The Fate of a Telegraph Operator (Flash Fiction)

Boston – September 2, 1859

Frank Gooseland finished his dinner and donned a coat for the cool Boston night. The walk to his job at the telegraph office was liable to chill his narrow frame. Frank was halfway out the door when his neighbor, who was rushing into the house, knocked him flat on his backside.

“Hello! Good night!” James David exclaimed. “Are you going out? You’d better be going out right now. What are you doing sitting on the ground for? Come on, get on your feet!” He hurried outside to the Gooseland front yard.

Frank got up and went to his yard. For a moment he thought he had forgotten to set the time on his pocketwatch correctly, for it was bright as day, but in another moment his eyes saw what was happening in the sky. A ribbon of rainbow light covered the firmament, one color fading in for a moment only to be replaced by another, and each more beautiful than the last. All his neighbors were craning their heads up at the sky. Some were blessing themselves or praying or singing songs, but the silent shifting of the spectrum made Frank uneasy.

“It’s a sign from the Lord,” James said. “The King is coming soon.”

“The King?” Frank said, absently thinking about his job. “What’s the crier say?”

“Some solar event. I doubt it’s so secular. God is sending a message.”

“A sign about the South, maybe?”

“A sign for Revelations,” James said.

Frank checked his watch. He was late. Bidding goodnight to his neighbor, and to all his other neighbors who hailed him and bid him to look up as if he was completely blind to what was going on, Frank hurried into town. On the way to his telegraph office, he passed a rival standing outside his own office. He was talking with an excited customer.

“Well how long is it going to be down?” the customer said.

“Half our machines are damaged. One shocked an operator.”

“Good grief, Kovchek! I’m paying fifteen cents, here—”

The streets were crowded with people pointing and staring. A few thoroughly unimpressed contrarians shrugged and talked with their arms folded. When Frank arrived at the office, he was unsurprised to find half the staff outside marveling at the brilliant bath of colors bounding above their heads. It seemed to him that the novelty had already run its course; there was business to attend to. May O’Conner, an older operator and one of his closest friends, peeled out of the group when she saw him and walked with him into the office.

“It’s the strangest thing,” she said in her thick Irish accent. “Lights in the sky at this hour. You’d think the very world was coming to an end.”

“If Philadelphia doesn’t get their telegrams on time, it might as well come to an end,” Frank said, settling into his chair. His hand hovered over the telegraph for a second. “Any problems since the aurora showed up?”

“Well, all of our batteries are either beastly dead or filled to breaking. Those two started spitting sparks. No fires, thank the Lord.”

Nearby, a telegraph’s sounder clicked out a message that caught their attention: “Portland querying Boston. Request receive.”

“That one’s disconnected,” May said. “Its battery was near bursting.”

Outside, the light flared and the staff ooh’d. A nearby telegraph threw sparks across its table.

“Must be powered off the current in the ground,” Frank said. He took a seat in the chair in front of the telegraph receiving from Portland. He tapped a brief received and Portland queried for transmission of messages. “That’s incredible. Has we tried transmitting without batteries?”

In answer, May motioned to the people staring at the light outside.

“How have the systems been?” Frank said. “Two started sparking, is that right?”

“Yes, sir. The signal’s been very strong. Like I said, some of the batteries don’t work at all, some of them are overcharged. The relay magnets are getting a lot of strain.”

“Let’s pull all the batteries and work with the current.”

May nodded and went around disconnecting the power sources from other telegraphs. Frank tapped a message back to Portland. “Please cut off your battery entirely for fifteen minutes.”

“Will do so,” came a reply.

Frank went outside and folded his arms up at the sky. It seemed the novelty was not wearing off on others. Someone down the street had set up an easel and a chair. More people were coming out of the taverns and pointing up. Frank begrudgingly had to appreciate the light show. A dim thought told him he was being a curmudgeon, but no matter how much he tried to be impressed, the way the lights moved without any sound was just unsettling.

When he thought fifteen minutes had passed, Frank went back inside. A message from Portland was waiting for him at his desk. “It is now disconnected.”

Frank answered: “Mine is disconnected, and we are working with the auroral current. How do you receive my writing?”

“Better than with our batteries on,” came the reply. “Current comes and goes gradually.”

“My current is very strong at times,” he wrote, “and we can work better without the batteries, as the aurora seems to neutralize and augment our batteries alternately, making current too strong at times for our relay magnets. Suppose we work without batteries while we are affected by this trouble.”

“Very well. Shall I go ahead with business?”

“Yes. Go ahead.”

Frank leaned back as the messages poured in, thinking about how interesting the night truly was. There wouldn’t be another like it in his life, he thought, and he would never again be able to send a message to Maine solely on current running through the crust. He drafted the conversation with Portland on a spare sheet of paper, intending to pass it off to the Boston Traveler in the morning, and busied himself with his work.