What Passed Through

What Passed Through

Fragments from
an unnamed relay station attendant

Discovered by
Mara Levin, Aisha Rahman, & Lucía Torres

With care and reverence, these fragments are shared by Scott Bryant, at the request of Mara Levin,
Aisha Rahman, & Lucía Torres

I receive what arrives and pass it on.

The station does not ask me to decide what matters. It only asks that I listen closely enough not to alter anything by mistake. Most transmissions repeat. Some weaken. A few come through so often that they feel permanent, even when they aren’t.

I log them all the same.

When you spend enough time receiving messages, you start to notice what they carry besides information.

Not content. Shape.

I’ve heard versions of it before, spoken casually, without emphasis. That some movements continue only because no one interrupts them. That noticing is different from intervening. That things can exceed their usefulness long before they collapse.

No one ever stayed to make a point of it.

III

The night settles without incident.

The instruments hold steady. The lines behave. I wait longer than necessary because waiting is part of keeping things intact. Outside, the air feels occupied, though nothing has arrived that I can name.

I do not mark this.

I hear them first.

Not as sound exactly, but as arrangement — a rhythm passing across rather than toward. It doesn’t press against the building. It doesn’t disturb the lines. It moves as if the route already exists.

When I step outside, they are there.

They do not slow. They do not look around. They pass as if this point has always been accounted for.

Nothing else reacts. No alarms register. The world continues as usual.

As they move past the station, the sound adjusts — neither louder nor softer — only aligned. That is how I know they see me.

I don’t follow them.

They are not here to be watched. They are passing because something has reached its limit, and passing is what happens next. I’ve heard this shape before, in other words, from other mouths. The frequency fits.

When the air resumes its ordinary weight, I go back inside.

One transmission repeats.

It has repeated long enough that no one downstream expects it to stop. I do not forward it again. There is no urgency in this. It feels closer to correction than decision.

The system remains stable.

VII

The station stays quiet.

Nothing else arrives that requires attention. I stop listening for what no longer needs to pass.

The fragments end here.

Note: These fragments were found together and carry no name. They end without indicating what followed, and we did not agree on what may have happened afterward. Some of us felt the woman left the station; others found no trace of departure at all. One reader was reminded of an old song about riders crossing the sky; others felt the comparison didn’t quite fit. We’ve left the fragments as they are.