Dream d1204-s: Ink and Axle

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the library had wheels.

The wagon sat at the eastern edge of the settlement, its iron rims sunk into packed clay, its wooden sides weathered to a silver-grey that caught the beacon's pulse like a slow breath. I walked to it in the early hours, when the post-apocalyptic light came through in long flat sheets between the stripped towers on the ridge, and the shadow of the forecasting tower's mast stretched all the way to the wagon's rear steps.

Inside, The Philosopher sat with a volume open across his knees, one finger holding a page against the draft that came through gaps in the boards. He did not look up. The lamp above him ran on the settlement's shared line, and when the beacon pulsed - once, twice, three times - the light in the lamp brightened by a fraction, a sympathy signal that neither of us mentioned.

The Dreamer had organized the shelves by theme rather than author, which I had not expected. One section held technical manuals, field guides, maintenance logs from before. Another held fiction, spines cracked from heavy reading. A third section, still being built, held papers the returned characters had written themselves: observations, plans, corrections to old knowledge. The Builder's structural diagrams were filed there. The Wire Man's splicing notes. The Weather Reader's atmospheric records going back to the first week.

I ran my hand along that last section. Pages that had not existed until we made them.

Lano came up the rear steps while I was standing there, nails clicking on the wood floor, and pushed her nose into the back of my knee. She moved between the shelves with her ears angled forward, reading the room in her own way. At the base of The Philosopher's chair she paused, sat, looked up at him.

"Quedo," she said once, and settled.

The Listener was at the telegraph desk in the signal room next door, and through the shared wall I could hear the tap and pause, tap and pause of the wire going out. The Beacon Network Specialist had gone up to the ridge before dawn and her latest report was pinned near the door: all relays holding, line strength improved.

I took a seat near the window. The beacon glow came across the settlement in its regular interval. The shelves held their weight. Outside, the infrastructure hummed at its ordinary pitch, which I had come to understand as the sound of things continuing.