by Phil Temples
Hear it? No, of course you don’t. That’s because it’s in my head. I’m not crazy or hallucinating. It’s the damned tinnitus! But with a new twist.
I’ve had this ringing in my ears for as long as I can remember. Normally I just live with it. I tune it out. But something has changed over the past day or two. Instead of a continuous, high-pitched tone at the upper limit of my hearing range, now I hear irregular patterns. Almost like dots and dashes. Yeah. That’s it! Morse code.
I described it to my neighbor, Sawyer. He’s a ham operator.
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“Yup, sounds like you’re hearin’ Morse code, Jeb. Sometimes people have reported hearing code from the fillings in their teeth. Or metal objects in their body. I’m told it’s got something to do with different layers of metal rectifying the signals from over the airwaves. But I’ve never heard of anyone picking up radio signals through their busted hair cells. Can you pick up anything else on those ears—like music?”
I shake my head.
Sawyer pauses for a moment to light his pipe. He takes a few sips of the smoke into his mouth. Then he says, “Well, it ain’t comin’ from me. I’ve haven’t touched a telegraph key now goin’ on three years. I only use a microphone to talk.” He pauses for a second. “Well, that ain’t completely true. Sometimes I use my computer to make contacts using that new-fangled FT8 digital mode. It makes really ‘loopy’ noises. It’s kinda hard to describe. You know? Wanna hear some FT8 digital on my radio?”
“No thanks, Sawyer.”
“You sure? It’s pretty wild stuff.”
I’m beginning to feel desperate. “You gotta help me, man! It’s awful! Tinnitus is one thing—I’ve had that for years. But these ‘dit-dit-dah-dits’ are driving me crazy. I can’t get any sleep!”
“I got an idea, Jeb. Why don’t you write down the dots and dashes on this piece of paper? I might be able to decode some of it, then perhaps we could figure out where it’s coming from.”
I quickly grab a pencil and a pad of paper from him and start concentrating. The patterns are there in my mind. I start to make lines and dots on the paper but it’s quite challenging. The dots and dashes are coming fast. I catch a dot here, and a dash there. I put the pad of paper down in frustration but Sawyer encourages me to keep trying. Just write down whatever you catch and don’t worry about what you miss. You’ll get the hang of it soon, he tells me.
Darned if he isn’t right. After fifteen to twenty minutes of writing meaningless patterns, it feels like I’ve strung together a solid thirty seconds of dots and dashes on paper. Sawyer smiles and nods to me. He takes the notepad and starts to write letters and numbers underneath my hen scratching.
“Hm,” he says almost to himself. “Trick is to separate them out into actual letters and words…”
Sawyer fiddles with the information. He erases a character and writes a new one. Then he shakes his head and erases more letters and writes in replacements. He does this for almost five minutes. Finally, he puts down the pencil and pad and turns to me with a puzzled expression.
“What is it?”
“Damndest thing I’ve ever read.” Sawyer scratches his head as he shows me the sheet.
“Do you know a guy by the name of Prince Adebayo? He says he’s got $5 million in a Nigerian bank account, and you’re just the guy to transfer it into a US bank account for him.”
Category: Featured, Short Story