Long Distance Operator

A newsman receives an otherworldly telephone call.

The news desk was awash with sound, the noisy clackity-clack of typewriters competing with the viscous swish-pfft-pop of garrulous tongues. And, amid it all, a telephone, ringing, ringing, ringing, clamouring for attention.

The typists kept clacking. The tongues kept swishing.

The telephone kept ringing, urgent, insistent.

An anonymous hand descended on the handset, picked it up and, shivering at the cold black contours of its cold black form, raised it to a warm, anonymous ear.

There were angels on the other end of the line. Not an operator. Angels.

A seraphim choir, accompanied by cherubim harps and trumpets of Rapture, drifted through the earpiece, an ethereal aria of unearthly composition sung by celestial sopranos.

The mouth of the anonymous listener fell open. Here were the principalities of peace; there, the dominions of hope; there again, the joyous exaltation of virtues and powers. And all of it, all of it, emanating from the earpiece of an ordinary office telephone. The mouth utte…