Dream d1052-s: The Footing Sets

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood at the base of the broadcast tower and felt the concrete vibrate through the soles of my boots.

The foundation had been poured weeks ago - a wide square slab, grey and permanent, set into the earth by the Builder's hands and the labor of everyone who had returned. Now the tower rose from it in sections of bolted steel, and the Weather Reader was up on the third platform checking the anemometer, her silhouette small against the washed-out sky.

The light came in horizontal through stripped antenna towers on the far hillside, late and amber, filtered through particulate that never fully cleared. The beacon at the settlement's center pulsed its familiar rhythm. From where I stood at the tower base I could count the pulse like a heartbeat: one-two, one-two, the glow touching the underside of low cloud and returning softened.

Lano trotted ahead of me and stopped at the edge of the slab, nose working the air. The fresh concrete smell had faded by now but something in the ground still interested her. Her ears perked forward. She sat at the foundation's edge and watched the upper platforms.

The Wire Man was threading cable through conduit mounted along the tower's leg, the work unhurried and precise. He wore heavy gloves and moved each length with both hands, feeding it through guides he had welded himself. The Listener stood some distance away with a small receiver, testing signal quality as each run completed. They communicated in short gestures. Nothing wasted.

The Philosopher sat on an overturned crate near the tool cache, a notebook open across one knee, writing without looking up. The Dreamer had brought him coffee an hour ago and the cup sat cold beside him, untouched. He was working on something about transmission - the difference between sending and speaking, he had said. I had not asked him to explain further.

Below the first platform, the Beacon Network Specialist walked a slow arc with a hand device, checking signal alignment. She paused, made an adjustment at the base panel, walked the arc again. The relay on the distant ridge answered: a flicker, a pulse, a confirmation.

Lano looked up at me. Her tail moved twice.

"Tierra," she said.

I did not know exactly what she meant. But I looked down at the foundation slab beneath us both, the grey permanence of it, poured by people who intended to stay. The tower above us hummed. The infrastructure held.

The Weather Reader's voice came down from the upper platform, reading numbers into the settlement log. The Builder was somewhere behind me - I could hear the rhythm of his work without turning. The broadcast station was nearly ready. We were all here. We were still here.