beach somewhere with a big, icy drink. Utterly alone. All other human beings dead or otherwise confined somewhere far, far away. “What do you mean, MTV music?”
“Like that video channel crap. The beepy and the boopy electronic German stuff. Like that song about cars? Only without even any words. Just noises. Call that music? I should put on some Haggard and crank it up to 11, show that little punk what real-“
“Thanks, Andy!” She bubbled, turning quickly and making for the cruiser.
Helms sat in the driver’s seat and stared at the dented aluminum caravan for ten full minutes. She ran over the scenario in her head again and again. She had come out here and verified the report firsthand, and now it really sounded like she might be on to something. She should call the station and have a unit sent out, even if it was Terrell and Bryant. Maybe they wouldn’t just laugh it off if she’d scouted it in person first. Maybe they would just laugh harder. She should at least call Price.
And he would say “what are you doing in the field?” and “we’re riding desks this week,” and “by the book” and “blah blah blah.”
Helms knew all of this before she drove out here in the first place. She was just having doubts now because it was time to actually do it – time to pull the trigger and go vigilante. You saw it in movies all the time: A cop gets pulled from the case, but they pursue it anyway on their own time. They get the perp, save the day, and all is forgiven. That’s not how it works in real life. If she knocked on the door of that trailer and things went south, it would mean her job, at least.
She drummed on the steering wheel. She checked and rechecked her service revolver. She opened the glovebox for no particular reason, closed it, then opened it again.
Screw it, she thought, it’s going to be nothing anyway. Just some guy with bad taste in music.
No need to report anything. Nobody would even know, and she and Price would be down one bad lead when they picked up the case again in a week. That’s progress.
Helms stepped out of the cruiser and adjusted her belt. Her shoes crunched over gravel and broken glass, then up a set of creaking, crudely built wood stairs. She rapped on the thin aluminum door of the caravan, and took a step back. Her hand rested on the hilt of her pistol. She swallowed hard. Watched the light leaking out from the floorboards so she could tell when footsteps blocked it. They did. A silhouette moved back there.
“Hello sir,” she said, biting back the instinctual urge to identify herself. “We’ve had some noise complaints recently. Just following up on those, if you could spare a moment to answer a few routine questions….”
Silence.
Helms hated this part. The wait. Every traffic stop, every knock on every door -- there was always this agonizing moment. While you waited for whoever was on the other side of that glass, wood, or steel to decide if this was the day they drew down on a cop. She knew most every encounter goes down peacefully, but there was always the chance. There was always the decision to be made, and she had no hand in it. Helms hated that more than anything.
The door creaked open an inch. Just a thin swatch of face – white male, short, maybe 5’4” if he wasn’t slouching, probably 30-40, brown hair, green eyes. Deep bags under them. Pale skin. She couldn’t tell the weight just from the few inches of face showing, but judging by his gaunt cheekbones: Not much. Not exactly a threatening specimen, but a bullet is the great equalizer. She kept her hand on her pistol.
“Sorry to bother you, sir,” Helms tried to sound as harmless as possible. She threw a little ‘even I’m annoyed, having to be out here’ into her tone. “We’re just following up on all disturbances from this neighborhood as part of a community outreach program. We’re making sure relations are still solid with your neighbors and there hasn’t been any further escalation between you.”
The single eye narrowed and the door closed a fraction of an inch.
“Look, it’s just this thing my superiors are making us do. I’m sorry to bother you, I really am, but you know how bosses are – and mine get worse around election season. They just want some feedback, make sure you’re not harboring some complaint about us that’ll come back to bite ‘em in the ass around poll time. You know? It’ll only take a second.”
The door opened a bit further, and the man took in Helms from head to toe. Finally he swung the door wide and stepped back. He gestured Helms inside with a sweep of his head.
Helms knew it was a bad idea to step into an unknown premises like this, with no backup. But she also knew there was no way in hell she was getting a search warrant based on ‘this funny feeling she had.’ She stepped around the man – most of her assumptions were right, she saw. Short, skinny, pale. But she was off about the age. She figured he was only in his late 20s, maybe early 30s, after seeing him up close. But he did not wear the years well. Junkie, maybe?
Helms quickly surveyed the interior of the caravan. There wasn’t much to see: A little kitchenette to her right, a stained bench opposite that, piled high with papers and textbooks. A faux wooden door directly across from her, barely the size of a closet. The bathroom, probably. To her left there was a cramped bedroom, barely more than a twin mattress and a couple of nightstands. It was jam packed with electronic equipment – smooth steel surfaces thick with dials, gauges, switches and needles. They were all on and active, flashing, sweeping and clicking with hidden purpose. In the center there was an enormous reel to reel recorder.
Helms became suddenly aware that she had no idea what she was looking for. Audio equipment? Okay, she found that. What does that prove?
“Ask your questions,” the man muttered into his own chest, then twisted his head upward and loudly repeated, “ask your questions!”
“Well uh…” Helms mentally scrambled for a plan. “We really just wanted to follow up on the initial report, make sure that your neighbors haven’t uh… harassed you about the complaint or anything.”
“The idiots? No, no the idiots have left me alone. I bought the headphones, see?” Again the man wrenched his head skyward and repeated “the headphones!”
He rattled a set of over-the-ear cans attached to a long wire leading all the way back to the bedroom full of electronics.
“So uh…you mind if I ask what all the equipment is for?”
“Hmm?” The man’s face bunched up and he blinked at Helms. “Why do you need to know? Not a crime to have this equipment. Not a crime!”
“No, of course not,” Helms said, and put on her harmless smile again. “It’s just that my nephew, he’s uh… he’s really into A/V stuff and I’m trying to… y’know, connect with him more.”
Damn. Helms felt her credibility slipping away by the second.
“Okay…” The man said, dragging the syllables out. He thought for a second, then continued. “I’ll show you! I’ll show you!”
The man set his headphones down on the bench and shuffled past Helms. They both had to turn sideways to let him pass. Helms tightened her grip on her pistol while he did. He stooped in front of the equipment and fiddled wit
h something in the bottom-most stacks. Then he flipped a few switches on the receiver, and yanked the headphone cord out of its plug. He turned around and smiled at Helms, and she instantly knew she’d tipped him off somehow. She took a reflexive step backward to put some distance between the two of them, but her heel thumped against the far wall of the trailer.
Nowhere to go.
The man hit play. There was only static at first, gentle pops and clicks as a recording spooled up. Then it opened with a deep bass, almost too low to hear. The thin walls of the caravan shuddered with it. A high ululating squeal, then a wildly oscillating tone that dove up and down through the registers. Quickly the sound filled out with too many atmospheric squeaks and whistles to track. Helms felt something behind her eyeballs pop, and a sucking vertigo pulled the floor of the trailer away from her. She stumbled, but put a hand on the kitchenette’s sticky counter and steadied herself. The recording stopped, and for a moment Helms wondered if it had truly gone quiet, or if she’d just gone deaf.
The man peered back at her from the far end of the trailer. His eyes burned with focused curiosity. He was expecting something.
When the vertigo passed and she popped her ears a few times, she felt normal again.
“That was…weird,” Helms said.
The man smiled slowly, his thin, dry lips cracking from the effort.
“Interesting,” he said, then looked to the roof and barked “interesting!”
“So what was all that ab-” Helms began, but the man cut her off.
“I wonder,” he said. He did a little hop and then scuttled toward her. He stood a few inches shorter than Helms, squinting up into her eyes and inclining his head to get all the different angles. “I wonder which you are, then, hmm?”
He reached up to touch Helms’ eye, but she slapped his hand away with her right while pushing him back to arm’s length with her left. Then hand to pistol again, ready position.
“Not a Manic,” the man continued, unfazed. “This close to a filtered hi-fi source and you’d be clawing at the walls by now.”
“What the hell are you on about?” Helms said.
“A Sleeper then? Could be,” he clapped his hands hard.
Helms jumped. She pulled her revolver out from its holster a fraction of an inch.
“No,” the man shook his head. “The reflexes would be fading by now. You could be one of the other frequencies – I haven’t identified them all. Wouldn’t that be exciting? Exciting!”
“Sir, I’m going to need you to come with me. I have some questions for you in regards to a series of attacks around town that I-“
“How’s your heart rate?” The man asked, ignoring her. “Your breathing? Your vision? Are you hearing voices, having sudden unexplainable urges? What do you taste? You have to tell me, quick! Quick! The changes might render you unable to speak.”
“What changes? Sir, you’re not making any sense. If you’d just gather your uh…audio materials and… and accompany me back to the station, I’m sure we can get all of this-”
“Oh,” the man looked crestfallen. “Oh that’s it. Just another carrier. How disappointing.”
“Sir, I’m going to ask you one more time to gather your recordings and come with me to the station, or I will have to detain you.”
“Of course,” the man giggled, “of course! Just a moment.”
He shuffled to the far end of the trailer and poked around at his audio equipment. He turned back to Helms.
“I just have one question for you: What would you do if I erased this recording right now?”
“Sir?” Helms said, her patience wearing, “that is evidence to be used in a possible criminal investigation…”
“I understand,” the man nodded. His finger hovered over a button on the central console. “I’m going to erase it now.”
“I’ll fucking kill you!” Helms had her pistol out and trained on the man’s face in the span of a heartbeat.
“Yes, yes. There it is. The carrier wave doing its work. Not your fault of course – the carrier wave is the strongest frequency. It has by far the most adherents. Not the most interesting effects, of course, but it makes sense. The signal needs to spread. I can’t cast aspersions on you – no shame in it. No shame! It took me years to figure out that my own research wasn’t on my initiative. I’m susceptible to the carrier wave, myself. You’re in good company!”
The man started to fiddle with the audio equipment again, and Helms had to bite into her own cheek to keep her finger from slipping past the guard and onto the trigger.
“Don’t worry – I would never erase the signal. I couldn’t if I wanted to! No more than you could, either, now that you’ve heard it. There’s a nest of messages in the signal, you see, each with different effects: The Manics are boring. They just attack, attack, attack. The Sleepers are more interesting: I’m just beginning to study them in depth. There seem to be some genuine changes in physiology there, not least of which is the seeming suspension of autonomic functions, presumably to conserve the energy they then release in sudden, intense bursts that transcend typical human abilities. I’ve been able to identify two more frequencies so far as well, but who knows? There could be more. More!”
The man flipped a series of switches and the reel to reel to spun up. He bent down and hit a button on a cassette player nestled beneath the mattress, and tapped his foot while he waited.
“What…what did you to me?” Helms said.
As soon as the man had admitted he had no intention of erasing the signal, the anxiety slipped away and she was able to lower her weapon. She felt the first itchy pinpricks of sweat springing out on her forehead. There was a tightness in her chest, and a building energy crackling up and down her spine. She felt like she would explode if she didn’t do something, but she couldn’t for the life of her think of what that might be.
“Me? Nothing. I don’t do anything. I am only a messenger. Like you are, now. See, there is such a thing as a disease that is too fatal. It will kill it’s victims long before they have the opportunity to infect others. It’s the same with this signal. The same!” He turned his head to the roof and barked “same! Same! Same!”
He composed himself with some effort, and continued: “If everybody turned Manic, or Sleeper, who would be left to spread the signal? That’s where the carriers come in. You hear the signal, but you get to stay yourself: You are allowed to retain your knowledge, your abilities, and your memories. But there’s a price: Once you hear the carrier wave, all you want to do is play it for others, over and over again, forever. I didn’t realize that at first. Not at first! I’m a man of science, understand. When we initially recorded that signal back at SETI, I thought that I kept replaying it because it was interesting. Then I showed others -- just to get their input, I told myself. The others…changed.”
The man fell quiet then. He made a fist, clenched it, then sighed and slowly released it.
“I knew it was the signal, but I kept playing it. For science, I told myself! To understand its effects! But that wasn’t it. I was just a pawn, myself. I’m still trying to learn about it, of course. Maybe even one day stop it? But then the urge gets too much, too strong, and I have to go out there. Out with the idiots. And I have to play it for them. It will kill you, if you don’t. Here.”
The reels clicked to a stop, and the man ejected a cassette from the deck. He rummaged around in an overhead bin and came out with a small tape recorder. He slotted the tape into it and held it out for Helms.
“You’ll need it soon,” he said. “Normally the signal takes some time to work, but I’ve filtered out the noise and boosted the frequencies on the master source here. It’ll be taking hold soon. Find somebody to listen, or it will tear you apart. I don’t do this for everybody, you know. I don’t want the signal to spread any further than it has to, so I just leave most of the carriers without a way to relay the signal. It’s…not pretty what happens to them. But it’s better for all of us, in the long run. Better than lettin
g them spread it. You seem different somehow. Plus, you have the gun – if I tried to kick you out of here without a way play the signal, I bet you’d gun me down, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you! Ha ha!”
Carrier Wave: A Day Of Knowing Tale Page 3