Dream d3082-s: The Fins That Would Not Warm

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the bunker sat below the pump house in Kestrelfield, and we had been working since before the fourth night grew cold outside. The walls were poured concrete, sweating at the joins, and pale brackets of fungus had taken the lower portions of the cooling fins in thick shelves, soft as bread. The Warden of the Deep Stratum stood near the far wall with a scraper, working loose the growth without comment. The Relic-Watcher did the same on the facing row, moving slowly, lifting each shaved section whole and setting it in the muck bucket rather than letting it fall.

The cooling jackets ran the full length of two walls. They were ice cold. Not cool as metal is when a room is cool, but cold in a way that did not account for the air temperature or the warmth of the bodies working around them. The Anomaly-Hand pressed a palm flat against one and held it there for a moment, then removed her hand and said nothing. She made a mark in her ledger.

Lano sat near the entrance step, nose working at the thick air. Her ears turned once toward the Warden, then forward again, toward something further in we had not yet reached.

Rurik had found a high shelf between two duct housings and settled there with his amber eyes half-closed, watching the work below.

I took the muck bucket when the Relic-Watcher filled it and carried it up the short stairs to the surface, emptying it into the spoil trench. The night outside was clear and the stars were many. When I came back down the bucket was already half filled again.

The Tally-Reader had the survey sheet open against the wall. He had written 127 in the upper margin and drawn a line beneath it. Below the line, nothing yet. The pump bunker had not been on any previous sheet. The Bedrock-Reader told him this, standing at his shoulder, and the Tally-Reader wrote the room's dimensions and nothing else, because that was what could be measured.

The fins remained cold. The fungus came away cleanly where it was thick and tore where it was not.

Lano padded to the far wall and sat there looking at the deepest fin housing, the one that had not yet been scraped. A low sound in her throat. Not alarm. Something else.

The Anomaly-Hand added another mark.

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