The story of one man's quest to uncover a literally earth shattering conspiracy. Zane is an obsessive radio astronomer who in his search for extraterrestrial life spends his days and nights listening for a "shockwave," the signal that will prove once and for all that we are not alone. All night long, he sits in a tracking station monitering every frequency, every wavelength, every millimeter of space--and hearing nothing but silence. At the end of yet another night's search, the delicate sensors are suddenly alive with a loud, clear radio transmission from space--a shockwave. This is what Zane has been waiting for. He begins an odyssey which starts with some ingenious tampering with the neighborhood's home satellite dishes and eventually leads to a mysterious power plant in central Mexico.