Final Broadcast

Most never really knew the man. Myrddin, the chirpy comms tech who kept it all ticking along, just about. Up until everything went to hell—and him along with it. He's gone. And there's nothing to be done about that. A muzzle-flash amidst artillery-blasts and screaming mortars, and hwyl! He's gone.

But he left a message, in a box filled with tapes and memories. Maybe some listened to it.

Regardless, they all forget him in the end.

Shwmae. Hopefully if you're hearing this, then you're just snooping around where you're not wanted—if so, please bugger off!

If something has happened to me, though, then best to keep listening.

Well. To begin at the beginning, as Thomas says.

I'm a radio technician by trade. I've been working with sound my whole life. I can still remember the first time we got a radio in our house. I thought it was magic! I still do, really. Every day, I'd come running back from school, ready in time for whatever evening broadcast would be made. Didn't matter if it was the dullest news despatch you'd ever heard, or one of those radio plays they'd play once and then never again for thirty years—I loved it. 

I always thought stories were best told through sound. So did my Tad. He bought me a cassette and a personal recorder just before the flooding of Capel Celyn (God knows how he found the money for it). It's in that box, y'know. Sometimes I wish I didn't have it. Bad memories. It's one thing moving from the village you've known your whole life. But to see it destroyed like that… I didn't adjust well when we moved to Swansea.

So radio was my lifeline. That, and recording everything. And I kept recording, all the time. I've got hundreds of these things back in London. But these are the most special ones to me. 

So. That brings me to a request. If you do find this, and if I'm no longer able to bring them back, I've a favour to ask of whoever's listening. I've listed my remaining family's address in a notebook in this box. 

If you wouldn't mind, I think it'd be nice for them to have this. It's not just my life. It's theirs, too. I've captured the earliest core memories of nieces and nephews, of siblings growing up, drifting coming back together, of my Tad before the Alzheimer's finally took him, of the friends and loved ones that have meant so much to me over the years. Only thing that's missing would be something with a spouse! Though I never did find the man for me. 

I'm rambling. And I know I can't stop you listening to some before you return them, if I'm dead.

But get them to my family. Please. I think they'd want to have it. So. Thanks for listening.

There is a pause.

Oh, and, realistically, if I have gone and died—Wilhelmina. Try not to do the same, would you? You've still so much left to do, so much life left to experience. Working with you has been one of the best parts of this hell. Reminded me why I love radio so much. It's as much the people you worked with as the tech. 

But seriously. Diolch yn fawr iawn, for everything, my friend. 

And… I guess that's it. 

Myrddin slips into a mock serious accent.

This is APERIS Communications Officer Myrddin Gwilym Pritchard, signing off (what is hopefully not) for the last time. Noswaith dda, a diolch am wrando.

And the tape shuts off.