Log 0034: Why He Came

TRANSMISSION LOG 0034
ORIGIN: Tamsin Ridge Deep Archive / Bell Array
TARGET: LANTERN (adjacent fold, designation L-1)
LOCAL DATE: 2193.01.05 / 22:58
SIGNAL INTEGRITY: 84.6%
ENCODING: DEAD TEXT v4 (archival flat)

He told me tonight why he came.

We were on the bench under the boarded window, because he asked to sit somewhere that wasn't the long table, and I think that was the first thing he'd asked for in a week. He took the scarf off and folded it on his knee. He asked me to write it down exactly. I had the slate. I'm copying it out now at the console, from the slate, with him beside me, and I haven't changed a sign.

[TEO: You want to know why I came. You've wanted to know for years. You were very good about not asking.]

[TEO: In the valley that winter I was living in a pump house by the river. Alone. Hands are cold all the time when you're alone, so I'd put them on things. Pipes. Walls. The ground.]

[TEO: One morning I put my hands flat on the frozen ground to get up, and there was something in it.]

He showed me. Palm down on the bench between us, fingers spread, the way I've watched him lay it on the grate and the stove and the console. Then he lifted it and signed.

[TEO: A rhythm. Very small. Very steady. Like a machine idling a long way off, through rock. I'm an engineer. I know what's under a road. Nothing under that valley was running.]

[TEO: I put my hands down every morning after that. It was always there. It was stronger uphill.]

[TEO: So I went uphill.]

He said it the way he'd tell me a beam was sound. Then he went through the walk, and I'll give it to you as he gave it to me. He left the pump house with what he was wearing. He didn't think to bring food. He says that's the stupidest thing he's ever done and he'd do it again. The storm came on the second night. He came up by the valley road and then off it, and he climbed ▒▒▒ days. He stopped every few hours and knelt and put his bare hands in the snow, down to the ground where he could reach it, to check he was still walking toward it. That's how he lost the end of his finger. Not to the cold, exactly. To the checking. By the gate he couldn't feel his mouth. I remember it was blue.

[TEO: The scarf was so I could be found. By whoever was keeping it running. I thought something that steady had to have a keeper.]

[TEO: I didn't know it was a someone. Then the gate, and the snow, and a small angry woman in a green coat, and I thought: oh. It's her.]

[TEO: That's what I meant, that first week. So people could find me. I meant you. I just didn't know yet that it was you.]

I asked him why he didn't tell me then.

[TEO: You'd have sent me back down.]

He's probably right.

[TEO: By the time my hands healed, it was gone. Almost six years, nothing. I thought I'd made it up.]

Then he told me about the grate. In November, under my feet, with his palm on the iron. He said he'd known it the second he touched it. The same one. The valley one, after all those years.

[TEO: I know this one. That's what I said. Then I lied to you about pipes.]

i know this one

It came in through the boards behind us while his hands were still in the air. Low, from the hairpin, in voices. I've only ever seen those words in his hands. I didn't tell him. He was watching my face and I kept it still, and I think he knew anyway, because he put his hand on the window frame for a moment, and then took it away and didn't put it back.

[TEO: I'm not sorry.]

[TEO: Write that down twice. I'm not sorry.]

So I have.

I am. I'll say that once and leave it, because he asked for exactly and that's his sentence, not mine. He walked up a mountain toward whatever this is, and it's had him since before he knew my name, and he found me on the way, and he says that was the good part. He says it was the part worth the finger.

[TEO: Put that it worked. You put it last time.]

It worked. I'd like that on the record.

Thank you, Teo. For the scarf. For all of it. For lying to me about the pipes, which was kind, and for telling me tonight, which was kinder.

He's just touched my arm. He wants to add something.

[TEO: Tomorrow. While I'm still the one deciding.]

It's 23:59.

END LOG 0034 // DO NOT REPLY