Dream d1297-s: Static in Clear Air

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the third relay beacon came into view around a limestone ridge, and I felt the way you feel when you recognize something you built yourself.

We had set that beacon two winters past - the Builder directing bolt placement, the Wireman running conduit by touch, the Listener calibrating resonance until the tone satisfied him. Now it stood in clear morning air with its indicator lights cycling steady green, and the Philosopher said something about returning to your own premises and finding them changed by your absence.

"It's fine," the Builder said, not looking up from her map. She was adding detail to the approach path, marking where the cable trench had heaved with frost and resettled. "Structurally fine. I can see that from here."

"Structurally," the Listener said. Which was the whole argument in one word.

He had his ear pressed to the air rather than his instruments - a habit the Weather Reader teased him about constantly, the way a doctor listens to a chest rather than reading the chart.

Then Lano stopped.

The dog had been trotting point, nose working the scrub, when he simply halted. He looked back at us once, a long serious look, and said: "Cuidado."

Then a single sharp bark, the kind with no wag behind it.

The Listener went very still.

The Weather Reader was already at his tablet. His pipeline had been tracking the signal since the settlement - a clean carrier wave threading every relay on the network, older than anything we built. "Carrier is present," he said. "But the encoding layer is - " A pause. "That's not degradation. That's corruption."

The Wireman moved to the junction box without being asked. He opened the panel and stood reading the wiring the way others read text, slowly, then twice.

"Physical layer intact," the Builder said, joining him.

"Physical layer intact," he agreed. That was the problem stated as precisely as it could be stated.

The radio on my pack crackled. The Beacon Network Specialist's voice came through half-signal, half-noise: "Relay four is reporting the same. Relay seven just went garbled. Something is moving through the network faster than -"

Static.

Clear sky above. The signal humming in the atmosphere. The Philosopher opened his mouth.

"Don't," the Weather Reader said.

"I was only going to note -"

"Not yet," I said.

Lano had not moved from his crouch. His nose was pointed toward the horizon, toward whatever was sending.