ROVER ENTRY #1512

START ENTRY

The dunes were wider. The cactuses were taller by ten years’ worth. Red’s buggy maneuvered through the Lonely Basin’s sun-scorched badlands. A sea of goldenrod sand stretched toward the early evening horizon. Only the occasional craggy rock formation or blooming cactus patch broke up an otherwise unremarkable Abeona-2.

She tapped the glass cover of the buggy’s temperature gauge. The heat was cozily within the orange zone but her sand-resistant clothing made it seem much hotter than that. She unbuttoned her hood and let her fluttering hair take to the wind. After years of her profession, she was used to the lack of comfort on the road. But on days like this she still longed for the days of her youth when her higher station within her settlement afforded her more luxury. Alas, this was her life now.

And what a life it had been thus far. The beginning of this expedition season began on the eve of the week after her birth date. The bright twin-suns burning explosively in her line of sight with no regard for what will happen when they finally grow cold reminded her of the candles stabbed into her ageing-ceremony steak. The fresh memories of laughs, pats on her back, and kind words inscribed inside a card which she had left at home came to mind. The polite smiles of her neighbors hid their true opinions: she was either stupid or brave to do the work that she did and they were not enough of either to be like her. Several elders in attendance congratulated her on surviving long enough to finally unlock all the rights and responsibilities of her fellow colonists. She nodded amicably for she had already believed herself an adult for years. Despite the dangers of her job and the expectations placed upon her by the Rover Order, she had, as a mere child, risen to the occasion on all accounts. Did that not separate her from her youthful peers already?

As a mature Rover, she had traveled the colony and employed her craft to observe, analyze, and draw conclusions from the planet’s mysteries. To her growing dismay, her society’s rigidity in scope and approach had tempered her natural curiosity. And keeping it in check she did for that was the attitude of an adult. However, secretly she believed that the Order, what with its interest solely on the riddle of the arches, intentionally prevented broader exploration. The tools provided to her were unproductive. The Order described them as tried and true. Her deviant conjectures were frowned upon by the colony and thus had remained unsaid. But it was becoming uncomfortable being aware of a voice inside herself, soft and low but growing with insistence each year, asking for more from this world.

Enough worrying about what she could not have, she thought. Red tapped her palms upon her fraying, leather-wrapped steering wheel. She bounced in her seat thinking about the variety of reasons for this trip yet it was an old friend who loomed largest in her mind. The silver moon was in a very different place in the sky than the last time she had seen her colleague, Green Rover of Iota settlement. After how they had left things, the secret flirting and forbidden words spoken aloud, she hoped he was as eager to see her as she was of him.

She did not know many Rovers her own age, the profession being mostly populated by twenty-to-fifty somethings, so the few fellow youths she felt connected too tended to light a spark inside her. Was he equally anxious, sitting at home and playing out the scenario of her arrival over and over again in such a way that no other thoughts could penetrate his speculative mind? Perhaps. Yet, she recalled Green was not the most considerate or organized Rover. She tempered her expectations and hoped he just remembered she was coming. A clean bed to sleep on may be the best she could expect for such a scatterbrain.

Her heart was also thumping at the thought of initiating the first field test of an experimental device of her own design. The makeshift machine rattled in her cargo space. She worried the rough road would shake all the screws loose but there was nothing she could do about that. She never told anyone about this monstrosity, not even her grandpa, but she thought Green could be open-minded enough to help her test it. The Red Rover’s reputation, tarnished by her mother, was hers to correct. While her current course of action was unsanctioned, she believed history required a certain degree of measured, hushed boldness to achieve great shifts. She was sure people would understand and it would be worth it in the end.

A welcomed, cool breeze foreshadowed the return of a relentless winter with the evening temperatures dropping into the blue zone. With that relief, persistent sand hitched a ride and found its way in and through her tangled hair. At least her Order-issued red jacket, complete with thermal padding and more pockets than necessary, kept this nuisance away from her core. Her trusty goggles also kept the road ahead clear.

Red dragged her finger along the map lying on the passenger’s seat. Rough cactus paper against her skin helped fight the barren, unpaved road’s mind-numbing effects. While lonely, she slightly preferred solitude on the road to the bustle of the settlement centers. She did not understand people that well. Was that just her or part of being a teenager?

To her delight, the map foretold the approach of a point of interest brimming with potential to break up the monotony. She scanned the flat horizon. Her goggles zoomed in on the distant hilltop peaks. Details of the atmosphere were revealed to her by colors flashing across the glass circles. Such rare and ageing technology effectively helped Rovers avoid life-threatening hazards like potential conditions for a storm. A small blue pip pointed her toward an ancient colony ark.

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The mountainous wreckage was from her people’s first days. It certainly was an interesting sight and one she had missed the first time she traveled to Iota. This specific ship must have been a vessel that experienced a radioactive meltdown upon landing. She noted no visible tire tracks or campsite smoke pillars. Scant evidence of salvage activity lent support to this hypothesis, although she wondered how long resource-strapped settlements could avoid this dangerous yet invaluable heap of material. She recognized this same insecurity in the spurting sounds coughing out of her buggy’s exhaust port.

After over a millennium since their departure from the home world, a period known as the Great Expedition, their colony had reached its near limits of self-sufficiency. They may have called themselves The Lost Colony, but her ancestors were just one of many supposed ships that first explored the galaxy with no expectation of ever receiving assistance from home. No doubt other forsaken expeditions existed, but she had never read anything about them in her school texts. And without the functioning technology to initiate spaceflight or communication over galactic distances, no average colonist could gather such information from what remnants of humanity remained, if any at all.

As curious as the effects of nuclear radiation were, and despite her believing its research should be a part of the Order’s charge, she knew it was best for her to forget about it. The wilds like this outside the established settlements were largely a mystery even after all the generations of colonists. On rare occasions, Red fancied herself as someone who took the path less traveled, but she made it a point to not be her mother. She checked her map again to see if the Order had marked this route as dangerous. She did not want to accidentally drive through the surely poisonous wind the decrepit ship emitted. Curiously, there was no such note. She assessed her battery gauge. A slight detour would not cause any trouble.

She charted a path a little off-road. With a jerk of her wheel, she gave the colossal wreckage a wide berth. Yes, the undocumented trail was unpredictable but a good Rover could handle themselves on the road. She reasoned she was taking a well-calculated risk considering the alternative.

Her eyes darted as she analyzed the rocky route ahead. She dug her fingers into the steering wheel’s cold metal. The tires spun and popped over the rough terrain. She gasped as a steep cliff materialized before her. The buggy swerved into circles until it stopped at the edge.

Still anchored to her seat, Red’s hands trembled at the sight. Climbing higher than a few meters off the ground was not in her job description. Eyeing the craggy crevasse as if it would reach out and grab her, its absence from her map puzzled her. Yet the longer she spent near the brink, the more curious she became much to her dismay. Shifting mountain ranges and deep valleys, like this one which nearly took her life, were still not fully understood.

There were theories proposing an overactive molten core inside the planet or massive regular meteorite impacts sundering rock. Kids even whispered regarding her favorite conjecture; giant sand serpents carved the land as they roamed. Little to no evidence existed for any of these ideas so she did not think about it much. And yet an opportunity to gather more data on that mystery spanned before her.

She climbed out of her vehicle and tiptoed toward the edge.

“As long as I take it slow and am careful, I should be safe,” she muttered to no one but her nerves.

Some things could only be learned by living. This cautionary argument seemed less convincing as she crept closer. The raw statistics running through her head comforted her. She had exponentially more Rover hours than anyone her age and had never done anything intentionally stupid. She was capable of being safe.

The open chasm stretched before her. From gold, to amber, to red all the way down, layers of colored rock provided a glimpse into the past. One feature which caught her eye was the large holes speckling the opposite cliff far below. Muscle moles, another of the desert’s rare creatures, lived deep underground among the rock too hard for human tools.

It took her three tries to get herself to take a steady seat on the ledge. She unfurled her map to sketch the gorge. She should report the aerial dimensions with her upcoming log so updated maps could be sent to the other Rovers. While attempting to estimate the distance between the two escarpments, she recalled a school text which claimed the existence of fissure-filling technologies equipped on the ancient colony arks. Her people encountered this planet’s resistance to such terraforming efforts early in their history. Other inadequacies, like the inability to calm the green lightning storm beginning to peek over the horizon or being unable to find ways to vary their nutritional diets, were more challenges that hindered her ancestors.

When she was done, a second sketch inside her Journal was for her alone. Her black pencil formed the initial scene and colored ones brought it to life. Chromatic pencils were not standard-issued Rover gear. She spent a month’s salary at Epsilon’s market for those beauties. She had no regrets.

Once satisfied with her drawing, she sketched the horizon as well. The view was breathtaking. Why could this not be studied, distributed, and enjoyed by the people? She believed the image had value. Yet it took away Journal pages from the Great Answer. It was possible her desires were wrong. The Order certainly would think so.

After shading her last cloud, she retrieved jerky and a pouch of water from her belt. She enjoyed a bite of sinewy meat and double the gulps of satiating liquid. Her grandpa would have scolded her for deviating from her ration schedule, but she wanted to celebrate her bravery in some way.

A hair-raising howl echoed up from the ravine’s deepest depths. Few had seen canidaurochs near settlement walls in recent years. Defense forces hunted many varieties almost to extinction to prevent attacks from their vicious claws and fangs. She had never seen one in the flesh before and she did not want to. Her curiosity had its limits. Red hopped up, cursed as dizziness fell upon her from peering down the cliff too far, and carefully climbed back into her buggy.

She had been off course long enough. She had a date to make.

END ENTRY