7.The Story
Benny is a Welsh coal miner. He is a radio ham. He is 23 years
old, married
to Molly. They have a son, young Ben, aged 4, and a new baby.
They look after
Benny's twin brother Billy, who is apparently a vegetable. The
mine is closed
by the market forces. The Male Voice Choir stops singing, the
village is dying.
One night Benny takes Billy on a pub crawl. Drunk in a
brightly-lit shopping
mall, Benny vents his anger on a shop window full of multiple TV
images of
Margaret Thatcher's mocking condescension. In defiance, he
steals a cordless
'phone. Later that night, Benny cavorts dangerously on the
parapet of a
motorway footbridge, in theatrical protest at the tabloid press.
That same
night, a cab driver is killed by a concrete block dropped off a
similar bridge.
The police come to question Benny; he hides the cordless 'phone
under the
cushion of Billy's wheelchair.
Billy is different, he can receive radio waves directly without
the aid of a
tuner; he explores the cordless 'phone, recognizing its
radioness.
Benny is sent to prison. Billy feels as if half of him has been
cut off. He
misses Benny's nightly conversations with radio hams in foreign
parts. Molly,
unable to cope, sends Billy to stay with his Great Uncle David,
who had
emigrated to the USA during the war. Much as Billy likes Uncle
David and the
sunshine and all the new radio in LA, he cannot adjust to the
cultural upheaval
and the loss of Benny, who for him is 'home'.
Uncle David, now an old man, is haunted by having worked on the
Manhattan
project during World War II, designing the Atom Bomb, and seeks
to atone. He
also is a radio ham; he often talks to other hams about the
Black Hills of his
youth, the Male Voice Choir, about home. He is saddened by the
use of
telecommunication to trivialise important issues, the soap opera
of state.
However, Live Aid has decynicised him to an extent. Billy
listens to David and
hears the truth the old man speaks.
Billy experiments with his cordless 'phone, he learns to make
calls. He
accesses computers and speech synthesizers, he learns to speak.
Billy makes contact with Jim a DJ at Radio KAOS, a renegade rock
station
fighting a lone rear guard action against format radio. Billy
and Jim become
radio friends, Reagan and Thatcher bomb Lybia. Billy perceives
this as an act
of political 'entertainment' fireworks to focus attention away
from problems at
'home'.
Billy has developed his expertise with the cordless 'phone to
the point where
he can now control the most powerful computers in the world. He
plans an
'entertainment' of his own. He simulates nuclear attack
everywhere, but
de-activates the military capability of 'the powers that be' to
retaliate.
In extremes perceptions change, Panic, comedy, compassion. In a
SAC bunker a
soldier in a white cravat turns a key to launch the counter
attack. Nothing
happens; impotently he kicks the console, hurting his foot. He
watches the
approaching blips on the radar screen. As impact approaches, he
thinks of his
wife and kids, he puts his fingers in his ears.
Silence. White out. Black out. Lights out. It didn't happen,
we're still
alive. Billy has drained the earth of power to create his
illusion.
All over the dark side of the earth, candles are lit. In the pub
in Billy's
home village in Wales one man starts to sing; the other men join
in.
The tide is turning.
Billy is home.
Jim： This is K.A.O.S. You and I are listening to KAOS in Los
Angeles. Let's
go to the telephones now and take a request.
Billy： Hello, I'm Billy.
Jim： Yes？
Billy： I hear radio waves in my head.
Jim： You hear radio waves in your head？ Ah! Is there a request
that you have
tonight for KAOS？
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