Dream d1332-s: Compressed and Kept

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the cliff face rose in clean horizontal lines - each layer a different color, red giving way to grey giving way to something almost blue. Not geological time. Something else. I could see the traces of infrastructure in each band: faint outlines of conduits running laterally, junction points surfacing at fault lines like knuckles pushing through skin.

The Philosopher set down the wagon's handle and pressed both palms against the rock. "Each layer is a complete system," he said. Not a question. He had that tone. "Different materials, different routing logic. But they all terminate at the same point."

I looked where he was looking. About forty meters up, where the blue-grey layer met something darker, there was a seam - a place where the rock had been opened and resealed multiple times, over what looked like a very long interval.

"How long is a very long interval?" I asked.

"Longer than we should need to ask about," he said. Which was either an answer or a way of not giving one.

Lano circled at my feet, nose working the air. Then his ears went flat - not toward the cliff, but back the way we had come.

The radio on my belt crackled.

The Beacon Network Specialist's voice was tight with controlled concern. "Southeast group. Conditions developing at the settlement. Wind picking up fast. Antenna masts reading stress. I need the Builder's frequency if you're in contact."

We weren't. The Builder had gone northeast with the bass signal. I told him so.

"Understood. Sitting with it. Keep your radio open."

The Philosopher had not stopped looking at the cliff. "The signal is strongest at that seam," he said. "The integration node. Where the three systems cross and become one."

Lano barked once. Short, deliberate. Then, barely audible: "Tormenta."

I looked at him. He was still facing away from the cliff, nose tracking something in the air I could not read. Over more than a thousand nights of walking, I had learned that Lano's instincts ran on a frequency nobody had yet named.

"The settlement is getting hit," I said.

"Yes," the Philosopher said, finally turning from the cliff to look at me. "And the node is here, accessible, possibly for a limited window." He let that sit. "These are not mutually exclusive problems. They merely feel that way."

I put my hand on the rock. The signal ran through it like a current - older than any blueprint I had ever read, older than any storm I had ever waited out.

The radio crackled again. Generator flicker. Cable trenches filling. The eastern antenna bending.

We had found what we came for.

We were also needed somewhere else.