I Am Radar

by Reif Larsen

  ——•— ••• •—•• —•— ••——— •—— ——————•— — ••••

  It had been a while since Radar last used Morse, but it was a language deeply ingrained in his psyche. When he was five years old, he had learned the code in just one day, and for weeks afterwards he would speak to people only in Morse, annoying everyone but Kermin to no end.

  Radar quickly translated the signal in his head:

  QSL K2W9 QTH?

  These were the so-called Q Codes—abbreviations developed by CW operators as shorthand for common phrases. QSL meant “Acknowledge that you receive this message.” K2W9 was his father’s call sign. QTH? meant “What’s your position?”

  This was most likely one of his father’s ham friends. He probably just wanted to chew the rag about the blackout, not knowing that Kermin was, in fact, the cause of it all.

  Radar picked up the paddle key. Positioned thumb and forefinger. The lingering twitch of the first dash. The code came back fast. He realized how much he had missed it. The secret to Morse code was not the length of the dits and the dahs but rather the length of the spaces in between.

  ——•— ••• •—••——•— •—•——•• he tapped, the letters coming out neat and clean. QSL QRZ? This was an acknowledgement of message and a request for the identity of the caller.

  There was a pause. And then:————• •————••——— This meant: 9 12.

  What was this? There was a chance he was hearing it wrong, that he was out of practice, but he didn’t think so, as the sender on the other end had a tight, clear delivery, and Radar could generally understand him perfectly. “9 12” in old Western Union 92 Code meant “Priority business. Do you understand?” It was unusual for anyone to be using such antiquated lingo, but then Kermin kept strange friends.

  Two can play this game. Radar tapped out 13, Western Union for “I understand.”

  The reply came after a moment:

  ——•— •—• ——•• —•— ••——— •—— ————•

  QRZ WHERE IS K2W9?

  His interlocutor obviously was not fooled. Like every CW operator, Radar had his own particular “fist,” or accent, that no doubt diverged from his father’s. It was like a sonic fingerprint. A trained ear could hear the difference between two Morse operators within the first few dashes. Radar wondered about the deviation between his father’s fist and his own. Was he more forceful? His father lazy and self-assured? Well, he would just have to come clean.

  ——•• ••• ••• •• —• ——•

  QRZ K2RAD, HIS SON, he tapped out. K2W9 IS MISSING.

  He waited. A long pause. Maybe he had scared him off.

  Then: WHAT HAPPENED?

  He responded: DON’T KNOW. I’M IN SHACK. QRZ?

  —•• ——— —•— —•— —• —— •—— •• —— ••• ••••— —•—•

  He didn’t want to get into the whole pulse generator situation, lest this person decide to report it to the police and ruin everything.

  VIRCATOR? EXPLOSION? came the reply.

  How did they know?

  WHO ARE YOU? Radar tapped.

  Pause.

  A FRIEND. WHAT ABOUT BIRDS?

  Radar looked up at the creatures hanging above him. So they knew about this as well.

  THEY SURVIVED, he wrote. WHAT ARE THEY?

  —••• •—•—— •—• •••—•• •••—•—•••—•—•— •—— ••

  I WILL COME OVER.

  Here? Radar looked around. Kermin wasn’t even here to defend himself. It was a disaster. He couldn’t have anyone here.

  HOW YOU KNOW K2W9? he tapped.

  WE WORK TOGETHER.

  WHY DID K2W9 HAVE VIRCATOR?

  ———• •••• •—•••—• •••—•• •—• —•— •————— •—• ••—— ••

  Pause.

  FOR THE SHOW.

  WHAT SHOW?

  Another pause.

  I’LL COME AND GET BIRDS.

  NO. Radar was suddenly annoyed at the stubbornness of these beeps. Who did this person think he was?

  IT’S IMPORTANT, came the response.

  K2W9 MUST AGREE, he tapped.

  WHERE IS HE?

  I DON’T KNOW.

  A long pause.

  Then: K2RAD, YOU COME HERE. WE WILL SHOW YOU.

  —•—••——— •—• •— —•• ——••—— —•—— ——— ••— —•—•———

  SHOW ME WHAT?

  THE HEADS. BRING A BIRD.

  WHAT ABOUT K2W9?

  There was no answer.

  DO YOU KNOW WHERE HE IS?

  WE ARE AT XANADU P4 D26 came the answer.

  Radar took a scrap of paper and wrote this down.

  XANADU P4 D26? QSD?

  IN 1 HOUR. 73 SX.

  “73” was a sign-off. Radar felt himself panicking.

  WHAT IS XANADU? he tapped frantically. ROAD? STREET?

  There was no answer.

  WHICH BIRD?

  Silence.

  R U THERE? But it was already clear that whoever it was had slipped back into the vast, blank spectrum of night.

  “Xanadu?” Radar said by candlelight. “P4 D26?”

  He studied the scrap of paper. It was clearly a code of some sort. He had flirted with cryptanalysis in college, and now his mind jumped to possible encryption methods: could it be an alphanumerical substitution cipher? Maybe “Xanadu” was the keyword. Or maybe it was a columnar transposition coordinate system? Or a modified Nihilist symmetric encryption cipher? Or was it a chess move, and the board was some kind of map? It would take him days—weeks—to crack. He did not have weeks. He did not have days. He looked at his watch. He had about fifty-three minutes.

  6

  There was, of course, still the minor dilemma of what to do with the smoking gun of the pulse generator. With his father nowhere to be found, should he take the liberty of dismantling and destroying the evidence? Sooner or later, the authorities would triangulate the origin of the blackout to their house and they would all—he and Charlene included—be in serious, serious trouble. Radar decided to leave it for the time being. He would come back and handle it shortly, but first he needed to find Xanadu and try to track down his father.

  But where could his father have gone? Kermin never went anywhere. That shack was his den. If ever he strayed too far (read: ten blocks or so), he always came rushing back to its safe haven.

  Radar went over to the Faraday trunk and proceeded to pilfer it. At this point, he no longer cared what Kermin thought—after nearly blowing up New Jersey, his father had lost the moral high ground. Radar took the flashlights, the radio, one of the pocket televisions, the calculator watch, and the cell phone. He put on the watch and stuffed the rest into a backpack. He also carefully picked out three birds from the ceiling. He tried to choose three varying specimens, but to his eyes, at least, they all looked fairly similar.

  Tata, what the hell were you going to do with these things?

  Radar took one last look at the carnage of the shack’s interior. This, the epicenter of the Great Jersey Blackout. Would they one day write a book about this room? Radar shook his head. Just before leaving, he felt compelled to pick up the stick figure he had found by the vircator and put this into his backpack as well. Then he closed the door behind him.

  Xanadu, Xanadu . . . What was Xanadu?

  He had heard this name before. In a movie? Or was it a book? He cursed his ignorance of pop culture. His time was ticking away. He looked at his watch. It was 8:23 P.M. He estimated he was already down to forty-five minutes.

  The house was dark. He lit ano
ther candle and headed upstairs.

  “Mom?” he called.

  She was lying on her bed, listening to a hand-cranked record player crackling away on the floor. The windows were wide open. There was a collection of uncapped sniffing bottles on the bedside table.

  “He still isn’t back?” she said.

  “No,” he said.

  “I wonder where he’s gone off to?” she said. “Obviously he feels no obligation to protect his own family.”

  “I’m sure he has good reason.”

  She shifted on the bed. “This is his favorite piece,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “Caruso singing ‘Una furtiva lagrima.’ We used to take this out and listen together after you had gone to sleep. We would hold hands. Can you believe it? Holding hands,” she said. “I pulled out the record player and thought that if I played it, I might lure him back.”

  So they both had their homing beacons: his was liquor; hers was music.

  They were quiet, listening to the aria. Caruso sustained, inspected, and released a high note out through the windows and into the ether.

  “Where could he be?” she said. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “You’ll see. There’ll be some explanation and we’ll all laugh about this later.”

  Charlene reached over and sniffed one of the bottles on her bedside table.

  “I still can’t smell a thing,” she said.

  “I’m sure it’ll come back.” He went over and sat on the bed. “You did really good today, Mom. You helped a lot of people. Tata would be proud.”

  “Are you sure he’s not in his shack?”

  “I—” He again thought about telling her all. “No. I checked.”

  He lay down beside her. His parents’ room had morphed and changed colors and layout over the years, but lying on his back now, he was able to recall all of those nights when he would burrow down between his parents after having a nightmare, Kermin sideways and snoring, Charlene rubbing his back and humming a little lullaby. In his memory, this room was a place no nightmares could penetrate.

  After a final exhortation from Caruso, the aria clicked to an end. The needle shifted into an endless groove, spinning around and around. Radar got up, cranked the box several times, and then flipped the record to the other side.

  “It’s amazing the things that still work now,” he said. “Maybe we’ll become a mechanical society. Everything will be hand-cranked.”

  “Do you think we’ll ever get the electricity back?” she asked.

  “I think so,” he said. “The city already got its power back. But then, I don’t think the city got hit like we did.”

  “Ha! Of course. The city will always have its power.”

  “Mom,” said Radar, “what’s Xanadu?”

  “Xanadu?” she said. “You mean the poem?”

  “The poem?”

  She began to orate in a faux British accent:

  In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

  A stately pleasure-dome decree:

  Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

  through caverns measureless to man

  Down to a sunless sea.

  “What is that?” he said.

  “Coleridge,” she said. “I wasted my time in college writing a useless thesis about Coleridge and narrative fragmentation.”

  “It doesn’t sound so useless.”

  “Oh, it was. I think the title was ‘Completion as a Function of Interruption’ or some nonsense like that.”

  “But is Xanadu an actual place?”

  “I think it did exist in China once upon a time.”

  “But I mean, we couldn’t actually go to Xanadu now, right?”

  “No, but then, that’s the whole point. It’s something not real . . . The poem was famous in part because it was incomplete.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Coleridge claimed he had been reading this book about Kublai Khan right before he smoked some opium and then he fell asleep. And while he was sleeping, he had this very vivid dream about a poem . . . a complete poem, in five parts . . . something like three hundred lines long. And so he wakes up and begins writing it all down. But then the doorbell rings and a visitor from Porlock interrupts him. The visitor stays for about an hour or so, and when Coleridge finally gets back to writing the poem, he’s forgotten the rest.”

  “So what did he do?”

  “He left it as it was. At least that’s what he claimed. A lot of people think he made the whole story up, but I guess I just loved the idea of this mysterious visitor from Porlock coming in and interrupting genius at work. It’s the idea that if only we hadn’t been interrupted, then we could’ve accomplished our magnum opus . . . but in the end, we come to realize that the interruption is the work itself.” She paused, opening and closing her hand like a jellyfish. “Did you know that in Lolita, Quilty checks into the hotel as ‘A. Person, Porlock, England’?”

  Radar was suddenly struck by the depth of his mother’s knowledge. He realized he had never once asked her about her college thesis. He had always dismissed her as his slightly less hapless parent, when in fact, here she was, a walking literary encyclopedia, a font of information, untapped for all these years. How had he never quite understood this? Perhaps because proximity—contrary to popular belief—did not breed clarity. Her habits were not habits, but merely the backdrop for his own upbringing, quite literally: for as long as he could remember, sheets had obscured all of the bookshelves in the house. He had grown up thinking of books as something dirty, to be kept but never shown, which might explain why as a teenager he would regularly develop random erections in the school library. But these books, her books, hidden as they were, had all been considered, read, placed in an order dictated by a mind at work. For the first time, he saw her as a fully functioning being, someone other than just his mother.

  “A. Person, Porlock, England,” he repeated.

  “When I first read that, I almost died. It was like Nabokov and I were living in the same world. We were not so different, he and I. We both had our Porlocks.”

  “Someone said they would meet me at Xanadu.” He reached into his fanny pack and took out the scrap of paper. “Xanadu P4 D26.”

  “Sounds very Dadaistic.”

  “I think it’s some sort of code.”

  “You mean like spies?” she said.

  “Some kind of transposition cipher or something.”

  “Or maybe they were talking about Xanadu.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, Xanadu—that monstrosity by the football stadium.”

  “What monstrosity by the football stadium?” Radar said. A dim light flickered in his head.

  “You know, the mall. Xanadu. The building with the awful stripes?”

  The awful stripes. Yes. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Xanadu. The answer had been staring him in the face the entire time. Of course.

  “It’s the mall!” he whispered.

  “It’s an abomination,” she said. “Have you seen that thing?”

  She was right. It was an abomination. Billed as “the largest mall in the world,” the hideously gargantuan pajama-striped mega shopping complex sat at the confluence of the New Jersey Turnpike and Route 3, just across from the newly constructed Meadowlands Stadium, a stone’s throw from the Hackensack River. One day soon, Xanadu promised to offer six million square feet of glory for the entire family, including an indoor ski slope, a skydiving tunnel, a skating rink, a water park, and a three-hundred-foot Ferris wheel that orbited a giant Pepsi symbol visible for twenty-five miles on a clear day. The only problem was that it looked like a day care turned terrorist detention center and had been languishing, empty, for years now—ever since its primary backers, Lehman Brothers and the Mills Cor
poration, had both gone belly up. Xanadu had been renamed Xanadu Meadowlands Mall, which was then shortened to Meadowlands Mall, which had recently been rechristened again as the American Dream Meadowlands Mall. But Xanadu would always be Xanadu.

  “I need to go,” Radar said suddenly.

  “To Xanadu?”

  “I’ll be back. I swear. I just need to go.” He kissed her forehead. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “What did I do?”

  “Everything,” he said. “I’m lucky to have you.”

  “Don’t go,” she said. “Not you, too.”

  “But I’m going to find out what happened to him.”

  “At Xanadu?”

  “That’s all I’ve got right now.”

  She stared at him and narrowed her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  He realized his folly. She was his wife, for God’s sake. It was a bond of intimacy, however flawed, that he would probably never experience. She had a right to know.

  He sighed.

  “Kermin was the one who caused it,” he said.

  “Caused what?”

  “The blackout.”

  “Kermin? As in my husband?” She blinked. “How?”

  He shook his head. “It’s complicated. But when I went into the shack today, I found an electromagnetic pulse generator. It’s very powerful. It had exploded, and it must’ve sent out a pulse that was amplified by the antenna in our backyard.”

  “Is he okay?” Her voice rose.

  “He wasn’t in there.”

  “But why would he do something like that?”

  “I don’t know. I got a message on one of his radios to meet this guy at Xanadu.” He reached into his backpack, pulling out the little figurine. “And I found this. Have you ever seen it before?”

  She took the stick figure from him. Touched its face with her fingertips.