In the forgotten quadrant of the Epsilon System, explorers from Earth stumbled upon what they initially mistook for a celestial illusion—a planet-like construct orbiting no sun, glowing faintly with its own bioluminescent architecture. Its outer rim was lined with dense, vertical spires like a sea urchin frozen mid-burst. But it was the center that silenced even the most seasoned among them: a colossal, concentric ring of desert, swirling around a suspended, crystalline sphere.

They called it Nisaba, after the Sumerian goddess of wisdom.

What they had found was not a world—but a machine. A living archive. And possibly, a warning.

The Outer Wall: A City Beyond Civilization

Stretching hundreds of kilometers high, the outer edge of Nisaba was made of reflective alloys unknown to human metallurgy. Skyscrapers extended both upward and downward, clinging to gravity in defiance. The architecture pulsed—some towers emitting soft amber light, others flickering like stars caught in deep breath. Cities were etched like circuits, glowing blue veins of energy linking one structure to another.

Autonomous drones still moved with purpose, maintaining corridors and repairing wounds of time, though no life was visible. This was no ghost city. It was sleeping.

The Ring of Sand: A Paradox of Nature and Code

And yet, in stark contrast, the core of Nisaba held a desert—an endless swirl of golden dunes circling the central sphere like a halo of time. No machines touched the sands. No footprints lingered.

Yet, within the dunes, relics surfaced: glᴀss tablets etched in shifting glyphs, bones of unfamiliar species curled as if in sleep, and monolithic stones humming at frequencies just below perception. Some researchers believed this desert was a simulation of Earth’s own cradles—Mesopotamia, the Sahara, perhaps even Mars in its forgotten age.

The desert was the soul of the machine. It contained not code, but memory.

The Core Sphere: A Brain, A Star, A Seed?

Suspended in the gravitational null at the very center was the orb—a perfect sphere of translucent matter pulsing with inner storms of data-light. When humans drew near, it responded. Dreams became more vivid. Forgotten languages stirred on their tongues. A child born aboard the orbiting research vessel began speaking in patterns matching the glyphs on the glᴀss tablets.

The sphere was alive. Or it contained something that once was.

Some hypothesized that it was a seed—a star-child, ready to birth new realities when the time was right. Others feared it was a vault, a failsafe from a species that no longer dared live.

And then, came the signal.

A Message From the Past or the Future?

It wasn’t sent. It was there, layered in the electromagnetic noise like a melody beneath static. When decrypted, it spoke through images: cities burning, skies darkened by machines, a final pilgrimage across glᴀss deserts. Then silence. And finally, a rising spiral—an image of Nisaba spinning in space, glowing softly like a beacon to lost civilizations.

It wasn’t a warning. It was a last will. A hope that someone, somewhere, might rebuild not what was—but what could be.

Emotion in the Void

What struck the researchers most was not fear, but a deep ache. Nisaba did not feel alien. It felt familiar—as though humanity had always known, deep down, that knowledge and memory must be preserved beyond flesh. That if the universe must forget us, we must make it harder to forget everything.

And in the swirling sands of the ring, in the impossible pulse of the core, in the haunting beauty of a machine that dreamed in deserts—there was love. Not of a person, but of existence itself.

What kind of civilization builds a world to remember its silence?

Would we ever build such a thing?

And if we did, would we bury it in stars… or in sand?