Landing Point: Hubris
It was going to be a wonder of technology, evidence of how far man had come over nature…
20251109
Prompt from DailyPrompt.com
As with all planets, this has many names. Most registered in databases, never seen by living eyes, incomprehensible to anything except bureaucracy AIs as they hummed about their endless duties. Its singular colony likewise had a serial code associated with it, but the name everyone knew, the one which stuck, was given long after the fact by a distant observer; Colony Hubris.
This big, all-or-nothing gamble by an up-and-coming exploration company was a cautionary tale across inhabited space.
Even now, some people claimed the logic had been sound; lava fields providing endless energy, which was used to make reinforced domes habitable. But reality never pulled punches against logic. And the planet hadn’t shown mercy to Hubris.
Up here, on the mountain range where the colony had been, is cool enough that if you invest sufficiently in your equipment you can expect to get most of it back after the scouting run. The lower ruins, in the lava field, have been devoured whole. Power stations eroded, melted, the relentless heat proving too much even for specialist materials. As soon as they were abandoned the structures were slurped up by force of nature.
The process is still happening to the colony itself. Just slower. Agonisingly slow. A mirror of how the initial degradation had been gradual. Glacial. Until all the points which had been patched, everything which was being carefully monitored, tipped over into a crushing landslide.
Surprising how few deaths there were, really. At least the company did its evacuation planning right. Though that was paltry comfort to the bereaved.
Heat presses down on the rocks with each gust of wind, and the wind on this planet is ceaseless. Erratic in direction, making it unsuitable for power and apparently impossible to engineer against properly. It brings a dull glow to certain bands of rock as it passes. Sweeping wavy paths upwards, fleeing the lava dunes below.
They’d been planning on building kite turbines. Once ‘everything was settled’. Some people still claim that would’ve somehow saved them.
Dark clouds roil overhead, lit by the glow from the planet’s surface. It’s constantly raining here, yet the water never makes it to the lower atmosphere. The wind keeps it cycling. An eternal storm spiralling around the planet. Heat turned to cold fury.
It played havoc with the emergency broadcasts. And made it far harder to pilot survivors to the transport waiting in the comparative safety of uncaring space.
But the desiccated nature of the air means that what materials haven’t already smouldered away must wait to be sand-blasted by the wind. Most of the interior structures were worn down a few years after the domes failed. The domes themselves cling on. Wrecked shadows of their designers’ dreams, giant fragments sagging inwards as if reaching for one another. For comfort in the face of the inevitable. Beneath them you can spot the odd lingering fragment of buildings, cowering in their inadequate protector’s shadow.
Colony Hubris. It did make history, and gave many names hollow immortality.
Prompt was “Write a descriptive paragraph about a place that has been badly affected by natural elements.”