Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

It’s occurring to me now that you may not even be actively transmitting. This could be some kind of emergency alert system that’s been going out for years, sent from a station manned by no one. 

[click, static]

If that station is here in Kentucky, I don’t have a clue where. I drove forty miles in each direction and the clarity of the code didn’t change in any way that made any kind of sense. It would get clearer or it’d disappear into static without any rhyme or reason. I don’t know, maybe it’s the hills, messing things up. 

[click, static]

Or…maybe…

[click, static]

Maybe this is all…skip. Picking up signals from far away. It has something to do with solar flares, I think. I don’t know, my dad used to talk about back in the day. He always got so excited when he picked someone up from, say, Alabama or something. Somewhere really different. He mostly drove the northern east-west route—the route I set off on more than a week ago—so anything from the south felt exotic. 

I don’t know if I mentioned that. That my dad was a truck driver. He loved his CB. I wish I’d kept it. But I already had the car he’d fixed up for me, and needed to sell the truck and didn’t know how to get the CB out of the truck, so…yeah. 

I wish I’d paid more attention to him when he talked about how to use it too. 

Anyway. If you are a real person, somewhere, anywhere, and you’re listening, now you know a little more about me. 

I wish I knew something about you. Anything. I was never the most social growing up. I don’t know if its because I was a tomboy or because I was so used to it being just me and my dad, but I had a hard time fitting in with new groups. Other girls thought I was weird and the boys didn’t know what to think of me, so I mostly kept to myself. That’s the reason I fell in love with tinkering with things, I guess. Or part of it anyway. 

And even as an adult, it’s not like I had a bustling social calendar. But I was always surrounded by interesting people. Always meeting new folks. And then when I got into a rhythm with work, I ended up being on crews with the same people over and over and they…sort of become your friends. 

[click, static]

Though that’s not how I would’ve characterized Harry back then. I’m not sure I would call her a friend now. I’m not sure there’s a word for two people who are relying on each other to survive but who hate each other’s guts. A…symbiotic relationship of sorts, I suppose. 

All this to say, it’s been a very long time since I’ve met someone new. And despite never seeking out reams and reams of friends, I didn’t realize just how hard it would be to never meet anyone new. I don’t think people are supposed to only talk to one other person their whole lives. And that’s what it was starting to look like—that we’d be talking to each other and only each other for the rest of our lives. 

[click, static]

Maybe there’s people out there who have some kind of romantic notion that one person is all you need if that person is the one. Obviously, my situation does not apply, but I really think even in a romantic, soulmate style scenario, those two people would drive each other crazy. 

I’m guessing, if you exist, you’re equally in need of some variety. So, please, tell me where you are if you can. And I’ll…try and figure out what the hell you’re saying so that if you do tell me through morse code, I’ll actually be able to understand it. 

Whiskey out. 

[click, static]