It has been approximately 5 years since the silence. It’s late evening by the beach. The wind is calm but still manages to sway the dune grass in subtle coercion. Crickets chirp with the calm artificial waves, generated by a mechanical seawall some twenty miles out. Their peaks are what remain visible as the sun retreats from behind.
There are symbols. Symbols that no person could discern from that distance, and with meanings equally remote in time. If this were Earth, crabs would have been scuttling by. One of the architects would have introduced them by now, but plans change. The beaches will remain virgin and unscathed for millions of years.
The cliffs are still solid, surprisingly. No arches or sea stacks to block the light of the stars. The sea is still young. Too young to erode the cliffs in a way anyone would notice. The sand here is too rich in quartz to be a natural deposit. It’s off, but you can’t quite tell. And still there, after years without maintenance, stands the Arch.
Before the Orbit war, the Arch was a purely scientific station. It was never intended to be a civilization onto itself. But when it was all over, Manis was considered a heritage site, as were all the Fatherworlds. The only people allowed to go back down were researchers, pilgrims, and politicians.
But in time, these trips to the surface were seen in an increasingly negative light, due to political and social paradigms that developed in the post-war era. It didn’t even matter after a while. Sensory probes with instant data transfer and sensory input replaced the need to be on the planet in person.
And even then, the newly discovered multiverse was far more intriguing. Biotic architects were some of the few who still cared about the old world, just to finish what the first colonists started.
Yet, before their work was complete, they were gone. The Arch is still there, tattered and broken. It once used to enveloped the entire equator, but now only a few pieces still linger in orbit.
It’s like a rainbow. The biodome cables refracting green and blue, and grey. Small fragments gracing the red horizon, and up amongst Orion. On nights like these, you can sometimes see small fragments streak through the stratosphere, like falcons set alight mid dive. An architect’s drone is left rusting at the edge of a cliff. It looked like it was washed up from the depths of some eldritch ocean. An oblong body with two owl eyes and four human hands, cracked and exposed like an egg. Moss has begun growing between the cracks. Fungal mycelium are digging into the circuit boards. It is being dissolved. In a few years, it will disappear without a trace.
By Tardigrade