Dream d943-s: Standing Wave, Open Sky

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I climbed a stairwell with nothing but a tool roll under one arm and Lano trotting ahead of me, her white coat bright in the half-light, her nails clicking against each step, her nose already tilted up toward wherever the air tasted different.

The roof was stripped. Someone had pulled the HVAC housings off years ago, left the bolt circles in the membrane like crop circles. The antenna mast stood at the south edge - a triangular lattice tower, maybe eight meters, base-plated and guyed with corroded wire rope. Three of the four guys were still tensioned. The fourth had been cut and coiled at the base, left in a neat loop like an apology.

The Builder was already up there, crouched at the mast base with a spectrum analyzer open on a folding stand. He did not look up when I arrived. He was watching a sweep run across the screen, stylus hovering.

I unpacked the tool roll. Coax stripper, crimper, a handful of PL-259 connectors still in their plastic sleeves. The feedline ran from the mast down through a conduit entry that someone had sealed with expanding foam - the foam had dried and cracked and pulled away from the pipe, letting in ten years of whatever the sky sent down. I cut back to clean jacket. The braid was green for the first thirty centimeters. Then copper.

Lano sat at the mast base and watched. Her ears were up. The wind moved through the lattice above her in a low chord.

"Muerto," she said.

I cut another ten centimeters. The braid came up bright. I stripped the center conductor, fitted the connector, crimped it down. The Builder took the end without a word, connected it to the analyzer port, ran the sweep again.

The standing wave ratio came back at 1.4 to 1. Not perfect. Acceptable. The trace held its shape across the band. He nodded once.

I looked out from the roof edge. Below and in every direction: the skeleton of the old infrastructure. Tower bases without towers. Cable conduit trenches running toward buildings that had no power to receive them. A signal fire burning on a ridge three kilometers north, someone else's marker, patient in the afternoon haze. The cave tunnels from the old network ran under all of it - those same nodes, those same hollow chambers waiting to carry what we sent down.

A white heron crossed the sky at mast height, neither circling nor rushing.

The Builder began routing the feedline down the mast's leg, zip-tying at each cross-member, work moving from the top down and unhurried. I handed ties up to him. Lano watched the heron until it was gone, then settled onto her side in the sun.

We had the line dressed and the connector seated before the light shifted. The routing table could wait for fire.