“Shhh… BSBT, this is HS4BU calling BT and waiting for a response…”
The same voice came again through the speaker, this time clearly a man’s voice.
Mali froze.
What on earth…? It sounded like someone was calling out from inside this machine. Over and over.
Suddenly, a scene from long ago appeared in her mind. A little more than a year ago, a traveling movie team had come to the edge of their village, setting up a screen in the open field near the village headman’s house.
That night, she’d watched from up high on her father Boon’s shoulders, legs dangling, eyes wide.
The film had been about soldiers. She remembered they carried something on their backs—long metal antennas poking into the night sky—and used it to talk to their friends far away.
Right. That thing was called… a radio station.
Now she remembered. Clear as day.
Back then she hadn’t really understood much; her mind was always wandering somewhere else, and her memory was patchy. But the voice through the speaker pulled her in.
“Shhh… BSBT, this is HS4BU calling BT and waiting for a response…”
The man kept saying the same thing, as if he wouldn’t stop until someone answered.
Strangely, the sound carried something inside it, something that tugged at her chest. It was almost like a spell. She felt the strangest urge… to answer him.
But how?
Her eyes searched the equipment on the table.
There is an oval thing hanging from the control panel, a wire curling down into the machine. That had to be the microphone.
She glanced at the doorway. It was empty. Then, before she could talk herself out of it, she reached out, her fingers curling around the mic. Her voice came out small, trembling:
“Hello…”
“Shhh… BSBT, this is HS4BU calling BT and waiting for a response…”
He didn’t seem to hear her. She tried again “hello… hello…” but nothing changed.
Wait. What’s this?
Her thumb brushed a little button on the mic’s side. Of course—press to talk.
She pressed it, swallowed hard and said, “Hello… nice to meet you…”
The repeating voice stopped. Silence.
She almost hung the mic back when the speaker crackled to life:
“Hello, little friend. Glad to connect with you… shhh…”
Her heart leapt, her face flushed hot. She was talking to someone, not in the next room, not in the next village, but somewhere… else.
“Shhh… little friend, how old are you?”68Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2x2PCJVf0E
“I… I’m eight,” Mali whispered.68Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡC2YSrRR59S
“Shhh… Eight years old and already using a radio? That’s amazing… When I was eight, I didn’t know a thing…”
She found herself blurting out, “Uncle, where are you?”68Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVZH6OQZByX
“Shhh… I’m in the capital. Do you know where that is?”
The capital.
To her, it was a place like a star, so far you could only look, never touch. Uncle Somchai once said it took days and nights by train to reach it. And now, here she was… speaking to someone there, as if he were just across the table.
“Shhh… Little friend, study hard. One day, come to the capital for university. Here you can—shhhhhhh—”
The static swelled, swallowing his words.68Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNhvfRkRITK
“Hello? Uncle? Are you still there?”
Nothing but rushing noise.
She stared at the knobs and switches but didn’t dare touch a thing.
Finally, she hung the mic back on its hook, slipped outside and murmured goodbye to the two old men still hunched over their chess game in the shade.
She limped home.
That moment—it had changed something inside her. The capital didn’t feel like a fairy tale anymore. The radio was real. The connection was real.
The capital… wasn’t that where her mother was?
Her mother’s face rose in her mind.
If I had my own radio… could I talk to her too?
The thought struck like lightning. She sat up, reached under her bed and pulled out her treasure box. Inside was the broken radio her father Boon had smashed and she fetched her small knife.
She would make a crystal radio.
It wouldn’t be powerful like Old Somchai’s transmitter, but she had to start somewhere. A coil, a capacitor, a detector, earphones, an antenna, those were the bones of it.
From the wrecked radio, she salvaged what she could. In Boon’s room, she found a spool of copper wire. Outside, in the dust, she picked up a beer bottle and began winding the wire around it, loop by loop.
But she still lacked the heart of the thing: the detector. She’d read in her school magazine that natural crystals could do the job, more sensitive than the expensive diodes she could never afford.
And she knew exactly where to find one.
She slipped her only fifty satang coin into her pocket and headed out toward the herbalist’s shop, where green mineral stones sat in a glass jar, waiting.68Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmeGJcgCyGD
and then Add to home screen.