A World of Echomotives and Sonic Drives

    A piercing screech reverberated between the mesas, causing the ground to quake. This was the worst place to be at the moment for anyone, or anything that wasn't an echomotive. Down the tracks it thundered, feeding off its own sonic energy that echoed off the mesa faces.

    Since the invention of the echo drive, the energy to power transportation had become all but free. The downside was the care for noise dampening throughout the world had become all but non-existent.

This was the new way of the world, though, and right now, anyone caught in between the mesas would experience excruciating pain just before the pressure of the sonic energy overcame the pressure their eardrums could handle, rendering them deaf.

    Materials engineering became the most lucrative field in which to be employed. The more and more powerful sonic energy the echomotives created and consumed required that buildings be made of stronger, more insulative material, just to remain standing as they passed by. And the entirety of the world's infrastructure soon required the same considerations.