Dream d3456-s: The Needle at Rest

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood in the open valley below Pewtermill and the smoke from the settlement rose in separate columns above the roofs, each one discrete, each one vertical, as though the cold air had agreed not to move.

The notebook was in my coat. I did not take it out.

Lano walked a few paces ahead of me, nose angled into the frost-hardened grass, reading it. She found the path that ran along the lower terrace without my pointing.

The keeper of the place met us at the fence line where the valley met the first rise. He said nothing by way of greeting and I said nothing back. There was a low building on the terrace I had not seen from below - not a dwelling but something operational, its windows small and high, three antennas mounted to the north face. I counted three.

Inside, the relay clerk was standing over a table. The entry-keeper was beside her. They were looking at a device that sat in a bracket on the wall - a receiver, small and gray, its needle resting at a position where needles do not ordinarily rest. The relay clerk pointed to a column of numbers on a paper log. The entry-keeper ran her finger down it and stopped partway through.

Nobody spoke for a moment.

Then the relay clerk said the signal was not from the northern network, not from the coast, not from the valley repeater. The pattern matched nothing they had. The entry-keeper asked when it had started. The relay clerk said: the third watch.

Lano had followed me through the door. She stopped. Her ears went flat against her head. She gave one short bark into the room - not at any person, at something in the direction of the receiver - and then she pressed close to my leg and went quiet.

The keeper looked at the window. The smoke above Pewtermill had not moved. Whatever had sent the signal had done it without disturbing the air.

No one touched the receiver. The relay clerk made a note in the log and put the pen down. The entry-keeper looked at me. I looked at the north-facing antenna mount: three bolts, one rust stain at the upper-left bracket. The keeper said: we will need to know where it came from before we do anything.

The needle did not move again while I was there.

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