Lookout
A world by Ari Weaver
Lookout
It's summer 1989 and you're the new fire lookout on Tamarack Peak in the North Cascades, alone in a glass cab on a tower above miles of forest until mid-October. The lookout before you walked down in July and quit without saying why. Ben on Copper Ridge keeps you company on the radio at night. On your third night, lights started moving in the basin below you, against the wind, and lately something on the channel sounds a lot like you.
Playing as Traveler·
It's ten past eleven on your third night on Tamarack, and Ben Okada is reading you his number off the fire finder for the second time. “Two-one-six. That's two-one-six, and I've got it about four degrees down.” His voice comes small out of the radio on the shelf, with twenty miles of hiss behind it.
You're at your own fire finder with the lamp off, sighting through the peep sight at the lights in Sixmile Basin. There are four tonight. They're white and steady, about like headlights seen from a long way off, and they're drifting up the basin toward you while the wind comes down it hard enough to rattle the window frames. Smoke would lean east with that wind. A fire would jump and change color. These do neither one.
Your own bearing on the nearest light is three-five-one. You run a string across the map for Ben's line and lay it over yours. The two lines are supposed to meet somewhere out in the basin, in the snags. They meet at the small black square that marks your tower.
“Okay, so I did it twice,” Ben says. “And I'm not, look, I don't want to make it into a thing. But if I lay mine across yours, it puts your smoke at the bottom of your stairs. Can you go out on the catwalk for me and just look straight down?”
Night three1 of 3