The Red Rover
File Under: exploration, mindfulness, knowledge
Location(s): Abeona-2
Executive Summary: I, Red of Omega settlement, humbly submit this report to the Planetary Archives of the Rover Order formatted in formal Rover Code third person qualitative-compliant narrative style. This is a complete written history of my summarized oral presentation titled Documentation Regarding the Red Rover's Journey Across the Stars at the 701st Annual Rover Conference. I also include an appendix of subsequent events thereafter. This report explores the complex circumstances that led to the Great Answer Crisis. It encompasses my discovery of answers to gate technology, its alien origins, those connected through it, and how we came to be in this new post-gate era. The following first entry is of my own account. Further entries will document ethnological interviews I conducted with my known associates before returning to my own experience. Herein, the Red Rover verifies her documentation is true and free of intentional error.
ROVER ENTRY #1511
START ENTRY
The cactus-fiber wrapped feet of little miss Red trembled half-buried in golden-red sand at the top of a blustering hill. The metallic arch before her turned the sand nearest to it blue with its wavering glow. Inside its metal frame swirled a thin blue, undulating surface that could have been mistaken for gelatin if her family had not taught her better. No more than a few centimeters thick, the portal still had a cavern inside it and no one understood how. Gusts of indifferent wind, so much worse up here than around her home at the hill's base, ignored her craving for stability like the wilds of her galactic frontier world. Nature would not offer her peace today. Assurance would have to come from within herself.
"You always knew this day would come," the staunch Governor said standing beside her and gripped a metal pipe anchored deep within the sand. It held the two of them steady despite the fierce wind. Dressed in his finest ceremonial attire, bright red leather pants tucked into his boots and a thick woven jacket adorned with jangling medals and chains, he looked uncomfortable. However, this ceremony was his to oversee. He was a man who believed duty always came first and he was expecting the same from her.
"Come now," he said, patting her back. "People aren't used to seeing a child up here. Put on a cheery smile and wave."
Omega settlement expected Red to shoulder the full responsibility of a Rover. Many believed the Great Answer of the arches was almost upon them and her profession was a necessity. Her school texts corroborated this in the history section along with recently introducing her young self to multiplication tables. No more than a week prior she would never have thought it possible that she would be standing on this hill at so young an age. She was supposed to have at least ten more years to go. Yet, the settlement believed sacrificing her childhood was worth it if it could help solve their planet's greatest mystery. The revelation, it was widely believed, would change everything.
Like the desert sand, the colonists' excitement coalesced around their new Rover during the ceremony taking place in the settlement's center. The population center's densely packed buildings made of rusting expedition-age metal had been Red's entire world. She knew through tales that tan sand and gray stone indeed extended indefinitely across an environment devoid of mercy for its occupiers but she had never seen any of it with her own eyes yet. Instead, the first novel sight, the first of many in her future, was unfolding just below her. At the base of this hill, hundreds of people held the hands of their neighbors. Their bodies swayed in unison. Lungs rang out a melody from composers whose names had long been forgotten. Linked like a fence, the people believed their ritual channeled their strength and wishes into their Rover as she took her oath to serve the colony.
"Red Rover, oh Red Rover. Send our questions on over. Red Rover, oh Red Rover. Bring answers back over," they crooned.
Despite the unpleasant dust storm whipping up, the weather was comparably kind for her first clash with the pristine metallic curve at the center of her people's society. Any other day of the year and she was likely to be facing down her destiny in the middle of a terrornado surge. This arch, about four-meters tall, had always been here on top of the hill in all its silvery glory. It resided at the base of a conductive colonist-constructed mountain of metal and wire. The electrified heap's summit held steady, defiant among the clouds of the orange sky. Together, the crag of shining debris polished over centuries by sandy gales and the arch both sparked excitedly with the electricity that powered their homes.
As the chanting grew louder, Red shook her head within her wrapped up hood. Her weather-repellent goggles jiggled upon her face, too big still for her small melon but necessary for such an occasion. Being a part of such a silly ritual felt childlike. And, despite her age, had the Governor not told her the time for childhood things was over? But when her mouth cracked open to protest with confident words directing the Governor on how she wished to conduct the ceremony, her pronouncement failed to materialize.
A helpful distraction or not, other worries occupied her mind and competed for her attention. What expectations would the youngest Rover in history have to bear? Would she be expected to leave her home, conduct serious research, and learn to drive as a seven-year-old?
She wanted to cry knowing her grandpa could not accompany her for the next part of the ceremony.
Her mother's brownish-red leather glove encapsulated her hand in the only comforting embrace she had been afforded yet today. It was well worn in for it had seen decades of adventure before Red herself was even a conceived concept. Red wished it were her mother's hand that held onto hers, providing her warmth, but that was impossible. Instead, her own small fingers swam in the glove's spacious cavity and she was beginning to resent that fact.
She stared at the glove and recalled her grandpa pleaded with her earlier.
"My little desert flower, please put it on. It'll bring you luck. I'm sure of it," he said while holding her arm still. His voice was quiet, almost lost in the wind. He grew frailer with every season. She would have no one left who understood her once his last grain of sand drifted away.
"No. I don't want that anywhere near me!" she cried. Try as she might to wiggle out of his grasp and finding her stance unsteady being ankle deep in golden sand, he slipped the large glove over her hand and tied it closed at her wrist. His shaking fingers could still summon a few Rover knots she had yet to learn. He loved this without-a-pair trinket because it harbored many recollections he never wished to forget. Red hated the glove because its owner chose adventure over making new memories with her.
"Trust me. You will want it in the end. You will."
"It's time," the Governor said, recalling Red to the present moment with a lull in the wind. "Quickly now before it picks up again and blows either of us off this peak." He released his grip on the stabilizing pipe and they approached the arch hand in hand.
With the arch's portal swirling near her face, the Governor guided her gloved arm and pushed it slowly through the sea of blue. There was no clue to discern of what to expect out of its swirling patterns, just static. She squirmed at first, wanting to run back to her grandpa waiting at the bottom of the hill. She had heard from other young Rovers-to-be that the inside of an arch was excruciating. But just prior to her fingers piercing the veil, she remembered her grandpa said everyone expected her to be brave. She did not agree with all of his beliefs, but she wanted him to be proud of her. Like how he inexplicably was of his daughter.
She settled for the comfort of closing her eyes.
Unsettling heat swathed her hand like cleaning out the organs of a freshly gutted canidauroch for holiday dinner. There were no daggers, stretching of flesh, or mind-boggling agony. She released her trapped breath. The evidence was clear; just as the adults had said, she was in no actual danger. It was almost pleasant at first. She almost smiled before the pressure grew stronger. First firm, then concerning, and finally escalating to a frightening level of crushing strength that swung open her mouth before her eyelids.
Her screech hushed the crowd of neighbors. It drew out by itself until the dry air tugged the last string of breath out of her lungs. Red believed she could have suffocated if the Governor had not gently withdrawn her wrist.
Tingling aqua sparks, like little hands gripping her fingertips, came back with her painfully pulsating hand. She had never seen anything like it but she was told that something like this may happen. Yet seeing it in person was surprising. As the end of her glove pulled away, a weak invisible force tried to pull her back inside. She tugged forcefully back until it let go and snapped back to its mysterious world. All the pain was gone in an instant.
"It is done!" the Governor announced to the audience. He lifted Red's hand toward the crowd. "Introducing the twelfth Rover of Omega Settlement who will be known henceforth by her legacy name, Red!"
The quicker she forgot her old name, the better it would be for everyone. A life-long professional Rover had no need to be identified by anything other than their formal designation. But she never forgot the first time she touched the inside of an arch. Those sticky little metaphysical hands had imprinted on the deepest recesses of her memory.
She descended the steep hill amid the backdrop of euphoric applause and the calls of respectful remembrance for her mother. Red kicked up sand, avoiding tripping, and managed to rip the glove off. She ran into her grandpa's chest and buried her face. Moist tears trickled down her cheeks. They evaporated in the arid wind almost as fast as she could expel them.
"Honey. Why are you crying?" he asked with a curious smile, cradling her head between his arms like he did for her mother at the same ceremony a lifetime ago. "This is a moment of great joy. You begin a critical journey today."
She shoved the glove into his hand. How could she wish it away, make it disappear where she would never see it again?
"I heard them shouting just now! Everyone says I look just like her. But I don't want to be her!"
Embarrassment for thinking such things about the recently departed stacked upon her still mourning heart. This life was unfair and it made her weep. However, starting that day she did become the Red Rover as per ritual. Her new responsibility would leave little time for dwelling on personal concerns so she wailed out her troubles for the entire planetary colony to hear.
Her grandpa must have understood the cathartic need to do so for he did not scold or discourage her from expressing herself despite being unbecoming of a stoic and adaptable Rover. Her adherence to the Rover Code could start the next day after she had a proper goodbye to her past self.
Nothing would have consoled her in that moment, but she could have tempered her remorse if she knew she had taken the first step on an expedition which would lead her to unlocking the mysteries of the arches, embarking to lands unknown, and ending it just as it began: recording knowledge in her Rover Journal.
END ENTRY