This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Vorash134 on 2026-03-26 17:01:46+00:00.
The explorer ship New Horizons entered the system and immediately began scanning everything it's sensors could reach. The ship's course would take it through the system to the yellow G-type star in the center and then back out the other side, only stopping for a closer look if something truly remarkable came up on sensors. The crew doubted that would happen, though they hoped it would. They always hoped, but in the 3 years they'd been out in the deep dark, they had yet to find anything that counted as truly remarkable.
This system wasn't proving to be any different. It consisted of a fairly normal G-type, main sequence star, about halfway through it's life. It was orbited by roughly 9 planets, 10 if someone was feeling generous, none of which were habitable as is. A couple might be, with some work, but it was for the higher ups to determine if they were worth the effort. The other planets were all just gas giants with fairly normal compositions. Though the largest one had so many satellites of it's own that it was practically a system within a system.
The ship was most of the way through the system when the probes registered something that sent shockwaves through the crew. On one of the inner planets, the probes had found evidence of life.
It was long gone, but sentient life had once lived on the surface of the planet, if the roads and ruined cities were any indication. The images the probes sent back were of a bleak desolated world, with dry riverbeds, broken buildings and strange vehicles, all slowly decaying back into the soil of the planet. Slowly, the ship altered course.
They spent a week in orbit, sending down expedition teams and testing everything. The air was unbreathable. What water there was, was so polluted it was nearly impossible to purify. They managed to find a few computers and gather some data, though they couldn't translate what they found. A week was all the time the New Horizons could spare though, and soon enough it was once again on its way. A full report was sent back to the homeworld, along with a recommendation for an archeological team to examine the world, and whoever these people had been.
That expedition arrived three years later and they began sending down shuttles almost before the ship had entered its parking orbit.
Teams in full containment suits began collecting samples in earnest, trying to understand. They remarked on the strange blocky architecture. They collected samples of wirting and art. They even collected the remains of a couple of ground vehicles. Soil, air, and water samples were analyzed. The remains of animals, long dead and little more than skeletons now, were also collected.
As the expedition neared its end, one of the teams came across what looked like a bunker. The outer hatch had rusted shut, but they were able to get it open with some effort. Once past the airlock, they entered a small complex of rooms and corridors. In the largest of these rooms, clearly designed as a mess hall, stood a large, black, stone obelisk covered in writing. At its base, sat a skeleton wearing the tattered remains of clothing, a hammer and chisel on the floor beside it.
The team couldn't read the words carved into the stone since the translation programs hadn't been successful yet, so they examined the skeleton. Clearly, it had been bipedal, with two arms and a single head. And, if the hammer and chisel were any indication, this had been the dominant species of the planet. Other skeletons were found throughout the complex and they collected as many of them as they could, being as respectful as possible.
The expedition left eventually, to examine their finds with better instruments, and pour through the data, trying to find anything trace of who these people were.
A graduate student eventually cracked the code. She had learned of the mysterious world and its forgotten people when everyone else did, though she had only been a child. Now, nearly 20 years after the first expedition returned, she had finally learned how to read the alien language. And after reading what was on the stone obelisk, she almost wished she hadn't.
She presented her findings at a conference that summer. The room packed with scholars from all over, all of them eager to hear the secrets she had unveiled. She finished her presentation with a reading of the stone obelisk, and when she was done, the room sat in stunned silence for a long time.
"We called ourselves humans. We called our planet Earth, or Terra, or Gia. We lived. We laughed. We loved with a fierceness unrivaled. We hated, and we feared. We created and we destroyed. We dreamed. Oh, how we dreamed. We dreamed of going to the stars. We dreamed so many things. But we were arrogant and greedy. Arrogant that we thought we could control each other instead of work together. Greedy for wealth or power. But it in the end I think it was fear that ultimately did us in. Fear of each other. Fear of the unknown. Fear of our own differences, even though differences are what made us great. We listened to fear and anger when we should have listened to hope and love. We called empathy a sin in the end, not realizing that empathy could lift us all up. We destroyed our planet. Treated its resources as infinite. Gave too much power to those few who thought themselves above the rest of us because they had more wealth or power. We fed an endless cycle, and in the end it destroyed us. So, I write this epitaph, this final message to any who find us. We were human. We existed. Learn from us. Remember us."