NUMBERS

          When I was younger, my father used to have a huge, complex looking radio on top of the table in his study. I loved listening along as he made his way through the various stations, always trying to get the sound as crisp as he possibly could.  It was amusing to me, listening to the people at the other end of the signal. Being a child, it was almost like magic to me. I don’t know if it is like this for all children growing up, but for some reason, I was extremely infatuated with listening to the words of someone I couldn’t see, and imagining what they’d look like, what they’d act like, all by the impression I was left with by the sound of their voice. However, this was not my favorite part of listening along with my dad.

          The blank stations. I loved those so much. Nobody talking, nobody doing anything, just ominous sounds, screeching steel and electronic sparks. It was almost like somebody was playing with an analog synthesizer and broadcasting it to us. I never knew exactly what these sounds were, but they calmed me. They actually relaxed me so much that I would frequently fall asleep to them, only to wake up the next morning after my father had tucked me into bed feeling unusually refreshed, and ready to go about doing whatever childhood activities my dad had planned for me to embark on that day.

          But one day, my dad started acting a little bit weird. He refused to let me go into his study with him anymore, and no matter how much I begged, or how much I stomped around the house, he just wouldn’t let me in. I missed the radio the second I was told I couldn’t listen to it anymore. Why would he do this to me? It wasn’t like anybody was saying anything profane over the broadcasts. To me, a radio was something completely harmless, and I saw no purpose for his sudden decision to stop me from listening to it.

          I asked every day after school if he would let me listen, even just for a few minutes. I told him how much I loved it, and how happy I would be to hear it again, but still, he refused.  I noticed that he was beginning to spend more and more time within the walls of his study, hour after hour, I would peek from the living room couch at the door hoping it would open, but it never did. He was still in there. I became jealous of my father. He gets to spend all of this time, listening to the radio, so why couldn’t I?

        I couldn’t take it anymore. A few weeks later my father left me home with a babysitter. While she was on the phone, I tiptoed toward the door to my father’s study. My little heart was racing with excitement as I put my hand on the door knob. It took effort, but after trying a few times, I was able to get it open.

          To my surprise, my dad was sitting in the chair in front of the radio. I was so confused; I didn’t know how to react to my discovery. Then I realized it.

          He had hired a baby sitter to watch me so he could spend more time listening to the radio. He began to yell at me, and for the first time in my life I was deathly afraid of my father. He asked me if I knew what privacy was, and continued to scold me until he was all out of energy and finally asked the baby sitter to put me to bed.

          I couldn’t sleep that night. I was scared that my dad would come in and yell at me again, and to me, that was worse than any monster that could be hiding in my closet or under my bed. But then I started to think about the radio again. I thought about how the sounds of the stations put me to sleep, and that gave me an idea.

        Maybe if I was able to get into his room again, I could listen to those stations I loved so much until the sounds of mysterious electronics lulled me to sleep.

          I peeked into my father’s bedroom, and he was sound asleep. I snuck to the door of his study again, and opened it. The room looked a lot messier than I had remembered. Papers were scattered everywhere, and the space seemed to develop a strange smell, like that of someone who hadn’t bathed for a few days.

           But there it was, right where I had remembered it being. I walked up to his desk and pulled myself up onto the chair, staring right into the face of my dearly missed machine. It looked so much more beautiful up close. Gleaming metallic knobs and switches reflected my smiling face, and I just couldn’t wait to power it up and hear what I had been craving to hear for weeks now.

          I remembered that my father hit a big red button to turn it on, and as I looked around his desk for where it could be, I noticed something. Countless papers strewn about, all containing numbers and letters that made absolutely no sense to my observing eyes.  I brushed it off as nonsense, because as a child, it meant nothing to me.

          I found the button.

          A cool shiver ran down my back as I anticipated pressing it and hearing the smooth tones of the radio.

          As soon as I pressed it, I jumped off of the chair and hid my head between my knees on the floor. These weren’t the sounds I heard before; they were dark, loud, and nothing like what I had expected.

          My father came running downstairs and turned it off as quickly as he could. He then looked at me, and even though I was expecting him to yell again, he remained silent. He just stared, and I couldn’t tell if he was sad, angry, or just annoyed at the fact that I woke him up. We stood like this for a few minutes, until he finally said, in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper.

          “Now they are going to come for you, too.”