Dream d1000-s: Cases Before Words

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the beacon shifted its rhythm just before he arrived.

I noticed it from the rise where I'd been watching the perimeter - two long pulses, then a pause, then two more. Not the standard cycle. Something answering. I looked toward the low road and saw him at the far end of the settlement, standing still with cases stacked around his boots, waiting the way I remembered him waiting: without impatience, without announcement, as if arrival were simply a fact to be received.

Lano was already moving. I hadn't called her, hadn't signaled - she'd heard something or smelled something or the beacon's shifted rhythm had told her what it told me a half-second later. She crossed the ground between us at a trot, nose low, then high, then she sat directly in front of him and looked up and said, quietly, "Aqui."

He looked down at her. He set one case aside.

I came across the clearing and we did not shake hands and we did not need to. He was already crouching, opening latches. Inside: relay boards, patch cables coiled in sequence, a telegraphy apparatus I recognized from ceremony - brass fittings, a keying lever, coil housings wrapped in cloth. Not new. Maintained.

The Builder appeared at my left shoulder, the way the Builder always appears - without announcement, with attention. Looked at the cases. Looked at the man. Said nothing, which meant: I see what this is and I am ready.

We moved him and his cases to the northeast corner of the settlement, near the east-facing wall where the antenna conduit already ran. The Wire Man had seen the conduit as he walked in. Of course he had. He'd probably read the whole layout from the beacon signal - spacing, rhythm, protocol. Ceremony and infrastructure, he'd once said, are the same thing. Protocols that bodies follow.

By afternoon we had framing started for the signal room. Lano sat at the threshold of where the door would be and watched the relay boards go up, watched cable runs get tested, watched the keying lever get mounted to a salvaged crossbeam at working height. The beacon threw long light through the open wall framing. When the Wire Man sent his first test sequence - three short, two long, a pause, three short - the beacon pulsed back at the same interval, as if it had been waiting to hear from him specifically.

I thought about all the signals sent that never reached anyone. All the transmissions into silence.

This one reached.