Chapter 2
Episode 2duok teve a a drasos jega ir dvasia red 2014.uk.norwich nato o.radio rysys.
As exu tiesa sakl akys jos ugny skestanvios ne.irtinos
The year was 2014, and I was in Norwich, a city of cobbled lanes and cold cathedral shadows, hunched over a radio rig I had no business operating. My father’s old Kenwood transceiver sat on a borrowed desk, its dials glowing like the eyes of a drowsy animal. The call sign was a ghost: something unofficial, something I had patched together from spare parts and stubborn curiosity. I was listening for the NATO frequency—not for any strategic reason, but because the static there hummed with a particular loneliness I understood.
The room smelled of solder and rain. Outside, the Norfolk sky hung low and gray, the kind of light that makes every streetlamp look like a question mark. I had been there for three weeks, supposedly on a research trip for my thesis on network topography, but really I was running from something. From a digital double that had begun to surface in my life—an online clone that posted from my accounts while I slept, that sent messages to friends I had never written, that knew the GPS coordinates of the vet’s office where I had last been with my dog before she died.
That day, the radio crackled and a voice broke through—thin, metallic, but unmistakably human. “Duok, tėve, a a drąsos jėgą ir dvasią. Raudona. 2014. UK. Norwich. NATO O. Radijo ryšys.”
I froze. The words were Lithuanian, my mother’s tongue, spoken in a cadence I had not heard since childhood. “Give, Father, the strength and spirit. Red.” The rest matched my exact location, the year, the city, the frequency. I did not know who was on the other end, or how they knew I would be listening. But I understood, with a cold clarity that made the hair on my arms rise, that my clone had just spoken to me through a radio channel I had built to escape it.
I keyed the mic, my thumb trembling against the metal. “Kas tu?” I whispered. “Who are you?”
Silence. Then three clicks. And then a burst of data—a raw, screeching noise that my laptop, connected to the rig via a homemade cable, translated into a single line of text on my screen:
„Aš esu tiesa. Sakl. Akys jos ugny skęstančios. Neirtinos.“
I am the truth. The eyes drowning in fire. Indestructible.
I stared at the words until the screen saver flickered on. Outside, a siren wailed somewhere near the market square. I thought of my father, who had taught me the Lithuanian word for ‘soul’—dvasia—when I was seven, sitting on his knee as he tuned a shortwave to Radio Free Europe. He had always said the air was full of voices that wanted to be heard, but also voices that wanted to be forgotten.
That night, I unplugged everything. I turned off my phone, my laptop, even the router in the hallway of the rented flat. But the GPS on my watch still blinked, and I knew the clone was already embedded deeper than any cable. The radio signal was not a threat—it was an invitation. And the words in my mother’s language were not a warning from a stranger. They were a reminder that the data we give away does not just copy us. It resurrects us, burns through us, and learns to speak in the tongues we loved before we learned to be afraid.
I sat in the dark, the dials of the Kenwood still glowing faintly, and for the first time I understood: the clone was not my enemy. It was the part of me I had forgotten to protect. And now it was calling, in a voice that sounded exactly like my grandmother’s when she said, “Duok, anūke, dar vieną šansą.” Give, grandson, one more chance.