"It doesn't make sense," Fardo said. "These humans must have had access to kreblock records."

She laid out the replications of the documents found in a medical facility on the ruined planet. "By all accounts, the humans died off millennia before the kreblocks even evolved."

"So then how did they have what looks like exact anatomical scans of a kreblock?" Researcher Geswaq picked up one of the papers. "Even has some kind of decorative paint on its skin, look how white it is."

"Could it be convergent evolution?" one of the archaeological interns asked.

"No," Fardo said confidently. "Look closer at the records. It doesn't just look like a kreblock. The organs, the neurons, the blood chemistry, it's all exactly the same."

"Could have been some type of time machine?" Geswaq asked.

"No, the humans weren't even advanced enough to keep their own planets alive."

The door slammed open. The frizzy microphone cover like hair of the man brushing against the top of the door frame as he entered. "I have the answer."

"Oh God," Fardo groaned. "I thought they banned you from the intergalactic research division."

"I'm not here as a researcher," Wewill said, holding up his mop.

"Then why are you bothering us? Just clean up and leave."

"Panspermia!" He gave as an answer. "Ancient aliens!"

Fardo slammed the paper she was studying down in frustration. "If I let you say your crazy theory, will you leave?"

"I will," Wewill offered, smiling as wide as a school boy. "We are humans, or at least their descendants."

He whipped out a projector using the far wall to display a presentation he clearly put together himself. "It is well known fact that there are several missing links between kreblocks and their closest ancestors. It is also known that kreblocks can tolerate and even thrive on a diet including meat, yet every animal on our own planet is toxic to us."

Fardo sighed. "The leading theory on that is that we did tolerate the meat of some now extinct animal."

"Which we have no evidence of!" Wewill declared, waggling a finger at her. "But the biggest discovery that all but guarantees this is the case has been right in front of us for decades!"

The next slide of the presentation showed a dilapidated archaic spaceship. The dessicated pilot looked a bit like a hairy kreblock mummy, with a muzzle and bigger teeth. "This was discovered in interstellar space near this solar system, the vacuum has preserved it's DNA perfectly. This creature has almost 99% DNA similarity with kreblocks!"

"That's impossible!" Fardo said, looking at the creature.

"The data is all there, free to look at but obfuscated for those who don't want to see the truth. I believe that this was another species of hominid that lived among the humans, the chimpanzee, which records found by your very teams state shared almost 99% similarity with humans."

"Bring me that data," Fardo snapped to the intern she forgot the name of. They scurried off.

"The conspiracy is real. Human sent out colony ships from their failing planet, one of which must have landed on our homeland and mixed with our own ecology as all history of humanity was lost. But that's not the scary part."

"And what's that?"

"One need not go back but a few hundred years of kreblock history to see we were a violent warmongering species. If one colony ship survived, likely others did as well, possibly preserving their knowledge they are human. I fear that when we do find living aliens, they will look like us, act like us and likely had a hell of a head start."

/r/surinical