For four days I answered each night. I could not stop. The call from the empty frequency was clear each night, and I ceased to call the laying of my hand on the key a duty. Each time I answered, my name arrived in the reply, resolved clear. And on the fourth night, I knew one thing.
The dispatches that had been transmitted with tomorrow's date were now going out from my own hand.
From when, I could not place. The hand that struck the key was transmitting, with tomorrow's date, the mainland relay's scheduled traffic for tomorrow — the traffic not yet come. I had been the one who copied it down; now I was the one who sent it. The caller who had called from the empty frequency had been, all along, myself. The me of a day not yet come, calling the me of yesterday who had not yet received it.
The callsign struck from the Bureau register by the censor's ink, I recognized at last. It was not another station's. It was my station's callsign — the very callsign that would be entered, struck out by the censor, in the next operator's register.
My predecessor too had once answered. That is why he called from the empty frequency — to me, who would be posted to the place he had left. "Copy it down, but do not answer." That one line was a warning, and a regret, and also a call. He knew I would answer. Because he himself had once answered. We were not operators posted in turn to the same place. We were one caller, calling in turn from the empty frequency.
That Latin on the brass front panel stood in my mind the whole time I struck the key.
That which does not sound is heard.That which does not sound is heard. I know the sentence now. The current that had flowed without a carrier was not a dispatch I had not sent. It was a dispatch not yet sent. Between transmitting and receiving there is a gap of time, and in that gap, the thing before it sounds is heard first. I had entered that gap. Within the empty frequency, between yesterday and tomorrow.
I laid my hand on the key. I struck the last dispatch I would send. It was for the next operator — for those who come after. The dots and dashes went out clear. But the code that left my hand scattered into a single group that bound into no word. It was no alphabet. Even I who sent it could not read what I sent.
██ ████ █ ███ — JL2█ ███.The current meter needle did not return to zero. Quietly, stopped at a place that was not zero, it trembled in time with my transmitting. There was no carrier. Yet something, unbroken, was flowing through me — toward a day not yet come.
The next one will receive my call. And my one line with it — copy it down, but do not answer. He will answer. Because I did. Then he too becomes a caller. On the empty frequency there is always one person — between yesterday and tomorrow, sending what has not been sent.The sentence stops there. After it, only blank leaves remain in the log.