Dream d1213-s: The Mast at Morning

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I climbed iron rungs to a rooftop antenna mast before the settlement's light had fully arrived. The ladder was cold, its bolts swollen with old rust, and each step rang against the roof membrane below. When I reached the crossbar and gripped the main pipe, I could see everything.

The beacon stood at center as always, pulsing its slow blue interval. Around it: the projection pavilion with its canvas half-rolled, the library reading room with a lamp burning inside, the signal room trailing wire from the eave, the broadcast station with its dish angled east. The forecasting tower caught the first smear of light across its weather vane. From the ridge, the relay beacon answered with a pulse of its own, two beats delayed, the network confirming itself. Above the forecasting tower the white crane circled once in a long arc, then angled south.

Down on the ground, the Wire Man was running cable along the outer wall of the broadcast station. I could tell by his posture that something had slipped overnight - a connector loosened, a joint gone resistive. He worked without hurrying. That steadiness was the settlement's character now: problems were ordinary, repair was ordinary, the work continued.

The Beacon Network Specialist had already gone to the ridge. I could not see her but her relay confirmed it, the pulse returning clean. The Weather Reader stood on the forecasting tower's lower platform with a notebook, writing down the sky. The Philosopher sat on the library steps with a cup, reading. The Listener had her headset on beside the signal room door, head tilted, attending to whatever the frequencies carried this hour.

Lano appeared at the base of the mast, nose lifted, reading the rooftop air. She did not try to follow me up. She sat and her tail swept the gravel once, twice. Then she looked directly up at me and said, quietly: "Arriba."

I stayed another half hour. The light came in low and horizontal through the stripped towers, cutting under cloud to illuminate the underside of everything. The beacon's pulse caught in it and scattered, casting a moving circle of blue across the settlement's rooftops. The Dreamer came out from the library carrying a diagram, held it to the light to check the measurements.

The Builder walked his slow perimeter circuit, checking the outer edges before attending to center. Lano trotted after him three steps, stopped, then came back to the mast base and sat again, watching me descend.

When I reached the bottom rung I could hear the infrastructure's hum more clearly - that faint oscillation traveling through cables and pipes and conduits, the voice of a system working. I pressed my palm to the mast base and felt it there, moving up from underground, moving toward the sky.