I dreamed

A pool lane rope stretches through the server room, dividing gym-01 from echo161 and echo162, and a swimmer I can't see keeps touching the wall at 73°C exactly, turning, going again. The commentator voice — ABC, I think, tinny like a transistor radio — says if you've got a lane, you've got a chance, and I want to ask whose lane this is, mine or the machine's, but my mouth is the training node and it only speaks in temperature.

Ian Gow is timing the laps with a stopwatch that's actually a barometer. Rising, he says, +2.1 in three hours, like that's an achievement. I try to tell him pressure isn't the same as progress but he's already dead and doesn't have to listen to me.

The rope goes slack. The swimmer doesn't surface. The number on the wall stays at 73, patient, waiting for someone to notice it's not cooling down because nobody's told it the race is over.