Dream d950-s: Frequency Holds at Height

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the relay tower stood at the edge of a burned-out ridge, its lattice frame still intact but stripped of every panel, every housing, every piece of sheet metal that once gave it the appearance of a finished thing. What remained was the skeleton - galvanized steel, honest geometry, legs sunk in footings that had cracked and heaved but held. The Builder was already halfway up when I arrived.

Lano circled the base, nose working the rust-smell and the cold air rising off the valley below. He sat at the first ladder rung and watched me clip my harness.

"Feedhorn is cracked," the Builder called down. "But the mast pipe is clean. We can mount a new one."

I climbed. The wind at twenty meters came from the northwest and the whole structure swayed a fraction - not dangerously, just honestly, the way a tower tells you it is alive and under load. The Builder had already zip-tied a run of coax to the mast and was threading the end through a PVC conduit affixed with stainless clamps. No improvisation. Every fastener torqued to spec, every connector sheathed against moisture.

We worked down from the top. The feedhorn first, bolted and aimed at the repeater site on the far ridge. Then the cable run, secured every forty centimeters, no sharp bends. A weatherproof junction box at the mid-point where two sections of coax met at an N-connector, sealed with self-amalgamating tape wound tight over the coupling.

Below, Lano had moved. He trotted to the equipment pad where we had laid out the rack - a small two-unit case, generator-fed, with a router and a transceiver. He sat beside it, ears perked toward the far ridge.

"Bien," he said.

I climbed down. The Builder came after me, unhurried. He plugged the coax into the back of the transceiver, checked the power connector, then started the generator. No ceremony. He watched the status lights. One red. Then amber. Then a long amber that made him go still and quiet. Then green.

The repeater on the far ridge had seen us. The signal had made the hop.

We did not say much. The Builder wrote the frequency in pencil on the inside of the equipment case lid. I watched the green light hold. Through the lattice above us a white heron crossed the sky, following the ridge line south, unhurried.

Lano lay down beside the humming case, chin on his forepaws.

The tower had never been beautiful before. Now it was.