Time Had Smoothed Everything Away

Human probes continued deeper into the graveyard, but found nothing else of use. This Civilization Graveyard did contain all manner of things, yet not a single thing was useful for humanity's translation of that distant Spaceship Text Wall.

At first, humanity had hoped to find intact equipment inside, but the result left everyone silent. All kinds of small probes wandered through the Civilization Graveyard, entering wherever there were cracks or holes, yet all they found was rubbish that crumbled at the slightest touch.

The warships had decayed, the spacecraft had rotted away, and every vessel was riddled with holes. Due to the immense passage of time, the metal materials had undergone natural molecular diffusion. The various structures that had once been clearly distinct had fused together at their joints. This phenomenon occurred because substances from different structures had remained pressed together for too long, allowing their molecules to diffuse into one another.

Everything inside the ships had become unrecognizable, reduced to blurred ruins.

Old, scarred beyond recognition, stale, aged, riddled with holes, and utterly dilapidated—the stench of decay washed over them.

The instruments and equipment could only barely be identified by their shapes. Not a single device remained operational. Within this vast Civilization Graveyard, humanity could not detect even one location with an electrical potential difference.

All its energy facilities had shut down, all its instruments and equipment had become inoperable, and as for the lifeforms within the ships, it was impossible even to tell whether they had once been lifeforms. They had all returned to dust.

Time seemed to be using these ruins to demonstrate its might to humanity.

Time sent everything into final silence, wore everything smooth beneath ever-increasing entropy, and led everything toward death.

A civilization already capable of easily crossing the stars had perished just like