A Search in Vain

Humanity has long since left Earth. However, scientists left a scanner to find out if there is life in the Universe. A thousand years later, the scan completes. (A writing prompt)

In the year 2210, the Earth was officially declared uninhabitable by the vast majority of the world's nations. Space exploration and settlement had already been verified as an option, and many of the world's more elite families and wealthy cities had already relocated to what served as a temporary home in the stars. They were crudely made and resulted in more fatalities than had been recognized. Most of the media attention had been on deaths caused by failure to launch, rather than a miscalculation in how much oxygen a family of five would need or a contamination of the food supply.

Regardless, this began a race to find a safer, more permanent settlement. Scientists from all over the world focused their attention on further exploration, through technology designed to allow physical exploration of space, pinpoint Earth replacements, and simply find other forms of life which may imply a hospitable environment. Of course, most of these technologies did not work as they were meant to or worked so slowly that waiting for the result would almost guarantee the death of the human race.

One such machine sat in an abandoned laboratory in what was once a decently sized city. Roads had cracked to make way for trees and grass and flowers. Buildings began to break apart, and the windows had been broken from looters left behind after the last departure and nature reclaiming her land. The pollution and decay of the atmosphere that had driven everyone away worked at the people left behind until none remained. The world was silent, save for the chitter-chatter of animals recovering and growing and the fall of human-made structures. 

The lab in question had once been a pristine, tiled white building but now existed more in theory than reality. Most of the walls had fallen away; nearly all the furniture remaining was broken. Even the computer that housed the life-form detection program had fallen to the floor, now powered only by one solar panel haphazardly balanced on one piece of roof left on one small section of standing wall. The monitor had been shattered years ago, but kept emitting the same blip-blip of a search in progress. 

Finally, finally, the blip-blip lapsed into a confident, complete ding! A small group of birds that had settled near the monitor leapt from their sleeping positions and took to the air in fright. ding! ding! The sound echoed against the remaining walls, much higher pitched than the search indicator had been. After a while, a few small animals had gathered around the machine, curious. They crawled on the monitor and nibbled at the glass that had fallen away from it to see if they could bring it back to their young. Finding nothing of use, they left the machine alone and moved to see about the rest of the structure, the ding! ding! ding! persistent.

A strong wind sent a few of the animals away, and the falling wall that crushed the solar panel sent the rest of them sprinting. The ding! d ing! d i n- faded out quickly. The wall settled, crumbling away a little bit more. Birds came to take the smaller pieces to use in strengthening their nests, other animals sorted through the new rubble to find something to nibble on and discarded it quickly once they realized there was nothing there for them.

Author's Note

This is my first time writing something that doesn't actually have any human characters. I found the description surprisingly difficult. :x I wanted to show the insignificance of the presence of humans after they've left.

The prompt was originally from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/35ar4t/wp_humanity_has_longe_since_left_earth_however/

Reviews

[Mr_M]

I thought the descriptions were detailed and gave a vivid picture of the city in my mind. I love sci fi and what could Turn in to reality. I had this eree feeling of a desolate city. Leaves me wondering what the scanner picked up...