The Orchard Transmission
I arrived at the Marrow Creek reservoir a little after nine.
Fog clung to the surface, thick enough to dull the light.
Somewhere beneath that still water lay the old agricultural station — WMC-22 — shut down after the flood in the late seventies.
My task was simple: confirm whether any of the original soil telemetry beacons still emitted a signal.
They had been designed to broadcast low-band pulses, measuring moisture across the orchard rows that once stood here. The trees had long rotted away.
Only the towers remained — six rusted spires half-sunk into the bank, panels coated in algae.
When I powered one on, the air changed.
The frequency was supposed to be below the threshold of hearing, yet I felt it in my chest — a steady vibration, about fifty hertz, the same pitch the archive lights make when their ballast begins to fail.
I spoke a calibration phrase into the recorder:
> “Field test. Soil telemetry. Finch conducting.”
The transmitter pulsed once. A clean waveform. No interference.
Procedure complete. Or at least, it should have been.
---
By early afternoon, the data looked wrong.
A second waveform overlapped my test signal — faint, but rhythmic, like something repeating a few miles away.
When I filtered the noise, I heard a woman’s voice threaded through the carrier wave:
> “…county weather, reporting clear skies…”
The recording ended in static.
A perfect ten-second fade.
The last documented broadcast from WMC-22 had been the day before the flood.
I told myself it was an atmospheric reflection — an old transmission refracting off the water.
But when I replayed the file, the inflection had changed — the same words, newly spoken.
I checked the beacon.
Its indicator light was pulsing again, though I hadn’t scheduled a second test.
---
By dusk, interference had spread to nearby bands.
Even my vehicle radio — long dead from disuse — buzzed faintly with the same voice, half-submerged in static.
When I switched it off, the speaker kept vibrating, a breath against the air.
I shut down power to the array.
The sound persisted — not from the equipment, but from the ground itself.
A low hum rising through the soil, like something stirring beneath the surface.
I scraped a bit of earth near the transmitter’s base. The dirt was warm and smelled faintly sweet, like fruit beginning to rot.
When I touched it, the hum grew louder.
I recorded another note:
> “Residual feedback loop. Possible piezoelectric discharge. Continue observation until nightfall.”
---
An hour later, the beacon reactivated.
I hadn’t restored power.
The broadcast was clearer this time — the voice older, slower:
> “…county weather, orchard… winds south…”
Then static.
A rhythm pulsing underneath, almost like breathing.
The indicator light blinked in time with it, reflecting across the reservoir in soft green flashes.
For a moment I thought I saw shapes beneath the water — rows of trees shifting as though a current moved through them.
The hum deepened.
Every instrument needle on my console drifted upward in unison — soil saturation, barometric pressure, electrical potential.
All rising together.
---
I keyed the mic.
> “Station WMC-22, this is Finch. Conducting manual override. Please confirm transmission.”
There was a pause, then my own voice came back — flat, filtered, repeating the same words.
But when I compared the timestamps, the echo had spoken first.
I shut everything down again.
Still, the voice lingered in the speaker, fading only when I stepped away from the array.
The moment I turned back, it returned.
---
Around nine, condensation began forming on the transmitter’s casing.
Not water — something thicker, amber-colored, smelling faintly of apples.
It hissed when it touched metal.
The ground trembled once — not enough to register as seismic, more like breath expanding under the soil.
I packed the recorder, sealed the logs, and prepared to leave.
Before disconnecting the final cable, I noticed the transmitter display flicker to life.
A single line scrolled across the screen:
> WMC-22 — LIVE
Then my own voice:
> “Cut the signal. You already started it.”
---
The drive back took less than an hour.
Halfway along the access road, the dashboard radio turned on by itself.
The same weather report played through the static — distant but clear.
In the background, beneath the voice, came a faint sound: leaves moving in slow rhythm, though there was no wind.
I parked at the archive just before eleven.
Even with the ignition off, the radio kept transmitting, low and steady.
The antenna glowed faintly green.
I logged the event as uncontrolled field emission, sealed the equipment, and placed it in Cold Room 3 alongside previous Marrow Creek artifacts.
Temperature stable. Signal quiet.
I should have left it there.
But the hum followed me up the stairwell.
By the time I reached my office, I could hear it through the vents — a pulse just below hearing, patient, familiar.
I thought of the orchard then.
The rows beneath the water.
And the voice that spoke before I did.
I turned on the recorder again, meaning to document the phenomenon.
Instead, I heard breathing on the line.
Not mine.
> “…weather’s changing…”
I left it running.
When I came back hours later, the reels were still turning — though the power light was off.
The hum hadn’t stopped.
It had just learned to wait.
---
**[End of recovered material]**
*Timestamp correlation: 22:22:46 / Field Source WMC-22 / Finch Archive Integrity Log 1022B*