The piercing white sunlight shone through broken shutters onto a rusty floor. Small turbulent clouds of dust kicked up from the ground by the background vibration of the crawler filtered and cast shadows, intricate swirls as complex as the iridescent carapace of a scorch beetle. As the harsh rays slipped through janked metal slats, so too did they into Ruth's only just cracked eyes.
She sat up bolt-straight in her cot, and the accumulated dust of her rest flung off her in all directions. Her stuck-out, disorganized curls of hair bounced gently as the crawler hit a rock, but the shock was felt much more harshly by her rear. She scrambled out of bed, only barely covering her ears in time to feel the reverberating second bell of the switchover. The first one had just cut through her tired head, prying her from her sleep just enough for the second to alert her fully even with her meager ear protection. The bell gonged far overhead and off in the distance, and yet it pierced her flesh and shook her bones. Massive they must be, for she felt the all too familiar low clanging more for several seconds after it struck. She stumbled to the door of her tiny room as she did most switchovers and, half walking half falling, stumbled her way out into the narrow hallway. Her narrow shoulders and small frame only increased the impression that she was but a tiny, frail thing.
She finally made it to the kitchenette where her mother had left her a note:
I know you don't like dates and cashew milk, but it's what we had in the pantry. Promise I'll bring you home something tasty!
The note, stuck to a glass full of thick brownish purple liquid and covered in an inelegant but kind scrawl, was falling off from the condensation, the little piece of tape holding it on sweating and letting go. Ruth wrinkled her nose and took a sniff at the glass. It was as terrible as she imagined, but this would have to do. She needed her strength to meet him later, the trek up four files would be exhausting for her little legs. She scrunched up her eyes, took one tentative sip to try and steel her nerves, then threw her head back exaggeratedly, trying to show no one in particular just how brave she was.
Glass drained, she set it back on the one ray of sunlight on the table. The brilliant white peeking through another half-broken shutter refracted through the dirty glass and cast a vivid shadow on the grey wall behind. Finally awake enough to begin her morning chores, Ruth grabbed the broom that was just a bit too tall for her and began pushing open the broken window coverings. They didn't need much - just a small nudge and they loudly clacked up into their receptacles. She giggled as they flapped open, and the formerly hinted-at sunlight finally filled to bathe the room fully. Her small bedroom came into full view: a cot covered in approximately four too many colorful blankets, an untidy pile of clothes next to a small two-chested dresser, a small family of corn-husk dolls, and her brightly beaded betrothal cap. The kitchen, just as untidy but filled with the trappings of a family, showed signs of a quick exit. Her parents surely were needed on the farm-crawler and left their breakfast eaten but only half-cleaned up. She saw with disdain the wrapper of a wheel of farmer's cheese she had been hoping to eat that morning, no doubt scarfed down by her unaware father this morning. She crumpled it up and threw it down the trash chute, taking some pleasure in hearing it disappear into the innards of the crawler forty feet below.
Next, she swept under all the windowsills; the seals were going bad, but who knows how long this crawler had been on the move. The sand was shimmied in by the wind constantly, and it was a herculean effort (to her little body at least) to keep up with it. Fifteen minutes later, every inch of the apartment was as clean as she could get it, and the pile of dirt she had assembled was even more impressive than usual. She donned a pair of sand goggles, swept the dust past the inner door, closed it behind her, and finally pushed the button to open the heavy, pneumatic outer door. It hissed slowly to the side and the wind began buffeting past the opening. She only just held on as the biting hot air blew into the little vestibule, sweeping the dust all over and attempting to tear clothing from body and broom from hand. She re-steadied her feet, then began flinging the now much-bigger pile out of the floor of the vestibule and onto the catwalk. Five or six big sweeps of the broom got it clear enough, and she quickly pushed the button to close the outer door again. The wind rushed to a crescendo as the door slid shut, culminating in a loud whistle and a screech from the ancient piston that held it shut before (relative) silence reigned again. Ruth dusted herself off head to foot, shaking the fine sun-bleached sand from her unkempt hair and off her slightly-too-big clothes, popped off her goggles, and opened the door back inside. This, of course, trailed a bit of dust right back in, but there was nothing to be done about it; this was the curse of living in an old crawler, before they began covering the walkways. Always dust.
Her chores finally done, she began dressing to go out properly this time. She doused herself in the cold water of the family wash-basin, scrubbing just enough so she wouldn't offend the boy's parents later, shivering all the while. The grey mycelium sponge felt extra rough today, and she felt raw after just a cursory wash. Wrapped in one of her many blankets, she flipped through her somewhat meager pile of clothing looking for the bright blue smock her mother had made just for this meeting. It looked baggy and unlike her, but fit well enough, and with an ox-leather belt her reflection looked less rectangular than she had feared. She donned her silk tights, remembering how long her mother had spent weaving them in the workshop next door. She paid extra special care not to wrinkle them, smoothing out every crease so that the milky white fabric stretched perfectly over her legs. They ended in uncomfortable sewn-shut points, and when she slipped her feet into her nice pair of boots the thread and bunched up material made her toes feel cramped. She winced at the first few steps, hating the sensation, but laced them up anyway. Finally, she wrapped her hair into a tight bun, covering it with her betrothal cap. This was a gift from Mother Serah, the old crone who lived at the end of their floor. Simple though it was by the standards of girls in the Caravan, the bright red, white, blue, and green pattern was as intricate as anything she had ever seen, and she fell in love with it immediately. When her father had told her he had found a match, she was at least as excited that she would finally be able to wear it as she was to finally be safe from being chosen. That was four days ago, and today, the fifth, she would be making the customary meeting with the boy's family.
This she was not excited for. It wasn't so much that she didn't want to be betrothed, or that she didn't recognize the importance of it, or even that she cared much whether she would like the boy or not. She just didn't want to be the center of everyone's attention. Betrothals were always so focused on the bride, and she hated feeling all those eyes trained on her. This meeting today would be the fifth day of the sixty-day betrothal period, ending in the feast, and she could think of nothing more torturous than being the only thing anyone in the entire family, the entire crawler, talking about for the next fifty-five days. The first five, where nothing was technically supposed to happen, were exhausting enough: "congratulations"es and "we're so proud of you"s at every corner, walking to school or shopping for her mother at the store. People dropping off gifts and baubles and treats at every hour of the day. Well, she didn't mind the treats so much, and she scarfed a few caramels and candied peanuts while her parents weren't looking, but the rest of it was a random assortment of hand-me-downs and good luck charms she wouldn't even need until her fifth Turning when she and whatever-his-name-was would actually begin living together. She was barely three and a half Turnings anyway, that was ages away!
Still, she knew her responsibility to her parents and certainly didn't want to be chosen, so she trudged through the first few steps until her toes didn't feel quite so cramped, donned her canvas jacket and head scarf and goggles once more, and exited the double-doors onto the walkway. The wind buffeted her once again, but the second blast of the day never seemed as bad as the first. She grabbed hold of the smooth railing, its paint long stripped off by the blowing sand and polished to show the grain of the metal underneath. This was more out of habit than need; her parents always scolded her for not being careful enough on the walkways, as they were on the West-facing side and should she fall, as her father always said, "it wouldn't be the fall that killed you, it'd be the crawler running you right over!"
As slow as the crawlers moved, Ruth always imagined she'd be able to get out of the way long before it threatened her, but today she took one extra glance over the side and saw just how long the drop was. Maybe she wouldn't survive the fall, let alone the crawler. But she refocused her vision on the staircase at the end of the walkway, and marched towards it as she had a thousand times before. She reached the spiral staircase and descended the four winding flights to get to ground level. The noise of the crawler was much louder down here; the whirring of the sunlight-powered wheels, the crumble of small rocks being pushed aside or pulverized into dust, and the deafening clank of machinery all conspired to drown out any nuance. The din was oppressive, and Ruth quickly crossed from the bottom of the staircase to the little loading dock. There were blessedly still a few carts left; she wouldn't have to walk today! She hopped in the first one she came across. She had only just learned to drive the carts, and her confidence far exceeded her ability, so when she yanked the charging cord the same way her dad did the plug came straight for her face rather than landing safely in her hand. She avoided a metal prong to her nose at the very last second, but the heavy plug managed to strike her in the back instead. She winced as she gathered up the cable to stow in the (always broken) retracting reel. She pushed the button on the dash that unclipped the cart from its mooring, and the cart drifted backward from the crawler. She pushed the accelerator lever a bit too hard and the vehicle jerked forward, almost hitting the dock again, and she slammed on the brake, also too hard, to adjust. After a few more attempts to get the feel of this particular cart just right, she reversed away from the dock and began the several-minute ride to the farm crawler where her parents would be waiting for her.
The farm crawler was something to behold: the housing block where she and a few dozen other families lived and worked was perhaps 120 feet to a side; the farm crawler, on the other hand, was eight times that. Eight crawling platforms, stitched together by uncertain but no doubt ancient mechanisms, to move in perfect unison with each other, dotted with greenhouses that grew plants and fungi of all sorts for use by the Caravan. Ruth was always a bit intimidated by the sheer size of it: something that big didn't quite fit in her head, and when she stood in her parents' greenhouse (near the middle), she couldn't quite see either end of the massive thing. It felt infinite to her.
The wind tore through the open-air cart as she made the slow trip four machines to the left from the housing block to the farm. She didn't often think about much when she was traveling out in the open, the bleak landscape around her was oppressive to thought. In the far distance she could just make out the mountains that lined this basin. The Caravan nearly always traveled through basins and plains and flat places, so the landscape was nearly unchanging. The 10th row was to the west, towards the darker side. She could just squint and make them out too; a few dozen crawlers, half a mile or so away, mostly shops and schools for rows 7-13. Behind her, towards the East, was the 12th row. Most considered the 12th row to be the start of the light side of the caravan, it being the first row to be fully in sunlight, but Ruth could hardly believe that people could live in light brighter than this. She already had to squint just to look out windows, and not wearing your goggles out could hurt your eyes, and not just because of the sand. But looking out to the North or South, there was usually basically nothing. When the mountains did creep in, they gave children nightmares. Their looming presence to a child used to nothing but endless flatness was an unknowable monster, visible for days at a time out of every window. Thankfully, today the mountains were so far off they could almost be ignored, but they still made Ruth just slightly uneasy. She suppressed a shiver as she realized she was counting the mountains she could see. Four, Five, Six, she thought, each being highlighted momentarily in her mind. Finally she shook herself out of it, and realized she had nearly arrived to one of the loading docks at the back of the farm crawler. She decided that she would rather get off the ground and back into the safety of a machine, even if it meant a long walk on the crawler itself. More gently this time, she lined herself up with a pier, slowly approached with the gripping jaws extended, until she bumped into the mooring and the jaws clanked shut. She hopped out, gingerly pulled the charging cable out of its reel and plugged it in (of course, now the spring inside the reel worked and the plug yanked itself out of her hands just as she had wrestled it to the receptacle). She climbed up the staircase just one level to reach the topside of the farm crawler and began walking towards the greenhouse where her parents worked growing milkweed and silkworms.