REMAINS

We knew something was wrong when we first found the planet.

Each measurement we took simply didn’t make sense. It all didn’t add up. From the thick clouds, swirling masses of orange dust that blanketed the planet’s sky, a strange jumble of garbled radio signals. We could never make any sense of them, but it was hoped by us all that somehow, something was living down there on the surface, obscured from view.

Almost immediately after this discovery, an expedition was launched, using the latest technology to speed its progress. After all — we didn’t want to miss this. Even above the planet, the clouds remained a barrier. There was no option but to break through them, and land on the mysterious surface of the planet beneath us.

It was a rough ride down to the surface, down into the thick layer of cloud with no idea what we would find when we landed. Fortunately, the surface was forgiving — flat and solid, with plenty of places to land. Still, the planet itself was a mystery, a seeming expanse of desert and drifting sands. Around us, the radio signals still bounced around as we left the capsule in our bulky suits, stepping out slowly onto the harsh landscape of rock and sand.

It was only when we crested the great dune in front of us, and passed through a valley of rock, did we understand what had happened here. Rearing up in front of us, swimming on the distant horizon in a wavering heat haze, the ruined structures of a long dead civilisation rise in shattered concert. Decaying and still carrying the scars of battle, they stand unseeing over the mummified remains of their creators who lie scattered in the empty streets and throughout the smashed buildings. Already the sand has covered much of what was once there, but nevertheless, the skyscrapers still push up towards the thick clouds, irradiated by the weapons that destroyed them all. In a strange way, the bodies almost look like us.

Looping endlessly around the buildings and into the sky are the final, frantic radio messages, preserved by the remaining working transmitters, the last orders to the long dead corpses strewn beneath them. To our ears, they are indecipherable, but we can imagine what they say, what they saw in those final moments. Picking our way among the shattered buildings and craters, there appear to have been no survivors, not even animals or insects — there is nothing here to disturb the corpses. Whatever weapons were used seem to have rendered the entire planet completely sterile. There appears to have been no victor, no survivors at all.

Only the shifting sands remain, slowly swallowing all trace of the great civilisation that once lived and died here, destroyed by its own hand. Soon, even the crumbling ruins, like their builders, will return to dust, leaving nothing behind, only a vague memory of destruction contained in the fading radio transmissions, indecipherable by any one who intercepts them, a forgotten last cry for help from a planet that can no longer be saved.