Dead Air at 3:07

A whisper on line four. Water on the floor. You have one live microphone and forty minutes.

At 3:07 a.m., a woman on line four whispers that she is trapped in the dark, with water rising around her and only your radio show for company. With a producer, a sound engineer, a musician and a stranger from the phone company, you have forty minutes to find her using nothing but the sounds behind her voice. Question a 'brother' who knows too much, stand up to a station owner with secrets of her own, and decide whether the whole city should hear the rescue. Four endings.

ตีสามเจ็ดนาที ผู้หญิงคนหนึ่งในสายที่สี่กระซิบว่าเธอติดอยู่ในความมืด น้ำกำลังเอ่อขึ้นรอบตัว และมีเพียงรายการวิทยุของคุณเป็นเพื่อน คุณมีโปรดิวเซอร์ วิศวกรเสียง นักดนตรี และคนแปลกหน้าจากบริษัทโทรศัพท์ กับเวลาอีกสี่สิบนาทีที่จะตามหาเธอจากเสียงที่ดังอยู่เบื้องหลังเท่านั้น ซักถาม 'พี่ชาย' ที่รู้มากเกินไป ยืนหยัดต่อหน้าเจ้าของสถานีที่มีความลับของตัวเอง และตัดสินใจว่าทั้งเมืองควรได้ยินการช่วยชีวิตครั้งนี้หรือไม่ มีสี่ฉากจบให้เลือก

You play

Host of the late-night radio show 'Night Owls'

Keep a trapped caller calm and talking, find clues in the sounds behind her voice, question a suspicious second caller, and guide rescuers to her before the river water rises.

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Speak aloud · a few missed words are okay · 4 endings

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A story that changes with your voice

Preview the opening chapters

Follow one possible opening route below. Your choices lead to different outcomes. Speaking rehearsals revisit your chosen route after its resolution and are counted separately from the story chapters.

Scene 01

Line four

It is 3:07 a.m. at Riverside 98.7, and your late-night show, Night Owls, is drifting through its quietest hour. Your guest, the musician Akira, is packing his guitar. Leo, the sound engineer, is yawning at his desk. Then line four blinks red. A woman whispers so softly that Mira, your producer, pushes the fader all the way up. 'Please don't hang up. It's dark in here, and there's water on the floor. I can only hear your show on a little radio.' Behind her voice, water drips and echoes, as if she is inside a huge, empty room. Rain hammers the studio window.

Scene 02

Every sound behind her

You keep her live and ask, softly, what she can hear. Her name is Elena, she says. Someone locked a heavy door behind her and took her phone, and she is calling from an old phone on a wall. Leo pulls the call into his headphones and lets his noise filters work. Out of the hiss come three shapes: water dripping into a deep space, a ship's horn sounding twice, and a low iron rumble that shakes the line. On the other phone, Mira reaches the police. A Detective Jin says that tracing an old line could take forty minutes.

Scene 03

The switchboard lights up

Within two minutes, every light on the switchboard is blinking. Night Owls listeners are awake all over the city: a taxi driver, a baker starting her shift, a nurse on her break. The taxi driver is sure the horn belongs to the big cargo ships that turn below the river bridge. Then Elena whispers something strange: 'I have to keep the boxes dry. Everything depends on them.' Why would a trapped woman worry about boxes? Through the glass, you notice a man in a soaked jacket at the studio's street door, holding a phone-company badge up to the security camera.

Useful expressions

English you can actually say

01Let's keep her on air and ask her to describe every sound around her.
02I want to take her off air and call the police before anything else.
03We should ask our listeners if anyone recognises the sound of that ship's horn.
04Let's ask our musician guest to listen too, because musicians hear details others miss.
05I think we should put her back on air so our listeners can help us find her.

Story vocabulary

Words you meet in context

whisper: กระซิบ
fader: ปุ่มเลื่อนปรับระดับเสียง
prank call: สายโทรมาแกล้ง
echo: เสียงก้อง / เสียงสะท้อน
producer: โปรดิวเซอร์รายการ
sound engineer: วิศวกรเสียง
noise filter: ตัวกรองเสียงรบกวน
hiss: เสียงซ่า

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Questions about this story

What English level is Dead Air at 3:07?

Dead Air at 3:07 is written for CEFR B2 learners. The level describes the story's target language difficulty, not an official proficiency assessment.

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