The death of Humanity.

Elasticred monitored his boards carefully as the delicate instruments in his ship picked up the last messages of a long-dead civilization. His name wasn't really Elasticred, but something that translated as such. He was a member of the Radio archology fleet. A vast fleet of ships whom would track the development of the sublight radio waves that the vanished civilization broadcast. This one was proving to be a treasure trove. This civilization lasted longer than most. It seemed to have been on the cusp of crossing to the point where it would have met Elasticred's race as equals. They didn't make it, and it was Elasticred's job to piece together the Archaeological history from the broadcasts of the species to find out why. Hundreds of ships were involved, all throughout the chain. Many, many ships were involved in identifying the species first recordings. Unlike those early ones, it was easy to tell when they stopped. They stopped between Elasticred's position and the next ship down the line. Not a peep had been heard from the ships farther down. That meant that Elasticred was listening to the last radio waves of the species. The cause of death was his question to answer. He just hoped it would be in the record. He perked up as he studied the analysis of the most recent information. Reports on a disease had started to dominate the non-fictional content of the Radio Waves. Elasticred took a look at his data. Warfare and Climate Change remained very likely, but the degree of fear which the people put in this new disease was something else altogether.

“And so, the mutated form of Swine Flu has finally been contained. It is expected the new vaccine will prevent any more population from being infected by the deadly strain.” Elasticred scratched off Swine Flu. The last days of the species looked especially grim. He had several theories for its demise, but the leading runners appeared to be warfare or climate change. His own species had dominated his world as a whole as the first nuclear weapons were developed. It prevented the threats that this destroyed species seems to have had. Many of the causes of problems seemed to result from the multitude of nations. On the same hand, his own people's technology had stagnated at that period for thousands of years, while this vanished species seemed to jump ahead in leaps and bounds. Elasticred sent his updated report, as his first plausible theory of disease failed.

“The Crisis has been averted. In a bizarre turn of events, the United States and Iran have agreed to peace. Spurred by the proven effective technology, there is a worldwide movement to disarm all remaining obsolete nuclear devices. The United States government has decided on a facility to contain the Radioactive waste in Idaho. Environmentalists have taken a hard stance against the proposed site, as it contains a critically endangered animal. The spokesman for...”
Elasticred turned his attention away from the unfiltered data. Nuclear war had been the running consensus with his sister-ship from further down the line. Warfare of such a scale could have eliminated the species, but their technological developments, the same things that caused the risk, ended the threat before it could occur. These creatures were too inventive for their own good, and it was possible that they created something even more destructive further down the road.

“And so the climatic cliff we have been warning of has been reached. Even now millions of tons of methane previously trapped in permafrost are entering the atmosphere. It is expected that by the end of the year, the sea levels will have increased by nine feet. The global governments are taking this very seriously, and coordinated efforts will be taken to evacuate everyone living in areas that will soon be under water.” He looked at the previous data to understand the climate they were in in the last days. Over the months he had been reviewing their history, he had developed an affinity for the spunky creatures. He knew what wiped them out, because he had reached the end of the tapes. There was still some strange static effects he was cruising through, but that was to be expected as the equipment continued to broadcast without any data from the end of the vanished race. He went back to the very last broadcast. “And so, the massive space object is estimated to be approximately half the size of the moon. At it's current trajectory, it is expected to strike in the Gobi desert in about four days. The governments of the world are doing everything they can, but now it seems all we can do is send all our most priceless treasures up into space, to be preserved in case an intelligent race some day in the future comes to study what we once were. Among the artifacts to be sent up into space are tablets explaining human history to date. We hope our legacy will...” Elasticred watched as the signal was obliterated in a burst of static. He didn't know what caused the static, if the object hit early or not. He continued to monitor the static band, wandering if any remnants survived in space, but nothing came after that last broadcast. He had gained all he could. He went back to earlier data, to understand their mindset better, to figure out why in the end they decided to spend their last days trying to preserve their culture for a species like his. It made little sense. A puzzle that could make the career out of any radio archeologist that solved it. He pulled up the data from other ships up the line to attempt to figure it out.

The commander of the combined archaeological effort was furious. So many resources used to find out what happened, and there was nothing to find. Not nothing as in nothing interesting, but literately nothing. The Exploration fleet reached the area where the source of the radio waves should have been, but didn't find anything. There was no star, nor no black hole. No matter that implied there should have been such a thing either. There was the residue from where the star once was, but it abruptly stopped well short of where the radio waves stopped. After months of exhaustive combing they found a single broken solar panel, cast out from the missing solar system by a collision. They went many light years out and found the sun that should have been there. They spent months tracking through empty space to find out what happened to the sun, but even that didn't provide any clues. It was there one second, and gone the next. Without the ruins of the system, there was no way to verify that the astronomical collision was the true source of the end of the “Humans”. The mystery of what happened to the lost civilization haunted known space for eons, longer than the lifespan of many space-faring species and longer than the span of Elasticred's own species. It was as great of a mystery as the rumors of the hidden civilization, the one that would occasionally pop out of nowhere to avert a great disaster broadcasting strange symbols. Only conspiracy theorists ever connected the two. They theorized that the symbols resembled some of the symbols found in the missing civilization. Those theories were rejected by all the learned institutions, those outside of the stealthed system known as Sol, that is.