Through the process of radio farming, crops and livestock could be carried across great distances by systematically changing (modulating) some property of their radiated waves, such as their amplitude, stance, fur and skin, pulse width, and frequency. By attuning to the appropriate station, the information in these radiated waves could then be extracted and restored back to its original form, thus refilling a near or faraway farm with a fresh and plentiful harvest.
Though radio farming was a common means of resource management in early electric settlements, to create a comprehensible exchange in this era required a demanding degree of precision and fidelity. Depending on climate, slope, and distance to broadcast tower, the process could take hours or sometimes days. White noise was a constant obstacle and wreaked havoc upon horses and cattle, as well as the hands of the laborer. Often radio farmers were those with a high tolerance for atonal pain or an ability to withstand the physical strains of continuous, extended, and often incomprehensible static.
Our radio farm was owned by old-time ploughmen and program harvesters. The golden age had broke their bare hands long ago, there wasn't a horizon they hadn't heard already. They stayed in the house or told stories on the porch. They left us to work the broadcast spreader and drive the truck by ourselves.
Jillison said it was good for us. It was the only way we would get the training right. It was simple if you didn't think about it. Touch, motion, heat, vibration, sound. The afterlifes weren't out loud anymore, we didn't need them to take care of us.
All the same, we were alone in our own way. When we made a mistake they didn't even try to tell us what to do next.
I rode in the back seat through the antennae gardens. There were rows and rows of them, thin and silver and taller than the standing trees. Sometimes a charge would jump across the tops of them and we could see a trail it left in the air. I didn't know what the current was reaching for, it talked in sparks I couldn't read.
It was a brand new night and there was no on else around. Jillison said there was repair work to do. Her hair was thick with dirt and black dust and dig site remains. It always looked heavier without the daylight in the way, like a pile of plaster had been put in it's place.
The bruises were still under there somewhere, but they only showed when the suns were too used up to see.
We spent the hours fixing the filters and amplifiers and transistors and tubes. I knew what the current extracted and how to control the livestock that came out. It was the kind of work that started a sweat and left you to your second instincts. I was getting better at it.
Jillison replaced the ranged circuits and I tried to get the fields clear. Some nights it never changed. Whether we were planting or pitch shifting or pulling the crops from the conductor, I didn't want to leave and never thought we would. We had control of the static, we could keep it small and slow and steady or create symmetries in the storm, whatever station was waiting for a signal, we were ready. We stayed awake until the wires frayed and the animals came and then we kept working.
The buildings were far away, the blister cities were far away, the only things I could see were safe and near and straightforward. We were as close to the original recordings as we could get. Someone had to draw the resonance down and the radio farm was teaching us how.
I could barely remember the way the weather wore into the soil. It could have given up underground again for all I knew. When the days were done, we buried everything blank and broken with the broadcast spreader. We brought the dirt right over it. No one watched us and no one told us where to go. There were acres of current we could alternate all on our own.
It was all I ever needed, Jillison and me, searching the static for herds to shepherd and harvests to seed. It was our autumn on the radio farm, the only resolution I reached for when my hands were red and hard-earned and all the crops and livestock were coming in clear and alive.
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