GG-D5 · Surveyed Destination

The Standing Lights

An airless flat dead city lit by endless lamps with no source; empty, preserved, and — the teams insist — attentive.

Designation: GG-D5Disposition: VACUUM / UNCANNYAccess: GG-1 dialOwner: Destination Survey

FIG. D5 · GG-D5, the Standing Lights. Hard vacuum, no star, no sky. Lamps lit, source unknown. No movement on record. The teams say it watches.

SURVEY The Standing Lights

GG-D5 unsettles the survey teams more than the Underhold does. It is above ground — a wide, flat, dead city of pale geometric buildings — but there is no atmosphere, no weather, no star, and no sky: only a black overhead and, to every horizon, endless ordered banks of cold white lamps, all lit, throwing hard shadows across streets that nothing has walked in a very long time.

We can find no power source for the lamps and no sun for them to stand in for. Nothing moves; nothing decays. The teams that cross report, unprompted and in near-identical words, the conviction that the lights are not illumination but attention — that the place is switched on, and is looking back. We take what we can photograph and we leave before our nerve does. Logged VACUUM / UNCANNY.

This file is one record of the Destination Registry. Crossings to this destination are listed in Mission Logs.