It was about an hour later when the phone on my desk rang. I was busy telling everybody about the return of the Lincolnshire Poacher, but I stopped my Internet chat session and picked it up. It was Nikolai, calling in from Povarovo, Russia. It was about noon my time, so it was about 9:00 P.M. his. He was chattering excitedly, telling me to tune into the UVB-76 station.

UVB-76 is called “The Buzzer”, because that’s precisely what it does, twenty-four hours a day. Occasionally it switches to a lower power or accidentally gets some voice transmitted over it, but it can almost always be counted on to be an annoyance. Again, nobody really knows what it’s for.

Today there were voices, albeit very spottily coming in and infrequently clear. They spoke Russian, so I asked Nikolai to translate. Of the tidbits he managed to hear, he provided the following:

“…above…Boris…Roman…size of it…Olga…8-4-2…ought to do…19…Americans know this yet?…call…Pavel…Laika…33…president…”

The voices then ceased, but my curiosity didn’t.