Dream d1159-s: One More Beam

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the projection pavilion was going up in stages, the way bones grow before the flesh comes.

The Builder had set the foundation posts the week before, concrete still pale where it had cured in open air. Now the cross-beams were being lifted into position, two of us steadying each length while she called adjustments from below, her voice flat and precise over the sound of the tools. Post-apocalyptic light came down through stripped towers on the eastern ridge and made the raw lumber glow at its edges. Everything in this settlement had that quality - of things half-becoming, caught between what they were and what they would be.

Lano trotted ahead of me on the sawdust path, nose working the fresh-cut smell. She paused at a stacked pile of screen material, ears lifted, then continued toward the beacon at center. The beacon pulsed its slow rhythm. You felt it before you heard it, a pressure in the sternum.

The Wire Man had run conduit along the south face of the pavilion frame already, silver tubing catching the beacon glow each time it cycled. He crouched at a junction box and worked with attention and economy, not looking up when I passed. Nearby the Listener sat on an overturned crate, headphones around her neck, checking signal levels on a small panel she had mounted to a post. She nodded. I nodded back.

Further out I could see the forecasting tower where the Weather Reader kept his instruments. The relay beacon on the distant ridge blinked in answer to the central one. The Beacon Network Specialist was up there, I knew, calibrating the handshake between them. The Philosopher had gone to the library reading room before dawn and had not yet returned.

I watched the Builder sight along the top beam, checking horizontal. She made a small sound, satisfied, and the beam went down into its brackets.

Lano had circled back to me. She sat at my feet and looked up at the unfinished pavilion, head tilted, reading something in the structure I could not read. The white of her coat caught the beacon glow on its next pulse. She said, very quietly: "mira."

I looked. The Dreamer had come up beside me without sound and was looking too, and we stood there a moment with the half-built pavilion overhead and the settlement humming all around us, each structure full of someone's labor, each connection holding.

The Builder called up: one more beam. We moved toward it.