White City

White City

The planet Enigma, Groombridge 1830 system:
The crew of the Drake found the second anomaly offset in a deep crater amid a vast lava badland.

“So you’re saying that this city, or whatever it is, came first, then the lava, then the crater?”

“Pretty much. The city is about twenty million years old, like the others. The lava flows started just after that. I’d guess that crater is about three million years old, but it’s hard to say.”

“Weird how it only melted the one tower.”

“Uh-huh. Knocked the other one over though. Still don’t know how some of the egg-like things stay up.”

“Is it radioactive?”

“Tower or the whole place? I’m almost positive the crater wasn’t from a natural impact, and, actually, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a nuke. I think someone dropped some antimatter dust on it.”

“And the city survived. So what we have here is the aftermath of annihilation archeology. And I always thought those archeology types dug out stuff with toothbrushes.”

“Toothbrushes?”

“Yeah, you know: the fuzzy sticks that people used to clean their teeth before nanos.”

“Oh yeah, I remember. And they reused them for months. Yuck.”