Whispers in the Static"

Whispers in the Static

by Ahmar Khattak

The solar storm hit Earth in the early hours of a Thursday morning, cloaking the skies in a curtain of aurora that reached as far south as Texas. To most, it was a dazzling light show. To James Carver, retired electrical engineer and lifelong ham radio hobbyist, it was a gift.

He hadn’t touched his radio in months, not since the accident that took his wife, Ellen. But something about the storm called to him. Maybe it was the way the house felt too quiet, or maybe it was the guilt in letting her old voice fall silent—she used to sit by him while he tuned into late-night frequencies, sipping coffee and joking about alien signals.

So, when the auroras danced above his Idaho cabin, James powered up his battered Yaesu FT-101ZD, expecting static, maybe the crackle of ionospheric noise. What he got instead was... a voice.

“—repeat, Zone 9 under blockade. All civilian movement restricted. Report all dissenters to your local Coordination Post. The Resistance grows. Do not trust even family.”

James froze. The signal was faint, garbled, like it had traveled too far to be clear. But the voice—female, firm, with a clipped military cadence—sent shivers down his spine.

He scribbled down the frequency. 14.207 MHz. He tried triangulating, but the signal made no sense—it was strong, then weak, shifting with a rhythm he couldn’t explain. It wasn’t just interference. It felt... off.

Over the next few days, James couldn’t pull himself away. Every night, the same strange signal. Different broadcasts. They all spoke of a world that seemed eerily like his, but not quite. Familiar city names—Boston, Seattle, Detroit—but wrapped in unfamiliar circumstances.

“Citizens of the Eastern Bloc,” one voice said on a Saturday evening, “you are not alone. The tyrants in the Capitol fear us. Continue the strikes. Power must be reclaimed.”

The Capitol? Not Washington, D.C.—just the Capitol.

He dug deeper, recording the broadcasts. Analyzing the voices. He realized quickly: this wasn’t foreign propaganda. It wasn’t some elaborate prank. These people were talking about places, events, even technologies eerily parallel to his own. But their history had taken a darker turn.

There had been no World War II victory. Fascism hadn’t been crushed. It had morphed, adapted, and conquered from within. The United States, as he knew it, had fractured sometime in the 1960s. Surveillance was universal. Resistance was met with public execution. Dissent, even in thought, was criminal.

The messages weren’t directed at anyone in particular. They were like pirate radio broadcasts—fragmented pleas, calls to action, desperate reassurances.

James sat by the fire one evening, listening to a woman talk about a failed rebellion in "Pacific Sector 3." She sounded exhausted, her voice breaking as she read names of the dead.

He shut off the radio, hands trembling.

He couldn’t sleep that night. Should he try to contact them?

Every instinct screamed no. There were too many unknowns. What if the transmission was one-way? What if they weren't real at all? What if—God forbid—he made contact and caused more harm than good?

But another part of him, the part that had fixed things his whole life—the part that couldn’t let people suffer in silence—urged him otherwise.

He dusted off his microphone.

"Testing... This is K7JLC calling out. I hear you. I don’t know where you are, but... I want to help. I’m from another Earth. If you can hear me, please respond.”

He waited.

Nothing.

The next day, he tried again. And again.

Then, on the fourth night, a crackle broke through the static. Then a voice.

“…repeat, received your message. You say... another Earth? Prove it. What’s the outcome of the 1984 uprising in Atlanta?”

James swallowed hard. There was no uprising in his Atlanta. Not in 1984. Not ever.

He responded carefully. “No uprising here. In my world, the Cold War ended peacefully. Our government is far from perfect, but... we’re free.”

A long pause.

Then: “How did you get our signal?”

“I don’t know. Solar storm. My radio lit up. I just started listening.”

Silence again. Then, finally:

“You’re a threat to them now. They’ll find the signal path. They always do. Don’t reply again. But thank you. Just knowing... there's a world where we won... It means everything.”

The line went dead.

James stared at the radio for hours.

He could have stopped then. But he didn’t. He kept listening. Night after night. Even though no one ever spoke again. Even though the static had returned to normal. He couldn’t let it go.

He made tapes. Wrote transcripts. Uploaded them anonymously to online forums. Most dismissed him as delusional. A few believed. One amateur physicist reached out, asking if he'd measured the exact conditions of the solar storm.

He had.

Together, they tried recreating the moment. To no avail.

Years passed. James grew older. The radio grew quieter. But he still waited—still hoped—that maybe one day, when the sky lit up again, the whispers in the static would return.

And if they did, he’d be ready.