The Frequency of Dust
some frequencies were never meant to be found
On Trilon-C, the hum of the Veil is the sound of civilization - an electromagnetic shield the colony's children were raised to believe keeps the storms out and the air breathable. Fifty years ago, Elder Recardo Chase-Barlow signed the Accord that built it. When Aldo, a heavy-rig maintainer, and Kael, a signals analyst, uncover the courier ship that was lost the night the Veil came online, its final transmission rewrites everything they were told about the world they live in.
first draft complete · now in revision - continuity & polish passes
the story
Fifty years ago, Elder Recardo Chase-Barlow signed the Accord - a deal that promised his people survival in exchange for extraction rights to Trilon-C's mineral core. In return, Sol-Corp built the Veil: an electromagnetic containment lattice enclosing the planet in a purple sphere of managed air, and engineered calm. The Trilonese have tended it faithfully ever since, calling it a miracle and building lives around the certainty that it keeps them alive.
Aldo is a heavy-rig maintainer who has spent thirty years calibrating equipment he believed was holding the planet together. Kael is a signals analyst who reads waveforms the way other people read weather. When a routine maintenance run opens a crater and uncovers TC-09 - the lost courier that was supposed to have carried the Elder Council to safety the night the Veil came online - the data it transmits in its final burst of power tells them what the Accord was really for.
"Fear was the most successful product Sol-Corp had ever manufactured."
The Veil was never there to keep the storms out.
It was put there to keep them in.
A science-fiction novel in which sound is a medium of power, and three generations of consequence hum at 440 cycles.
The opening of the book is up to read - a prologue and the first 3 chapters.
Read the opening