Why do the cameras keep turning by themselves? What causes the temperature to drop in certain sets? How do the shadows move between the stages? Why do the night crew hear broadcasts when the equipment is off? What secrets lie in the sealed control room?
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I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
― Groucho Marx
Cordelia Marsh had always prided herself on her technical precision, but the antique television equipment at Station WKRP defied every manual she’d ever read. The studio hadn’t broadcast live programming in thirty years, yet somehow the ancient cameras still hummed with electrical life, their lenses tracking movement that wasn’t there.
The station manager, desperate to revive the failing network, had hired her to restore the main broadcast studio to working condition. “Just get the equipment functional,” he’d said, avoiding her eyes. “Don’t worry about the… quirks.” She should have pressed him about those quirks, should have asked why three previous technicians had quit without notice.
On her first night alone in the studio, Cordelia discovered that the cameras recorded more than they should. The monitors displayed not just the empty studio, but layers of previous broadcasts bleeding through like double-exposed film. She watched herself working, but also glimpsed fragments of shows from decades past — a children’s program where the puppet host turned to stare directly at her, a news anchor whose words didn’t match his moving lips, a game show where contestants screamed silently.
The breakthrough came when she realized the equipment wasn’t malfunctioning — it was working exactly as designed. The studio existed in a temporal fold, broadcasting across multiple time streams simultaneously. Every program ever filmed here had left an imprint, a ghostly echo that grew stronger each night. The cameras weren’t just recording the present; they were sampling moments from the infinite past and future.
By her final night, Cordelia understood why the other technicians had fled. The studio didn’t just broadcast entertainment — it broadcast truth. The children’s show revealed the puppet master’s true face, ancient and terrible. The news anchor spoke of events that hadn’t happened yet, or perhaps had happened in another timeline entirely. The game show contestants weren’t playing for prizes; they were competing for the right to remain in their own reality.
When dawn broke, the studio was empty except for the humming equipment and a single monitor displaying static. If you tune to the old frequency late at night, sometimes you can still see Cordelia working diligently at her station, forever trying to fix equipment that was never meant to be repaired, broadcasting her warnings to anyone foolish enough to listen.
