Last year, a television emitted an international distress signal, and police showed up at a house, only to discover the television was crying for help. The owner switched off the set and has not used it since.
I have been thinking about this alot lately - about the concept of inanimate signals. I wrote the story of the television distress signal into an essay a while back (Shutter Release), but as time moves forward, I find myself rethinking the whole concept.
I keep thinking: What if it wasn't inanimate at all? What if the signals came from somewhere else? What if the television was tuned to a channel nobody has ever seen? A missing channel?
I will post some notes on this later.