Ken C. Pohlmann

I am doing spring cleaning. Yes, it is currently winter. But I live in Florida, and it's too damn hot to do manual labor in the spring. Ergo I am currently cleaning out my storage locker. As a result, I think I have to buy this Audio-Technica turntable. I'll explain.

Trinitron, Betamax, Walkman, PlayStation, Compact Disc, MiniDisc, Blu-ray – and EV. Yes, you read that right. In the not-so-distant future, you can pre-order your Sony Electric Vehicle. With a little help (or maybe a lot) from Honda, the proud block-letter logo of our favorite electronics company can now reside in your garage. And I'm not talking about that old Trinitron in the corner of the garage that you keep meaning to recycle.

The year is 2017. You are in Portland, or at least in the general vicinity. It is late at night. You are driving down a dark road. You turn on your radio, and happen to tune to 96.7 MHz on the FM dial. What you hear is something you've never heard on the radio. Something strange is going on, something very strange.

Late one night, unable to sleep, you fire up your short-wave radio and aimlessly tune across the dial. Broadcasts from close by and from distant lands, in English and in languages very much not English. Then you come across something unusual — a radio station with a voice endlessly repeating a series of seemingly random numbers. Congratulations. You have stumbled into the strange world of numbers stations.