Takahiro Studios

Aftertone

Sounding

Free

A wall comes down at Red Ridge. Six hours earlier, nobody had any reason to think it would. The man who walked out of the gate has not said a word. He has been sitting inside a taped square since dawn, and the Commonwealth has arrived to decide what he is. Hiro, who has spent his life not saying what he notices, tries something that isn't words — and gets an answer. Then the stranger stands up, walks to the highwall, and puts his hand on it. The instruments say the rock is fine. The geologist says the rock is fine. Nelson, who is right about everything else today, says a man nobody can identify does not get to shut down a mine because he touched a stone. Claire has to choose whether to believe the data or the man, and she has nine minutes.

Aftertone

Somebody Maintains This

Free

Hiro is on the other side. It is sixteen degrees and raining. The ground is mud where it should be red dust, and somewhere down the valley there are lights. He does what he always does. He counts. Forty-one lights, which makes it a town. Then forty-two — and the forty-second one is moving. Back on Earth it is 06:14 and nobody has moved since the power came back. By 11:40 the mine belongs to the Commonwealth. By nightfall his crew are outside the wire, and the only man who knows what is through the gate has been gone eleven hours. Twenty pages.

Aftertone

Stepping Through

Free

The circle in the highwall answers to one person on site, and nobody can explain why him. While the instruments argue and the crew watches from behind the tape, Hiro works out what the Gate has been waiting for — and the night the floodlights go out, he gives it what it wants.

Aftertone

The Anomaly

Free

An excavator on a Cape York mine takes a bite out of a bench and the bucket slides off. Under the red dirt is two metres of grey stone with no tool marks, no bedding and no fracture. The physicist sent up to explain it has heard a sound his entire life that no instrument has ever picked up. He stopped mentioning it when he was a child.