The Trans-Umbral Switchboard

By James Hertsch III (jwhertsc@bulldog.unca.edu)

Description

During his tenure in the Technocracy, Doctor Aurelius specialized in communication. Most particularly, Aurelius was interested in improving communications between the human world and the spirit world. Motivated partly in a quest to find his wife's spirit, the good Doctor managed to construct a device which carried his telephone signal across the Umbra and into the Shadowlands -- provided he could make the right connection. Otherwise, God only knew whom Doctor Aurelius might contact.

In a flash of insight, Aurelius realized that this sort of communication could be a boon to all humanity. Imagine if people could contact their dead relatives! No more contested wills! No more uncertainty as to whether your parents are happy in the afterlife! Being able to find out what happened to the family fortune!

Of course, Aurelius had a problem: the phone numbers. Trying to remember what number to dial to reach a given Spirit was frustrating at best, impossible at worst. Initially, Aurelius considered publishing a "Yellow Pages" listing of realms and spirits, but eventually realized that this would be incredibly costly and time-consuming.

Instead, Aurelius reasoned, such calls could be made readily if, first, there was a central area all calls could go through, and, second, if that central area were monitored by an entity knowledgable about the Spirit realms. Thus, the Trans-Umbral Switchboard was born!

Searching through the then-primitive telephone net (a precursor to the Digital Web), Aurelius located an Umbrood known only as "Mary," and, impressed with the knowledge she displayed of the worldwide telephone network, managed to entice her into being a "telephone operator." Then, of course, came the easy part: the Trans-Umbral switchboard.

Starting with a "regular" switchboard form the local phone company, Doctor Aurelius ran three Ethereal filaments from the Switchboard, through the Digital Web, and into special Etherphones he set up in the High, Middle, and Low Umbras. Then, Doctor Aurelius ran a thick cable into the regular telephone network, linking the "main" world to the Umbra.

Unfortunately, before he could complete the necessary receiving stations and publicize this momentuous invention, Aurelius's familiar, a large ferret, began suffering a terrible head cold, and, in caring for his familiar, the rather scatterbrained Doctor was distracted from his work.

Shortly after this, the Sons of Ether defected to the Traditions, and Aurelius had little time for his experiments; in fact, his life was rather muddled up for several years after this happened, and he has never been quite the same since.

But, Mary continually files her nails as she tends the Trans-Umbral Switchboard, and, should some caller dial it by mistake, he's going to get a surprise. In fact, the Trans-Umbral Switchboard is connected to five unlisted numbers in Hoboken, New Jersey. And, thanks to the advent of the Digital Web, the ether filaments leading from the Switchboard to the Umbrae are stronger than ever.

In fact, when Mary answers the Switchboard, she greets her caller with a loud Brooklyn accent: "Hello, Hello? Low, Middle, or High Umbra?" At the request of the caller (or whatever she feels like at the moment), Mary then routes the call to the High, Middle, or Low Umbra. Somehow, Doctor Aurelius managed to install old-style crank phones in each of these Umbrae. And, when Mary routes a call through to one of these phones, about a 1/3 of the area around the phones in that region of the Umbra is filled with an irritating ringing sound until somebody answers the phone, or until the caller hangs up.

And, that, my friends, is the fate of Doctor Aurelius's Trans-Umbral Switchboard.