Three years of failure had produced one success, and the success was forty metres.
Wikk had spent the first year trying to increase the range by modifying the dampener gap, widening it, narrowing it, offsetting the crystal alignment by fractions of a degree. The modifications produced variations in harmonic frequency but not in propagation distance. The signal went through the wall. The signal did not go through the building. Twelve metres was the ceiling, twelve metres through stone, nine through wood, fourteen through open air. The ceiling was consistent. The ceiling was frustrating. The ceiling was twelve metres, and twelve metres was enough to prove the signal existed and not enough to prove the signal mattered.
