Dream d1090-s: All Six Accounted For

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I walked the perimeter at first light and the settlement answered back. Not with voices, not yet, but with smoke from the forecasting tower's exhaust vent, with the steady amber pulse of the beacon at center, with the thin creak of the projection pavilion's door swinging on its hinge as someone inside adjusted the lens array before the day's first image.

Lano moved ahead of me, nose to the ground, tracking the morning's cold footprints across the frost-pale dirt. Her tail was up. She was reading the night's record before I could.

The ridge held everything in a long clean line of sight. I could see the relay beacon on the far rise, its steady blink answering our central pulse in the old agreed-upon interval. The Wire Man had calibrated the timing two days before. It still held. That mattered.

The Philosopher was already at the library reading room, door propped with a flat stone, lamplight inside. I could see her silhouette moving between shelves. The Listener was in the signal room. I knew this because the telegraph was tapping, soft and even, as I passed the window. Short-short-long. A test sequence, or a response to one.

The Builder was at the broadcast station's exterior wall, checking a seam in the cladding with his palm. Running his hand along it, pressing, listening for the hollow that means water has gotten in. I stopped and watched. He found nothing wrong. He moved on.

The Weather Reader was on the forecasting tower's platform, instruments tilted toward the sky that was just beginning to separate itself from the ridge in bands of ash and rust. Post-storm light, filtered through what remained of the old antennae on the far hill. It came in stripped and pale and still told you everything about the day ahead if you knew how to read it.

The Dreamer was somewhere I did not go that morning. I knew he had been there because his notes were folded under a stone near the beacon base.

The Beacon Network Specialist was not visible either, but the relay link held, and that was how I knew he was working.

Lano stopped at the foot of the central beacon post and looked up. The amber pulse washed across her white fur in a slow count. She sat, watching.

"Quieto," she said.

I stood beside her. The network was complete. All six stations, all six people, all six windows with their particular work behind the glass. The white crane came in from the south and made a low pass over the settlement, wings spread, and neither of us moved.