The crimson glow from the request bank painted the mahogany console in the color of fresh arterial blood.
Above the center meters, the neon glass tubes hummed a low, venomous sixty-cycle buzz:
ON AIR -- NIGHT HARBOR REQUEST HOUR FCC PUBLIC SERVICE CALL-IN WINDOW: 01:30 TO 02:00 AM
Clara Vance gripped the edge of the call-screening desk.
Beside her left hand, five frosted glass bezels--Lines Two, Three, Four, Five, and Six--were flashing at three pulses per second. Each red pulse was accompanied by the sharp mechanical rattle of the line relays firing behind the wall.
Clack-clack-clack-clack.
Only Line One remained still, burning with that steady, quiet green lamp that held their father’s pocket watch on studio hold. Through Clara’s left earpiece, the sixty-beat-per-minute tick of Thomas Vance’s 1946 Elgin watch continued without missing a stroke. It was a cold, tiny heartbeat in the dark, reminding her that behind thirty miles of harbor copper, someone was standing guard.
“Five incoming calls,” Clara said, her voice dropping low into her headset. “Every single copper trunk on the city cable just lit up at once.”
