the broadcast

Atok believes the radio.

He does not believe people. People say a thing and Atok looks at them like they are weather that might pass. But the radio says a thing and Atok takes all of it as true. The traffic, the prayer times, the jam on the Causeway, 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 hear.

Once Mak told Atok it was going to rain. Atok said nothing. Then, ten minutes later, the radio said it was going to rain, and Atok got up and brought the washing in. Mak had said the exact same thing. But the radio is more reliable, in Atok's view, even about Mak's own washing.

There was a big match on. Our team against a team from up north. And I decided that this time I was going to be the one who brought Atok the score. Not the radio. Me. I wanted to come into the corner and tell him our team had won before his radio could, just once, and watch his face do the small thing it does when it is pleased.

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 put people all the way down the street. The second the score is known anywhere, it comes down the line to me, here, faster than the announcer can read it out."

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

"Kavi. Far end, by the field. You have the most range." By range I meant he could shout the furthest.

"I HAVE THE MOST RANGE," confirmed Kavi, proving it.

"Aiman. Middle, by the kedai. You always know things."

"Knowing is a service," said Aiman. "Confirmation is extra." I had kept some coins ready for exactly that.

"Pei Pei, by the surau." Pei Pei was already going, because Pei Pei picks up things nobody knows how she picks up.

"This will not work," said Divya, who was on the porch with me, for the record.

Hana was on standby. Standby is the worst job in any operation. Hana stood by the porch the entire match, ready, holding nothing, waiting to be needed. Nobody needed her. She stood by anyway, the whole time, because that was the job, and Hana does the job. She is the best at standing by of anyone I have ever met.

The match ended.

And the network reported in, exactly the way I had built it, and every single part of it was wrong.

From the far end, Kavi shouted a score. He shouted it with total confidence. It was a guess. Kavi shouts a guess in exactly the same big voice he shouts a real fact. And when Kavi shouts, everything sounds true, even when it is not.

"TWO ONE," shouted Kavi, down the entire street.

From the middle, Aiman sent word that he could confirm the score for two ringgit. I paid the two ringgit. Aiman confirmed a different score. When I pointed this out, he explained that confirmation and accuracy are two separate services, and that I had only paid for the one.

From the surau, Pei Pei sent back the real score, calm and certain and correct, because Pei Pei is always right. But Pei Pei does not shout. So the real score went into the relay, the actual line of kids I had stood down the street, and the relay did what a line of children always does.

Pei Pei's three nil left the surau. It reached the next kid as three nil. It reached the kid after that as free meal. It reached a kid I had not even posted as tree fell. And it arrived at the porch as a serious report that a tree had come down somewhere on the street. Which is not a football score. I had to spend a whole minute making sure it was not actually true.

And then there was the signal. I had set one up for "score confirmed." The signal was Kavi shouting it, loud, so it would carry to the porch. Kavi shouted it, loud, so it carried to the porch, and 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 whole kampung the score at the top of Kavi's voice. Three houses down, a makcik who had not even known there was a match found out the result before her own husband, who was at the match. By the time I turned to go and tell Atok, everybody else had already told everybody. I was the only one left who had not.

I had built a whole machine, and the only thing it had done was make me the very last one to know.

So I went and sat down by Atok with nothing. No scoop. No surprise. The whole kampung already buzzing outside with a score Atok had known before any of us.

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

Then Atok turned the radio down.

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

I did not say anything. I sat down in the corner next to him, and the radio murmured low under the evening, and we listened to the men talk about the match for much longer than the match had taken.

Out on the street my network was falling apart on its own. Kavi had moved on to shouting about something else. Pei Pei had gone home, correct as ever, not bothered in the least that nobody had listened. Aiman kept the two ringgit. Aiman always keeps the two ringgit.

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

I went inside.