Dream d1461-s: Green for an Hour

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the path through the relay corridor narrowed past exposed conduit housing, junction boxes bolted to pine trunks at head height, the kind of infrastructure that accumulates over years until you stop seeing it. I had seen all of this before. That was the problem.

The first station sat at a bend where the trail crossed a dry creek bed. I knew it before we reached it - a gray housing unit, two meters high, antenna array on top, indicator panel visible from thirty meters out. It should have been burning green. It was burning amber.

The Builder was already crouching at the access panel before the rest of us stopped walking. "Input buffer's full," she said. "Nothing downstream is clearing it."

The Wireman unslung his kit and handed her a bypass cable without being asked. They worked in the easy silence of people who have done this particular repair many times. The Wireman rerouted the secondary line while the Builder flushed the buffer by hand.

Lano sniffed the base of the housing unit, then sat back and watched the indicator panel as if he understood what color it should be.

The Weather Reader had her instruments out. "Pressure has been dropping steadily," she said, which was not quite about the weather. "The degradation pattern is consistent. Not random. Something upstream is drawing on all available bandwidth."

"How many stations between here and the source?" the Philosopher asked.

"Depends how far the source is."

"That's not an answer."

"No," the Weather Reader said. "It isn't."

The Dreamer stood apart. He raised his camera and framed the relay housing - the conduit lines, the amber panel, the antenna bracket bent slightly where someone had overcorrected it, years ago. He took two photographs. Then he lowered the camera and looked at the path ahead, where it curved out of sight. He stayed like that longer than a photograph takes.

The indicator clicked. Amber held a moment. Then green.

The Builder stood. "That'll hold," she said with the particular flatness of someone who did not believe the sentence she was finishing. "For a while."

"How long?"

"Long enough to reach the next one."

The Wireman was already repacking. I looked at the panel: green, steady, almost convincing.

Lano had started up the path.

I followed him.