A bright and shiny future

Another CF story that didn't make it. Looks like Science fiction does not sell anymore.
Written at the start of the sem, I didn't think it was good enough to be posted here...but what the heck...here it is anyway.

The earth was past it's prime.
Located in the outer edge of the galaxy, it's intelligent inhabitants didn't develop contacts with other intelligences which

were concentrated around the galactic center and hence didnt benefit from the sharing of technology and trade that occurred between these worlds.
Within the first millennium of the technological revolution, all the resources on earth were used up.The desperate adoption of nuclear power by the ruling business companies (the nation had become obselete in a globalised world)of the planet had streched the inevitable total energy crunch by only a few centuries before all the fissionable material had been used up.An ever increasing population had driven the beings to dwell in underground cities, and adopt yeast and plankton and similar microbe-derived products as staple foods.Soon all the worlds population was concentrated in 200-odd cities and the open spaces were kept aside for growing and harvesting.But the planet was doomed to a bleak future and no amount or research and development of new technology could change the future.

A few thousand years later, a lone scout ship of the galactic confederation(GC) was searching in the neighborhood for harvestable resources like iridium and other fissionable heavy metals.The GC was a loose agency that was responsible for governing the various planets and colonies of the 50 odd intelligences of the central galaxy region.it was composed of the heads of the various intelligences, each in charge of a stellar cluster and so on.Each intelligence controlled many star clusters and the planets in them, until the race for planets among them had ended and boundaries were drawn up.

This scout detected the signs of intelligence in this part of the galaxy (concentrated in a single solar system, to be more precise) and reported it to the GC.The Gc soon sent a peace-cum-reconnaissance there.It consisted of two members,one each of the dominant races of the galaxy.
One was a Gly being (named after its home planet)and was a highly dexterous being,having 7 independently movable appendages on its body(2 were artificial,i.e. not originally characteristic of the species but due to genetic engineering, all Glys born had these 2 extra limbs to be put to use).Its physical abilities were offset by its lack of intelligence, though (the Glys were the last of the races to reach the level of technological advancement that all races now had).
Another was a Gaian matrix organism.It was a slow moving but highly complex and intelligent organism.Ever since all Gaians had,after a century of planetwide debate some three thousand years ago decide to merge all their individual consciousnesses into a single, mother unit, all Gaians were part of this giant organism.After this, the Gaians had become the most advanced race of the galaxy.
The GC ship navigated the solar system in a few minutes, studying the extent of intelligent prescence there.It soon zeroed in on the home planet, which was the third from the star.The beings, they found, had established remote bases on the moon orbiting the planet and on the planets before and after itself from the sun, but no major settlements on either.
After some preliminary study, they landed on the planet, surprised at not being stopped or intercepted.The planet was barren and brown to look at under the acidic clouds that thickly enveloped it.On the whole, they decided, it was an uninteresting planet to look at.They landed their ship on a random sandy place on the northern hemisphere. Again surprised at not encountering any moving life forms on disembarking, they carefully proceeded in a northerly direction.The Gly creature had a breathing apparatus supplying it the thick greenish gas that it breathed.The Gaian had no use of any such appratus as it was only a remote outpost of the overall intelligence that was it's race, and did not need to breathe to sustain itself.
Soon they discovered a largish city of brown buildings randomly oriented and distributed with respect to each other.Detecting no organism more intelligent than some clusters of anaerobic bacteria here and there, they proceeded faster.Unlike most settlements of that planet, it seemed to be mostly overground.During the detailed exploration of the city thay found many large laboratories where chemicals were manipulated,labs where lifeless electronic robots had been created and tested and facilities for nuclear research, and facilities for a large number of other scientific studies.In addition they found many empty rooms(buildings and buildings of them....living quarters, they assumed), rooms with many semi decomposed books with leaves of a carbon-based compound that broke away under their touch and filled with words in a script they didn't know.

They worked out that the planet had been sans intelligent life for at least four thousand years.They also worked out the age of the age of the civilization that created the city to be eight thousand years.

They also spent a sorry, pitiful minute thinking of the fate of the beings who created the city...

On the way back to their ship, they unearthed a metal structure inscribed with large letters of the script alien to them....they decided to take it back and study it. The words were - WELCOME TO BITS PILANI.