Log 0047: Off

TRANSMISSION LOG 0047
ORIGIN: Tamsin Ridge Deep Archive / Bell Array
TARGET: LANTERN (adjacent fold, designation L-1)
LOCAL DATE: 2193.02.08 / 22:40
SIGNAL INTEGRITY: 63.9%
ENCODING: DEAD TEXT v4 (archival flat)

At six this morning I read the plates for the last time. The needle was where it's been since December, against the stop. I wrote the figure in the ledger, and the date, and my initials, and then I closed it.

There's no line under it.

The Bell is ready for one send. I've checked the key, the bolts, the plates, the trench. I've checked them twice, and then I made myself stop checking, because a third time is only nerves.

The cards are in a box by the key. Twenty-nine. I put them in order at the long table this afternoon and closed the lid there, and carried the box over shut. I haven't opened it at this desk, and I won't until it's time.

Marek's blank card is still on the long table where I left it for him. He hasn't touched it. He's asleep by the stove with the wax in his ears and his hands inside his sleeves.

The new moon is after midnight.

I've been sitting here deciding what to tell you, and the honest answer is not much. I've filed everything. I've said most of it. I thought I'd sit for an hour and write you something plain and short and go and lie down.

It's 23:05.

The wall behind the desk has gone the color of weak tea. The radio's faced that wall since November, the way I turned it, and so what I see first is never the dial. It's the stone, warming, like a window across a street when someone inside gets up in the night.

Then June.

"Wren."

Only that. Not inside the lamp, or the kitchen, or the tune. None of our old things around it. My name, the whole of it, by itself, the way she'd say it from the next room when she wanted me and didn't want to get up. Her voice, with nothing behind it.

I'm writing this with the radio in front of me. I pulled it out from the wall while she was still saying it.

Marek asked me once if he could turn it off. I wrote No under his card, in my own hand, so it wouldn't look like a rule. I'm the one who keeps it on. I wrote that to you too.

There's a switch at the dial. There's always been a switch. I've turned it off there before, properly, the way you're meant to, and I've turned it on again, because I'm the one who does.

A switch can be turned back on.

The lead runs down the back of the desk to where it joins the geothermal line. The pliers were in the drawer with the spare bolts. I didn't have to look for them.

She's started to say something else. The breath before it. I know that breath. I've waited thirteen years for whatever comes after it.

I cut it. [SIGNAL LOSS 00:01.0]

The dial's dead. The needle went back on its own as the light went out of it, down to the low end of the band, where I keep it parked, where there's nothing to receive.

the lamp is on the lamp is on

That's from the hairpin. Not the radio. The radio has nothing in it now. It came up through the boards, faint, and went.

The wall's going cold. I can feel it from here, the warmth leaving the stone the way it leaves a cup.

I don't know what she said. I'm not going to guess. It's hers.

I thought I'd feel it more than this. I feel very light. My hand is steady. I've set the pliers by the radio, and the cut end of the lead is lying on the desk, bright copper, and I keep looking at it the way you'd look at the place a tooth was.

And I know where the afternoon went.

The fourth of October, 2179. I let go of ring one at about a quarter past twelve, and I stood at the repeater grille in the rock beside the stair down to the plate gallery, and I listened to the link. Hiss. Only the hiss of the line. The plates were amber below me the whole time. I stood there for ▒▒▒ hours, until about a quarter past six, waiting for it to say something else.

It didn't. Then I went up.

That's all of it. I've had a gap there for thirteen years, and I've written around it the way I write around every gap, and now it's filled and it's only a woman standing at a grille in the rock, waiting.

That's the last thing I'll tell you I heard.

Marek hasn't woken. I'll leave him.

The box is by the key. The blank card is on the table. The ledger is closed.

At 03:12 I'm going to sit down to send. Every other time, I sat down to wait.

END LOG 0047 // DO NOT REPLY