THE ACTIVE OPTICAL LINE

Stay seated until the band goes out, said Célia, and Antônio pushed the bowl away. The contractual presence still demanded two hours and twenty minutes. The visit to the route opened fifty-three minutes before dawn, with mandatory authentication at the starting point. Between the bar and the authorised entrance to the licensed polygon lay forty minutes on foot for Célia, more for Nael. Antônio would have eleven minutes to cover a distance the utility company had been measuring for years. Nael came up to the threshold without crossing it. He asked Célia to enlarge the summons map on the visor. The line of the visit started at the road, in front of the old access to the surveys, then climbed to the digital fence. He followed the route with his fingernail, slowly. He stopped over a point hidden by the bar's projection. It used to start here, he said. Here where. Under the storeroom. Antônio raised his eyes. The storeroom was behind the kitchen, reached through the yard. Before the guesthouse, when the bar had only one refrigerator and three tables, Nael had kept survey cables there, paid by the metre opened. The crews left from that ground to teach the excavators where the rock gave way. The mining operation had later moved the start of the route to the road and harmonised the old stretch as commercial area. Célia checked the public history. The map showed a rectangular interruption under the bar. No path went in, none came out. Antônio's property seemed to have landed whole on an administrative void. If the starting point is corrected to here, he joins the visit without leaving, she said. No one touched the confirmation. Nael went to the storeroom. The door recognised Antônio from a distance and opened only the width allowed by the contractual presence. Inside, recent ducts climbed over the old rammed earth, held by clamps that vibrated with the refrigeration of the reading cabinet. The cold escaped through a narrow gap and died before it reached the kitchen. On the floor, a maintenance plate covered the junction of two cables. Nael asked for a torque wrench. Antônio took one from the tool compartment and left it on the floor, without crossing the luminous band. Célia passed the tool along with her foot. The first screw turned half a turn. The second released compacted dust. The third resisted until Nael put both hands on the wrench and made the metal groan. Under the plate appeared a thick cable, sheathed in patched layers, and beside it an optical line still active. The light pulsed at short intervals. Célia brought the visor close. The embedded identifier answered. Survey corridor, operational origin three. Deactivated for human circulation, kept for territorial telemetry. She opened the correction request. The datacenter consortium appeared as an interested party because the visit would assess the route of the future water intake. The regional authority, which had granted the incentive, demanded continuous imaging of the corridor and responsibility for any loss of signal. The utility company added the price. To move the starting point to the bar, someone would have to take on maintenance of the optical line until the end of the inspection. My name, said Antônio. Your presence is already committed, answered Célia. That's exactly why. He brought his face to the reader without leaving the kitchen. The authentication linked the corridor to the establishment. At the same instant, three indicators on the cabinet changed from white to amber. The technical consumption passed to the guesthouse account. One cooking unit disappeared, then another. Food was left to heat once. The correction still asked for physical proof. Nael took from his pocket a fragment of blackened rubber and cleaned the optical window embedded in the cable. Célia captured the pulse. Antônio confirmed, by voice, that the point remained accessible from inside the property. The utility company compared the current reading with logs from before the harmonisation. There were twenty-six seconds of waiting. The map moved. The line of the visit drew back along the road, crossed the yard and ended under the storeroom. Territorial presence of Antônio confirmed. Physical departure authorised after the close of the night cycle. He was still bound to the bar, but now the visit would begin beneath him. Célia put the visor away against her body. The correction had consumed her two remaining movement units as a cartographic review fee. She would go on foot. Nael put the plate back, tightening each screw until the vibration lessened. In the main room, the power to the stove was cut. The mash kept aside would lose its only heating unit before the return. Ilva waited for the projection to settle and took the cold mirror to the storeroom. The parallel ledger received the corridor identifier, the two debits and the time at which the map recognised what the mine used without admitting it. When they closed the plate, a blue line was already rising from the floor toward the door of the rooms.