Divine Radio
From where I’m standing, I can barely see a thing past the gawpers, the camera crews, the journalists, and the zealots. Oh yes, and the genuinely religious. Half of them were hoping for a miracle, the other half for a scandal about to be exposed on international television.
Perhaps if I edge slightly to the right… Yes, onto this small rise in the field.
Ah. Much better.
I can just about make out his balding head now. There’s a divine joke from the Lord Almighty if ever I heard one. His shoulders, too, though he’s facing away from me. A placard reading John 12:32 drifts into view every now and then, like an unwanted subtitle.
Still, you can’t have everything. And since I already know how this ends, it’s only polite to let someone else have the better view.
I’ve never understood the placard people. You see them everywhere, football matches, rock concerts, anywhere a crowd gathers. Do they really believe they’ll convert someone mid-kickoff? It seems unlikely.
As far as I know, and I do, by the way, the only reliable route to true belief is far less theatrical.
Voices.
Once a man starts hearing those, he’s gone. Bang. Religious fervour, permanent and unshakeable.
But I’m wandering.
The bald man is Emlyn Jones. Former headteacher. Blackwood, Gwent. Down in the Valleys, male voice choirs echo through the ghosts of coal mines. A melancholy sort of place, though apparently ideal for Mr Jones’s purposes.
You see, according to him, his machine wouldn’t work just anywhere. It required a particular combination of atmosphere, geography, and, if you ask him, something not entirely measurable.
Mountains. Air pressure. A hint of dragons.
(Though I should say, there are no dragons in Wales anymore. They vanished long ago. One of Creation’s finer ideas, quietly abandoned. Not like the dodo, which was clearly a draft that slipped through.)
Anyway.
Mr Jones claims to have invented a machine that allows him to speak to God.
Simple as that.
He switches it on, adjusts a few dials, pulls a lever or two, and, apparently, God answers.
He won’t explain how it works, beyond something about barometric shifts interacting with specialised circuitry inside what looks, to most of us, like a radio assembled in a shed.
Which is, in fact, exactly where it was.
He used it for weeks before telling his wife. She found it odd, of course, that her husband should spend long evenings alone in the potting shed, returning late with a faintly beatific smile, but, as she later explained to her sister in Abergavenny, that was “just Emlyn.”
The whole thing might have remained a domestic curiosity had he not, quite by chance, mentioned it in a pub in Newbridge.
Unfortunately for him, one Ann Barker happened to be listening.
Head of Religious Affairs for a soon-to-launch satellite channel. Professionally curious. Naturally sceptical.
She asked for a demonstration.
Mr Jones agreed—his instinct for privacy swiftly overcome by the prospect of appearing on television. (A curious reaction, for a man allegedly on speaking terms with the Almighty.)
Ms Barker was converted instantly.
The machine's voice answered questions no one could have known. No one living, at least. Her mother might have managed it, but she had been dead for years.
From that moment, the story took on a life of its own.
Radio Four. Television debates. Panel discussions. Highbrow analysis and lowbrow hysteria. It spread like wildfire.
A small war broke out in Uzbekistan and barely made page three. Meanwhile, the nation debated the theological implications of a man in a shed with a radio.
All the while, Mr Jones said very little.
Which brings us here.
A windswept hillside in Gwent. A folding table. A radio. A balding man, I can now see quite clearly, thanks to the placard brigade finally sitting down. Representatives from every church, several MPs, a scattering of law enforcement, Ms Barker glowing beside him, and a restless press corps shifting for position.
Flashbulbs pop. Cameras whirr. Then, silence.
Mr Jones sits. Reaches for the switch.
“Infidel!”
The shout cracks across the field. A hundred heads turn at once.
A bearded man stands to my right, trembling with outrage.
“This is an abomination! You are being used by Satan. Stop this now before we all suffer!”
The crowd ripples. Opinions ignite. Someone near me shouts, directly into my ear:
“If Satan’s using him, it proves God exists!”
Neat argument. Pity about the delivery.
A senior police officer moves along the line, urging people to sit. Reluctantly, they do. The noise fades. The strange calm returns.
The machine hums.
Then the zealot moves.
He lunges forward, shoving past an MP, planting a foot on the thigh of an unfortunate bishop. Just as he reaches for the radio,
Ms Barker steps in front of him.
“Stop,” she says, with surprising authority. “Let him show what he has found.”
The man falters. Momentum gone. He rocks slightly, unsure whether to argue or attack.
And then, of course, a politician intervenes.
Bernard Middlewick MP. A man known for clarity of thought and a talent for reducing complex matters to simplicity.
“Why are we even here?” he says. “He’s a crackpot. Let him play with his toys on his mountain.”
The zealot seizes the opportunity.
“Who are you to call anyone mad? Haven’t you sent men to die? Haven’t you—”
Bang.
Middlewick’s right hand lands squarely in the man’s beard.
The crowd inhales.
Then explodes.
A cleric attempts peace and gets it wrong. A columnist in a gabardine coat misreads the moment and joins in. Someone swings rosary beads with unexpected enthusiasm.
A government minister takes a glancing blow meant for a rabbi. Blood appears. Bodyguards draw pistols with the enthusiasm of children discovering toys.
Chaos, in other words.
And then…
lightning.
A single, precise strike.
The table splinters. The radio shatters. Smoke curls upward as the crowd freezes, caught between revelation and inconvenience.
Silence returns, thinner this time.
I was wrong again, wasn’t I?
I thought you might listen.
But that’s the trouble with free will. You give it away, and suddenly omnipotence comes with conditions.
Perhaps next time I’ll keep it simple.
A burning bush. A weeping statue. Something more… traditional.
Behind me, the crowd begins to argue again.
I turn and walk away.
Unnoticed, as usual.