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Cattails
KAFM Grand Junction, 9pm - 12am
Big Thief
The catamarine knifed silently upstream, its passage discernible only as a faint twin wake on the surface of the river. Up ahead, the sonar array was already picking up the turbulence from the Mbocaruzú falls, the staccato warning pings slicing neatly between the Mozambique big-band swing being piped into the earpieces. In their individual pods, the cartographer and the miner reviewed their maps, surveys, and orders. Up ahead, behind the rushing down-flow of the water and completely out of sight, a set of steel doors silently opened and awaited the pair’s arrival.
Dead Of Night
KAFM Grand Junction, 9pm - 12am
Orville Peck
Once above the canopy, it was impossible to see the green-winged hang-gliders that the archeologist and the mercenary had used to enter the Antananarivo bird sanctuary. Going through Customs had been dicey, the parts for the flying machines had been dispersed with various kinds of unassembled patio furniture, but the quality of the materials still stood out. Fortunately, the mercenary had brought up the Madagascar goth metal scene and distracted the functionaries into stamping passports and waving them through. They hadn’t even asked about the Geiger counter.
Running Like A River
KAFM Grand Junction, 9pm - 12am
Telekinesis
There wasn’t enough room on the narrow boat for the botanist to take out a handkerchief and wipe their brow. The square head vessel, slicing through the water on its way to the Phong Dien Floating Market, looked to be laden with mangos, but that was a ruse. The pyramids that piled the boat only a had a skin a single mango deep. Underneath were piles of something with about the same density as mangos, but much much more valuable. The captain twisted the knob on the cabin radio on hearing some narcopolka, the device’s limited capacity making the sound increase not in volume, only in distortion. The sun sparkled off the water, a thousand heat lasers evading the shade thrown by the wide straw hats they wore.
Big
KAFM Grand Junction, 9pm - 12am
Fontaines D.C.
The archivist’s breath misted in the freezing vault as gloved hands lifted the metal canister off the shelf. Getting to Greenland had not been trivial, driving the snowcats to Nuuk undetected had been a challenge, and breaking into the Katuaq Cultural Centre’s secret collection room, dug out of the permafrost, could be described as difficult. Now, locating the footage was close to impossible, given the hundreds of linear meters of shelving that were visible. The producer unspooled the first few feet off the reel, peering up through the film to the overhead light. The muffled sound of Persian hip-hop could be heard from the theater above. Maybe it was not so impossible.
Crazy Energy Night
KAFM Grand Junction, 9pm - 12am
Pom Poko
The earth rumbled into an appropriate angle of repose as the bucket wheel ground to a halt. On the ground, the sapper raised an arm to signal to the operator, sitting high above in an air-conditioned cab as disproportionately tiny as a brontosaurus brain. The sounds of Taiwanese ragtime could be heard on the earpiece now that the excavator had stopped digging into the hard Upper Peninsula soil. This machine was capable of extracting tons of copper ore in a single hour, but now it was digging for something far more valuable.
Little Bit Of Life
KAFM Grand Junction, 9pm - 12am
The Woolly Bushmen
The pilot felt the glider’s control surfaces bite into the updraft. The craft smoothly pitched up and right as the surreal Eastern Washington terrain unfolded beneath them. The plucky strains of a Bolivian polka filled the small cockpit, the whistling of the wind no true competition. Facing backward, the specialist peered at the techmapper. Somewhere below, there was something messing with the surveillance satellite and downing any powered aircraft that dared approach. Up ahead, the clouds were bunched up in a way any seasoned traveler of the skies could tell was just. not. right.
Work
KAFM Grand Junction, 9pm - 12am
Frankie and the Witch Fingers
The mechanical harvestman towered over the fig grove, its spindly arms tucked underneath as it towered over the fruit trees. The cryptobotanist aimed the infrared reader at the edge of the cultivated land, where the real Bhutan took over, hoping for even a quick glimpse. The landscape gave nothing in return. The operator’s headphones leaked the sound of some Turkish reggae, bounced from a satellite to overcome the foreboding mountains that ringed the valley. They both had patience to spare. The beast they were seeking had only one food source, located right here, and everyone’s gotta eat.
Chevrolet Van
KAFM Grand Junction, 9pm - 12am
The Nude Party
The landtrain rumbled over something bumpy. Probably a hill, thought the conductor, as they made their way down the gently swaying aisle, digital holepuncher out, ready to process the ticket. The passenger, sole occupant of the car, sat oblivious, staring out the window at the landscape rushing twenty feet below, the faint sounds of some Slovakian cumbia leaking out of the expensive earbuds. “Ticket please?” The passenger startled, and reached for the sleek titanium briefcase, its embedded digital timer declaring to everyone that it held no ordinary cargo.
Warranty
KAFM Grand Junction, 9pm - 12am
Meat Puppets
The first mate adjusted the sails, letting out some wind to keep both skids on the sand. The sun shone down like a hole punched in a blast furnace someone painted blue, the radio broadcasting its gypsy salsa above the hiss of the sandmaran’s travel. Leaning on the tiller, the captain let out a yell of warning as they crested a dune, gaining air for a brief moment. They still didn’t have a plan for replacing the statue, but they had a thousand miles of desert to work something out.
