the broadcast

Atok believes the radio.

He does not believe people. People say things and Atok looks at them like they are weather that might pass. But the radio says a thing and Atok takes it as true, all of it, the traffic, the prayer times, the price of fish, the football. The radio sits on his knee in the corner and it is the one voice in the whole loud house that Atok turns up to listen to.

There was a big match on. Our team against a team from up north. And I decided that for once I was going to know the result before the radio said it, before Atok's radio could tell him, so that I could be the one who came and told Atok the score and watched him hear it from a person for the first time in his life.

You cannot beat the radio by listening to the radio. You have to be faster than it. So I built a network.

"Information," I told the gang, "moves in a relay. We will have people all down the street. The second the result is known anywhere, it travels to me, here, faster than the announcer can read it out."

I strung them down the street like a line of telephone poles. Kavi at the far end, by the field, because Kavi has the most range, by which I mean volume. Aiman in the middle, by the kedai, because Aiman always knows things and would charge the network for confirmation, which I budgeted for. Pei Pei near the surau, because Pei Pei picks things up that nobody knows how she picks up. Hana on standby. Divya on the porch with me, on the record, saying it would not work.

Everybody got a badge. The badge was a bit of tape on the shirt. A network needs badges or it is just children standing in a street.

The match ended.

And my network reported in, exactly as I had designed, and every single part of it was wrong.

Kavi, at the far end, shouted a score. He shouted it with total confidence. It was a guess. Kavi does not know the difference between a thing he knows and a thing he is shouting, and at volume the difference disappears for everyone else too. Aiman, in the middle, charged two ringgit to confirm the score, and then confirmed a different score, and when I pointed this out he explained that confirmation and accuracy are separate services. Pei Pei, near the surau, sent back the correct score, calm and certain, because Pei Pei is always right, but Pei Pei does not shout, so her correct answer arrived last and quietest, drowned under Kavi's wrong one.

And the whole time, in the corner, Atok's radio had simply said the real score, first, correctly, the moment the match ended, the way it says everything. No relay. No badges. No two-ringgit confirmation fee. It just knew, and it said so, before my fastest runner had drawn breath.

But the worst part was the signal.

I had set up a signal for "result confirmed." The signal was Kavi shouting it, loud, so it would carry all the way to the porch. And Kavi shouted it, loud, so it carried all the way to the porch, and also to every house on the street, and to the next street, and to people who had not even known there was a match. My own signal told the entire kampung the score at the top of Kavi's voice. By the time I turned to go and tell Atok, I was the last person on the street who had not already told everyone.

I had built a machine whose only achievement was to make me last.

So I went and sat down by Atok anyway, with nothing, beaten, no scoop, no surprise, the whole kampung already buzzing with a result Atok had known before any of us.

Atok did not look up. The match programme was still going on the radio, the part after, where the men talk about the match for much longer than the match took.

Then Atok turned the radio down.

Not off. Down. A small notch, just enough, so that the men talking became a low murmur under the evening, and there was room for another sound in the corner if another sound wanted to be there.

Atok never turns the radio down. In my whole life I have only ever seen the radio go up. I had always thought the radio was Atok's way of keeping the loud house out, a wall of one voice that was only his.

I had it backwards. He does not turn the radio up to keep you out. He turns it down to let you in. He had heard me come and sit, beaten, with nothing, and he had made me a quiet space the only way Atok makes space, by turning down the one thing he loves most.

I did not say anything. There was nothing that needed saying. We just sat, the two of us, and listened to the men on the radio go on about the match. The score I had failed to beat was already in the room. We both knew it. Neither of us said it.

My network disbanded itself. Kavi had moved on to shouting about something else. Pei Pei had gone home, correct as ever, unbothered that nobody had listened. Aiman kept the two ringgit. Aiman always keeps the two ringgit. It is the most reliable thing in the kampung after the radio.

When the programme ended, Atok turned the radio back up to its proper place.

I went inside.

Next big match, I am not building a network. I already know who is going to know the score first, and it is not me, and it is not Kavi, and it is not even Pei Pei. It is going to be the radio, the way it always is.

But I am going to come and sit in the corner anyway, for the part after, when the radio goes down a notch and there is room.