Allena stared at the radio, wide-eyed. She wasn't sure what to do. After a moment it occurred to her that it had responded to what she'd said, so obviously there was someone listening. While looking around for a recording device she asked, "Uh, hello? I'm sorry, who was that?"
The voice responded, "Good evening! That may be a bit difficult to explain. Perhaps I might ask who you are?"
She frowned. The voice sounded like a man's, though she couldn't discern anything else from it. "My name is Allena. I'm an employee here at the Foxcroft-Dover Museum of Local History. I was just cleaning up this exhibit…where are you?"
The voice said, "Again, that is rather difficult to explain. Exhibit? Museum? Are you saying my radio has ended up in a museum?"
The man sounded a bit agitated at the news. Allena's eyebrows furrowed as she replied. "The…yeah, the radio is here as part of one of the exhibits, and I'm polishing up this other thing here now. The device."
The voice took on a sharper tone. "Device? You don't mean my gateway, by chance?"
Allena looked at the device. It didn't look much like a gateway. "I don't know. Does this sound like it?" She described it to him.
After only a few lines of description his voice sounded again, this time heavily colored with excitement. "Yes! Yes, that's it! Clearly intact, too! I'd assumed it destroyed after what happened."
Now Allena was very confused and becoming somewhat alarmed. The voice was referring to this stuff as though it belonged to him, but that was clearly impossible. "Excuse me, but who are you? Why are you calling this stuff yours?"
Then a very obvious answer crossed her mind, and she flushed a furious red. "Wait, is this some sort of prank? Gerald, is that you? Oh, for the love of…cut it out! I'm trying to work!"
She picked up the bottle of polish and went back to cleaning the device, sure that she'd just been duped by her coworker as revenge for dumping the mop job on him earlier. She expected to hear his voice come snickering out of whatever microphone he'd hidden behind the radio.
To her annoyance, however, the voice piped up again and didn't seem happy with her assumption. "What? No, no, this isn't a prank. Please, listen to me. My name is Wilson Percival Higgsbury–"
The scientist. Yup, definitely a prank. "Look, Gerald, I told you I didn't have a choice. Ford shoved this job on me, so I had to shove my job on you. Don't you have anything better to do with your time? It's late. Go home."
The voice was silent for a long moment. When it spoke up again it sounded afraid. "I suppose for my things to have ended up in a museum I must have been gone for quite a bit longer than I'd thought. That must make it very difficult to believe I am who I say I am. But please, do not dismiss me as a prank. I've been stuck here alone for a very long time, and I need help."
Allena shook her head and put down her cleaning supplies. She walked over to the radio, intent on finding the recording device and shutting it off. When she looked it over, however, she found nothing besides the radio itself. That was troublesome. Even for a prank as silly as this one Gerald wouldn't dare tamper with the radio by putting a speaker inside of it. It was one of the most priceless exhibits in the museum, being both a part of local history and also a relic of a fascinating era of technology. It was the only thing here that regularly attracted interest from out-of-state and was worth a small fortune.
She rolled her eyes. "Alright, I suppose I don't have anything better to do than chat with you while I work, prank or not. What do you need help with?" She asked the question seriously enough, though her inner voice was a bit sardonic.
The voice sounded relieved. "I'm a gentleman scientist," he began. Allena was familiar with the term – a financially independent man, generally unconnected to any existing scientific institutions, who devoted his time to scientific pursuits more as a hobby than out of any real need. The voice continued. "Things weren't going well for me. In fact I hadn't made any progress in my studies in a long time. That's when I stumbled upon something rather enticing."
As Allena continued polishing the device she couldn't help but become intrigued. She'd always loved a good fiction. "Oh? What was that?"
"Information pertaining to a device. The very device that now sits dormant in front of you."
She hummed in response. No longer terribly irritated by the intrusion into her work, she found she was actually glad of the company. Though she had to admit she was getting a bit creeped out by the story – the man would be a hit at campfire stories. "Go on?"
The voice perked up a bit at her obvious interest. "I sketched out the blueprints and crafted the device, but when I threw the switch something went wrong. It was meant to open up a stable gateway to another world. Instead the gateway opened only briefly. It drew me in then shut down. I have been stuck here in this wilderness ever since."
Now Allena's hands slowed in their work. There was no way this was Gerald. The inflections in the voice…this had to be the best actor that ever lived. Either that or –
She shook her head. "I see. So, how do you intend to get back here?"
She asked out of a desire to keep playing along with what she was still convinced was an elaborate prank. At least, that's what she told herself.
"I can't get myself back. I've tried everything. I'm trapped."
"I'm sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do to help?"
It was when the voice responded that alarm bells really went off in her head. He said, "Yes! Please, if you can just fix the device–"
She walked at once back over to the radio and began searching it thoroughly up and down for a speaker. That's what this was about. Trying to get her to monkey around with an exhibit. If she was caught – and no doubt she would be, there was probably a hidden camera somewhere nearby – she'd be fired immediately. "Do you think I'm an idiot, Gerald? I'm not going to mess around with a priceless exhibit. Seriously, what did I do to merit this? I already told you I'm sorry about the mop thing, but this is going a bit too far. You're trying to get me fired!"
"No! Please! You're my only chance. You're the first person I've been able to talk to. Please…"
The voice trailed off. It sounded positively wretched, and Allena had to really force herself not to say anything. This guy was good. She was very, very tempted to believe him.
But she couldn't.
The voice came back, and this time it sounded strangely calm. "Is there anything I can do to convince you of the truth? Anything? You have no idea what it's like here. This place…it's a living hell. I can't stay here any longer. I'll go mad."
Her movements ceased completely. The desperation in his voice was heart-wrenching. Could this possibly just be an act?
Could it possibly be real?
She was silent. After a minute the voice said, "Hello? Are you still there?"
It sounded small, and terribly sad. She sighed and said, "Yes, I'm still here. Just give me a minute."
She decided there was no harm in checking the voice's validity, though it was likely a waste of her time. She pondered what she could do to confirm or deny it's claims, then came to a decision. "Okay, if you're really Wilson Higgsbury, you ought to remember the original setup of your lab, right?"
"Yes! I do, every detail."
"Alright. Wait there for a moment. I'll be back in just a few minutes."
She turned and went to visit one of the archives. There would be the original pictures of Higgsbury's lab. Although the exhibit was meant to be a replica, the layout of the lab had been altered to make it more appealing to visitors. Several things had been moved around and a few things added and removed. If the voice could tell her what it really used to look like…
She went and found the book containing the pictures, flipping to the correct page. Then she went to the exhibit and took a few pictures of it with her phone. That done she returned to the radio.
She set the book down on a small table nearby and pulled out her phone's pictures, holding them next to each other. "You still there?"
"Yes."
"Okay," she said. "The exhibit we have here is an imperfect replica of your lab. I have pictures of the original lab before anything was moved, added, or altered. Think you can describe the real thing?"
"Absolutely! The window was a round old thing facing west and set just over my main workbench…"
Over the next few minutes he described the old attic lab almost perfectly. She threw in a couple extra questions to see if she could trip him up, such as,
"Okay, how many beakers were sitting on your main worktable?"
"Hmm? I don't know…not many, very few of the device's components were alchemical…"
That was an acceptable answer. In fact there were three beakers on the table, one broken, but if he'd remembered that much detail she'd have assumed it was someone looking at a copy of the picture. She asked him the purpose of one of the implements that had been added from a different local collection, and had not in fact been in the original lab. He'd responded indignantly, claiming he'd never owned such a piece of equipment.
After several minutes of this she was forced to admit it; either he was the real deal, or someone had gone to an inconceivable amount of trouble to prank her, and frankly, there was no one in the entire town who cared enough about her one way or the other to pull something like this.
She bit her lip. "Alright, that's enough. You really aced it."
The voice came back, this time cautiously hopeful. "So you'll help?"
She sighed, loudly. Rubbing her temples, she looked at the strange, looming device which the man – perhaps Wilson Higgsbury, perhaps not – claimed was a defunct gateway to another world. Cogs and gears sticking out this way and that; buttons and switches and levers; more nuts and bolts than she could count; even a spun-glass orb mounted on some sort of electrical component, all straight out of Frankenstein's lab.
She said, "I don't know if I can. It looks incredibly complicated, and I have no experience with engineering or handy work. I can barely fix my toaster back home, and you want me to open a gateway to another world?"
When the voice replied it was soft and encouraging. "You can do it. I'll walk you through every step. From what you described you may not even need to replace any of the components. Just shove a few things back into place, mend a bit of broken wiring at the very most."
She groaned. If she was caught messing around with this thing she could lose her job. Maybe even get arrested for vandalism. Anyways, there was no way this could be real. But if he was telling the truth, as mad as it sounded, then he needed her help. If she walked away from this and it was real, the man could die, trapped in whatever hell he'd fallen into.
She looked at the radio, wrenched between fear and pity. What should she do?
