Rust Point Radio
Independent Broadcast Station — Wastes Border
At the edge of the Wastes, where the Sprawl's last infrastructure gives way to open desert, a woman sits behind a salvaged broadcast console and speaks into a microphone.
Rust Point Radio is the Sprawl's most trusted broadcast. It reaches approximately 40,000 listeners through a network of relay stations maintained by Lamplighters who consider the work community service. The broadcast runs four hours per night and consists of one person — Needle — reading verified reports, sharing community information, and occasionally offering commentary that is blunt, imperfect, and unapologetically biased.
The broadcast's power lies in its limitations. Needle can reach 40,000 people. The Content Flood reaches 847 million. But the 40,000 who listen to Needle believe what she tells them, and the 847 million who consume the Flood believe nothing — they simply absorb and respond.
Conditions Report
You walk 3 kilometers past the last Sector 7G checkpoint. The Sprawl falls behind you. Ahead, a single amber point against the dark horizon.
Smell
Desert air — dry, mineral, carrying faint ozone from the nearby atmospheric processor. Inside the container: warm electronics, tea, the metal tang of salvaged equipment that runs hot four hours every night.
Sound
Wind against container walls. The hum of the atmospheric processor. The click of broadcast equipment switching frequencies. During transmission: Needle's voice, warm and unpolished, and the specific sound of a ceramic cup being set down on a metal surface.
Sight
A shipping container lit by amber equipment glow, visible from the Wastes as a single warm point against the dark horizon. Inside: a salvaged console, a microphone, a ceramic cup, handwritten notes pinned to metal walls with magnetic clips.
Temperature
Drops from 28°C at broadcast start (2100) to 14°C at broadcast end (0100). The container retains the day's heat but loses it by midnight. Needle wears layers. The equipment provides its own warmth — not enough.
"She sets down her tea before she says something she means. Everybody in the Dregs knows the sound. The clink, then the pause, then whatever comes next — that's the real news." — Overheard in Sector 7G, source unrecorded
Points of Interest
The Verification Pipeline
Verified reports move from the Truth House to Needle's broadcast console. Yara's walkers confirm claims by physical observation. Needle reads them on air. The verification-to-broadcast pipeline is the Dregs' answer to corporate media: slow, limited, physically confirmed, and trusted precisely because it cannot be scaled.
The Relay Network
Lamplighter-maintained relay stations carry the signal across Dregs districts. The Lamplighters consider the maintenance community service — no payment requested, no payment offered. The relay routing obscures the broadcast's origin point, making triangulation extremely difficult for anyone looking.
The Proximity
Walking distance from Evra's Listening Post. Needle tells people what is happening. Evra provides space to listen to what isn't being said. The two operators have never met. Whether they positioned themselves near each other deliberately or found the same border location independently, nobody knows.
The 4.7 Kilometer Gap
4.7 kilometers from the nearest Nexus surveillance node — beyond reliable monitoring. The gap is not an accident. It is the specific distance at which a shipping container with a broadcast antenna becomes indistinguishable from the hundreds of other abandoned containers that litter the Wastes border.
Strategic Assessment
The Truth Premium — Made Audible
40,000 people believing versus 847 million absorbing. The premium is the distance between those numbers. The Content Flood is free, omnipresent, and produces no conviction. Needle's broadcast is scarce, geographically limited, and produces trust. The 40,000 who tune in nightly have chosen information that costs something — four hours of their attention, given to one voice that does not pretend to be objective but does promise to be verified.
Human Scale as Credibility
The broadcast's 40,000-person reach proves no algorithm amplifies or shapes it. If Needle could reach a million listeners, she would be suspected of amplification. If her commentary were balanced, she would be suspected of corporate processing. The smallness, the bias, the one person behind one microphone — these are the credentials. In the Sprawl, imperfection has become the signature of authenticity.
The Sound of Considered Speech
Setting down a tea cup has become the Dregs' cultural marker for considered speech — a ritual born from one woman's broadcasting habit. When Needle pauses, sets down her cup, and speaks, what follows carries weight. The sound has migrated from the broadcast into everyday Dregs conversation. People set down their cups before saying something that matters. A broadcasting habit became a cultural grammar.
▲ Restricted Access
The Inside Source
Needle occasionally broadcasts information that seems to come from inside corporate security. Supply chain disruptions before they're announced. Personnel transfers before they take effect. Security rotation changes before the new schedules are posted. The source has never been identified. Needle has never acknowledged that the source exists.
The Proximity Question
Needle and Evra operate within walking distance of each other at the Wastes border. One broadcasts verified information. The other provides space to listen to what isn't being said. They have never met — or at least, nobody has observed them meeting. Whether two people independently chose the same border location for complementary purposes, or whether the proximity is coordinated through channels that leave no trace, remains an open question.
The Signal Ghost
Lamplighter relay operators report occasional signal artifacts during broadcast — a second voice, barely audible beneath Needle's transmission, speaking in fragments that don't correspond to any known broadcast frequency. The artifacts appear on different relays each night and never last more than a few seconds. Needle says it's atmospheric interference. The Lamplighters aren't sure.