The Morning Show

In the early summer of 1953, during the cold war, a series of transmissions disguised as an educational astronomy show were sent on American wavelengths. All were about two minutes long, the last few being less than thirty seconds. Tracing them brought no results. Eventually they discontinued the attempts and sent a covert operation to the area they believed the transmissions to be coming from.While the explorers were there, a dozen more transitions came back to the station. They were deciphered and then archived in a government library.

In 1965, a Hippie protest and riot caused the full eleven of these transmissions to be stolen out of archives. He took them and, telling no one, hid them in a large iron chest with no lock. When he died almost forty years later, these archives, hand written by a signal boy, were found in his attic. When I consulted the signatures on the bottom, the name “Jonathon Brown” came up. Attempting to track this man into the air force (Or any branch of signal decoding in the time, for that matter) brought no result, as if he never existed.

The envelope the files were in was obviously something my father, meaning that he stole them out of the original packaging. I can’t be sure what date these transmissions were from, but based on the basic historical record I have I can make a basic hypothesis that it was between 20-30th of May, 1953. Each transmission came at exactly 2:00 AM, local time, according to the slip on each page.

TRANSMISSION 1

Person speaking has a very neutral American accent, almost melodic. Male. “Good morning, everyone! Well, I can’t really say it’s morning, because over in America, hell, it might just be tomorrow! Fun fact for the day; The reason for the time zones of the world in the earth spinning on its axis. Since our world is so big, one side of it is day and one is night! Things would get real confusing if they hadn’t have made up time zones way back in the 1850’s, that one Italian dude. But hey, this is an Astronomy show, not History!

Light chuckling, then a cough. Continues to speak. Anyways, those stars are looking beautiful. I’ve been up all night to tell you about it, and here it is. I saw a few stars of Centaurs about 1:00, a few of those on his arm. Real pretty, if you ask me. Not enough people appreciate the beauty of the sky. Shameful, really. So shameful.

END TRANSMISSION

It is notable that through the course of the transition, the wind can be heard whipping in the background.

TRANSMISSION 2

Voice sounds slightly happier than before, as if the person had just heard good news "Good morning again! Today I just got WONDERFUL news! Finally, I’ll be able to get a much better view of the stars! You know what that means, you all get a better view of the stars! I saw the Virgo Cluster yesterday. It sure does remind me of home. I miss my family. Sometimes I feel like leaving and going back home, but I know what I have to do for science. Science and god are the two greatest things to ever experience in this world. Remember that. Always remember tha…

END TRANSMISSION

The transmission cuts off prematurely before the man pronounces the ‘T’ sound at the end of ‘That’. It is unknown why.

TRANSMISSION 3

Voice is the same as before. The pitch goes up slightly as the video goes on, as if the person is high. "Good morning, people of America and beyond! Welcome again to my wonderfully educational and fun morning show! Today we are going a bit deeper into space and looking at some of the things that mean more!"

All background noises suddenly disappears, like it was interested in what he is saying "You ever look up at the sky and see that milky white stuff? We call that the Milky Way. No, it isn’t named after the candy bar! I love candy. Anyways, You see, if you could go out into the edges of our galaxy, it would look like someone spilled milk in space! Therefore, they name it Milky Way. A lot of people wish they could see the galaxy like this. Too bad nobody can but me."

END TRANSMISSION

His tone does not change at all when he talks about nobody seeing the galaxy but him, like he was being perfectly serious. TANSMISSION 4

IIt is notable that this is the shortest transmission until number 6, being only thirty-six seconds long.

The tone is similar to video 1, not showing any sort of outside emotion. "Good morning, once again. Unfortunately the sky last night was unkind to me and hit me with clouds. No stars. Sometimes I ask god if he will let me see the stars up close one day. Every time he answers, 'Yes, I really do believe you will one day, my favorite son.' I love you, daddy."

END TRANSMISSION

The background noises are slightly louder. It almost sounds like whispering.

TRANSMISSION 5

This is the first transmission that the voice begins to sound forlorn. This is also the second longest, besides number 12 "Good morning, once again. Something fairly bad happened yesterday. I found that a large amount of my food supplies are gone. I will have to ration my supplies a bit more. However, none of these things matter to me because I will continue to send my transmissions of intelligence and faith to all of you."

The sounds of flipping pages are heard. For Two minutes and Five seconds, he reads the first part of the Genesis bible, stating the creation of the world and the universe in 7 days. He slams the book closed immediately after reading ‘And he saw it was Good’. "Too bad god was wrong."

END TRANSMISSION

The background noises are getting louder every time. It is notable his voice cracks twice during the transmission.

TRANSMISSION 6

This transmission, the voice is much lower and darker than before. Background noises pick up. This is the final time he says ‘Good Morning’ at the beginning of his show.

This transmission is exactly thirty seconds, but this may be a mistake because it cuts off. "Good morning, I guess. I’m a bit hungry, but I still stayed up for you to know what happened in the sky. Sometimes I don’t even look for constellations. Sometimes I just look into the darkness. It is really a good way to describe the human mind. Blots of light in the dark. It is l…"

END TRANSMISSION

The cut off is similar to transmission 2, with no warning or dead air.

TRANSMISSION 7

The man no longer says ‘Good Morning’ for the rest of the 5 transmissions.

This transmission is forty-two seconds of actual speaking, with ten seconds of sobbing at the end. "Sometimes I think about why I came up here in the first place. Why I decided to go through this hell. Then I realize it is for you. All of you. To show how much I care for you. Humanity deserves to know what happens when you journey into what you do not know. When you try to find what god does not want you to find."

"I’m hungry. Very hungry."

Sobbing for about ten seconds, then dead air for ten minutes. This is also likely a mistake. END TRANSMISSION

TRANSMISSION 8

The transmission starts with two seconds of sobbing, then the man sniffles and begins to speak. Almost like he continued from Transmission 7.

The background noises get louder as the video goes on. "Why did I do this? I could have went and found a family to love me. I bet one would listen. I bet one would."

"It’s not like I am tired of being up here. Contrary. I love it up here. I get to talk to god and he sometimes talks to me. He keeps telling me that I need to go outside. I keep telling him that I can’t. Bad things happen out there. I can’t go."

It is unknown if he talks for the last 5 seconds, as the only audible noise is wind. END TRANSMISSION

TRANSMISSION 9

This transmission is the shortest of all of them. It Is only 9 seconds long. "I need to eat. I need to eat to do my work."

END TRANSMISSION

The man is breathing heavily between the sentences.

TRANSMISSION 10

The man talks much faster in this transmission. He coughs between sentences, like his breath can’t catch up with his voice. Even though the most words are said in this transmission, it is still shorter than 5. "I hate you. I hate you all. No one ever talks to me up here, I want to find someone. I am so hungry. I asked god for some food, and he always replies that I have it all along. So hungry. I can’t take the cold. I tried to go outside today.

Yelled a few times, hoped someone would answer me, feed me. No one ever did. All people are evil, it lives in all of us. Science is a horrible thing. It drives us to beg for power, to strike down the weak to make us strong. Faith is the only option."

Silence for multiple seconds, then he screams right into the mic. "FAITH FAITH FAITH FAITH FAITH!"

The sound of ripping paper and more screaming is heard. It is hypothesised that he is ripping his bible. "I don’t know what I’m talking about. I don’t know what day it is. All I know is that the sky is bright red. I need food. I know what god meant when he told me that I had food all along. I must eat. I must eat."

END TRANSMISSION

His voice is very strained at the last sentence. You can hear his lips smacking.

TRANSMISSION 11

Transmission 11 is the only one that was not found at the archive. When I turned to this page, I was met with a blank page with the word ‘CHEW’ typed in it with small font, nothing else. Transmission 12 is typed out like this one. It appears the boy who is listening to these and writing them down quit. It is likely the 11th transmission is somewhere, written fully.

TRANSMISSION 12

This is the longest transmission. However, most of the video contains no speaking, only background noise. The full transmission is over 5 minutes long.

For forty-five seconds in the beginning, there is nothing but wind. A fter this time, light breathing begins, along with dripping.

At around the 3 minute mark, a light voice is heard. It is incomprehensible for about ten seconds, then, finally, you can hear it. “So cold... So hungry..."

For the rest of the video, until the last 20 seconds, there is nothing but wind, breathing, and the dripping..

At the last twenty seconds, an outside voice is heard. It is muffled, and sound like"We made it". …

At the finally second, something slams into the microphone, shutting off the sound. END TRANSMISSION

I could not get ahold of the actual sound footage. There was an old myth that a cheap video copy exists, but I have never heard anything else on that matter. Unfortunetly, I never got ahold of anyone who actually held or heard a copy of this video. Digging up a bit and going to the exact place it was transmitted (Which is now a museum for code-cracking technology in that era), I found the daughter of the boy who transmitted the original signal, at least by her word. She said her father was only twenty four and lost his job after a nervous breakdown on the job. I suspect this happened at Transmission 11.

According to her, he lived a normal life as a computer mechanic until he died in 2009. She said that, according to him, after all of the transmissions were archived and the original tapes were burnt.

She also told me, that on May 29th (Also the day that transmission 12 was sent), the two explorers reached the approximate area that they were coming from.

Finding nothing but snow, they left a piece of candy and a wooden cross under the snow on the peak of the location of transmission, Mount Everest, and began the descent.