Christopher Corn's Arc

Chapter 12 of 12

Christopher follows Gourd past the towers to a patch of open dirt near the fence. Gourd drops a heavy coil of tangled wires on the ground and crouches over them. "This is my bench," he says. He starts sorting frayed ends by color. No table. No roof. Just dirt and hands. A memory hits Christopher hard. Nine years ago. A flash of light. An electric blue guitar in his arms and a stranger's farm under his boots. He had lost his family, his band, his fans, his whole world. The grief had started over from zero that day. It starts over again now, looking at this new stone at the gate. He walks away from Gourd and into the workshop where the relay plans are pinned to the wall. Tommy and Tom look up. Christopher picks up a soldering iron. "Louder," he says. "I want it loud enough that Earth has to hear us. Every person I lost. Every person who lost me." He bends over the bench and gets to work. By dusk a fourth structure rises beside the three towers. A slim spire covered in painted butterflies, planted where Gourd first stood. A lightning rod. A marker. The grief did not leave Christopher. But he stopped kneeling in it. He chose the build instead, and the signal grew.