Dream d3174-s: Iron at the Waterline

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Tally-Reader opened the door to the pump chamber and the smell of cold wet iron came first, before the dark.

The chamber was stone on four sides and low. A single cylinder of iron stood at the center, taller than any of us, its piston rod motionless in its collar. The Bedrock-Reader ran a hand along the wall near the floor and said nothing. The Warden of the Deep Stratum crouched to read the markings on the base plate. Lano moved past my ankle and sniffed the base of the cylinder, ears flat, then sat.

Outside, through the one slit window, the water was rising. We could see it. The field behind the chamber had turned lake, a slow expansion, and the level climbed the stone face by measurable degrees. The Horizon-Surveyor pressed close to the window and measured. The Tally-Reader wrote a number. I watched the water find a seam in the lower stone course outside and begin to finger its way in.

Rurik had come in ahead of us. He was already up on the iron housing, sitting with his tail curled over the edge, amber eyes moving from person to person. He watched the Anomaly-Hand cross to the far wall and then stop. She pressed her palm flat against a seam where pale cyan ran in a thin horizontal line, not glowing exactly, more like a surface that had absorbed something cold and held it.

The piston did not move.

I put my hand on the rod. It was dry. The collar was dry. Whatever this machine had last done, it had dried out in the doing, and nothing since had asked it to go again.

The Relic-Watcher made a note in her book, not of what the machine was for, only of what it was: the dimensions, the iron grade by color, the number of bolts at the flange. The Warden of the Deep Stratum pointed to a dial at chest height and said the needle was past the last mark on the face. I wrote that down too.

Water reached the doorframe sill. Lano stepped back from it, toenails clicking on stone. She looked at me, then at the water: "agua."

I set the stone I had been holding down on the pump base and stood back. The chamber held its quiet. The Tally-Reader counted the marks on the piston rod, one by one, not rounding. Rurik blinked once, slow, and looked back at the slit window and the water still climbing outside.

We did not start it.

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