This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/001DeafeningEcho on 2024-11-01 00:31:17+00:00.

When we first journeyed from our home system, we didn’t know what to expect: an empty galaxy, one filled with countless races similar and distinct, or even just one. We didn’t expect a grave.

It didn’t take long for us to find the first evidence. 20 light years from our home system, less than three days warp travel for us at the time, an exploration ship stumbled across the first evidence of alien life, the first evidence of others like us. It was a crypt, a million broken ships surrounding a thousand shattered space habitats, colonized asteroids, moons, and planets, not a single living soul left.

It was not the last we’d find. One by one we discovered that our galaxy was more a tomb than a cradle; a thousand broken systems found in the first year, a thousand more in the next. What life we found were simply the echos of those long gone: automated defenses able to wipe out hole fleets, super weapons that can crack planets in two, foundries construction battle fleets long after those who would command them ceased to be. Wherever we looked we found a galaxy turned to dust a thousand thousand generations before our time; I myself remember seeing in my childhood a super dreadnought larger than many moons that existed before my ancestors knew how to make fire.

Centuries after we find went out into the galaxy, and centuries before than any of your peoples, esteemed council, joined us, we found the answer we had been craving and dreading for all that time: why?

In the depths of space, distant from any star, we found a small satellite of ancient make. Within it lay a message, one I shall show you all now: (The center of the room lights up, filled with a large hologram. The image presented is of a mammalian biped, strands of pure grey fur covering its head and reaching to its neck, grazing the creature’s pale skin. “Greetings to any who find this, I am Robert Landers, and I am here to tell you how the galaxy died.” The silence already covering the room becomes deafening at the creatures words.

“I am a human, born on the world of Cassandra, only a dozen light years from my people’s ancient home world: Earth, or at least where it once was, dammed Xatharians. When we first ventured into the stars, we found the galaxy a ghost town just like you probably did, everyone dead with only ruins and a few primitive races still in existence. We sought to understand why it happened, why the galaxy tore itself apart. We found the answer, though a bit too late.” The creature takes a deep breath, before continuing. “Each cycle, for lack of a better word, a single race becomes supreme over all others, their head start as the first to arrive on the scene allowing them to grow powerful. Eventually, the other races join together to defeat the first race, starting a war that leads to the death of all life within the galaxy, all advanced life at least.”

A deep, almost broken sigh comes from the creature. “I am recording this in the three thousand, seven hundred, and fifty second year of what we believe is the nine hundredth such cycle in the Milky Way, this galaxy.” Something happens with the creatures eyes, seeming to stare deep within everyone watching. “Please make it the last.”) It seems we have failed.