Crawler

“Uh, right ... System check...” She stared at the display. The purple text had vanished, replaced by a simple, glowing prompt awaiting her input.

“Ugh ... You young ones are all the same. Only thinking about sex and how to, I don’t know, blow up an entire research station.”

“I didn’t do that...” She muttered, her cheeks flushing with heat.

“Say that again?” He asked.

“I didn’t do that. The explosion. That wasn’t me.” She said, more firmly.

There was a pause on the line, filled only by the faint crackle of the connection.

“Report says otherwise, kid. The ‘Hart’ throb of Den-Eve Research Station. Say’s here they all loved you, trusted you, until you decided to make a pretty little firework show out of years of hard work. A shame, too. You were showing promise.”

“I was framed. The logs were altered.” Her hands clenched into fists on her lap, knuckles white.

“Right. And a little fairy granted you three wishes too. Let’s move on. Remember from your Orientation, there is a stack of binders on the right side of your seat that are color-coded. The blue one helps you with ‘basic’ tasks like system checks, and piloting, and things like that. The red one helps you with more ‘advanced’ tasks, like diagnostics, repair, and emergency procedures. Find the blue binder.”

Her eyes darted to the right, where three slim binders were indeed nested in a fabric sleeve. Blue, red, and a third one, grey and unmarked. She pulled the blue one free and rested it on her console, opening to the pre-bookmarked page. The instructions were simple, with clear diagrams for each panel.

“Ok,” she said, flipping to the correct page. “Starting systems check now.”

She reached along the side of the console until she found a button with the same symbol as the one in the diagram. She pressed it. A new line of text appeared, blinking on the main display.

SYSTEMS DIAGNOSTIC INITIATED. 17 MINUTES REMAINING.

“I’ve started it,” she reported into the comms, her voice quiet.

“Good. While that’s running, let’s go over everything again, since your head’s probably still rattled from entry. Your mission, Hart, is simple in theory.”

She leaned back into the seat as the crawler’s internal hum settled into a steady rhythm. The vibration was constant now, low enough to fade into the background if she let it. The restraints pressed lightly across her chest and hips, firm without being uncomfortable, holding her in a posture that felt more imposed than chosen.

“You’re on a planetary body,” the voice continued. “Atmosphere’s breathable with filtration, temperature’s tolerable but hotter than we expected, and the surface is stable enough to support crawler’s weight, which is a good signy. What makes the place uninhabitable isn’t toxicity. It’s interference.”

The display shifted, pulling up the chart that broke down the atmospheric composition again.

“Micro-particulate saturation,” he said. “Fine debris suspended permanently in the air. Like a never ending dust storm, but these particles never fall to the ground, and makes real-time visual data useless. You look out there with your own eyes, all you would see is a mix of dark colors right in front of your face. Cameras don’t fare any better.”

Elise watched the numbers on the screen. 6.7% suspended matter. It didn’t sound like much, but the way he described it made it sound like a solid wall of noise.

“Reports show the storm is calm right now, this may be your only chance to open the shutters and actually ‘see’ what I mean.” The voice said. “There’s a green button on your console that will manually override the safety lock to open the shutters. Holding it for 5 seconds opens them, releasing the button immediately closes them. A safety feature. Just press it for a moment and look out, so you know what your up against.”

Her fingers hovered over a small, green plastic dome on the panel. She pressed it in, holding her breath. A whirring sound filled the cabin as metal shutters began to slide open.

“See what I mean? No visibility, right?” He asked.

She looked out each of the shutters around her in a circle. Darkness. There was nothing to see at all, it was like looking into the abyss.

“There’s nothing.” She said, her voice a whisper.

“Oh, there’s something, but there is so much the sun can’t get down there. The particles are to dense.” He explained. “Right next to that is a light switch, flip it on, you’ll need it soon anyways.” He told her, as he finished talking, she saw a small orange toggle switch labeled “EXT LIGHTS”.

She flipped it up, with a low hum, powerful exterior floodlights on the crawler’s exterior snapped on, their beams lancing into the gloom. A world she never would have imagined opened around the vehicle. The light didn’t travel far before it was swallowed, but in its limited reach, it revealed a breathtaking and terrifying landscape.

Slow-floating particles were everywhere, making the air itself look like a moving entity. They were tiny, almost invisible, but there were so many that they created a shimmering curtain of motion in the beams of light. There was nothing to see beyond right outside her window, because the curtain of particles swallowed everything, leaving her world to extend only maybe about a could feet outside of her crawler. There was no sky, no sun, no stars, just a swirling void of silent, floating dust.

“That’s ... it’s beautiful,” she found herself saying, her breath fogging the inside of the viewport. “But terrifying.”

“Beauty and terror. Two sides of the same coin on a dead world.” He paused, the comms crackling for a moment. “Let me remind you though, this is why we sent you down today. The storm is calm, better for entry, not necessarily for looking out side the windows, but a rare opportunity. Over observation for the past 90 days, the storm has been so harsh they tiny particles would eat away at the glass and break the seal. So consider yourself lucky, kid. Seeing something no one has seen before. Now close the shutters.”

She looked for a little while longer. The swirling particles moved with an eerie grace, like a silent ballet in a vacuum. She traced the path of a single particle as it drifted past the viewport, its surface catching the light in a brief, glittering spark. There was something mesmerizing about it, a sense of profound, ancient stillness.

Then, with a sigh, she took her finger off the button. The shutters slid closed with a solid thud, plunging the cabin back into its familiar dim blue glow and the illuminated purple words.

SYSTEMS DIAGNOSTIC INITIATED. 12 MINUTES REMAINING.

“Good.” The voice came back on, a little less static this time. “Now, back to business. The reason we are down here is to explore several areas that we have scanned from the ship. The ship’s surface level scans have revealed the possibility of massive structures buried deep beneath the dust. We have no idea what they are, but they are assumed to be long abandoned ruins of a lost civilization.”

The screen changed, showing a topographical map. A series of red blinking dots appeared on the display, forming a crude route through the uncharted darkness. Each dot was a destination, a point on a map that led from the unknown into the unknown.

“You were also given a physical map, should be inside your breast pocket. I personally don’t know why a physical map, but the old geezers who run this show love their traditions.” The voice explained.

Elise unzipped her uniform’s breast pocket and found a small, folded piece of paper. It was a printed map, lightly laminated and surprisingly durable. The red dots on the paper matched the ones on the screen, a tangible connection to the virtual world of the crawler’s interface.

“What do I do at these locations? Just ... observe?” She asked, running a finger over the smooth, cool surface of the screen.

“Yes and no. You observe for us, but through data collection with the on board camera system. The LSRS.” He said.

“LSRS?” She echoed, the acronym unfamiliar.

“Long-Shutter Reconstruction System.” The man’s tone was flat, as if explaining the most basic of concepts. “The LSRS is the only reason we can operate on this planet at all. Normal cameras take snapshots. They try to freeze a moment, which means all it would see is the mess of particles, just like you did. A complete failure. The LSRS doesn’t ‘take pictures’. It in a sense, makes the picture, a real picture. Press the big picture button on the wall next to you, left side. You can’t miss it.”

She reached out, her fingers brushing against a large, circular button on the wall to her left. It had an icon of a camera with a stylized shutter that was wide open. She pressed it.

CAMERA ACTIVE. TAKING PICTURE. REMAIN STILL FOR 30 SECONDS.

The display began counting down.

30... 29... 28...

On the wall next to the button, a screen began to slowly illuminate. At first, it was just a wash of grey static, a chaotic blizzard of noise. But as the seconds ticked by, a pattern began to emerge. The chaos started to resolve itself, with the system’s algorithms slowly subtracting the perpetual movement of the particles from the equation.

18... 17... 16...

She leaned forward, her breath held tight in her chest. The grey static on the screen was starting to thin, revealing hints of shapes beneath.

9... 8... 7...

What had been an impenetrable cloud was beginning to separate into layers. Individual particles became faint blurs, and beyond them, a texture started to form.

PICTURE COMPLETE. IMAGE READY.

“I’m guessing from your stunned silence, you were expecting more?” He chuckled.