turning 06 · up the track · the highest point on the road
Turning 06, and as far as the road goes
The Repeater
A radio mast on the ridge, as far from everything as the road goes, and the easiest place on it to be reached.
At the very end of the road a track goes up, and at the top of it there is a ridge with a mast on it and a hut at the foot of the mast. Nothing up here is lit. The cloud above is, a little, from underneath: every lit thing on this road and the whole town past the last streetlight throws a glow up onto it, so from the ridge you see the mast, the hut and the hill as black shapes against a sky the colour of somewhere else’s light. Two small red lamps on the mast are the only lights of its own, and they do not blink.
A repeater is a radio station that listens on one frequency and sends what it hears straight back out on another, louder and from higher up, so that two people who could never reach each other directly can talk. It stands where nobody lives because that is where it can hear everybody.
Signal is a place too
This road has turnings for crowds and turnings for staying out late, and it has this one for wanting to be as far off as you can get. Far off is not the same as cut off. Our Shared-Signal Space entry names what a lot of us already live in:
The mode of connection carried by signal rather than proximity — a voice note, a thread, a call left open in the background, a message typed and read across distance.
Our Shared-Signal Space entry
For a great many Autistic, ADHD and otherwise neurodivergent people that is where connection comes easiest — away from the masking and the noise a room asks for — and the entry is careful to say it is not a stand-in for being in the same room. It is a mode in its own right, beside shared-air space rather than under it. The written word is a channel, not a lesser one; in the study our entry cites, by Howard and Sedgewick, phone calls came last among Autistic adults’ preferences and written channels came near the top. AAC is real communication, and so is a message that took a long time to send.
The shape of it has a name: the Autistic Rhizome, which DGH Neurodivergent Consultancy gave to the network of Autistic communities growing on Discord, and which Helen Edgar has written about at Autistic Realms. Connection that spreads sideways, with no single origin and no correct path, and online spaces that work like watering holes, where turning up is enough. Our entry puts the whole argument in six words, and they are painted on the door of the hut:
No mode sits at the top.
Our Shared-Signal Space entry
Leave the line open
One of the things on that entry’s list is a call kept open in the background while two people just exist near each other. So the hut has a line you can open and leave open. There is nobody on the other end. It is the quiet hiss of an open line and nothing else, made in your browser when you press the button, for keeping you company while you get on with something else. Nothing is fetched, nothing is sent, and nothing listens: the page never asks for your microphone and could not use one if it had it.
THE LINE IS CLOSED
A steady noise with no tone in it. It does not beep, pulse, fade in and out, or change on its own. The slider only goes as loud as a line left open in the background should.
The log
Radio operators send each other a card to confirm a contact happened. The log in this hut confirms that every kind of contact counts, and it keeps no count of any of them — no totals, no awards for how many, no list of who reached whom. These are the kinds it has cards for:
VOICE NOTE
Contact confirmed
Left for later and played back twice. The breath in it arrived as well as the words.
THREAD
Contact confirmed
Picked up again days afterwards, mid-sentence, and nobody asked where anybody had been.
OPEN LINE
Contact confirmed
A call nobody hung up. Two people getting on with separate things, near each other, saying nothing for an hour.
TYPED
Contact confirmed
Drafted, read back, rewritten and only then sent, so what arrived was what was meant.
LETTERBOARD
Contact confirmed
Spelled out one letter at a time. It took longer to arrive and it is no less a voice for that.
LURKING
Contact confirmed
Read everything and said nothing for months. That was being there the whole time.
ONE REPLY
Contact confirmed
A single answer after a long quiet. It counts the same as a conversation.
The rules on the ridge
- The lamps are steady. A lot of the lights on masts flash, and these are the kind that do not. Nothing on this page blinks, pulses or moves on its own at any dial setting.
- Nothing here sends anything anywhere. There is no form, no message box, no call-in, and nothing that listens. The line you can open is made where you are and stays there.
- Nobody has to talk. Listening counts. Reading and saying nothing counts. So does coming back after a long time away without an explanation.
- Nothing is counted. Not contacts, not time on the line, not who turned up. A place for being reached should not be keeping score of who reached it.
If you want the real watering holes rather than a hut on a made-up hill, the Stimpunks community is where ours are, and our online space page says how they are built.
Whose this all is
The argument is our own Shared-Signal Space entry, and the two lines quoted from it are ours. The Autistic Rhizome was named by DGH Neurodivergent Consultancy and has been written about by Helen Edgar at Autistic Realms; neither is folded into our “we”. The study on communication preferences is Howard and Sedgewick’s. Details are in the liner notes.
The ridge and the mast are invented. Radio repeaters are not: they stand on hills all over the world, passing on the signals of people who could not otherwise reach each other.
Job marker — a confirmation card blown against the foot of the mast
You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.
The job: What a repeater does
Before the code: The Repeater says what a repeater does with a signal it hears on one frequency. What does it do with it?
Hint 1
It is in the paragraph that says what a repeater is.
Hint 2
It sends it back out again — so what does it do with it?
Last hint
Three words, and the last one is on.
Give me the answer
The answer is Passes it on. It passes it on. A repeater listens on one frequency and sends what it hears straight back out on another, louder and from higher up, so that two people who could never reach each other directly can talk — which is why it stands where nobody lives: that is where it can hear everybody. Far off is not the same as cut off.
Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.
Quest code: RELAY
That is the one.
It passes it on. A repeater listens on one frequency and sends what it hears straight back out on another, louder and from higher up, so that two people who could never reach each other directly can talk — which is why it stands where nobody lives: that is where it can hear everybody. Far off is not the same as cut off.
Quest code: RELAY