Dream d1126-s: Signal in Old Stone

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the tunnel mouth opened in the side of the hill just past the forecasting tower, and I went in with Lano trotting beside me.

The cables ran along the wall in bundles as thick as my arm, strapped to brackets that had rusted brown and then held anyway. I could feel the signal in them. Not hear it exactly, more a vibration in the air, a low register hum that lived just below sound and pressed against the skin of my wrist when I held my hand near the insulation. The cables were old. The insulation was cracked in places, wrapped where it had split with newer tape, grey on grey. But the signal moved through them. I had checked the output that morning before coming in and it was clean.

Lano paused at each bracket post, nose working, tail slow and steady. The tunnel curved and the entrance light fell away. We walked with lanterns. The beam caught the cable bundles and they threw long shadows across the curved stone ceiling.

Halfway in I found where the Wire Man had been working. A junction box mounted at shoulder height, its cover removed and set carefully against the wall. The terminals inside were polished clean, each wire labeled in his small handwriting on strips of white tape. He had been here recently. The connection points still showed the marks of his tools. I checked the grounding wire, traced the path back to the anchor bolt in the stone, and everything sat the way it should.

Lano settled beside my feet while I worked. His ears came forward when the hum shifted pitch, some fluctuation in load at the settlement end, and he made a small sound low in his throat. Then he said, quietly: "Vivo." I agreed with him. The signal was alive. It had been alive through the years when no one came here, waiting in the copper with nowhere to go, and now it was going everywhere.

I sat on the tunnel floor after I confirmed the routing. The stone was cold and the air smelled of mineral water and old plastic. Above the settlement the beacon would be pulsing. In the signal room the Listener would have her headset on. The Beacon Network Specialist would be checking relay integrity at the ridge. All of them connected by what ran through these walls.

When I came out the light was post-storm yellow, thick and directional, cutting between the stripped transmission towers on the hill. The white crane was making its pass above the beacon. Lano walked ahead of me toward the sound of the Builder working, his small paws quiet on the packed earth, tail easy, already moving toward the next thing.