There wasn't a New Gehesran anymore. Three years ago, the renaming had become official, in a municipal whirlwind of new-printed signage and digital batch-edits, but the people who'd packed themselves into refugee ships when the final city domes fell knew that New Gehesran had ceased to exist well before that. They had been the last to fight, the last to hold out hope; if they, too, had been forced to leave New Gehesran, then it was a certainty that New Gehesran was dead.
And yet here was Tir, idly flipping through channels on the speaker for anything that wasn’t Zeseran bubblegum, and here were the words, crackling but clearly distinguishable: “This is New Gehesran calling.”
The voice was jazzy, smooth, evenly paced –just like any other broadcaster on air, just as if they weren’t calling up a ghost. “This is New Gehesran calling, so don't change the channel, because we're bringing you the freshest tunes, hottest issues, furious debates, plus! Special tonight! Did you lose track of someone during evac? Make sure not to miss our twelve-step guide to short-cut you through your search —”
It was only then that Tir shouted out, “Get in here! Everyone get in here and listen to this!”
Their intrasolar doublewide unit was barely bigger than a six-stall barn, and a raised voice carried all the way to the back of the ship. It didn't take long for Tir's mother, father, younger sister, aunt and three cousins to all cram themselves into the front cockpit with Tir.
By the time they were all settled, the opening broadcaster had yielded the airwaves to a quartet of musicians, who were only moderately good. “You got us all up from what we were doing to listen to the hurdy-gurdy?” complained Tir’s aunt. “If you wanted us to listen so bad you could've just sent it to overhead. I was two grommets away from being done with Suki's new shoes.”
“Yes,” said Tir, “I'm sorry, but there was someone talking a moment ago, and he said –
“Listen,” said Tir's mother suddenly. “Listen, do you hear what they're playing?”
“It's that damn hurdy-bop version of the anthem,” said Tir's father, irritably, and then they all fell silent, and looked at each other.
They had all heard the partisan anthem recently enough. It was of course illegal to play it anywhere on the planet that had once held New Gehesran. But they were nowhere near that planet –would never go back to that planet— and in the privacy of their own intrasolar nobody could tell them what to sing or not to sing. Anyway, Zeseran authorities sometimes played the song during their fundraising events for Gehesran refugees, which Tir's mother listened to religiously. And Tir’s aunt would sing sometimes in the shower, which also was where she cried.
But when they played it at fundraising events it was a dead song, a haunting. It sounded hollow and melancholy in the ears, and tasted like ash in the mouth.
On the radio it was not like this at all. Nobody cried, hearing the music on the radio –and there was not a time that they'd heard the anthem in the past three years that somebody in the intrasolar hadn't cried.
Once, the best musicians in New Gehesran had all recorded versions of the partisan anthem. The players in this particular quartet had gotten no better since the beginning of the song, but their enthusiasm couldn't be denied. Listening to the hurdy-gurdy bounce its way energetically up and down the octave, Tir now found himself fighting the urge to laugh.
While the quartet played –played like they were enjoying themselves, like they knew they were ridiculous, like they fully expected their older listeners to get annoyed with the frivolity of the musical arrangement and turn the radio to another channel where they could hear classical Gehesrana harmonies –for those three and a half minutes, it was impossible to believe that New Gehesran was dead.
After that first hour, Tir and his family scoured the regularly transmitted schedules, but they couldn't find any sign of a listing for the program that they'd heard. When they tried the same channel the next day, there was nothing on but static. Tir's mother said it was a blessing to have had it only once, and Tir’s aunt was convinced it was some kind of collective hallucination, but Tir persevered, cycling repeatedly through back-channels of obscure vanity programming and long-wave spacer traffic updates until everyone else in the doublewide was sick to death of it. Over the next few weeks, his determination was rewarded with twenty minutes of G-pop, two fragments of religious debate in distinctive Gehesrani accents, and one full, glorious program, announced by the same rich voice: “This is New Gehesran calling!”
With this new information in hand, Tir sat down with his cousin Suki, who was good with numbers and puzzles. The program, they decided, was probably aired on a 37-hour Petivian orbit cycle, and rotated through three little-used channels on the high end of the radio spectrum. Maybe. If they'd guessed right.
Fifteen hours and twenty-three minutes later, Tir and Suki carefully tuned the transmitter, and waited with bated breath.
“Don't forget to tune in next time,” said the jazzy voice of the broadcaster –Tir had only heard it three times now, but felt at this point that he would recognize it in his bones –“and thanks for listening! This is New Gehesran, signing off.”
There was an audible click, followed by several minutes of static. Eventually, a teenaged voice came on and howled, “This is the music that your uncles don't want you to hear!”
Tir clicked off the transmitter, cutting off the scratchy wails of censored Zesaran ska before his parents or Aunt Ruti could notice any obscenities. He looked at Suki, and Suki looked at her calculations. “We were only off by an hour,” she said. “It'll be around again soon.”
And it was.
After that, they didn't miss a broadcast.
• • • •
“I can’t believe he’s not here yet! I cannot believe –”
“Good,” said Ereni, without looking up from her soldering. “I told you we shouldn't have programmed him. Not only is the man an unrepentant militarist, he’s got the worst voice that I've ever heard. If he doesn’t make it, you should count yourself lucky and take the day off.”
Viana balled up her call-slip and threw it. It bounced off Ereni’s shoulder and landed in the middle of the nest of switches and wires that served them as a soundboard, and Ereni let out a shout and spun around. “Vi! The amplifier has been hanging by a thread —”
“What does that matter if there’s nothing to amplify?”
“There’s four other segments to the show today besides your precious interview, Viana, so in fact it does actually very much matter!”
Geti's voice crackled over the overhead. “We're live in five, people. Live in five. Has everyone's mic been tested?”
“We're talking about the last surviving major ranking member of the Gehesran military here,” hissed Viana. “You know how difficult it is for him to travel interstellar! I can't believe you're not taking this seriously –”
“Yes, well, I’m a little more worried about the fact that we’re live in five—four-and-a-half—and we still don't know if Brun's mic is going to decide to work today –”
“What if his ship was boarded, or he was captured by the Luxians –that’s ten minutes of dead air! What are we going to do!”
“Vi!” Lor came pounding down the corridor and slammed through the room. “The General's just landed –sounds like they had some trouble but were able to slip away. Suti's just getting him set up with his mic now –”
“Well, thank every god!” said Viana, and dove back down the corridor after Lor.
“Live in three,” announced Geti's voice, wildly distorted by the overhead, and Ereni spat out a curse and bent back over the soundboard. She pressed another button and called, “Brun —”
Brun's voice came through the speaker. “The mic’s working fine. Just make sure to get Viana and the General ready.”
“I would, if —”
“Two minutes!” said Geti.
Viana came gliding back into the room, all composure. “Sir, if you'll please follow me through here so Ereni can test your mic —”
“Where'd you get all this tech?” demanded the General, looking around the control room greedily. “I thought you were an underground operation? What I couldn't have done with three of these speakers —”
“General, please, time is very short, and —”
“One minute!” shouted Geti. “Everyone ready!” Viana and Ereni exchanged anguished looks, for once in perfect accord. There was no way now to try to balance the sound to flatter the General's reedy, aging voice.
Viana took a deep breath, and turned to the General. “Please, sir,” she said, “people are waiting to hear from you.”
Her voice throbbed with emotion. Ereni waited to roll her eyes until the General had gone into the recording studio, and flipped the switch for Brun’s mic.
Brun’s voice rolled out, smooth and clear: “This is New Gehesran calling. This is New Gehesran calling, and today, have we got an exclusive! Stay tuned –”
“Listen –” Viana’s voice hissed over the mic into Ereni’s other ear. “Just make me sound as good as you can, and I’ll do the rest, all right?”
“Teach your grandmother,” muttered Ereni. She could make Viana sound good in her sleep.
• • • •
Andia had been cleaning dishes, only half-listening to the broadcast over the noise of the air-jet, when she heard Viana saBrihesi’s voice and dove back to turn the sound up high.
“–so appreciative that you braved the risk to be here with us today,” said Viana, warmly. “What a narrow escape! Listen, I’m breathless just from hearing about it.” She didn’t sound breathless. She sounded golden, as she always did, the purring rhotics and liquid laterals of her North Gessie accent pouring into Andia’s ears like a lullaby. “We don’t have much time left,” she went on, “so is there anything else you’d like to say to our listeners?”
The answering voice began to spout some of the usual clichés about strength, pride and suffering; whoever it was sounded a little wheezy, but Andia supposed that whatever near escape they’d been discussing would take the wind out of you. She wished she’d caught the speaker’s name. Many of the Gehesrani officials who turned up on Viana saBrihesi’s interview segment sounded more or less the same to Andia, but her grandmother would want to know.
Andia’s grandmother lived in a Savatican retirement community and didn’t know how to jailbreak her radio to get anything besides the ten locally approved channels. It was Andia’s sister who had heard about the show from a friend of hers and had suggested to Andia that they take turns listening and writing their grandmother about whatever news they heard. It would be a nice thing to do, a way to have something to talk about with her and assure her that they hadn’t completely forgotten their Gehesrani roots.
Andia hadn’t wanted to do it. A 37-hour Petivian orbit cycle was a wildly inconvenient thing to schedule around, and jailbreaking her radio voided the warranty. It was with more resentment than anything else that she’d tuned in for the first broadcast, at four in the morning local time, after her sister had helpfully come over the night before to set the radio and also Andia’s alarm.
Perhaps the early hour was to blame for the fact that she’d heard Viana saBrihesi interviewing some Gehesrani dancer and fallen instantly in love.
When Andia was thirteen, just before they emigrated, a North Gessie girl had switched into their school. She’d had long dark hair and bright-colored eyebrow rings, and her voice had made Andia’s heart start thundering whenever she heard it. The week before Andia and her family left for Savatica, riding ahead of the first rumblings of disaster, Andia had mustered up all her courage and asked if she could show her around town.
The girl –who’d been quick to make friends, and must have already seen most of the places that Andia wanted to take her –had laughed her beautiful laugh, and said that Andia could. All through the evening, she’d said charming things to Andia in her warm, liquid voice, and asked her questions about her favorite places, while Andia flipped violently between feeling desperately interesting and desperately stupid. When they stood in the park to admire the jesa-birds, Andia had wanted to kiss her, but even absolutely all her courage hadn’t quite been enough for that.
Andia had forgotten the girl’s name, in the decade and a half since. She’d almost forgotten the sound of a North Gessie accent, too. Savatica had been quick to limit immigration from New Gehesran once it became clear the crisis was serious, and North Gehesran had been a particularly partisan district, among the last to empty out.
If the girl whose name Andia had forgotten had survived the fall of New Gehesran, she was most likely in a Petivan refugee settlement right now, or orbiting Zesar in an intrasolar doublewide. She was almost certainly not conducting interviews with famous Gehesrani refugees on a pirate radio station somewhere out in contested space. Still, when Andia heard Viana saBrihesi speak, it pulled back the taste of the mint tea in her favorite West Gehesran cafe; the smell of greenery and asphalt in the park under the highway; the sound of the jesa-birds singing, and her heart flip-flopping wildly as she felt, almost, brave enough.
She wrote to her grandmother every week about the show now. She listened to all of it when she could, even the comedy segment; she often didn’t understand the jokes, but her grandmother could sometimes explain them to her, and liked to be asked.
But she didn’t tell either her grandmother or her sister about Viana’s voice. That was just for her, her own little piece of New Gehesran.
• • • •
“And then I always finish it off with a little grated astaron cheese,” said the first panelist, “for flavor and crunch.”
“Astaron cheese?” The second panelist scoffed. “There’s only four ingredients that belong in a poracake: flour, egg, dort-extract, and pora. Can’t skip any, can’t add any, or it’s not a real poracake.”
“Oh?” said the third panelist, frostily. “So my grandfather’s recipe, with honey instead of dort-extract –our own honey, made from our own bees –isn’t real poracake?”
“Nope,” said the second panelist.
The fourth panelist, at this point, decided to weigh in. “Honey is one thing, of course. Plenty of people keep bees, it’s a classic Gehesrani ingredient. But astaron cheese, oh dear, do you really think our ancestors could have gotten their hands on that?”
“All I know is I’ve always made it with astaron cheese,” said the first panelist, her voice rising, “and I always will make it with astaron cheese –”
“I’ve been substituting banana,” volunteered the fifth panelist, and all the others immediately turned on the new target with the air of carnivores scenting fresh meat.
“Substituting banana –”
“Taro is the closest if you’re going to substitute anything –”
“Four ingredients! Just the four! Anything else isn’t –”
Ereni, splayed across the soundboard and frantically riding the panelist’s mic controls to ensure the entire broadcast didn’t dissolve into a mess of hissing and static, wailed, “Lor, why did you think this was a good idea?”
“It was supposed to be a nice broadcast for the holiday,” said Lor, stunned. “Just some grandfolk trading traditional recipes…”
“Haven’t you got any grandfolk?” hissed Ereni, straining to reach the switch for the sixth panelist’s mic. “How could you not see this coming?”
“It was never like this when I worked with professionals!” Lor put his head in his hands. “We’ve got to get them out of there, they’re going to run right through the next segment –”
“Not to mention miss the safe-passage window to get out of the system,” said Geti, striding in briskly with Viana at their heels, “which means we’ll be stuck with them for another thirty-seven Petivan hours, no thank you.”
“You’ll be stuck with them,” said Ereni, and kicked the amplifier with her heel. “Anything that happens after the broadcast ends is officially not my problem.”
Viana shot Ereni a withering look. “Never mind,” she said, loftily, “I’ll deal with this.” Back straight, fearless, she strode towards the recording booth –
“WAIT!” screamed Ereni, and hastily adjusted the sound controls to compensate for the opening of the semi-soundproofed door –
–opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it calmly behind her.
Lor, Ereni, and Geti all stared after her.
“They look … like they’re getting calmer?” said Geti, tentatively.
“I knew it would be all right,” said Lor, with absolutely unjustified confidence. “Ereni, what are they saying?”
Ereni, listening on the earpiece, shook her head. “She’s got them eating out of the palm of her hand,” she said, half-admiring, half-disgusted, “as usual. Now they’re all agreeing on pora’s unique flavor qualities and its importance as a Gehesrani staple. Gods, that woman’s a menace!”
Through the makeshift plastic of the semi-soundproofed door, Viana turned, smiled, and flashed them an OK-hand.
• • • •
Diani was reading in the bedroom, trying to ignore the noise of Teren fixing the ventilation in the engine room, when something wafted past her from the kitchen. Her nose twitched, then twitched again, as she tried to isolate whatever it was from the smells of engine fuel and heated metal and too-small living quarters –and then she jumped up from her seat, letting the pad she’d been reading drop behind her, and ran the few steps to the kitchen.
“Poracake!” she announced, triumphantly, and swung herself up to sit on the tiny countertop.
Nir glanced over their shoulder. There was green batter spattered on their cheekbone and over their eyebrow. “You’re cutting significantly into my prep space here.”
“Live with it,” said Diani.
“Don’t get too excited. It won’t be ready for hours. The batter’s got to go through its first rise –”
“Sure, I remember. It’s only been a few years.” Diani reached out with one finger and swiped some of the batter off of Nir’s cheek; Nir snorted and batted her hand away. Undaunted, Diani stuck her finger in her mouth to lick the batter off. “Mm. So what’s the special occasion?”
“No occasion,” said Nir, and flushed “I just thought it would be nice.”
Diani squinted suspiciously at them, and then began to tick things off. “It’s not a holiday –not our anniversary –not your anniversary with Teren, not my anniversary with Teren –”
“It’s really not!” said Nir, thoroughly red now. “It’s not anything, honestly. It’s just –you know, we haven’t been able to get dort-root since we left, and how can you make poracake without dort-root?”
Diani nodded sagely, and swiped another finger’s worth of batter.
“Only, on the show just now, someone was saying they used honey and I thought … well, we might not have dort-root, but we’ve got honey, and –it felt like, if that old gran said it was all right, then it felt a little like getting permission? Like not having the dort-root didn’t matter as much. You know.”
Diani looked at them. “Nir –”
“My gramps always said dort-root makes it too sweet anyway,” called a voice from the engine room.
“Teren!” said Diani. “Excuse you! We were having a moment!”
Undaunted, Teren continued, “My gramps always used condensed galactose.”
“I’m making a really incredible face at learning this information,” Diani shouted back, “and it’s very frustrating to me that you can’t see it right now. Condensed galactose! Trust a northerner!”
“So go show Teren your face then,” said Nir, “and give me back my counter. I’m going to need it.” They pitched their own voice to carry. “And Teren, I’m going to make honey poracake like that nice gran said, and you’re going to eat it! And you’re going to like it!”
The booming sound of Teren’s laugh bounced through all the pipes and vents in the intrasolar doublewide. “Yeah,” she said. “I know.”
• • • •
“Ereni,” said Viana, sticking her head into the recording studio. When this got no response, she pushed the plastic door open and came in. “You didn’t fall asleep in here, did you?”
Ereni didn’t look up from the cables she was twisting together. “What do you want?”
Viana came further into the room. “How long have you been trying to fix that mic?”
“More importantly,” said Ereni, “how long do I have until the mic has to be fixed? Since you ask: eleven Petivan hours and twenty-three minutes exactly, and if doesn’t work by then you and Brun will have to share for the next show, which might perhaps suggest to you that it isn’t a good time -”
“We would make do if necessary,” said Viana, magnanimously. “The show must go on, you know.”
Ereni shot her an incredulous look from bloodshot eyes.
Viana sighed, and delicately moved a coil of wire aside with her foot. “I knew you’d be awake,” she said, “and I needed to talk to somebody. I’ve had an offer.”
“How exciting for you,” said Ereni.
“It’s the General,” said Viana. “Apparently we’ve inspired him. He wants me to come and help him with managing communications on Zesar.”
Ereni paused, thin red and yellow wires caught between her fingers; then she laughed and set them down. “I really must have made you sound good that day.”
“Well, you always do,” said Viana, matter-of-factly.
“What communications has he even got to manage? I thought he was in hiding.”
“The Zesarans want to trot him out for a propaganda tour, apparently. Balm the souls of restless refugees, tweak the nose of the new government, you know.”
Ereni made a rude noise and turned back to her work.
“He really is an important person,” Viana informed the back of Ereni’s head. “Maybe not in and of himself, so much, but he’s what we’ve got left. He’s a symbol. And there’s thousands of Gehesrans on and around Zesar. Whatever their motives, the Zesarans are offering a guaranteed audience, a real opportunity for impact–”
“Working mics,” agreed Ereni. “A normal broadcast schedule. Regular meals. Piles of Zesaran money. I hope you have fun, it sounds wonderful.” She stuck the red wire back into position.
“Ereni,” said Viana, wounded.
“And if you did leave, I suppose Brun or Geti would have to do your interview segment, too, and then we would need one less mic, so that’s good news for me –”
“Ereni!”
“Look,” said Ereni. “I understand that you’re very important and in demand, but we both know you’re not going anywhere, you love this show more than most people love their children and it needs you more than most children need their parents. Go away and tell Lor about your offer when he wakes up. He’ll beg you to stay properly, it’ll be a balm to your ego.”
Viana blew air out her nose. “I don’t need my ego balmed.” She folded her arms and leaned back against the door of the recording-booth. “Of course I want to keep doing what we’re doing, I just don’t know that it’s right to. There’s a real opportunity being offered to me, with real resources. Are we just the doomed last stand all over again, shouting that we’re Gehesrani forever and pretending it means something? It’s all very well for us to call out, but if nobody’s listening –”
“Oh, gods,” said Ereni, “it’s the midnight maudlins.”
“Thanks,” said Viana, “that’s truly helpful. Thank you.” She turned and put a hand on the door.
Ereni looked at the set of her shoulders, and sighed. “Hang on.”
Viana glanced back at her, one eyebrow raised.
“Sorry,” said Ereni, and frowned back down at the disassembled microphone. “I’m tired. And no good at this. But –do you really need to hear people are listening? You know they are. We get the letters, sometimes –at least a third of the guests we invite have heard of us, and –and, you know, I’m listening. I’m always listening. I hear everything you all do. I’m Gehesrani too, aren’t I? I count, right?”
“Well,” said Viana, after a moment, “now if I say you don’t it will certainly make me sound a villain.”
“That’s was the point, of course,” said Ereni.
There was a pause, and then she rubbed her eyes with the back of her knuckles. “And now I’ve really desperately got to get back to working on this piece of shit, because, unlike some people, we don’t have any funding at all and we’re not going to get another one, so please will you leave before I murder you and ruin the whole show myself? Thank you. Goodnight, Vi.”
• • • •
“Tune in next time, and thanks for listening. This is New Gehesran, signing off.”
The copy-tape clicked, startlingly loud, and then whirred as it spun itself to its end.
“Well?” Tir crawled up next to Suki, who was wedged next to the radio in the back of the intrasolar doublewide. “Did it work? Did you get it all?”
Suki shoved him aside with her shoulder. “Lay off! Let me see.” Reverently, she detached the reel of copy-tape from the wires that connected it to the radio and moved it over to the playback deck she’d cobbled together from spare bits and parts. She unwound it from its spool and carefully threaded it through the assembly of guides and gears. Tir held his breath.
Suki pressed the rewind button. The copy-tape began to wind backwards. Tir, desperately impatient, slid his hand in below hers and hit ‘Play.’
“–the Zesaran government,” crackled Viana saBrihesi’s voice from the speakers –distorted, imperfect, but clearly audible. “We’ve already heard from the General, so for a counter-perspective, I’d like to welcome –”
Suki slammed the stop button. “Leave off! It’s not a real test unless we test the whole thing. Do you want to send Uncle Arker a bad copy? It’s not his fault his orbit’s got him on the wrong side of Zesar to catch half the shows.”
Tir waved an impatient hand. “It started dull today anyway. Who cares about the gardening segment?”
“Well, Uncle Arker for one,” said Suki. “Ma says he’s trying to get –oh, we’re at the beginning again. Moment of truth!”
She took a deep breath, reached down, and pressed play.
There was a click.
There was a hiss.
There was a terrible static sound, like something tearing, and Suki and Tir turned to look at each other, faces agonized –
And then the static resolved itself into a rich, jazzy voice. “This is New Gehesran calling!” said the tape, as Suki punched Tir’s arm in triumph, and Tir shouted along with it, slightly off time: “This is New Gehesran calling!”
• • • •
“Thank you once again, sir, for your fascinating insight on Petivan adoption of Gehesrani poetic forms.” Ereni saw Viana give the thumbs-up that signaled the end of an interview through the plastic door, and moved to switch off the poet’s mic. “Now,” Viana went on, “I know you’re all looking forward to the Geti baHeti comedy segment in just a few minutes, but first, the –”
Viana’s warm voice suddenly dissolved into static, and Ereni let out a string of profanity as she dove for the soundboard –but the mic was still coming in green, not showing any errors. She cursed again, reached for the transmitter, and looked up to see Lor storming down the corridor just as the static resolved, hissing and stuttering, into the sound of a voice:
“Hello? Is this the show, is this New Gehesran Calling?”
Ereni nearly dropped the transmitter.
“Hello?” crackled the voice again. “Hello? Sorry to bother, only I had just a few questions about that intrasolar gardening segment from last week –”
“Boost the frequency!” shouted Lor, now standing in front of her, windmilling his arms to make sure he caught her attention over the sound coming in through her headphones. “We’re being drowned!”
In the sound booth, Viana was still speaking; there was a line of confusion in her brows as she watched the chaos through the plastic, but she was, of course, a professional. Ereni reached out to tune the transmitter –and then, as the static swelled again, switched broadcast from Viana’s mic to her own before she could think better of it.
The static died. They were broadcasting once more.
“Sir!” she yelled, and heard the sound coming back to her over the headphones, tinny and harsh; she’d never learned to modulate her own voice for the airwaves. Her heart pounded in her ears. “What’s your name and your question?”
“What are you doing?” hissed Lor, as she recklessly spun the dial down again, rolling through that dreadful static on the way.
The voice crackled back: “I’m Arker baRahenna! I’ve been trying to grow dort-root in my engine room, but it just won’t thrive! I hoped if I told you how it was laid out, you might be able to sort out what’s gone wrong!”
The dial spun once more. “Well, sir,” Ereni shouted, watching Lor turning purple in front of her, “we won’t have our garden expert back until next month, and we’re running out of time right now –but call back, all right? Call back! I mean, not this way, please gods don’t do it this way, but we’ll tell you how –we’ll figure out how! Thanks for calling –thank you so much for calling –and now, back to the show!”
She switched to private, yelled, “Geti, you’re live!” and transferred the audio.
Then she flopped back into her chair and took several gasping breaths, as she attempted to bring her heart rate down to normal.
“Well,” said Lor. He shook his head, apparently at a loss for words. “Well.”
Viana, squinting through the plastic, had apparently decided that she’d waited long enough. She threw open the door, marched out, and demanded, “What was that all about?”
“Ereni,” said Lor, with the air of a person hanging onto his calm with both hands, “appears to be in the process of inventing us a new segment.”
“What?” Viana stared from one of them to the other. “What segment?” she demanded. “Whose time is it coming out of?”
“Viana will have to host,” Ereni told Lor. “Nobody can manage people like she does,”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Viana, plaintively.
“That was New Gehesran, Vi,” said Ereni. She looked from Viana, perfect brows arched high, to Lor, still slightly purple, and began to laugh. “That was New Gehesran calling back.”
Rebecca Fraimow is an author and archivist with a personal and professional fondness for community broadcasting. Rebecca's short fiction has previously appeared in venues such as PodCastle, Daily Science Fiction, The Fantasist, and Diabolical Plots.