Farah Rishi - I Hope You Get This Message

Adeem shuddered. He wouldn’t even be surprised. Based on what he’d heard on the radio, the world was going nuts : almost a hundred people had gathered in front of the Vatican and threatened a mass suicide, to coincide with the day the decision was to be rendered on Alma. NATO had called an emergency meeting in Brussels. Roads across the country completely backed up by evacuations to rural areas. Several billionaires from Saudi Arabia were preparing to launch their personal spacecraft to Mars—their way of trying to escape judgment day, he guessed.

At least school was canceled until further notice—a small silver lining in the storm cloud of imminent, planet-wide extermination. Adeem’s father, exhausted after a record forty hours at the hospital, had slept almost until noon, when Adeem’s mom finally got back from an extra-long board meeting at the mosque. Later, with reports of grocery shortages and continued riots, and rumors of blackouts to come, Adeem’s parents had hurriedly left for a grocery store on the other side of Carson City that was supposedly protecting its stock with armed guards.

While they were gone, Adeem had locked himself in the upstairs library, where Dad had let him set up his radio transceiver station. He’d last been listening to a report of the sudden increase in violence—specifically, violence targeting Muslim communities. Three prominent West Coast mosques had burned down, the target of fanatical arsonists who believed that the end of days was here—and that Muslims had brought it.

He braced himself.

“The end is nigh!” a breathless and sweaty Derek blurted when he opened the door. At least, Adeem was 98 percent sure it was him; he was gripping a baseball bat, even though he definitely did not play baseball, and his face was hidden underneath the dark motorcycle helmet Derek had spray-painted gold for their Daft Punk Halloween costume last year. Behind him, his bike lay forgotten on the front yard, as though he had thrown himself off the moment he saw Adeem’s house. His brothers must have taken his car again. “Nigh as hell ! And I haven’t even told Mia Jimenez I like her yet!”

Derek had been crushing on Mia Jimenez—a junior and the current president of the Video Game Club—since day one of their freshman year. She was also why Derek had agreed to help Adeem made the art for their video games in the first place. Babes love video games , he’d reasoned.

Adeem pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses and let out a long sigh of relief. “Why can’t you text me before you show up, like a normal person?”

Derek peeled off his Daft Punk helmet. “And the worst part is,” he continued, pushing past Adeem into the house, “she’s already on the road to Houston with the rest of her family, and I don’t even have her number.” He set his baseball bat down and collapsed onto the couch. “What if she gets hurt? I mean, even my dad’s freaking out. He got punched out at Walmart trying to buy one of the last spare tires. Then he tried to make me wear my brother’s Dragon Age warrior cosplay in case someone wanted to mug me for my bike. He almost didn’t let me come at all. It’s bad out there.”

A sudden chill bit at Adeem’s arms. He was starting to think now was the time to get better about praying. “Wait, what ? Is your dad okay?”

“He’s fine now, but I am worried about Mia. Do you think I should call the fire department in Houston, maybe ask them to find her?”

“Riiight, because I’m sure the fire department has time for that now.”

“I could tell them it’s an emergency,” Derek whined. “Tell them my heart’s on fire.”

“Gross.”

Derek flung his helmet at him, and Adeem barely dodged in time. It landed with a loud clack on the rug.

“ Not helpful. Can’t you and your fancy-ass radios project a message of love to every town until she hears me?”

Adeem folded his arms across his chest. “It doesn’t work like that. Besides, even if it did , your message would only get lost in the chatter.”

Derek suddenly stood. “What do you mean?”

Adeem led Derek through the upstairs hall, past Leyla’s closed-off room. The library seemed to hum with life, as if with the buzz of electricity. The walls were lined by bookshelves filled with Quranic translations and Urdu poetry—minus Leyla’s favorite book of poetry, which she’d taken with her. His school backpack, covered in anime and NASA-themed pins, was shoved in a corner, forgotten; he’d never been good about doing homework, but he figured he wouldn’t need to worry about that anymore. On the leather-topped office desk that sat at the back of the library, Adeem had left his equipment: a portable Tecsun shortwave radio, one of three he bought over the years on his allowance, still on. A notebook filled with frequencies and locations written in his tiny scrawl. A pair of tangerine-orange headphones—Derek picked these up, admiring them. Adeem’s laptop, covered in game decals. Neatly folded strands of coax cables. And the chipped Philco radio, a sight that always caused a dull ache in Adeem’s chest, but he couldn’t bear to put it away.

Derek plopped into a chair. “She wouldn’t listen to the radio, anyway. She’s probably listening to the Legend of Zelda soundtrack on repeat. God, I love her.”

“So you’ve said,” said Adeem, pulling his laptop toward him.

He’d created an algorithm that cycled through various frequencies and recorded them 24/7 to his laptop. Usually, the recordings were just robotic-voiced numbers and static, sometimes old, tinny music from the ’40s. But in the past few days, dead radio channels were suddenly crackling to life. Since NASA had translated the message from Alma, people were using the dead channels to broadcast prerecorded messages and local news reports to each other. A scattering of stars flickering back to life.

All day, he’d gotten lost in the sound. Listening to the messages was cathartic, captivating, even, a front-row seat to the world’s slow unraveling. Strings of code, waves of voice: they were one and the same. Full of hidden meaning, if you cared to look deep enough. After tearing out the USB connecting the radio to his laptop, Adeem shifted the screen toward Derek. With a double click, the audio file he’d downloaded earlier opened, and he fast-forwarded the cursor to the spots where the audio spiked.

10:33 a.m. at 1610 kHz: “Code 10-33. I’ve arrived at the scene and we’ve got armed suspects, mass attempted suicides. I’m trying to get in, but—”

Derek’s breath stilled. Adeem shifted frequencies with a click.

11:42 p.m. at 6125 kHz: “Algunos han dicho que el Papa planea declarar un estado de emergencia para toda la humanidad…”

1:04 p.m. at 6950 kHz: “Alma: Friends or foe? And does it matter? We’re lucky to have Keith Maloney, formerly an astrophysicist at SETI, here to give insight into the seemingly impossible technology necessary for Alma to have sent their message…”

4:17 p.m. at 9478 kHz: “In these approaching dark times, we invite you to shine the mighty light of the Gospel on your heart and keep America in your prayers…”

6:21 p.m. at 9565 kHz: “Officials from China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States will be meeting tomorrow to strategize ballistic missile defense systems in place in preparation for invasion…”

“What is this?” asked Derek.

Adeem paused the file. “Radio broadcasts—stuff you won’t hear on the news. Not yet, at least.” He stretched his arms over his head, and his shoulders popped gratefully. “This is just what I’ve picked up in the past couple hours. Haven’t even cycled through it all yet.”