Abandoned Pulse Reactor

When the city had disintegrated into warring factions, chaos and civil war, the pulse reactor had continued running, a testament to the expertise of the engineers who had automated it. Theirs was a golden age, the apogee of technocratic skill, the crescendo of scientific progress. This technocrats had congratulated themselves on their apparently inexorable progress, as if they were drawn towards success through a magnetic force. In their complacency, they had ignored human considerations, dismissed dissent, and neglected growing conflicts between the factions, which seemed to them less important than ever greater material wealth.

After the people had exploded into violence and torn apart the city, their society and each other, the survivors settled into a tribal existence, scouring the ruins for food and periodically raiding one another's rude encampments.

And now we, explorers from a neighbouring land, discovered the pulse reactor, throbbing listlessly despite decades of corrosion.