20 October 3024
Sector B12, Earth's Upper Research Dome
The ash horizon does not move.
The dome hums, steady on top, uneven under.
Eric Relish stands by the glass until his reflection looks like a stranger, then turns back to the core.
Orson is already there with the copper loop, the ceramic bits, the hand‑wound coil.
He looks like he slept in the lab and lost the fight with the blanket.
"Storm line over the old Pacific" Orson says. "Static will drag at dusk."
"Then we ride it" Eric says.
On the wall, the mission board holds the four names. No blink today. The blank line under RETURN SIGNAL: is empty and still.
The emptiness feels like it's pretending to be nothing.
The intercom pops. "Relish. Council in one hour."
"Of course" Orson mutters. "Bring your calm voice."
Eric tapes the small pencil card to the monitor again.
33.394
104.523
14
The edges are getting fuzzy from fingers but he does not replace it, he likes the wear.
They tune the loop to the core's skin, not the heart. Open one finger‑width and close one.
Fourteen counts open with Fourteen counts closed.
The wave on the screen has learned the sway, It looks like a slow breath, like a chest rising under a blanket.
"Numbers only" Orson says, but his voice asks a question he doesn't say out loud.
"Numbers only" Eric agrees, for the first pass.
He speaks into the grid, soft as a thought.
"Three. Three point three nine four."
The wave nods.
"One zero four point five two three."
The wave slides and settles.
"Fourteen."
The lab air tastes like hot metal and rain that never reached the ground.
"I keep losing little things," Orson says, eyes on the curve. "Lyrics, the name of the boy who fixed the lift last month. It was—" He shakes his head. "Gone."
Eric doesn't say it back to him: erasure.
He uses a kinder word. "Latency."
Orson huffs. "In my own head."
"Especially there," Eric says, and turns the shield a breath tighter.
They push again. The wave goes wider, then thinner, like it is walking down a hallway with doors.
The door to the lab opens a hand's width.
A young tech leans in, hair standing up like he fought the same blanket as Orson. "Lower dome lights flickered, the Elders want a status in forty."
"Stable" Eric says.
"You sure?" the tech asks.
"No" Eric says, mild. "Tell them yes."
The tech nods and disappears.
Orson adjusts the tape on the pencil card, smoothing a corner.
His finger goes a fraction too far, into the glass.
He jerks back.
The card flutters, then lies half in, half out of the monitor like the screen turned to water for a breath and the paper forgot which side it belonged to.
Eric doesn't move.
He waits for the card to choose.
It slides back onto the plastic frame, damp at the edge as if it came from fog.
Orson holds his hand up. His fingertips look the same, but he is breathing too fast.
"Did you feel—"
"Cold" he says. "Like sticking your hand in a stream in winter."
Eric opens the field a hair wider to see if it was the angle. The lights in the ceiling dim one step and hold.
The number counter on a side console flickers. A four wants to be a three. It chooses four again.
"We call that a ghost" Orson says, trying on a grin that does not fit. "Channel."
"Stay clear of the glass" Eric says softly.
He moves the loop three degrees and the wave straightens, then bows again.
A hiss comes through that is not the core. It carries a shape like a word has just been born but doesn't know how to stand yet.
"Fourteen" it says.
Eric looks at the speaker like a friend just knocked on the wrong door.
"We're here" he says, to no one in the room.
The Council room is colder than morning. Seya's hands are folded on the table like she is keeping them from reaching for anything heavy. Tolan's eyes count, and count again.
"Status" Seya says.
"Low band holds," Eric says. "Numbers pass with minimal draw, We are using weather as carrier."
"Storm superstition" Tolan says.
"Physics" Eric answers. "But I will accept superstition if it works."
"Drain?" Seya asks.
"Manageable."
"And risks?" Tolan presses.
"Edges" Eric says. "Small slips but we will not push voice at full."
Tolan taps the table once.
"You will not push voice at all."
Eric holds his breath until it counts to seven. "Numbers, then a single word, the word they already have."
"Which is?" Seya asks, though she knows.
"Fourteen."
Seya looks at Tolan.
Tolan looks at the ceiling as if it will help him.
"One more day" Seya says at last. "Then we cut if the dome dims again."
Back in the lab, the air feels warmer, like the core heard the word cut and decided to pretend to be tame.
Orson has the loop in hand, ready.
"Storm's building" he says. "Listen."
They don't need to listen to hear it. The hum under the hum thickens. Somewhere outside, the ash moves like a slow sea.
Eric lowers the shield on a count. Open. Close. Open. Close.
Fourteen ticks. Fourteen more.
He rides the swell with his voice.
"Three—three—point—three—nine—four."
The wave arcs, soft shouldered.
"One—zero—four—point—five—two—three."
The sound hisses like paper burning far away.
"Fourteen."
A second hiss answers.
Then a second line ghosts itself onto the screen for one heartbeat, like another monitor leaned in from another room.
AMARA: Rule stands.
It is gone before Orson can say what he sees.
"Did you—"
"Yes" Eric says. His chest feels too small for his breath.
The pencil card on the monitor edge looks suddenly like a face he should apologize to.
"Amara," Orson says. The name is awkward in his mouth and strangely right. "Who—"
"A Whitaker" Eric says, with a certainty he did not have ten seconds ago. "She is holding our line."
"From the middle" Orson says, eyes wide. "Not the past. Not here."
"The middle holds the rope" Eric says.
They do not tell the Elders this part.
They work.
They gate the field, fourteen open, fourteen closed, the rhythm falling into them until their hands know it without eyes.
Eric speaks only three things, again and again.
The coordinates. The number. Then the single word that is not theirs anymore, it belongs to anyone who needs it.
Fourteen.
On one pass, the lab air tightens.
Orson reaches for the pencil to notch time on the edge of the bench, a habit from when they went to school.
His hand goes through the pencil. Not around. Through.
He yanks back with a sound that is not words.
The pencil clatters. It is unbroken. His fingers shake. His eyes shine.
"I don't want to fade like a bad radio" he says.
"You won't" Eric says, and hopes like a man who knows he is lying to someone he loves. "We are anchors."
Orson looks at the small circle on the lab window with 14 inside it. The marker line looks thicker today, though no one touched it.
"What if the anchor is the thing that drowns you" he says.
Eric turns to the console.
"Then we tie the rope to someone else."
He prints a strip of thin film.
He writes in blunt pencil, neat, like a student on a test he wants to pass with more than a grade.
AMARA WHITAKER,
WE ARE PEOPLE. WE ARE YOU.
WAIT FOURTEEN MINUTES.
DON'T CHASE. DON'T SHOOT.
33.394 / 104.523 / 14.
—ERIC
He holds it in his palm a second, the film feels warmer than paper and cooler than skin.
Orson watches him.
"You think writing a name pulls on the string?"
"I think the string already had her name in it" Eric says.
"We're just saying it out loud."
They tune the field until the wave on the screen looks like the slowest heartbeat ever measured.
They lower the shield a hair, the lab lights behave, the floor holds.
Eric steps close to the core's skin.
He can hear it, not with his ears, but with the small bones in his face.
He sets the film on the lip of the grid where the field hum kisses the metal.
"Drift" he says, like a blessing.
The film does not fly and it does not vanish like a trick.
It shivers. It slides. It thins, like ice on a puddle when the first warm wind of spring finds it.
It is gone.
Not gone like lost.
Gone like used.
Orson lets out a breath that shakes.
"If that lands on the wrong table—"
"It won't" Eric says. "Because it already has."
He doesn't know how he knows it, but he hears a pen on paper in another room, another year.
He hears a woman circling a 14 in a corner and tapping the page three times.
They ride the storm until the dome's outer lights dim for one breath and come back. Eric stops at seven. He closes the shield to a whisper. He sets the timer for 14:00 and they sit on the floor and watch the numbers go small.
"The Elders will cut it" Orson says into the quiet.
"Not if the middle holds" Eric says.
On the corridor wall, the plaque that reads REVIVAL — POWER throws a shadow that looks like a letter that isn't there yet.
Eric writes one more line on a new card and tapes it beside the first.
WE DON'T SHOOT OUR OWN.
He touches the glass near the mission board but doesn't lay his palm on it. The names hold at four. The blank line under RETURN SIGNAL: stays blank like a held breath.
He thinks of a bank vault, of a lacquer disc. Of a clerk flipping a CLOSED sign to protect a moment he doesn't understand. Of a deputy who wrote HELP in a hand that didn't shake.
He thinks of a woman in an apartment with a stubborn lock.
Amara Whitaker.
"Tomorrow" Orson says.
"Tomorrow" Eric says.
He doesn't sleep.
He lies on his back and counts to fourteen and starts over.
Somewhere outside, the ash moves.
Somewhere in the middle, a phone buzzes when it shouldn't and writes a sentence on a page. Somewhere in the past, a circle in the dirt holds its shape a little too long.
The ghost channel is open.
The rope is taut.
They keep their hands on it and wait for the pull.