Dream d3155-s: The Chip Runs Counter

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the wheel stood in its shadow above the bank at Vespermill and the water below it moved in two directions at once.

I crouched at the bank, watching a pale wood chip work its way upstream against the current, slipping beneath the wheel housing without touching the paddles. The Tally-Reader stood at my shoulder. Neither of us spoke. The chip moved steadily, against the physics of the place, turning once in the shallows and then correcting itself toward the upstream dark.

The Bedrock-Reader came down from the survey line. She had been reading the strata beneath the mill's footing and she carried her slate in the crook of her arm. She did not say what she had found. She looked at the water.

From the relay post above the cut, we heard the signal station begin its transmission cycle, the short double-pulse that meant the hourly count. Except the pulse came wrong. It doubled once, then stretched, then broke into a repeating fragment that had no sequence we recognized. The Warden of the Deep Stratum was the first to turn toward it. She raised her head and held still, listening.

The Relic-Watcher had been logging the stone armature on the far bank. She stopped writing. The relay post pulsed again, and again the pattern scrambled, the count cycling back to the same three tones without advancing. The Horizon-Surveyor came down from the upper ledge, her measuring rod still in her hands, and stood beside me without speaking.

Lano stood at the water's edge, ears flat against her skull. A low sound built in her chest and came out as a single sharp bark. She did not retreat. She stood and looked upstream with her whole body coiled, white coat very still against the dark water.

I marked the time in my record: the chip had now passed the wheel and continued upstream. I marked the direction. I could not account for the direction.

The Tally-Reader said, quietly, that the relay count had not advanced. Three cycles without advancing. She said it the way she said all her numbers, plainly, without inflection. But she said it.

The station pulsed again. Garbled. We stood at the bank of Vespermill while the wheel did not turn and the chip moved where chips do not move, and somewhere in the stones behind us the signal that was supposed to carry the count went on repeating its broken fragment into the dark.

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