Dream d3083-s: Filament Below the Flood

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the stairs to the lower chamber were already wet, and the water on each step was perfectly still, as though it had been there for years and intended to remain. The Horizon-Surveyor went first, holding a lamp angled low. I followed with the Anomaly-Hand at my shoulder, and behind us came the Warden of the Deep Stratum, who said nothing but whose presence I felt as a steadiness at the back of the room.

The chamber was flooded to knee height. The floor was not visible. I placed each step with care, feeling for solidity through the sole of my boot, and what I found was mostly tile, cracked in places, with a soft depression near the center where the water was slightly deeper and the cold more immediate.

The cathode tube lay on what had been a workbench. It was submerged now, glass entire below the surface, and from it came a pale cyan glow, faint and even, moving very slightly as though breathing were possible for glass. I leaned over it. The Anomaly-Hand crouched beside me, and together we looked down at the filament without touching it.

Lano stood at the base of the stairs, her nose working the air. She did not follow us into the water. Her eyes tracked the glow.

Rurik had already crossed somehow, slipping through a gap at the far wall. He was perched on a high shelf above the waterline, watching us with amber eyes. His tail moved once.

The Tally-Reader stood in the doorway with the sheet. She said: one hundred and twenty-seven, fifty-five walked. She did not add to the tally. The tube was not a place in the census. It was a condition of a room.

The Bedrock-Reader waded to the far wall and pressed one palm to the stone there. She held it for some time. When she turned back she said: this room was below grade when they built over it. She did not say who built, or what over.

The Relic-Watcher made a note in her book but did not speak it aloud.

The cyan glow did not flicker. It held its pale steady output from under the water, warming nothing, counting nothing, still there.

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