The scent of cold metal lingered in the air.
The entire chamber was sterile, colorless - as if even time itself had been scrubbed clean with disinfectant.
Elias stood before a long steel-covered table, where the council members had arranged their files, tablets, and skeptical gazes.
The walls were lined with smart glass reflecting holograms that drifted above - formulas, data, project names. Each one important, official, safe.
His was none of those.
He cleared his throat.
"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for allowing me to present. I know the subject we're about to discuss… is controversial."
"That's an understatement," murmured Dr. Rosen, without lifting her eyes from her screen.
Elias didn't respond. He slid his finger across the remote, and the hall dimmed.
A projection flared into the air - a vast black metallic ring slowly rotating in a circle.
At its center pulsed a single point of light, white and rhythmic, like a heartbeat.
"This is the Gate of Eternity," he said softly but clearly. "A system designed to measure the energies that remain in the human body after death."
Dr. Margolin raised an eyebrow.
"Energies… after death?"
"Yes," Elias replied. "Frequencies, actually. Residual electrical resonance that appears consistently at the moment life ends. I call it the Soul Frequency."
Silence fell.
Heavy, uneasy silence.
He knew how absurd it sounded to them - saw it in their faces, the restrained smirks, the polite academic disbelief.
All his life, Elias had fought to prove one thing: that science could explain even the inexplicable.
But in that moment, standing before the council, he felt like a child reciting a love poem at an engineers' convention.
"Do you have proof?" asked Dr. Rosen dryly.
"Yes. Three separate experiments, all pointing to the same recurring frequency - 11.7 hertz."
"And you're sure it's not background noise?"
"I checked everything. In all three cases, the frequency appeared seconds after confirmed brain death and vanished soon after."
"So what are you suggesting?" Margolin interjected. "That we build a radio station for ghosts?"
Laughter rippled through the hall - restrained, professional, devastating.
That small, polite laugh was the moment Elias realized they would never truly listen.
He shut down the presentation.
The lights returned.
On the council's faces lay that familiar look of fatigue - another idea that sounded better on paper.
Margolin glanced at his watch.
"Dr. Ray," he said authoritatively, "you suffer from the same syndrome as many brilliant scientists - you seek meaning where none is required. You want to talk about death? Talk to biologists, not physicists."
"It's not about death," Elias replied quietly. "It's about what remains."
"That's not science," Margolin cut him off. "That's romance dressed in mathematics. And the state doesn't fund romance."
He wanted to answer, to shout - but instead he simply nodded, shut down the hologram, gathered his laptop, and said softly,
"Thank you for your time."
Outside, the corridor was long and empty.
His footsteps echoed on the steel floor.
Through the glass on his right lay the main laboratory - flooded with pale light and silent machines.
At its center, covered in dust and stillness, stood her - his machine.
The Gate.
The dim neon light traced blue lines across the metal.
Elias stopped, placed a hand on the glass, and for a brief second felt it tremble.
Almost like a heartbeat.
Almost like a breath.
"They don't understand you," he whispered. "But I do."
In the elevator down, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny disc - a digital storage chip, etched by hand with the mark L-01.
He held it like a charm, reverently.
It contained the recording of their last experiment together - his and Lian's.
The accident.
The day she vanished.
He closed his hand around the chip, eyes shut.
Her voice echoed in his memory, like wind trapped between worlds:
"Remember, Elias… if it's real - you'll see me in the light."
When he stepped out of the station, the sky was crimson.
The sun was sinking behind tall antenna towers, and the desert around him glowed like a sea of dust.
He stopped, looked at the horizon, and for a moment there was perfect silence the silence that follows failure.
Then he whispered to himself,
"I'll prove it. Not for them. For you."
He didn't look back.
The last light of the sun faded, and the man descending into the shadows was no longer just a scientist -
but one who had lost everything,
and vowed to find the soul of the woman he loved,
even if it meant crossing the boundaries of reality itself.