The Archive of Unclaimed Dial Tones
Raymond logged line 408 under 'ambient weather,' stamped the sheet in purple ink, and slid the headphones off one ear. He sighed before taking a quick sip of his lukewarm and stale coffee knowing it would be quite some time before he sat at his desk again. The buttons on the reel to reel made satisfying clicks as he pressed and depressed them. He clicked the release, drew the spool off its spindle, and taped the leader flap against the rim before dropping it into a tin canister. Hobbling over to the box marked “FOR DIGITIZATION” he debated whether this would be the last reel or if he could fit a few more. He sealed the cardboard flaps with brown tape, slapped a shipping tag across the seam, and scrawled ‘Northeast Station’ in purple ink.
Back at his desk, Raymond slid his headphones on, glad to be shielded from the arrhythmic hum of the fluorescent light bulbs. Looking over the lines of green text on the old CRT monitor, he landed on line 236 ‘lighthouse repair hotline’. For as much as he grumbles, he had to admit seniority has its perks. A new reel in place, he depressed the buttons bringing the reel up to speed and hit record. Through the headset beyond the 400 Hz tone he heard seagulls squawking and waves lapping, two voices drifting in and out of the static talking about leaving the phone off the cradle to buy an hour’s peace.
Raymond closed his eyes and was almost relaxed when the smell of raw sewage seeped in from the nearby facilities. Another trek up to maintenance to let them know. The Archive of Unclaimed Dial Tones kept no active phones on site. Admin claimed trainees would confuse internal versus external dial tones or that there might be cross contamination in the recordings, but Raymond knew they were just being cheap.Five flights of stairs later, the sign on the maintenance door read ‘Sorry! Be back later.’