Any Instructions? (2/5) By Denis Price

(1/5), (2/5), (3/5), (4/5), (5/5).

They were all apprehensive of him, his easy smile and English that didn't equate with his occupation. He'd try and draw them into conversation, not about their work, that would have been too obvious, no, just peripheral stuff, families and life in Britain. Rumour had it he was a plant reporting any breaches back to Security.

He reached the guardhouse and presented his pass to the policeman, here we go again, eight mind numbing hours of listening to recordings of the afternoon's Soviet flying activities. He'd rather be busy on a live frequency, they all would, but the winter nights and bad weather restricted flying so it would be hours of transcribing from earlier recordings. The listeners were vultures and he was a good one.

Information was what they scavenged for as they scanned the airwaves for human tragedy. The morality of it all passed him by, the System needed information and he needed the incident which would feed the System. Cries of fear and despair from distressed airmen were a welcomed source of intelligence as any aircraft malfunction would create panic over the airwaves and a breakdown of signals security to be eagerly picked over. The listeners all malevolently agreed that airborne fires were the most lucrative. Even the most stoic of the Red Menace's apparatchiks was wont to reveal all when his arse was on fire at thirty thousand metres. He passed through security and stamped his snow covered boots, scattering melting droplets as he walked along the dimly lit passage to the hangar's main operations room. Checking his watch he saw he was five minutes late, should be alright he thought, nothing live tonight. The brightly lit room caused him to shield his eyes as he left the gloom of the passage to view the serried ranks of empty chairs, radio equipment and tape recorders, all enveloped in a low hum of power. Two listeners were manning silent live frequencies, he guessed the others were in the back room listening to the afternoon's tapes. One of the two figures turned to him 'I thought you'd be late'. He spoke in an unmistakable Scottish accent, it was the watch commander. He answered, 'Yeah, sorry, I missed the bus. Bloody driver left early again.' 'I know he did'. Said the Scotsman taking in his frozen appearance. The snow on his heavy clothing was beginning to melt in the warmth of the room, trickling down to form pools of water around his feet. Droplets of water splashed on desks and equipment as he wrestled to remove his heavy coat. 'For God's sake don't do that in here', said the Scotsman.' You'll electrocute the lot of us, clear off into the back until you've dried out'. Discipline wasn't taken seriously in this job, they were a small specialist unit with a high security grading, and the nature of the work dictated that the petty restrictions of service life were kept to a minimum. This, together with only minimum observance of rank guaranteed that the System was fed the information it required and preserved the compliance of the listeners. Now back in the transcribing room, he paused and breathed in its stale institutionalised air. Already re-cycled he could smell the mix of damp clothing, body odour and the indefinable tang given off by electrical equipment. The room itself was a windowless, colourless, utilitarian box. Lengthy wooden desks ran along the two sides of the room each having six transcribing positions. Alongside each position stood a neat pile of tapes awaiting transcription. Almost all the positions were manned by hunched blue-clad figures, foreheads furrowed in concentration as they strained to pick up gems of intelligence.

The recorders clicked constantly as taped speech was played back again and again to ensure accurate transcription. He laughed to himself, that's how our leaders would have it. In reality the low priority of these tapes was well known to the listeners, their priority was to perform a selective skimming exercise until the pile disappeared and then get some kip! Tonight he was lucky; the tapes were few and done in a couple of hours so he drifted back into the operations room. The Scotsman waved at him and pointed at a vacated live position. 'Now you're dry have a listen on that, might get busy soon'.

Continued...Next Page

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