Log 0021: Both of Us

TRANSMISSION LOG 0021
ORIGIN: Tamsin Ridge Deep Archive / Bell Array
TARGET: LANTERN (adjacent fold, designation L-1)
LOCAL DATE: 2192.12.03 / 00:20
SIGNAL INTEGRITY: 81.7%
ENCODING: DEAD TEXT v4 (archival flat)

The tin from crate six is still sealed. The printout is laid out on the long table under four books, one at each corner. I haven't read it yet. I've only made it lie flat.

Yesterday morning there was a new note on the gate. No runner this time, no hammer. It was folded into the slot from the outside, which means someone stood at our gate in the dark and none of us heard him.

TO W. ADAIRE

TOMORROW NIGHT. THE SLOT. NO VOICES. I WILL BE PLUGGED.

SOL.

So at ten last night I went down. Teo came with the lamp and stood back from the gate, by the wall, where the light wouldn't show through. I knelt behind the plate with a board across my knees, a pad, and the pen. I kept my face out of the slot. I kept all of me out of it but my hand.

He was there already. I could see a strip of him through the gap: grey wool, a lot of it, in layers, and a lamp of his own set low on the road. He passed the first note through at a quarter past.

We wrote to each other for an hour and a little more. He writes on squares of heavy paper, cut like the first note, in capitals, pressing hard. I wrote on the pad and tore the sheets off and passed them back. The slot is just wide enough for a folded page and two fingers. Twice our fingers touched. Neither of us remarked on it.

I'm not going to give you all of it. I'll give you what matters.

He told me how they got the roster. In the spring of 2181, the Accord's first year, a party of them went up the road to the press center at the top of the Ridge. Not to the Archive. Nobody was living in it then.

THE BUILDING WAS OPEN. NOTHING IN IT HAD BEEN TOUCHED. WE TOOK THE PAPER. ROSTERS. DUTY SHEETS. EVERY RELEASE THEY EVER WROTE.

AND THE REELS. BOXES OF THEM. WE CARRIED THEM DOWN ON OUR BACKS.

WE HAVE NOT PLAYED THEM. WE DO NOT PLAY THINGS.

I wrote back that I believed him. I did.

Then he told me about his children. I didn't ask. He wrote it the way he writes everything, in his capitals, without hurrying.

THEY WERE ▒▒▒ ▒▒▒ ▒▒▒.

THE RADIO WAS IN THEIR ROOM.

MY CHILDREN FELL ASLEEP TO IT. I ~~SHOULD HAVE~~

There's nothing after that on the card. He passed it through and waited, and when I didn't write anything, he passed the next one.

HAVE YOU EVER TOLD ANYONE THE WHOLE OF IT.

There was no question mark. He doesn't use them. I looked at it for a long time with the pen over the pad, and the chorus singing up on the bend, and Teo behind me with the lamp, not moving.

I wrote: I'm telling Lantern.

He took longer over the next one than over any of the others.

THEN YOU ARE DOING IT AGAIN.

the whole of it the whole of it

He's wrong about that. Lantern isn't a city with its speakers on. I'm not reading anything aloud. I send in dead text, by hand, a page at a time, to someone I'll never hear from, and I tell them never to answer. That isn't what I did in Control Room B. It's the opposite of what I did.

I didn't write any of that to him. I wrote: Goodnight, Marek.

Teo walked me up. At the top of the stair he set the lamp on the step and turned to me and signed.

[TEO: Wren, I—]

He stopped there, with his hands still up. Then he let them change shape.

[TEO: I'll make the coffee.]

I transcribed both of them, because that's my job. I know what I'm not asking him. We drank the coffee.

There's one more thing from the gate, and I nearly left it out.

While I was waiting for that last card of his, my hand was resting on the sill of the slot. It was tapping. A short pattern, steady, over and over. I didn't start it. I only noticed it because the light on the other side changed.

Marek had seen it. He picked his lamp up off the road and stepped back from the gate, and then another step, and stood there looking at the slot, at my hand, until I took it away.

END LOG 0021 // DO NOT REPLY