Fiction Prompt:
You sit down at your desk one quiet morning and notice your speakers giving off a faint static hum.
When you lean closer, you realize the static isn’t random — it’s forming words, like a voice trying to come through from somewhere else.
Write the moment you first understand what it’s saying…and what the first clear sentence is.
Keep it subtle, grounded, eerie-but-soft — your signature style.
Response:
I have a wooden antique radio that I adore. Every morning, I sit at my desk with my high-tech tools—my smartphone and laptop—to get work done. Having this old-school radio nearby makes me feel classy. Elegant, even.
It’s one of those radios you adjust by twisting a knob left or right, with a thin metal antenna you can angle just so. Sometimes the signal is fuzzy, but most of the time it’s crystal clear. I like to think it depends on the weather and cloud coverage.
So imagine my frustration when one morning this same radio was nothing but static. My favorite stations wouldn’t come through—none of them.
I twisted the knobs. I moved the radio around the room. I even held it near the window. Outside, the sky was unusually overcast without a hint of rain. The streets below were eerily empty. Not even a squirrel was to be found.
Then, as I tilted the radio toward the glass, a faint voice broke through the static.
Here’s what it said:
“Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News.
At twenty minutes before eight, central time, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas, occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars.”
I asked my computer what this could mean. A quick search revealed it was part of a broadcast from October 30, 1938—The War of the Worlds by Orson Welles.
Of all the logical explanations—like someone rebroadcasting the show—I preferred the extraordinary. Maybe my antique radio had picked up an antique soundwave from 1938. Could something from that era have traveled through space and bounced back in 2025?
Why not, I thought.
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