I appreciate the mysterious tone and the overall ambience of the experience. Admittedly, I couldn't figure out how to activate the scanner. I basically just bounced around a bunch.
Sorry to hear that! That might be a UI problem, since the instructions along the bottom can get quite unreadable. I'm going to add a controls segment to the itch.io page.
Oh, duh - Its K, and usually it should be written along the bottom of the screen after a little animation coming from the center, after you either skip or finish the beginning cutscene.