Location from Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Six structures moving backward through time — the Sphinx, the Jade Tomb, the Crystal Monolith, the Obelisk, the Shrike Palace, and the Cave Tombs — where the future sends its judgments to the past.
The Time Tombs are the most paradoxical location in the Cantos — constructed in the far future and traveling backward through time, their anti-entropic fields expanding as they approach the 'present.' They are connected to the Shrike, to the fate of the pilgrims, and to the resolution of the entire four-book series. The six structures: the Sphinx (where Aenea emerged 300 years after the Fall), the Jade Tomb, the Crystal Monolith, the Obelisk, the Shrike Palace (where victims of the Tree of Pain actually exist), and the Cave Tombs. Each has its own function in the temporal mechanics of the Cantos. The Consul prematurely activated their anti-entropic field. Gladstone's war against the Ousters was partly about controlling what emerged from them. The Time Tombs are the Cantos' central mystery — not what they contain but what they ARE: messages from the future about what humanity must become.
Six alien structures in a remote valley on Hyperion. The Sphinx crouches. The Jade Tomb glows green. The Crystal Monolith catches impossible light. The Shrike Palace is chrome and terror. Anti-entropic fields make the air shimmer — time itself is visible here as distortion.
Also known as: Time Tombs, The Tombs