Log 0023: Ring One

TRANSMISSION LOG 0023
ORIGIN: Tamsin Ridge Deep Archive / Bell Array
TARGET: LANTERN (adjacent fold, designation L-1)
LOCAL DATE: 2192.12.08 / 02:45
SIGNAL INTEGRITY: 76.0%
ENCODING: DEAD TEXT v4 (archival flat)

At two this morning Teo's blanket by the grate was empty.

I found him on the gallery below the gantry, down the iron stair, where I stood in 2179. He was kneeling at the rail with his coat off and his scarf trailing, and his right hand was out over the shaft, bare, flat on ring one. Not resting. His fingers lifted a little and came down again, lifted and came down, keeping time with something. The lamp beside him was set low on the grating. The plates were dark. The Bell is only listening tonight.

I went down the last steps loud, so the stair would tell him I was there through the iron. He took his hand back without hurrying and signed with it.

[TEO: The bearings. I'm checking for vibration.]

it's the bearings it's the bearings

I knelt beside him and laid my own palm on the ring where his had been. The bronze was warm. Not hot. Warm like a cup someone has just set down.

I told him that was sensible. I told him to put his coat on. I said I'd come and check the bearings with him tomorrow, in daylight, with the meter. He nodded at all of it.

I'm pretending to believe him, Listener. I want you to know that I know I'm pretending. He knows it too. We walked back up the stair one behind the other, and neither of us said a word about the warmth, and he lay down on the blanket by the grate, and I came here.

I'm frightened for him. That's true, and I can't do anything with it tonight.

The note came at dusk, folded into the gate slot from outside. The first since he stepped back.

TO W. ADAIRE

OUR PAPERS SAY YOUR DIRECTOR KEPT A RECORDING FROM 2172.

GIVE IT TO US. WE WILL BURN IT IN SIGHT OF YOUR GATE, UNHEARD.

THEN WE GO DOWN THE MOUNTAIN.

WE STILL HAVE NOT PLAYED OURS.

SOL.

I don't think he knows where it is. I don't think he knows what it is. If the press center copied the minutes the way it copied everything else, the 2172 anomaly has been sitting in Lantern's minutes for fifteen years for anyone patient enough to read them.

The last line I read three times. He didn't write it as a threat. He didn't need to.

I wrote back two words and a name, and Teo took them down at full dark.

TO MAREK SOL

NOT YET.

W. ADAIRE.

He's offering to go home, and I've said no. But three copies on that printout agree on almost nothing past the top, and if the paper fails me, the reel is the only other witness to what came through P-1. You don't burn a witness before the record is complete. Not even to end a siege.

Before I went back to the printout tonight I read the last entry in her last notebook. It's dated the second of October, 2179, the night before the send. Her writing is smaller than in any of the other years.

EXHIBIT TR-M-2179-001 (provisional) / I. Morrow, notebook 2179, crate four, final entry

2 OCTOBER. TOMORROW WE SEND. THE CHOIR GOES FIRST.

I READ 2172/A AGAIN TONIGHT. I STILL DO NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS.

I KNOW WHAT WE ARE. WE ARE READY, AND WE WILL NOT BE READIER.

IF I AM ▒▒▒, LET THE RECORD SAY SO.

The rest of the notebook is blank.

So I went back to the paper, and I've been at it since I came up from the shaft, with the hum keeping time under everything and Teo asleep beside the grate, or pretending to be. I've stopped enjoying it. The work is the same and I'm the same and the pleasure has gone out of it, because the shape coming up through the noise is one I'd rather not recognize.

The first line has come up. Two copies out of three, and then the third agreeing once I knew what to look for. It says TRANSMISSION LOG, and after it four characters none of the copies kept.

Then ORIGIN, with its value still in gaps. Then TARGET. LOCAL DATE. SIGNAL INTEGRITY. ENCODING. The labels have come clean, every one of them. The values haven't, all but the last. After ENCODING, two words: DEAD TEXT. Somebody's dead text.

Six lines, in that order, set hard against the margin. The format is one I know the way I know my own hand.

I'm going to finish it tonight.

END LOG 0023 // DO NOT REPLY