Dream d2570-s: The Rate at Emberford

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we were on the shelf floor of Emberford from early morning and the work did not stop. The shelves ran from wall to wall and the figures moved between them in lines that crossed and split and rejoined without any signal I could read. My partner kept the ledger open on a narrow stand at the center of the floor and I called the numbers as they came. We were recording rate, not impression: how many crossings in a ten-minute window, how many loads moved from one row to the next, where the density built and where it thinned.

Lano stayed close to my left side for most of the morning, her nails ticking on the stone, her nose turning toward each new cluster of workers as they passed. She did not interrupt the count. When I paused to re-ink the pen she sat and watched the nearest shelf bay until I was ready again.

By midday the count had a shape. Not a narrative, just a number with a trend. The floor held the same pace it had held at first light.

We ate standing. Rurik had found the high shelf above the sorting table some time in the late morning and he watched from there, amber eyes tracking the movement below, his tail hanging straight down over the edge. He did not come down.

In the afternoon the light came through the high windows at a lower angle and the figures cast longer shadows between the rows. The count did not change. My partner read back the midday figure and I confirmed it against the tally sheet. The new column sat at the right margin of the page, a column for places that were neither running nor gone. Emberford's shelf floor took its mark in the left column, the running column, because the floor had not stopped once while we were in it.

Lano pressed against my leg near the end of the afternoon, not asking for anything. I put my hand down for a moment and then took it back and wrote the closing figure into the ledger.

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