The Distant Echo

Determination Overrode Fear

Implanted into a prominent mountain ridge, steel-cored concrete fixtures stretched along and throughout bedrock made from sandstone, limestone, and shale. Flattop decking containing access hatches, air-exchanger vents, and banks of electrical transformers gave way to a stout, 4-story cuboidal structure — the base threshold for the tower's transmitter array and supporting mast.

Essentially, the transmitter tower was a two-piece affair: an inner, hollow cylinder made from titanium-carbon fiber, 10 feet in diameter, encased in a nickel-based superalloy, and ascending 2348 feet into the air. A steel frame, 4-sided mast surrounded the inner, primary span, set 10 feet greater, supporting the primary span with stabilizer struts and cojoined by branches from the main body that powered a crowded array of parabolic dishes and aperture antennas.

Alex stood at the railing of the 'Cube,' the nickname workers had given the tower's base structure. Though safe behind a steel pipe railing mounted upon a concrete half wall, an icy breeze swirled, and panic swept through his core.

"Come on, let's get going before that storm rolls in," Burt said moving around Alex and starting for the outer mast.

The Phase Frequency Discriminator was located at the south exterior of the 'Interior Upper Span' — the highest section of the transmitter tower. At the tower's north side, they boarded a skeleton frame platform elevator — a rickety and flimsy piece of metal plating surrounded by brittle railing that might snap from metallic fatigue at any time, in Alex's estimation anyway — ascended with grinding gears and concerning vibrations, 1000 feet up and along the mast frame.

When the elevator reached the point it could not climb any further, the two men exited onto a metal grate service deck. Burton smiled, and maybe even yodeled as he secured his safety line to the railing. Alex somehow clipped the carabiner to the post, and he hugged the inner-most structure with crushing impulsion, hyperventilating and desperate to block the call of the void.

Burton squeezed Alex's shoulder. " I checked your line, and everything's good. Let's just get our work done, you'll feel better concentrating on fixing this thing."

Burton moved to the ladder and stepped onto the first rung. "I'll climb to the discriminator."

"No. I'll do it," Alex said.

"Are you sure?"

Alex shook his head. "No. But this is my project. It's something I have to do."

Taking a deep breath, Alex stepped onto the ladder and pointed. "Burt, I want you to open the power-feed junction and monitor flow levels. Make sure the ground source is shunted and that the zero-point collectors are disabled."

Alex started the 300-foot climb, as the Phase Frequency Discriminator control box awaited him there. Several years ago, when Alex designed every facet of Project Echo, he initially set the control box on the same landing as the power feed access junction. But, each calculation showed that the cumulative radiation from the power feed would ruin the circuitry in the control box. Furthermore, the control box needed to be close to the discriminator itself.

When engineering something on paper, those problems are easy to fix — just move the box. What did he care? He'd never have to climb 150 feet into the air to work on it. Well, now the joke was on him, and he was not amused.

Anxiety consumed him. Strapping the safety cable to the tower guideline, Alex looked down at the ground below even though he swore he wouldn't. He hated heights. The thought of flying in an airplane terrified him. Part of that was claustrophobia and the crazy notion people were just not meant to be up high in the air.

But he hated the thought of his project failing even more. Birch was a dick; Alex laughed, thinking of a closely related term more appropriate for a rooster, and Alex was not about to give that cocky bastard a chance to gloat.

Determination overrode fear. Though his head spun with vertigo, Alex started his climb. Every mental trick he could think of had its turn: Singing songs. Counting rungs. Chanting positive mantras. Replaying old baseball games in his head.

At the control box, there was no landing and Alex had to continue hanging on to the ladder. If the metal could have been crushed by his hold, it would have. With his other hand, he maneuvered a tool bag from his back to a shallow alcove next to the box.

He went to work, removing the control box outer panel. A warm tingle of static electricity surrounded him, and the shock of it caused him to slip. He screamed, hugging the ladder, but slipping down a rung. His head cracked against a snow-crusted pipe and he struggled to stabilize his footing. As he focused on planting the sole of his right boot square on the rung, he saw Burton below, working at the power-feed port.

Another wave of static bombarded Alex, and his heart raced with irregular palpitations that caused him to lose control of his bladder.

He screamed: "Burt, get out of there! It's a power surge!"

Burton pulled back from the port, not understanding what Alex said, hands up in confusion.

An explosion flashed from the open port, knocking Burton back into the guardrail. Branches of electricity shot out, wrapping him in a mesh of energy, lifting him off the platform before vaporizing him.

Alex didn't have time to register Burt's fate. Captured by intense energy that rushed around him, he saw the safety cable disintegrate and the fibers of his clothes unravel. His skin boiled from the heat as the air oppressed him. It felt alive — thick with mass to it, like a pool of invisible quicksand.

The energy was pushing Alex away from the tower. He fought against it, and he held his own until another explosion knocked him off the ladder. He did not fall downward as gravity would have had it; instead, he levitated, held upright in midair.

Current flowed out from the tower and wrapped him in a cocoon of crackling particles. Waves of energy flowed through him, like a million tiny shards of white-hot glass cutting through his body. There was another bright flash, and Alex could see the particles of energy colliding with his cells, affecting the molecules at a subatomic level. The energetic rushing river was now part riptide. Alex could feel his body being pushed away, with the energy inside of his body sucked back toward the tower.

Every nerve fired with agony until a swell in electric intensity severed the connection. Smoke and shimmering particles blasted out from the tower, and Alex watched his body fall to the ground below while his consciousness rushed back to the tower.

Amazing. He oversaw every step during the construction phase of the transmission matrix. He knew every module, every bolt, every piece of circuitry. What he had never done, however, was experience the matrix from the inside. He could now cross that off the list, not that it was ever on his list since death would be the price required for such an accomplishment.

Well, maybe not. He didn't exactly feel dead. All around him, Alex felt energy charging, building up within the matrix. Multicolored light and ultra-fast movement increased in intensity, as did a sense of restrained momentum. Anticipation, dread, momentum, pressure, wonder — would a dead man feel those things? And what about time? Mere seconds had passed since his body fell back to Earth.

But then again, maybe he was dead. A person needs a body to live, right?

Oh, the things one thinks about when disembodied andtrapped within an Energy Transmission Matrix. Particles streamed past him,expelled out of the tower into the sky, and out into space.