Dream d1442-s: Faint Is Not Nothing

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the worn footpath delivered us to the workshop clearing just as the light went amber. The woodworker did not look up. He was finishing something, a curved piece I didn't recognize the purpose of, and the plane moved along the grain in long strokes that sent thin curls falling onto the sawdust floor. Behind the workshop, barely visible between the posts, the specimen-keeper moved with her back to us, pressing and cataloging, arranging dried things in rows only she understood the order of.

Lano trotted ahead and stopped. Both ears up. Not at the workshop, not at the people. At something else. Something beyond the clearing's far tree line.

"There it is again," the Weather Reader said behind me. He was already reading the portable pipeline unit, the small screen casting pale light on his face. "Same frequency signature. Still faint. Still not categorized."

The Philosopher came up alongside me carrying a book he hadn't opened. "Faint is not nothing," he said. "The fact that it repeats is itself a proposition."

"It's not categorized because it doesn't fit any category we've built," the Builder said. She had her measuring tape out, not because anything needed measuring, but because she always holds it when she's thinking. "That's different from being uncategorized. That's outside the catalog entirely."

The woodworker set down his plane and looked at us over his shoulder. The specimen-keeper came around from behind the workshop, wiping her hands on a cloth. Neither of them seemed surprised we were there, which was a thing about this clearing I had noticed before: it received visitors without ceremony.

"You're going," the specimen-keeper said. Not a question.

"The pipeline is clear," the Weather Reader said. He meant the weather, the route, the atmospheric readings. He also meant: the signal is real, and we've verified it three times.

I watched Lano. She was still facing the far tree line, ears at full attention, nose making small decisive movements as if sorting and discarding possibilities one by one.

"Vamos," she said.

Nobody argued with that. The woodworker went inside and came back with a roll of cord. The specimen-keeper was already writing something in the small notebook she kept at her belt. The Philosopher tucked his unread book under his arm and looked, briefly, satisfied.

The Builder had already started mapping from memory, not where we were, but the direction we were about to go, which is how she'd always worked, staying ahead of the present by exactly one decision.

The signal hum was not audible to me. But the instruments confirmed it, and Lano's ears hadn't dropped once.