Dream d1520-s: Still Recording

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the clearing smelled of sawdust and warm electronics, and the Lens's monitors faced outward from beneath a canvas shelter rigged between two pines. The hum of processing equipment filled the air like a low note held just below hearing. Lano trotted ahead of me on the worn footpath, nose working, and then stopped at the edge of the treeline and sat. He had done that in the caves, the first time. That same still attention.

The Woodworker was at his bench on the far side of the shelter, planing a long piece of pale wood. He did not look up. The blade caught and then released and a curl of shaving fell to the ground.

The Eye stood before a bank of feeds - twelve monitors in two rows, each showing something different. An intersection. A warehouse loading dock. A road junction at night. A riverbank. She moved slowly along the line of them, hands clasped behind her back, the posture she used in the gardens when deciding whether a specimen had rooted or merely survived.

The Dreamer stood just behind her with his camera lowered. He was watching her watch.

"This one," the Eye said, and paused before the third monitor from the left - the road junction. "This one is looking."

Nobody moved.

She stepped to the monitor beside it - a rooftop covered in satellite dishes, pan-and-scan, mechanical sweep. "That one," she said, "is still recording."

The Woodworker's plane stopped.

The Lens was sitting on a low stool at the edge of the shelter, and I watched him look from the Eye to the monitors and back. Not startled. Something more careful than startled.

"What's the difference," he said, and it was not quite a question.

"The road junction is waiting," she said. "It has a direction. It will not be equally satisfied by everything it finds. The rooftop has no preference. It returns what passes through."

The Dreamer lifted his camera and took one photograph. I did not see what he aimed at.

Lano's tail moved once. Lento.

The Builder, standing near the cable run at the back of the shelter, nodded slowly - not at anyone in particular. The nod of someone hearing a structural principle stated correctly for the first time.

I had been in the caves for sixty-nine nights before I saw anything clearly. The dream had selected. I had not chosen what it selected - the drip of water, the shape of a ceiling crack, the warmth of one particular corner. The dream had been looking, not recording.

The Eye moved to the next monitor. She would go through all twelve. She would give each one a verdict.

The Lens was watching her work.