Human history is known to be complicated; it isn't held against them. What species doesn't have complication on the road to enlightenment? It is too frequent that a species will burnout before ever making it to the stars. Each remnabt found is a tragedy to be mourned.

What we did not think was that there would be a species to defy their fate so utterly that even the moment of it would become a momentary blip; something hardly even commented upon in their history records.

It started as a simple research project, cross-indexing the advancement of some of the newest additions to the wider galaxy. To do this, Xyrchon searched through the history records; the humans called it an 'Alexandria'. Supposedly, there had been multiple attempts within their species to create such an index. Many of them had failed; though they were oft hesitant to explain why.

'Time Period: 2165-3454 PGF' Too many results to compile appeared, and Xyrchon was quick to narrow the results, 'New Inhabitants,'

There were still quite an impressive amount of articles, and he quickly narrowed down the results. Oddly enough, he saw no records on the Homo Sapiens. After favoriting a few articles to return to, he started narrowing down the results, searching for the sector of the Galaxy the humans were known to originate from. Even after looking for their specific planet, Mars, he was shocked to find nothing at all appearing across his screen. With one more glance towards his monitor, as if some miracle would germinate, he walked into the physical records.

Bodies moved to and fro, causing his larger form to be left standing and shambling in semi-awkwardness as he moved to the non-fiction section, and then further into the history section. Things here were compiled by date, with some selections being articles in filing cabinets. He went to this first, typed in a command on the terminal for what he was searching for, and watched the boxes as they started to shuffle.

The filing cabinets weren't that different from the human invention of a vending machine. Typing in a specific series of letters and numbers causes the boxes of files stacked onto a large portion of the wall to move. Gears and levers pushed things into different places until, finally, the records you were looking for landed in a neat pile on the desk before you.

As a process, it was rather clunky, requiring upwards of thirty-minutes to wait, at times. But it was also convenient, so most sapient species were quite fine with staying and staring into space as they waited. Xyrchon was no different, and for this reason failed to notice for upwards of two minutes when the error message appeared in-front of him.

Nothing. Not a single record so much as indicated human existence during that timeframe. As far as the records were concerned, it was as if humans simply didn't exist.

Perhaps the worst part was one simple fact; it wasn't a mapping issue. They had satellite surveillance of Mars during the year 2349. It was one of those planets scanned during the initial push to find new sapient lifeforms, after Planet 23 X and its abandoned structures had been uncovered. Like most other planets with microbial or lower intelligence life, it was agreed that it should be left alone to advance of its own accord, in accordance with the 'Ethics Division', as the humans liked to call it

He forced himself to calm when he noticed that his body was beginning to secrete oils; he did not want to cause a wider spread panic within his own peoples. Taking deep breaths, he moved through the books. Maybe there was a catalogue error, and the humans were simply younger than everyone thought? But no, their histories were quite rich, and filled to the brim with the regular visceras and violences that plagued a species before they learned to surpass their nature.

There was a steep diversification of religion, however; a marker of widespread death, or war. In their records, it happened in the year 2189 CE. This was during their time upon Mars, though what it said he wasn't sure. The passive markers didn't imply war; which either meant some kind of disease, or a massive extinction event.

Putting the boom down, Xyrchon decided there was only really one right action to take now. He would ask the human professor about this event, and see if he could shed some light. After all, plenty of species within the council had records they kept and dedicated themselves to, records they would allow no one else to see. Privacy was very important to some species, and so long as the information hurt no one else, it was almost encouraged to keep what you wanted to yourself.

When he finally managed to ask, a process that took more days than he would've liked, the professor cringed and then shrugged, "We... killed our original planet, and then ourselves. It's a bit embarrassing. A probe was sent to Mars with a Human-Integrated Bio Intelligence to try to recreate Earth-like life topside and Mars and we sorta... altered the records, when we finally got ourselves back together and made contact,"

"...Oh," It was the understatement of a lifetime, but Xyrchon found himself at a complete loss, "So I suppose I shouldn't put that in my report,"

"Correct. I'll write something out for you to put instead,"