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Some people wonder why you would want to reinvent the telephone and establish an independent phone system. There are already so many forms of communication. The reason for this mysterious telephony is that all forms of communication can be and
likely are monitored. Privacy no longer exists. Some people wonder why privacy is so important. I was once told: “If you’ve done nothing wrong you should have nothing to worry about.”
Some people don’t understand the beauty of a secret. The new phones are brilliant. They power themselves, instead of pulling power from
the line. You can use batteries—double As, triple As, lithium ion. Some are powered with a hand crank. The hubs, similar in function to a switchboard, transfer the calls along the lines. The lines are laid out in secret: in sewers, under gardens, sometimes hidden in plain sight along existing phone lines.
A number has two Greek letters: a capital (A, E, Θ, M, and Σ) and a lower case (β, η, θ, π, and υ) and four digits
each from zero to nine. The number is set with dials, allowing the number to be changed, and a button transmits it to the hub. If anyone calls a certain number, the hub transfers the call to the phone with that number, granting it’s connected. You can only know a person’s number if they tell it to you, or if they put it in a phone book. A phone book is usually
an old photostatic copy of an ancient Greek text, heavily annotated and scrawled upon in a careful and beautiful code. For example, the phone book for Athens, Georgia is Aristophanes’ The Clouds. Sometimes no one will know the numbers of anyone else for weeks, until they bump into another member of their secret society, or they discover a
dog-eared copy of Plato’s Symposium in a used bookstore. It is this gorgeous impracticality that makes the system so difficult to detect and root out. The system isn’t public knowledge, but some people can’t keep a secret. Of course,
the whole thing is illegal. It is technically, constitutionally legal. It is simply a danger to the state. The government has been trying to snuff it out because it can’t be monitored, but the government has failed for nearly two decades. This is, again, because it is so wonderfully disorganized.
In the early days of telephony, phones were designated a number with two letters for the area the switch was in. So, if you called IL4679, IL2333, or IL2459, they would all be in Ilium, New York, because IL was the exchange for the switchboard
in Ilium. The FBI believed for some time that numbers starting with the same two letters, such as Αθ2391 and Αθ4591, must be in the same place, not knowing that the numbers could be adjusted. In fact,
Αθ2391 was the phone number of a
plumber in Houston, Texas, and Αθ4591 was an accountant in Dover, Delaware. Both of them are in jail now— the plumber for assaulting a police officer, the accountant for tax fraud. They had both received phone calls of warning from people on their hubs, but they ignored them. An unheeded warning is known by initiates as a Cassandra call.
The man who invented this ingenious telephone system was Howard Calchas, a Classics professor at Ithaca College and an amateur electrician. He had the idea
while tinkering with a lineman’s handset he had bought at a flea market. A year of fooling around later he had created the first of the new phones and a hub. He and a few of his fellow professors set up the first secret lines on their campus, paying a trusted maintenance man to assist them. It was secret, if unimportant and impractical.
Eventually, Dr. Calchas’ friend Dr. Peter Strauber (chemistry, department head) suggested they share the idea with a few friends and help other professors to set up systems on their own campuses. Calchas was flattered by the idea, but a bit
anxious. He did it, obtusely. The plans were hidden in bits and pieces in a pseudoepigraphical work on architecture, The Language of Architecture, which Calchas attributed to Archimedes. The schematics for the phone and the hub were disguised as the floor plans for buildings.
After several years the idea took off. Calchas was shocked to find an English translation of his book by a small run press when he visited an independent bookstore in New York City. He bought a copy out of curiosity, and a touch of vanity. He
read the translation and was disgusted. It read like the ham-handed work of a first year student. He promptly wrote his own translation and mailed it to the printing press, gratis. Years passed, and Dr. Calchas retired. He occupied
himself by working on his Sanskrit and toying with tube televisions. Eventually he got rid of his traditional phone. The only people who could reach him were his old colleagues or creditors. One day, his phone rang. Jane, his wife,
screamed and dropped a cup of tea. The phone had not rung in nearly three weeks. Calchas picked it up, expecting it was Dr. Brandenburg (philosophy).
“Hello?” “Is this Dr. Howard Calchas?” The voice was unfamiliar, deep.
“Y-Yes.” “You’ve won a prize.”
“I haven’t entered any contests.” “Your prize is a trophy.” “A trophy?”
“Yes, sir. I hope you’ll be wise enough to collect it.” “But—”
The phone disconnected. Jane walked into the living room, where the phone was. Still startled, she looked at him anxiously.
“Who was it, Howard? “It was Dr. Brandenburg. He was just letting me know he was changing his number.”
“Oh, I don’t know why he bothers. You never call him anyway.” Howard muttered distractedly in response. He walked into the kitchen,
stepped over the puddle of cooling tea. He fumbled in the pantry and opened up an old metal cracker canister. Inside was a bottle of Glenfiddich he’d been hiding from Jane. He heard a knock at the door. “Don’t answer that, Jane.”
“Hello?” Howard heard a voice from the foyer.
“Ma’am, we have a warrant to search your home for illegal firearms…” Dr. Howard Calchas spent the last years of his life in the
Attica Correctional Facility for possession of automatic assault rifles.
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