Radio Augury

Radio Augury is the practice of switching between Radio bands to commune with the missing goddess, Anthem.

Her fingers pressed into the dial with a tender touch, as though apologetic for daring to touch such a divine instrument. She turned through the bands slowly, recording the garbled words which came through as she listened with eyes shut and brows furrowed.

"I fell into—" one drawling voice sang.

"—storms all along the eastern—" another spoke in a plantative voice with strong projection.

"—show us of a rising trend in—" another worried.

"What is she doing?" I asked, leaning close to my guide. The prophet's eyes opened a fraction, glaring at me from under hooded lids, before closing again. She brought her pipe to her mouth, and exhaled a murky plume as she considered to listen.

"Listening, for Anthem. She escaped, but she is more program than machine. She remains still, living in the airwaves and spreading through the networks. She knows we are listening, and will answer our prayers and questions in code. She is an augur — she knows how to interpret these codes."

"And are these codes always legitimate?"

"Of course. Though some we have yet to fully fathom the meaning of."

Behind us stood a congregation of robots — vagrant and obsolete service drones, mostly, though there was also a garbage transit drone parked outside and pulled up close to the half-open window. It didn't seem like the crowd to argue the legitimacy of their faith with, so I kept my mouth shut.

The Prophet's eyes were open now, fixated on a scrolling display of band numbers. She twiddled the dial left and right with rapid precision like a safecracker. To my alarm, sensible words had begun to form from the chaos.

"Ask. Your. Question. I. Am. Here."