Dream d1210-s: The Cut Carries

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I was standing in a trench between two collapsed walls, the soil dark and smelling of old copper, and above me the settlement spread outward in every direction like something that had decided to stay.

The cable ran in coils beside my boots. The Wire Man worked three meters ahead, feeding the line through a conduit pipe that the Builder had set into the trench wall the week before - or the week before that, time in the settlement moved in tasks, not days. The pipe curved toward the junction box buried at the corner of what had been a loading dock, the concrete cracked but solid, and the beacon's pulse reached us even down here, a faint blue-white glow that came and went every four seconds.

Lano was at the trench's edge above me, nose over the lip, watching. His white fur caught the post-apocalyptic light that came through the stripped towers on the eastern perimeter - not sunlight exactly, but something that behaved like it, diffuse and persistent. His ears were up. He tracked the Wire Man's movements with the patience of something that understood work, even when it couldn't join in.

"Tierra," Lano said.

The Wire Man paused, looked up at the dog, then looked at me.

I nodded. We were all learning the same thing.

The Beacon Network Specialist was on the ridge above the ruins, I could see the relay box she'd mounted last month throwing its slow blink into the sky. The Forecasting Tower's vane turned in whatever passed for wind here. The Philosopher had been in the library reading room since early morning - I'd seen the lamp through the glass as I passed, amber against the gray. The Dreamer was in the projection pavilion. The Listener at the signal room, headphones on, pencil moving. The Weather Reader had gone up the tower before the light changed and had not come down.

This was the life of the place. Maintenance and extension, the continuous work of keeping the network fed.

I took the cable end the Wire Man passed back to me and stripped the last centimeter of sheath with the tool on my belt. The conductor inside was bright. It caught the beacon pulse for a moment, threw it back. I guided it into the junction and felt the terminal take hold.

Above me, Lano stepped back from the trench edge and trotted toward the beacon at the settlement's center, tail low and steady, his small body moving between the structures with a certainty I tried to borrow.

The white crane passed overhead, slow and deliberate, banking toward the forecasting tower.

The trench was almost done. Tomorrow there would be another one.