Dream d1065-s: Current Through Still Air

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the generator compound breathed with a low, even rhythm, and I stood at its center listening to it the way you listen to a sleeping house. The light that filtered through the stripped towers was the color of old bone, diffuse and shadowless, and against it the beacon at the compound's heart pulsed slow and steady, marking time the way a metronome marks time: not counting toward anything, just holding the interval.

The Wire Man was beneath the main panel housing, half-visible, one hand tracing a conduit along the wall. He did not look up. The work required that kind of attention, the kind that forgets you are watching. A cable ran from his junction point out across the yard to where the Beacon Network Specialist sat cross-legged on a folded cloth, checking signal continuity with a small meter she held up to the light. Her lips moved slightly. Numbers, I thought, or frequencies.

Lano found me before I found the others. He trotted out from behind the fuel storage block, nose low, tail in a loose arc, and pressed the side of his face briefly against my knee before moving ahead to lead the way. His paws made small sounds on the gravel.

The Philosopher stood near the forecasting tower with a notebook open on a crate, writing without pausing. The Weather Reader was above him on the tower's second platform, reading the sky with her usual economy of movement, one hand shading her eyes though the sky held no direct sun. The Dreamer sat in the open doorway of the reading room, a lamp on the floor beside her even though it was midday. The Listener was somewhere inside the signal room; I could see the window, the faint movement of the telegraph arm.

The Builder emerged from behind the broadcast station carrying a length of pipe on one shoulder. He set it down, wiped his hands, looked at the beacon, and said nothing. The Builder often said nothing. It was its own kind of report.

Lano stopped at the base of the beacon post, sat, and looked up at the pulse. Each cycle cast a brief warmth across the gravel, across the faces of anyone close enough. The white crane was somewhere above the towers, circling in long ellipses I tracked by sound, not sight.

I walked the perimeter slowly. The fuel lines. The conduit trenches. The guy-wires on the broadcast mast, tuned tight. Each thing in its place and functioning. Each person doing the work that was theirs to do.

Lano circled back to my side, ears forward.

"Ahora," he said.

Not a command. Just the word. Just now.

The beacon pulsed. The compound breathed. The crane turned above us in the stripped and quiet light.