The Last Moon Tower by David Afsharirad

The Austin Energy maintenance truck parked itself at the intersection of Pennsylvania and Leona and chimed to confirm arrival. Tom stepped out of the cab’s air conditioning and into the heat of a mid-August night, almost tripping over a cardboard sign someone had left on the sidewalk: SAVE THE MOON TOWER, the bold black letters already starting to fade. He nudged it aside with his boot and keyed his radio.

“On site.”

“Confirmed,” his AI supervisor, AL, responded.

The moon tower rose above the intersection, a lattice of steel, its six huge bulbs casting an eerie white light from atop the nearly two-hundred-year-old structure. Once, towers like this lit entire city blocks, but this one was now dwarfed by resin-glass apartment buildings and the Keating Vertical Botanical Gardens.

Tom checked the work order again: Decommission.

The last moon tower was coming down in the morning. And it was Tom’s job to unplug it first.

He walked to the rear of the truck and keyed the lift controls. The cherry-picker whined as the boom unfolded, raising him toward the weathered control box twelve feet in the air.

The interior was a tangle of wires, some so old and brittle-looking that he hesitated to touch them, their insulation gone chalky. He pulled on insulated gloves, took out his multimeter, and checked each line in turn—live feeds, dead runs, and disconnected relics left intact from past refurbishment projects.

He traced the live lines back to the main disconnect.

“Primary feed located,” Tom said into his radio.

“Confirmed,” AL replied.

Tom threw the disconnect. Above him, the moon tower winked out, its absence almost unnoticeable amid the light pollution from the surrounding buildings.

“Disconnect successful,” Tom said.
“Confirm zero voltage on the feed,” AL said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Tom muttered. He touched the multimeter to the line. The meter settled at zero.

“Zero voltage confir—” Tom frowned as the needle twitched again. There was voltage present on a separate run he hadn’t touched. He followed the live line. It wasn’t tied to the lighting circuit at all.

“AL,” he said into the radio, “I’ve still got power up here.”

Tom traced the live line back past old repairs until it disappeared into a compact, unfamiliar housing bolted directly into the tower’s frame.

“There’s something else in here,” he said.

“Send an image,” AL’s voice came back.

Tom snapped a picture and sent it. When no response came, Tom waited a three-count, then said, “You there, AL?”

“Unable to identify,” AL said. “Cross-checking maintenance records. This may take a moment.”

As he waited for AL’s reply, Tom studied the thing. It was compact and seamless, about the size of a junction box, though it didn’t look like any junction box Tom had ever seen. It looked to be as old as the moon tower itself, integrated into the steel not so much like a piece of machinery, but like an internal organ. Every wire around it had been cut, replaced, or rerouted at some point, but the device itself—whatever it was—looked like it hadn’t been touched since the day the tower went up.

“You with me, AL?” Tom asked.

“Still unable to identify,” AL said. “Maintenance records refer to something called simply ‘the unit,’ dating back to the construction of the tower. Cross-checking with records of decommissioned moon towers.” There was the briefest of pauses, then: “Records include similar language for all moon towers.”

“You mean every moon tower had one of these things in it?” Tom asked.

“Correct.”

“And there’s nothing in the archive about what the heck it is?”

“Also correct.”

Tom let out a low whistle. “Better kick this up the chain,” he said. “Let someone with a fatter paycheck decide what to do about this.”

“Negative,” AL said. “No escalation authorized. Work order requires all power to be shut off prior to dismantle tomorrow A.M. Proceed.”

Tom hesitated. He looked up at the tower looming darkly above him. From this angle, it felt less like an antique and more like something built for another purpose entirely.

“AL,” he said. “It’s on a separate power feed from the lighting. Might be important.”

“Proceed,” AL said. “Work order requires—”
“Right. Okay,” Tom said. “All power must be shut off. Got it.”

He traced the live run again. It was sheathed in a material he couldn’t immediately identify. Set beside the strange housing was one more access point, a narrow old-style service block with a single insulated handle like a miniature disconnect, painted the same dull gray as the tower’s steel. It looked untouched.

Tom glanced at his multimeter. The line was hot.

He thought about calling in a human supervisor, assuming he could get anyone on the line at this time of night. Thought how that would go. Thought about the paperwork, the questions.

He reached in and flipped the handle.

There was no noticeable change, but something felt … different. A quality of the air, perhaps. Or a low-level hum you didn’t notice until it was cut off. The world seemed darker somehow, less alive.

Tom checked with his multimeter. For a fraction of a second before the reading fell to zero, the needle spiked, not a surge, but almost like a response, as if something had noticed the change. Then the line went dead.

“All feeds cut,” he said, forcing his voice into its normal register. Not wanting AL to know he’d gotten spooked, though of course the AI wouldn’t notice or care.

“Acknowledged. Logging.”

Tom waited for AL to close out the work order.

“Log entry,” AL continued. “Connection terminated by operator.”

“Wait. Connection? What connection?” Tom asked, though some part of him knew, the way you know, too late, that you’ve hung up before the other side has stopped talking.

AL said nothing.

Above him, the moon tower stood black and perfectly still. And if it had ever been anything other than an antique streetlight, it wasn’t anymore.

The End

The Last Moon Tower (c) Copyright 2026 by David Afsharirad