What if all it took was a spark? A word spoken in the right direction?

They had dreamed of it sometimes. A connection made differently, wires twisted in some chance way, just a change in the wind. Walking into the workshop to hear a voice on the radio.

They had dreamed of it all being worth something in the end, when a dream had felt like all it would ever be. One day, someday, hoarse from saying hello, can anyone hear this, they would hear an answer.

But the radio on the table before them hissed only dead stratospheric sounds. Weeks of work, breaking down and rebuilding, scavenging and tuning, for it to tell them only what they already knew. They stood with their hands braced on either side of it, listening not for any hope of hearing anything else, but because they had hoped. Because deciding how to start over, a new project, a new hope, was harder every time.

The workshop door clicked open behind them, a closer sign of life. Less urgently interesting for that, for being known; they didn’t turn to face the only person who would have opened that door without knocking.

“Swallow Field just radioed in,” Song reported. “Their generator is on the fritz again. They’re hoping we can make it out there before dark.”

“Of course they are,” Lorne muttered down at a radio that wouldn’t hear, couldn’t hear anything but the dead sky.

“What was that?” Song asked. Already dressed for the long walk ahead of them, boots and gloves and tools lined neatly on his belt; he stepped up next to Lorne, less neatly, leaning for a closer look at the radio. “Huh – I thought that one might be beyond fixing. You really are a wizard with these.”

“It’s still not working right,” Lorne said, still as much to the radio as him.

“Isn’t it?” Song didn’t ask, never asked, never knocked, before leaning in to turn the radio’s dial. “Could be there’s just nothing on that channel. Let’s see if it can pick up Connelee’s broadcast. She’ll probably be picking up her guitar around this time.”

To serenade the city for half an hour or so, a hot midday breath of peace. She would be back again for longer in the evening, playing down the sun, but none of that was what Lorne had been looking for. Did Song really think they couldn’t have turned the dial to those first plucked strings, testing, tuning, if they had wanted to?

“There,” he said, as those strings segued into soft, wandering melody. “Loud and clear. Why don’t we take it with us? You know what their radio is like at Swallow Field – think the rust is all that’s holding it together. They might give us a decent price for this one.”

And then Lorne would start over. Look somewhere else for whatever might be missing. Was that how it would always be? Broken generators and decent trades, one radio after another questioning a sky that would never answer?

“Lorne?” Song prompted them. “Everything good?”

A life in that city, watching the lights dwindle around them and never knowing whether any were left to shine beyond what they could see? Whether there was hope beyond what they could see?

“Everything’s fine,” they said, shoving away from the table. “Just give me a minute to get my tools together.”