Telegram
Legacy Name: Telegram

You pass from the chilly, rain-swept street into the confines of the bar. Your eyes adjust to the dim neon of blue, green and violet. You don’t catch sight of your friends, so you decide to make your way to an empty stool at the bar.

I’m here where are you

sending

8:22 PM

The man beside you is tapping his fingers in a rhythm against a glass full of amber liquid. It doesn’t seem to sync up with the background music being pumped throughout the bar.

“Don’t mind me,” he says. “Dad taught me a thing or two about Morse code from his navy days. It’s nostalgic. Helps calm the nerves.”

Your neighbor with the nervous disposition has on an army green hoodie pulled over his head. You catch a quick glance of a tattoo of a stylized mantis in green and black ink on the inside of his wrist as he continues to tap out a rhythm, pausing after some taps to indicate a longer length.

Some weirdo is sitting next to me

sending

8:23 PM

While you wait for a reply, you look up, trying to ignore the man. The flickering of the televisions hanging from the ceiling catches your eye. They’re tuned to a news station broadcasting an interview with the finance minster as a follow up to his scandal earlier this week.

“I don’t suppose you know any Morse code yourself?”

“No,” you answer offhand.

Sighing, you draw your gaze away. You don’t know the exact details of what he’d done and you don’t really care. You’d much rather watch the game. What else are the TVs in bars for? You turn back down to your phone so you don’t have to make eye contact with the tapping man.

Hurry up he keeps trying to talk to me

sending

8:23 PM

“Which of those two screens are you actually watching?”
You ignore him, waiting for a text back instead. While you do so, you decide you might as well order a drink even though your friends haven’t arrived yet. You grab the drink menu from its stand and flip to the first page that lists local craft beers. That in itself take up a full page.

That’s not to mention the variety of wines, ciders, shots, and of course the extensive list of cocktails that take up the rest of the booklet. Your phone vibrates as you’re tracing you finger down page one of six.
Sorry bad traffic we’ll be 30 min late

8:25 PM

You sigh and return to the drink menu. Seeing a relatively cheap pale ale on draft, you decide to just go for it as soon as you can catch the bartender’s attention.

“Why don’t you try talking to a flesh and blood human being instead of distracting yourself with technology and alcohol?”

“I’m waiting for someone,” you state.“Really? Me too. Why don’t we at least keep each other company until then?”

You decide it will just be easier to give in.

“That’s a cool tattoo.”

“Thanks. Got it done after I quit my old job. It was in some stuffy old office. I would have been forced to cover it up if I still worked there. I consider it my present to myself.”

“Oh really? Where do you work now?”

He waves his hand. “Telecommunications. I’m a freelancer though.”

“A freelancer? What is it like?”

He smiles a toothy smirk. “Very freeing. I am my own man. Except when I’m getting paid of course.”

At this point, the bartender has noticed you sitting with the drink menu folded before you. You give him your order and he returns shortly with your order.

“How come you haven’t touched your beer yet?”

“Beer? No, I like alcohol. This is iced tea. It’s my favorite drink.”

“Well, okay, but that still doesn’t explain why you haven’t touched it.”

“I will now, if you’ll join me in a toast.”

“Cheers?”

“Cheers!”

He finally sets the drink to his mouth, and to your surprise downs half of it all at once. He sets it down and then looks over back to you.

“Wasn’t it better to have a chat than cut yourself off from the world?”

“I guess,” you say, realizing you’ve actually warmed up to him.

He’s still tapping away at his glass. The sound is slightly altered ow that it is only half filled with liquid. He himself pulls out a cell phone from the pocket of his green hoodie. He glances at it briefly before placing it down on the counter between you and himself.

“8:31. As good a time as any, I suppose.”

“Is the person you’re waiting for here?”

“Almost. Not quite. I’ve still got a little time to kill here, if you’re up for something.”

“Say, since you’ve been a good sport, would you like to learn a little bit of Morse code?”

“Uh, sure, I guess.”

“I’ll just take that as an affirmative.”

“It’s made up of two lengths of signals. There are dots and dashes, which are three times as long as the dots. Because I can’t sustain a tone by just tapping a glass, I’ve been pausing for that, but it might be easier if you had a sustained tone to work with. Here, I’ve got an app for it.”

He swipes through his phone to open the app. On the screen is a 3D model of one of those old fashioned devices that you are only familiar with from the movies.

“It makes the tone when you put your finger on it. Why don’t you try out some dots and dashes?”

When you touch the screen, the device moves as its actual real life counterpart would. A mechanical tone also reminiscent of the period flicks you’ve seen rises out of the phones speakers when you do so. While you play around with the app a bit more, the man writes down a sequence of dots and dashes on to a piece of paper and then slides it over to you.

“See if you can do that.”

Remembering what he said about the relative length of dots to dashes, you tap it out into the app with a satisfactory rhythm.

“That’s absolutely right.”

“Thanks. What does it mean?”

“Iced tea. What else would it be with me?” He smiles and shoves the glass against his face again, downing the rest of the glass.

Suddenly, the bargoers around you begin to gasp and shout all the common curse words. You glance around to see them all looking or pointing up towards the nearest television. Snapping your head up to the nearest screen you see why. The minister is shaking in repeated violent bursts as if he were being electrocuted an couldn’t disconnect from the power source. All at once it ends and the minister collapses to the floor out of sight of the camera.

“Holy shit!” you cry. “Did he have a seizure?”

In the moment you realize that your exclamations had been partially directed to the man at your side. Only when your brain processes some of the shock do you realize that the stool beside you is vacant. Your new friend is gone, as is his cell phone and the sheet of paper with the Morse code sequence. All that remains is an empty glass on the counter with several bills slid under it.

Story by Runes.

Background from Pixabay.

Morse code translator by SCPhillips.com.