This article is classified "Real"
In a society where information is everything, and most of the population
have yet to acquire the appropriate systems for obtaining instant specific
information at the relevant times, a necessary creation has, for a long
time, provided a theoretical solution. Unfortunately, its practicalities
end when the theory is substituted with the reality, and you are stuck at a
railway station with a PA system spewing incomprehensible gibberish into the
locality.
In fact, the actual announcements, in most cases [1], begin their lives as
reasonably, or not-so-reasonably, constructed sentences, which then begin
the journey through a microphone, and out into the world, via one small aged
disfunctional speaker [2]. The results are, more often than not, a drunken
echoed blur of noise that could equally mean the exact opposite of what was
originally intended.
As a result of this, many people who were set to benefit from a public
address system, will simply be as confused as ever, or perhaps more so, and
could also become increasingly angry that they may be missing a vitally
important announcement. Of course, if they managed to quieten all the other
noises in the vicinity, they would still be unable to comprehend the
announcement in question, so their position is just as helpless if the cries
of "Keep the bloody noise down!" are sufficiently effective, or if, as is
more frequently the case, they are just whispers in the wind.
Sometimes it is possible to extract the vaguest hint of a few words, which
when threaded together and combined with a few other words of the
interpreter's creation [3], construct an announcement that is almost
certainly and almost totally unlike the one that it was intended to be.
While we are told that science is continually attempting to develop more and
more sofisticated upgrades to these systems, it is too often the case that
each solution is just as bad as the last one, and eventually, it is simpler
to remain confused, and learn to live with it.
[1] The possibility exists that one announcer somewhere has realised the
problem, and simply recites yesterday's weather forecast, intermixed
with the football results.
[2] The number of speakers is irrelevant, but the disfunction is generally
compulsory, and each speaker should be adjusted to allow the sound-waves
to rebound off each wall unpredictably.
[3] There is an art to this, but sometimes it's necessary to pick them from
a dictionary at random.