Dream d3067-s: Floating Stone, Iron Calipers

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the sluice house in Fennbrook smelled of damp iron and old mortar - except there was no mortar. The steps floated in their courses, stone against air, each one held by nothing the eye could name. Four quarrymen moved among them with iron calipers, opening the jaws wide and closing them slow against each edge, recording gaps where stone met nothing. They did not look surprised. Rurik preceded us through the low door, slipped between two floating risers without touching either, and found the warm patch near the outflow grate. He settled there and watched.

The Bedrock-Reader ran a thumb along the lowest floating stone's underface, then read the caliper's measurement to the Tally-Reader, who wrote it without rounding. The stone held: 4.7 centimeters of clear air beneath. The next step above: 3.1. The Relic-Watcher noted the pale cyan seam running through the third course - a hairline emission, cold to the touch, following the grain of the rock rather than the cut. The Anomaly-Hand leaned in without speaking and set a mark beside it in the margin of the survey sheet, a simple bracket, nothing more.

Lano sat near the door, nose working. She had carried a chip of gritstone in from outside and set it on the floor when she crossed the threshold. I watched her ears swivel toward the outflow channel where the water moved below the house, passing through ancient culverts none of us had measured yet. The Horizon-Surveyor stood at the narrow slit window that faced the unreckoned stratum beyond the surveyed sheet's edge, holding a paper guide up against the glass. Beyond the glass: two cold ruin columns and the beginning of an ironwork armature, uncounted.

The Warden of the Deep Stratum entered last, took the caliper measurements from the Tally-Reader's record, and added them to the log under the heading UNRESOLVED MECHANISM. Not a puzzle. A fact: the stones float. The calipers confirm the air. The log is accurate.

I closed my own notebook and listened to the water pass through the culverts below the floor.

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