Thor Explorers Send Photos of Boring Dead Planet

Wiggly Bones of a World Gone Softie

The archaeological team headed by Institute luminaries Frau Doktors Norissa Tuck and Evangelina Serrestostia informed their mission controllers today via optical wireless that while research work continues doggedly on the desolate and absolutely depressing nearby planet, there is little understanding of exactly what kind of catastrophe overwhelmed and destroyed the Thoracic peoples. Concern, however, exists over the multiplicity of barren and unimaginative cultural artifacts--habitats consisting of child-like shapes made of crude and unfriendly materials, unsubtle aggressive or anonymous looking vehicles, and virtually no decorative, humorous, ironic, fantastical, or elegant arts. Worse, it would appear that all that could even conceivably be judged artful had been replaced at some earlier time with brute and superficial commerce. Ruminating upon from the evidence in the photo above (just one of a dreary and monotonous series we've eyeballed) the extinct "culture" had been in severe decline for many years before its fall; its people existed in a near granitic-age state of consciousness. Institute scientists speculate they would have had no measurable attention span and may have required endless infusions of hyperactive stimulation to function minimally. This would conform to newly developed exobiological theories that speculate major civilizations collapse from regression-of-consciousness rather than any other external factor--environmental, resource, or otherwise. Advanced races--as the theory would have it--always find means to adapt and maintain their necessary stimulations using, at worst, pure imagination. [For the uninformed, Thor is the nearest planet to our beloved Erde yet placed further outward from Sol. It is 97% the size of our world, and although distant from the central source of all life, maintains its highly seasonable temperatures due to a thick oxygen-rich atmosphere, vast oceans, and ample cloud-cover. Explorers report that it rains frequently--perhaps too much for their jolly sol-ish dispositions! No life has been found on the planet except for a vile species resembling our (mercifully) now-extinct Corporealate Sponge.]