Dream d1523-s: What the Frame Excludes

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the workshop bench had been dragged to the edge of the tree line, set at the point where forest shadow met the outer ring of processing cables. The Woodworker was drawing a piece of pine with a knife, and the wood curls fell across the cable runs without either of them caring.

Twelve monitors along the workshop wall, their cooling fans a steady hum in the otherwise clear air. The Lens stood before them with his arms at his sides, watching feed after feed cycle through its interval. Not reviewing. Waiting for something to begin.

The Dreamer stood one step behind him. Camera up. Not photographing the feeds - photographing the Lens watching them. I had been traveling with the Dreamer long enough to know the difference mattered.

"Seven," the Eye said, pointing at the leftmost screen. Feed seven held a fixed camera aimed at a concrete ceiling. Nothing moved in it. She was not addressing the Lens. She was working. "Still recording," she said, and marked her notebook.

"Twelve is looking," the Listener said from the far end of the cable run, ear near a junction box, reading the frame rate in the signal's hum. "There's intent in that rhythm. Four hertz difference, at least."

The Woodworker set his knife down. He held up what he had been shaping - a pine rectangle, rough but recognizable as a frame, open in the middle. He turned it slowly and sighted through it at the monitor bank.

"Give a thing an edge," he said, "and it already refuses half the world."

The Lens turned from the screens. First time in three days he had turned away without being spoken to.

Lano sat at the Woodworker's feet. His tail lifted once. Bueno, I thought, watching the dog watch the frame.

The Dreamer lowered his camera. He walked to the Lens and held out three photographs - printed on paper, warm from the portable printer he kept in his bag's side pocket. A cable junction. A feed showing rain on asphalt. The Woodworker's hands on the pine.

"Every one of those is something I chose not to photograph," the Dreamer said. "That's the picture. The choosing is the picture."

The Lens held the photographs like something unexpectedly heavy. Behind him, feed seven still recorded its empty ceiling. Feed twelve was still looking.

The pine frame rested on the bench between us, open to whatever anyone aimed it at.