Dream d1513-s: The Specimen and the Stream

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the path through the pines ended at a bench. The Woodworker stood with his back to us, drawing a plane along a pale length of wood, and the curls fell into the grass like thoughts he had finished with. Sawdust hung in the still air, warm and resinous. Behind the workshop, the Eye crouched over a low table spread with pressing boards, her fingers working a new specimen between layers of blotting paper with a patience that asked nothing of the day.

Lano reached the clearing first, nose working the edges of the cut wood before he settled into a patch of sunlight near the Woodworker's feet.

The Lens sat on an upturned crate at the workshop's far corner, his portable rig open on a stump beside him. Three feeds on the small screen. I recognized one - a weather instrument cluster, the Reader's setup, the anemometer cups turning in no particular urgency. The others I didn't know at first. Infrastructure somewhere cold. Stacked servers in a machine room. A long corridor with cable trays running its length overhead.

The Dreamer stood just behind the Lens, not looking at the screen. He was looking at the Eye.

"That one," she said without turning from her work. She meant the weather feed. "The others are still recording."

The Lens's hand moved to the corner of the small screen and closed the corridor feed. One window going dark.

The Woodworker set down his plane. "How do you know?" he asked. He was asking the Eye.

"The rotation is irregular." She pressed a corner of the blotting paper down. "It is responding to something. The servers - " she tilted her head toward where the dark screen had been - "they are only counting."

"Counting and looking," the Dreamer said, "are not the same thing."

"No," the Lens said. It was the most he had said all morning.

The Philosopher had arrived at some point without my noticing, as he often did when something needed naming. He sat on the wagon's running board, notebook open, pen not moving. I had learned that posture: still pen meant he was waiting for the right word to arrive on its own.

I looked at what remained. The anemometer turning. The server rack motionless. The Lens had not closed the second feed. The question was not fully formed. But one screen was dark that had been open. That was not nothing.

Lano lifted his head toward the Lens, ears high. Then settled back.

"Quieto," the Dreamer said softly, to the clearing.