Foreword to a Phantom Signal

By Joel Davidson

I have a strange device in the basement of my house.

I moved it here from my childhood home, where it had been since before my parents and my older siblings moved in. It’s a curious thing, shaped like a giant refrigerator and bulging out at the middle like an egg. Twisting, multi-colored wires run in and out of its metal surface. Rusty antennae sit atop it like antlers. There’s a big door with a tinted glass window in it. The door closes with the whispering kiss of an airlock sealing. There’s enough room for two grown-up people inside (three if you really squeeze in), and it’s dark and warm and dimly golden-lit in there. The walls are padded with cream-colored blocks of false leather.

When you push the right combination of buttons (clicky, mechanical buttons which are satisfying to push), the thing comes alive and takes you places. Or, to be more precise, it takes you to the same place, but when you come out everything is different. At first, I thought it was a time machine, but no… the date is always the same. I thought maybe it was a machine that took you to another dimension or an alternate universe. Now I’m not sure what it does.

All I know is that it works.

I never did care much for stepping out, so these days when I use the machine I mostly just stay in and watch television. The shows Over There are different than ours. Maybe not “better” exactly, but different all the same. I must confess, they are more suited to my tastes than the ones we’ve got here.

So, whenever I get the urge to tune out and relax, I hop in the machine and head to the other place for a spell. I bring a snack along and some lemonade, and I hang out in the other basement, sitting on an old folding chair, leaning my elbows against the beat-up, sawdust-covered worktable, and I watch the tiny TV which sits there until it’s very late at night.

Sometimes I hear people moving or talking upstairs, but they’ve never come down to find me. Maybe they don’t hear me. Maybe they do and they think I’m a ghost, and they’re too scared or too lazy to come and investigate. Maybe they know who I am, and they don’t mind at all. I suppose THEY could be ghosts, and I should go up and investigate myself, but I’ve got a good thing going on here, and I don’t want to mess it up.

I’ve got another confession to make (that is, beside my snobbish preference for another world’s television programming).

I’m not a writer.

I mean, I DO write things – stories – but they’re not my stories. I stole them, every one of them, from the television. I guess it’s plagiarism in a way, though I’m not sure how intellectual property laws work between worlds. Really, I always considered myself to be more of a distributor, or, if I can cross disciplinary lines, an archeologist. The worst part about it, I think, is the lying. I shouldn’t have done that, but let’s see you try to explain to a publisher where you got these stories from and why you can’t get permission from the artists of origin.

That doesn’t make it right, though.

Anyhow, here we are. The stories I’ve transcribed aren’t as good as the originals in most cases (what novelizations are?), but it was the best I could do. I’d take you all over there in the machine if I could, but it’s too small to fit everyone and – it pains me to say – I think it may be on its last legs. Perhaps I should be worried about it breaking and leaving me stranded Over There, but for some reason, I just know that won’t happen. Call it intuition if you like, but I know the old thing will see me home again, even if it’s with a dying breath.

For now, I still have some popcorn left in the bag (the real good small pieces at the bottom, heavy and extra yellow from soaking up most of the butter flavoring), and my lemonade pitcher ain’t empty yet. When this episode’s over, I’ll head home again, walk up the stairs, and drink chamomile tea in my reading chair as I make notes on tonight’s programming. Then I’ll brush my teeth, turn out the lights, and go to bed.

My wife will be asleep already, but she might roll over and mutter something pleasant in her sleep. I know she would rather us go to bed together, that she misses me when I’m Over There. But, as strange as it is, she knows how much it means to me, and she’s been patient and kind through it all, which is more than I deserve.

I’ve got to go now. The commercials are over, you see, and the show’s about to start.

See you on the other side.