The Gutter Lamp
The only dependable thing about life on Kepler-186f was the rust. It bloomed across everything—the corrugated steel of the habitat dome, the struts of the inactive fusion generator, and the pale, aluminum skin of the maintenance drones. Rust was the sprunki phase 5 colony’s unofficial mascot, a grim reminder that nothing here was meant to last.
Kael adjusted the strap of his scavenging harness and squinted at the sky. A sickly, sunset orange filtered through the atmosphere—not from a sun, but from the thermal venting of the upper atmospheric scrubbers. It was 04:00, or “Graveyard Shift,” as the remaining 300 residents of the New Horizon Settlement grimly called it.
He was working the Gutter Lamp today, the sector where the abandoned residential blocks met the industrial scrap yards. His job was to harvest anything with a residual power signature, a task that required less skill and more tolerance for silence.
