The Broadcast

by Liam Fialkov

  “Yes,” McPherson replied. “She got married, and today her name is Sarah Lishinsky. She is forty years old, and she lives in a small town called Corralitos, in central California, at 2408 Oak Road.”

  Michael’s heart was pounding as he wrote the details, “I don’t know how I could thank you,” he said.

  “That’s what friends are for,” McPherson replied. “I’m glad I could help, and especially in such a case when a person is looking for his parents.”

  Michael spent the rest of the day with his family and friends. He talked to Melanie on the phone and said he was continuing his search mission and delaying his return. Melanie was excited at the fact that her beloved boyfriend was going to meet his mother for the first time.

  Michael pondered the information that he had about his mother. He wondered why she had him at such a young age, and why in Phoenix and not in the city where she lived. He wondered who his father was and what the circumstances were, that caused them to decide to give him up for adoption.

  There was something else in the information that McPherson gave him. He knew that one of the details sounded familiar. What was it?

  Suddenly he remembered; Lishinsky! He’d heard that name before. That was the family name of Jonathan, Walter’s brother. In fact, it was Walter’s original family name. Could it be that his mother is married to Walter’s brother?

  Chapter 53

  Stewart McPherson

  Stewart McPherson had navigated his way through the world of journalism trying to maintain high standards of decency, fairness, and impartiality. He detested media channels that were not faithful to the facts, but distorted and exaggerated them to create a sensational story for the sake of high ratings. He also strived to expose the manipulations conducted by wealthy tycoons who were connected to politicians and the media.

  McPherson had unsuccessfully tried to expose the source of the TXB films, and he published the article in which he claimed that The Broadcast was based on deception. He saw that he had created a snowball, and many joined his opinion and his call; but with time, he realized that his confidence in the viewpoint he’d established had started to diminish.

  He watched the show one more time, focusing on programs from the first season. Back then, the network broadcast episodes in which they helped in solving police cases. The reexamination caused him to change his mind.

  When he watched the films for the first time, he thought police officers collaborated with the network’s deception when they said that The Broadcast helped in unraveling their unsolved cases. But now it no longer made sense. Now he pondered that one or two police officers could succumb to such a deplorable act, but the program hosted too many esteemed ranking officers who said The Broadcast helped in cracking their cases that were unsolved for many years.

  Moreover, in time, McPherson saw that Walter Lindsey and his team were conducting the show at a level of decency and integrity that he didn’t expect from them. He watched how The Broadcast’s people distanced the program from the sensational approach that characterized the first shows.

  When religious fanatics started to slander the show and claim that it threatened to display a reality different than what was written in their scriptures, McPherson thought that those scriptures were themselves manipulative. Much to his surprise, he had found himself siding with the show, and he respected Lindsey for standing up to the pressure for a long time. McPherson assumed that the reason the show got off the air, stemmed from advertisers’ demands.

  The Broadcast continued to fascinate him, even when he moved on to work on other projects. From time to time he reexamined his facts and wondered why he didn’t succeed in solving the enigma of the film’s source. One day, as he was driving his car, the explanation came to his mind out of nowhere: Howard Hensley had misled him.

  McPherson had never been comfortable in his collaboration with the private investigator with the dubious past known as HH, and he had difficulty trusting him. The first few times he turned to Hensley, he tended to doubt the information that the man with the scarred face supplied. With time, he saw that despite his suspicions, the private investigator delivered reliable information. Apparently, he had sources, connections, and capabilities that McPherson lacked.

  The journalist remembered the information that Hensley handed him, and was familiar with every detail. It occurred to him that there was one fact in which HH was intentionally not accurate. McPherson was still certain that Lindsey produced the films by himself, with the help of his friends, but now he thought that this wasn’t the whole picture… Another factor must be involved in the story, which up until now had evaded him.

  It must be the brother in California, McPherson thought to himself. He remembered that HH asserted that there was a complete cut off between the two brothers. Really? Now he tended to think that this point was untrue.

  McPherson called the hacker that he employed from time to time, and asked him to check whether a man by the name of Jonathan Lishinsky, had flown from San Francisco to New York in the past year.

  “It might take some time,” the hacker said. “Many people fly from San Francisco to New York, on several airlines.”

  But McPherson asked him to place the job at top priority. After two days, the hacker called and heralded that he had managed to break into the data archives of several airlines, and he had found that Jonathan Lishinsky had visited New York on Thanksgiving.

  McPherson called Hensley’s office to demand an explanation. But nobody answered the phone, and there wasn’t even an answering service. He then called Hensley’s cell phone.

  “What do you want?” HH irately snarled.

  “We have to talk,” McPherson said.

  “I’m busy,” Hensley said impatiently. “Maybe next week,” he added and disconnected.

  When Hensley talked, McPherson could hear the background noises, from which he learned that HH was at an airport. At that moment, the journalist decided to go to California, to meet and talk with Lindsey’s brother, Jonathan Lishinsky, to unravel the doubts that lingered in his mind. If it turned out that the brother didn’t know anything about the source of the films, he could at least shed light on the producer’s personality, thus assist in solving the mystery.

  McPherson drove to his home and packed a suitcase. From the airport in New York, he called a good friend who lived in San Francisco, a colleague with whom he’d collaborated on several past investigations. He asked the man to wait for him at the San Francisco terminal and to arrange a car and a handgun for him.

  Chapter 54

  Irene

  For many years, Irene had lived in an unhappy marriage, with an unfaithful and deceitful husband. She had spent her childhood as a single daughter to a single mother, which was why it was important for her that her kids would grow up in a home with two parents, a mother and a father, despite the many days that the father was absent from the house and his children’s lives.

  She kept her marriage, but in her heart, she wished for a new relationship, and with a decent man. During one period she tried the Internet, and she felt lucky when she had found Jonathan. The connection between them was unique and profound, regardless of whether they were half-siblings or simply good friends who understood each other in exceptional subtleties.

  When her two children were already young adults, she felt that she was free to untie the false marriage and separate from her husband.

  She continued to nurture her connection with Jonathan, who she perceived as a rare, kind, and honest soul, and she always listened to the things he said and to things that she sensed, even when they were not said.

  Recently, during a period of a couple of weeks, she’d started to worry when she noticed that Jonathan was not as he used to be. He sounded aloof and restrained, as if he was intentionally distancing himself from her.

  Irene shared her concern in a phone call with Sarah, who confirmed that Jonathan was in a bad mood, ever since the TXB network announced that The Broadcast was going off the air. �
��I don’t understand why he is taking it so personally,” Sarah said.

  “I would like to come for a visit,” Irene said, “Do you think that I would be able to help him?”

  “I think you could,” Sarah said. “He appreciates you a lot, and tends to listen to you more than to me, perhaps because you are a computers expert, or maybe because he hasn’t completely forgiven me.”

  Irene felt grateful to Sarah when she saw that Sarah no longer perceived her as a strange and foreign competitor, and she understood that both of them had the same intent.

  She told her kids that she’d be away for a few days, and they were glad to have the whole house to themselves. She made a reservation for an economy class ticket and flew from Saint Paul, Minnesota, to San Francisco, where nobody waited for her when she arrived at the terminal. She rented a car and continued on her way to the town of Corralitos, and with the help of the GPS, she had no difficulty in finding Jonathan and Sarah’s land.

  Irene arrived at the property early in the evening, and she found the couple busy with their evening routine: feeding the animals, and Sarah diligently preparing dinner. Jonathan smiled at her, and still, he appeared reserved and less friendly than in their previous meetings.

  “He is restless because of The Broadcast,” Sarah said when Irene came to help with the meal. And indeed, this was the last day of the program The Broadcast, no longer on TXB. This evening, the final films of the season, the controversial ones, would be transmitted, not on the traditional TV stations, but through the Internet site Uncensored News.

  They had dinner at seven thirty. Jonathan tried to be sociable with the guest, but the two women noticed that he was tense and anxious. Irene talked about innovations in the world of computers, which she knew would fascinate him. Jonathan expressed polite interest and asked a question, but he remained distant, and it was apparent that he was troubled by matters that evaded the women.

  After the meal, Jonathan turned on the smart TV and tuned it to the Internet site Uncensored News. He was going to leave the house and go to his computer room, located in his car repair shop, and he told the women he’d be back around 9:30 p.m., about half an hour before the start of the show. Outside the house, near the parking area, Jonathan saw one of the tenants, Willie Fowler, and asked him what he was doing there. Fowler answered that he was waiting for a friend.

  Chapter 55

  Jonathan

  Jonathan stepped out of the house and walked over to his car repair shop, where his computer room was located. He packed his laptop computer into a small backpack and headed toward the glade in the forest, accompanied by his three dogs. He looked in the direction of the site, and for a moment he imagined seeing a beam of light connecting the spot to the sky. He accelerated his pace. It was already dark when he got to the creek. His eyes had adapted to the darkness, and he had no difficulty in finding rocks protruding above the water, assisting him in crossing without getting wet.

  The dogs remained at the bottom of the hill, and he continued to the glade by himself. During the past ten days, the site had provided him very different scenes from the visions of the past. These were spectacles of a great fire burning at the center of the site, spouting out of the altar. He didn’t know what the significance of those images was, and he assumed that in time, the meaning would become clear. Following the visions, Jonathan had gathered a variety of burning materials: small tree logs, dry branches, and kindling.

  Now he lay his computer to the side, piled the wood on the altar’s rock and around it, and then he tossed a single match into the mound. The fire ignited immediately, and its flames rose upward. A giant bonfire gushed from the navel of the site, from the altar, and soared up to the sky—although for a moment, it seemed that the fire descended from the heavens onto the altar in front of him. The earth shook and sounded a deep and muffled rumble.

  Jonathan stood in front of the fire that shone in front of him with great splendor. The glowing pillar of fire hissed and whispered, bewitching and hypnotizing him with its array of colors. Now he knew that his whole life was channeled into this moment. All he had left to do was to step over to his laptop computer and press the send button, and this action would transfer the last films into the hands of the people of Uncensored News, and from them to the world.

  Afterwards, he would be free to move on to a new phase of his life that was yet to be revealed. He waited for a sign.

  ***

  Jonathan and Sarah discovered the site together, several months after they moved to reside on their property, and after that, Jonathan continued to excavate the place on his own. A short time after he finished his huge project, he experienced his first vision: the picture of the horrible accident in which his parents were killed. He assumed that it was a one-time vision, but with time, he realized that while on the site, he could observe occurrences from his past with vividness and clarity, beyond what he could ever imagine. He succeeded to watch every event from his life, including the most negligible and forgotten ones.

  Jonathan had an ambivalent attitude toward his visions. At first, he was deterred by them, because they contradicted his disinclination of spirituality, meditation, and Far Eastern teachings. With time, he became fond of the revelations, and he started to look forward to them. In his erudite way, he strived to explore, investigate, and understand the visions he was exposed to. He had found that in some instances, the most advanced modern science had arrived at the same perceptions and conclusions that mystics of different backgrounds had known for many years, be it yogis of the East, or Indian shamans of the Americas. The mystics attained their insights through turning their gaze inward, and the scientists arrived at similar conclusions through theories, mathematical calculations, and experiments.

  Jonathan learned that only in the recent era, the scientists had arrived at the knowledge that the mystics had known for thousands of years. For instance, the understanding that our senses are limited in their perceptions and the comprehension that there are other dimensions that we can’t access in our everyday reality.

  After he had been satiated with looking at his life, it occurred to him to try to see events in which he was not present. So he would sit on the rock at the center of the site, and concentrate his attention on events that he had found interesting, especially notable occurrences from the twentieth century, like the murder of President Kennedy, or the failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Gradually, he learned to control his visions—to direct his thought and his consciousness until the events showed up in his mind like watching a movie. He noticed that while he had seen the events of his life as if he was inside of them, and re-experienced them all over again, the occurrences in which he wasn’t present were seen as if they were projected from above, in black-and-white, and without sound.

  Jonathan didn’t know what the source of the pictures was; were they being created inside his unconscious mind, or outside of it? And perhaps his unconsciousness was connected to another unconsciousness, a collective unconsciousness, about which he had read in a Carl Jung’s book.

  Jonathan didn’t rule out the possibility that in some mysterious way, he had connected to a spaceship that sent him pictures from a great distance. When he read Professor Nishimura’s erudite explanations, he thought that the professor might be right in his assumptions. According to Nishimura, events that take place on planet Earth, during daytime and when there are no clouds are drawing away from the planet at the speed of light.

  Jonathan thought that if he succeeded, in a way that was beyond his comprehension—to catch images that were flying in space, it could explain the way by which the pictures appeared in his mind: as if from above.

  Nishimura also wrote that according to Einstein, the distinction that we make between past, present, and future is not consistent with scientific observations and calculations, and doesn’t exist when we add the effect that movement creates over the space-time continuum. The reality of the past and future is not less substantial than the reality of the present
. The past is not gone, and the future is not nonexistent. The past, present, and future exist in the same way: everything that had happened and everything that will happen, all exist here and now, from events that occurred in the distant past, to events that from our limited perspective have not yet happened.

  Was it possible that his mysterious site was some kind of a gate? A focal point? A hub connecting the worlds and the times? And he, through his visions, could tune into events from the past that their substantiality continued to exist?

  Jonathan didn’t know the answers to the intriguing questions, but he had an easier time accepting his visions when he assumed that there was a scientific explanation for the phenomena. He realized that it was easier for him to connect to past events when he knew the exact place and time of the occurrence, as if he was directing the flow of information into his conscious mind.

  One day it had occurred to him to try to document his visions. He took with him to the site a laptop computer, sat on the rock in the middle of the site, and concentrated. He directed his attention toward an event that had interested him for years: the Cuban missile crisis, a confrontation from the Cold War in which the superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, had come very close to a nuclear war. It didn’t take long before images appeared in his mind, in which he saw different incidents from the course of the confrontation.

  Quickly, employing the proficiency he’d attained during many hours of persistent self-study, he created a clip using 3-D animation and virtual reality software. His ability and skill were so highly developed that he wasn’t required to think about the software and the tools they provided; instead, he watched his visions and uploaded them to the computer almost simultaneously. It was as if he was in a trance in which the world around him stopped moving, and there were only the events that he saw in his mind and the pictured that appeared and moved on the computer screen.