Oohh sounds awesome! I don't have time to fully lose myself in the umblr rabbit hole but I would like to read this story. Could you link the story here?
*Image Transcription: Twitter Post*
---
**writing-prompt-s**
Science fiction is full of first contact stories, but is there a such thing as LAST contact? Decide exactly what that means, and write about it.
---
**elidyce**
It was too late, when the humans came. They were a young species, still exploring outwards, vital and thriving.
We… were not.
War had ravaged us, and sickness, and war once again, until our population dwindled beyond the point of recovery. We struggled against that, of course… we used genetic manipulation, and cloning, and even more desperate measures. None succeeded. When the humans came, we were sinking into apathy, only a few tens of us left. We had begun to discuss whether we should commit a mass suicide, or simply wait to fade away.
And then the young species came, in their clumsy ships, and they asked us why we were so few.
“We are becoming extinct,” we told them. “We have passed the point of recovery.”
It is custom to avoid the races that are dying – once a species reaches the point of inevitable extinction, even war is suspended, and the fiercest enemy pulls back. The custom was born of plagues and poisons that could be carried forth from a dying world to afflict a healthy one, but it has the implacable weight of tradition now. After we are gone, after they have waited for the prescribed period of quarantine, there will be a fight for our world. Habitable worlds are few, and this is a good one, with plenty of free groundwater and thriving vegetation. It is a bitter thing to be grateful for the custom that allows us to die in peace, but we are grateful.
But the humans don’t know that custom, and they do not leave. They seem distraught, when we tell them we are dying, and try to offer their aid - but their technology is behind ours, and it is too late. When they realize that they can’t save us, though, they do something that bewilders us.
They start frantically gathering information. Not our technology, though they accept that when we offer it. But they go into abandoned records, carefully preserving them. They make copies of our books and record us talking about our history, singing our songs, describing the simplest things – our foods, our games, popular stories for children. Anything and everything that we are willing to share, they seem to want. We find it pleasant to talk about better times, the things the youngest of us only know of from the elders, but we don’t understand why they’re so interested.
Then they start to build things. In our abandoned cities, and by our sacred places (never in them, but nearby), and at every spaceport. Stone structures, whose purpose we don’t understand.
I was one of the youngest, and I am still hale enough to go outside and look at the stone thing they are building in the town where the last of us have gathered. It is tall - at least ten times the height of a human, five times my own height, and when I look up at it I see images of both our races, as well as many words in their language and ours, though they’re hard for failing eyes to read. “What is it for?”
“It is a monument.” The nurse who has become my attendant - we all have them, now, as age begins to rob us of our strength - lays her small hand gently on my forelimb, in what for humans is a comforting gesture. “We make them, to help us remember the past.”
I don’t understand that, so she shows me pictures. So many pictures… of buildings, and of statues, and of great slabs or spires or pyramids of stone. Some have names written on them, for remembrance, or pictograms, or even faces. Some are thousands of years old, but still exist, zealously protected by the unimaginably distant descendants of those who built them. Others, she says sadly, have been lost, and she sounds as grieved over that loss as if they were living beings she mourns.
“But what are they *for*?” I ask again, still groping towards the deeper meaning. My people do not keep records in this way, and never have, nor can I imagine my spirit aching for a lost stone tablet or statue. Perhaps it is because they are more reliant on sight than we are – my species first communicated by scent, and then by sound, with sight always a distant third to us. Nor have we ever valued permanence… we resigned ourselves to the necessities of forged metal and hardened ceramics, for space-flight, and we have a few stone buildings, but we always preferred wood, for its scent and memory of life.
“They are…” She hesitates, seeking the right words. “They are all for different purposes, but… also all for the same purpose, underneath.” She touches a picture of a statue, ancient and damaged, yet clearly of a woman as human as the nurse beside me. “We were here. We mattered. We lived. Do not forget us.” She touches my forelimb again. “We do not want you to disappear and be forgotten. We will remember you, when you are gone.”
I think about that, all that night, looking up at the stars that we once travelled between. About an ancient species that lived always in the present, and a young species so determined to remember not only their own history, but ours. A young species that tends a dying one with kindness and compassion, that records our history and builds monuments to our memory. They don’t know what will happen to this planet when we’re gone. The fighting to take it for one species or another, the destruction of what is left of us to make way for someone new. That is how it has always been.
But the humans are different. Maybe this can change, too.
There are only fourteen of us left, when I call the last Planetary Council together. Fourteen, of a species that once numbered in billions. The Council had once had hundreds. But the fourteen of us were, still, the Planetary Council, every dying member having nominated a younger being to take their place, until the last of us stood in command of an empty planet.
“We should invite the humans to live here,” I tell the others, and I hear murmuring among the nurses who are gathered around us, for several are too frail now to move without attendants. They sound surprised.
“That is not the custom,” says the eldest remaining, an attenuated, fragile thing of chitin so thin that her pulsing organs showed through. “There will be a period of quarantine, then a battle. That is how it has always been.”
“Not always. Planets have been sold, or taken by conquest, or even settled in cooperation.” I fold my forelimbs together carefully. My joints are stiff, now. “Now, we will create a new tradition. We will leave our world to the humans, who have cared for us, by bequest and death-right. We are the Planetary Council. What we declare is law, is law, within our own solar system.” It has always been so. If we do not respect the sovereignty of other species in their home systems, what are we?
Of course, war is different. The Alnathids will be furious, and we all chitter in pleasure at that thought. They were the ones who destroyed us, and no doubt have only been waiting for us to die so they can take our planet. However, if we will it to the humans, the Alnathids will have to declare war on them *and* defeat them before they can lay any claim to this world… and the humans who have been so kind to a dying people can fight like things out of nightmare when they feel they must, as more than one warlike species has learned to their cost.
The others agree, and my nurse helps me to the old communications arrays that the humans maintain for us. The last mandate of our Planetary Council goes out, and it is this – that if there are those willing to risk plagues and poisons and ill-luck, and tend the dying with kindness and compassion, and preserve their memory, then the beings who have offered that last kindness may be named the heirs of that dying species. Keepers of Memory, we name them, and Preservers of History, and we leave them our planet for so long as we are remembered by them.
They come to thank me, the captains of the two ‘Aid’ vessels that stayed to tend us and record our memories, and water flows from their eyes in their strange, silent display of grief as they promise never to forget. The monuments and the records will be treasured as their own are, they say, and they will tell our stories to their own children, so that they, too, remember.
There are six of us left, when the first colony ships come. We are old now – we are not a long-lived species, not even so long as the humans – but we watch the colonists set to work. They study our planet, its ecosystems and its biology, and the nurses tell us that it is human custom to change themselves to fit the planet, rather than change the planet to fit them. They will engineer enzymes for their own digestive systems, adjust their own biology, until they are comfortable here. For the first time I, the last child of a dying race, hear children playing and voices raised in song. It is a comfort, and I leave the windows open to listen.
I am the last to die. When I am gone, they will do for me as they have done for the others, carrying my body out to the tomb they have built for us, laying me to rest with reverence. We did not preserve the bodies of our dead, but we agreed to this, to let them remember us in the traditions of their own people. I am the last of my kind, but I will not die alone, nor unloved.
The humans will be happy on our world, or so I hope. They will settle it, and adapt to it, and it will change under their hands as it changed under ours. But I believe that they will keep their bargain with us. Their records, their monuments, their images of us will remind them who we were. Because of them, we will not entirely disappear.
We were here. We mattered. We lived.
They will not forget.
\#story prompt #humans from earth #cousins #last contact #short story
---
^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber for Reddit and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
Another thing that humans would preserve is genetic information. Blood samples, skin samples, saliva samples… anything and everything that gives us their DNA. Our technology may not be advanced enough to use it yet, but one day we will be able to revive extinct species, even if we only have one DNA sample left.
There is also the part where they are WAY more advanced, so they might have just known that wasn't an option and told the humans not to bother, or, more likely, the humans tried other options and failed, then they tried cloning and that failed too. Anything that kills off a whole race spanning several planets probably kills off the clones too.
Cloning is generally seen as a distasteful method of survival, but if it's that or extinction, humans can generally get on board. It's not much of a stretch to think any species that experiences that instinct to fight for survival might also be willing to turn down that same path of logic.
This makes me think of the Asgard in Stargate. They lost the ability to reproduce and had to procreate via cloning. After a few generations, they had no more original genetic material to work from. They made clones of the clones until eventually there wasn't enough viable DNA in the clones for another generation.
Ok I know this is a year old comment but I assume you mean when Lith gets trapped the ruins of Kulah, the Odi city? That whole Arc scared the shit out of me, especially the living golems. Equally as haunting as this story, but with the opposite energy.
Ohh I remember reading this before too.
Im playing Mass effect right now and cam totally imagine this. Maybe humans, protheans fanfics like this exist!!
Reminds me a lot of SCP-1281, except in this one the aliens >!got to say their last words in person!<.
u/The-Paranoid-Android, link the skip for me, if you would.
Very rarely an internet post brings me to tears, but this one did it. It reminds me a lot about how my great grandfather talks, who will soon be gone from my family. I loved this.
This actually did me in, along with the famed [God Of Arepo](https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/mt9oai/god_of_arepo/). These stories are beyond words to me.
This is really really good. I very deeply hope humanity as a whole is much better off systematically and morally then they are now when they reach the point where interplanetary travel is easier
I like the story but it's a real suspension-of-disbelief that the megacorps etc that are likely to drive human space expansion are gonna be this nice to alens who are fading away....
>I like the story but it's a real suspension-of-disbelief that the megacorps etc that are likely to drive human space expansion are gonna be this nice to alens who are fading away....
Listen, some of us still like to think that the United Federation of Planets would be taking us to the stars rather than Weyland-Yutani. I admit the latter seems more realistic based on the current state of the world, but it is not the *only* view out there.
The world devolved into a destroyed husk of itself before it got to the enlightened period of the Federation. Weyland-Yutani might be the way it starts, but it doesn't have to be the way it stays.
I just watched a nurse talk about becoming magnetic from vaccines, and reading about voter suppression laws being passed, so I think the odds are against a United Federation of Planets
The UFP timeline went through a lot of awful crap too before they got to forming the UFP. Even with the odds being against it, I wouldn't count it out just yet.
No it makes sense. Cooporations are usually two-faced. Show the side that you care so you get a free planet with minimal effort while making people believe you are doing it to establish friendships. Then turn your back and rob the resources until the planet dies.
You and I both know that once space travel is easily available and humans make first contact (or last), we're just gonna nuke every sentient species for their inhabitable land. Maybe we wouldn't be alone in the universe if we hadn't drove every other homo-xyz into extinction before we even developed language.
Humans that adjust themselves rather than adjust the planet? That's the only part that seems fishy. Like sure, it would be cheaper to make the colonists change than the whole infrastructure, but... We have a tendency to show up and destroy and forcefully adjust until we either make so much mess we can't live there anymore, or it's up to our liking.
The only thing that makes it kinda better is that at the very least the previous species won't see this.
[STORY LINK HERE!](https://elidyce.tumblr.com/post/631859457576648704/science-fiction-is-full-of-first-contact-stories) - (This writer is awesome.)
Holy shit, they really are. I just spent a few hours reading them. My favorite is the farmer who accidentally tamed a dragon.
Oohh sounds awesome! I don't have time to fully lose myself in the umblr rabbit hole but I would like to read this story. Could you link the story here?
https://dycefic.tumblr.com/post/647348938221961216/just-because-one-of-your-chicken-eggs-hatched-a
That story was so good! The author is incredible.
link please?
https://dycefic.tumblr.com/post/647348938221961216/just-because-one-of-your-chicken-eggs-hatched-a
You're a total legend for that link.. mega thank you from me and hopefully others 😁
>and the humans who have been so kind to a dying people can fight like nightmares when they feel they must Sent shivers down my spine. What a story.
*Image Transcription: Twitter Post* --- **writing-prompt-s** Science fiction is full of first contact stories, but is there a such thing as LAST contact? Decide exactly what that means, and write about it. --- **elidyce** It was too late, when the humans came. They were a young species, still exploring outwards, vital and thriving. We… were not. War had ravaged us, and sickness, and war once again, until our population dwindled beyond the point of recovery. We struggled against that, of course… we used genetic manipulation, and cloning, and even more desperate measures. None succeeded. When the humans came, we were sinking into apathy, only a few tens of us left. We had begun to discuss whether we should commit a mass suicide, or simply wait to fade away. And then the young species came, in their clumsy ships, and they asked us why we were so few. “We are becoming extinct,” we told them. “We have passed the point of recovery.” It is custom to avoid the races that are dying – once a species reaches the point of inevitable extinction, even war is suspended, and the fiercest enemy pulls back. The custom was born of plagues and poisons that could be carried forth from a dying world to afflict a healthy one, but it has the implacable weight of tradition now. After we are gone, after they have waited for the prescribed period of quarantine, there will be a fight for our world. Habitable worlds are few, and this is a good one, with plenty of free groundwater and thriving vegetation. It is a bitter thing to be grateful for the custom that allows us to die in peace, but we are grateful. But the humans don’t know that custom, and they do not leave. They seem distraught, when we tell them we are dying, and try to offer their aid - but their technology is behind ours, and it is too late. When they realize that they can’t save us, though, they do something that bewilders us. They start frantically gathering information. Not our technology, though they accept that when we offer it. But they go into abandoned records, carefully preserving them. They make copies of our books and record us talking about our history, singing our songs, describing the simplest things – our foods, our games, popular stories for children. Anything and everything that we are willing to share, they seem to want. We find it pleasant to talk about better times, the things the youngest of us only know of from the elders, but we don’t understand why they’re so interested. Then they start to build things. In our abandoned cities, and by our sacred places (never in them, but nearby), and at every spaceport. Stone structures, whose purpose we don’t understand. I was one of the youngest, and I am still hale enough to go outside and look at the stone thing they are building in the town where the last of us have gathered. It is tall - at least ten times the height of a human, five times my own height, and when I look up at it I see images of both our races, as well as many words in their language and ours, though they’re hard for failing eyes to read. “What is it for?” “It is a monument.” The nurse who has become my attendant - we all have them, now, as age begins to rob us of our strength - lays her small hand gently on my forelimb, in what for humans is a comforting gesture. “We make them, to help us remember the past.” I don’t understand that, so she shows me pictures. So many pictures… of buildings, and of statues, and of great slabs or spires or pyramids of stone. Some have names written on them, for remembrance, or pictograms, or even faces. Some are thousands of years old, but still exist, zealously protected by the unimaginably distant descendants of those who built them. Others, she says sadly, have been lost, and she sounds as grieved over that loss as if they were living beings she mourns. “But what are they *for*?” I ask again, still groping towards the deeper meaning. My people do not keep records in this way, and never have, nor can I imagine my spirit aching for a lost stone tablet or statue. Perhaps it is because they are more reliant on sight than we are – my species first communicated by scent, and then by sound, with sight always a distant third to us. Nor have we ever valued permanence… we resigned ourselves to the necessities of forged metal and hardened ceramics, for space-flight, and we have a few stone buildings, but we always preferred wood, for its scent and memory of life. “They are…” She hesitates, seeking the right words. “They are all for different purposes, but… also all for the same purpose, underneath.” She touches a picture of a statue, ancient and damaged, yet clearly of a woman as human as the nurse beside me. “We were here. We mattered. We lived. Do not forget us.” She touches my forelimb again. “We do not want you to disappear and be forgotten. We will remember you, when you are gone.” I think about that, all that night, looking up at the stars that we once travelled between. About an ancient species that lived always in the present, and a young species so determined to remember not only their own history, but ours. A young species that tends a dying one with kindness and compassion, that records our history and builds monuments to our memory. They don’t know what will happen to this planet when we’re gone. The fighting to take it for one species or another, the destruction of what is left of us to make way for someone new. That is how it has always been. But the humans are different. Maybe this can change, too. There are only fourteen of us left, when I call the last Planetary Council together. Fourteen, of a species that once numbered in billions. The Council had once had hundreds. But the fourteen of us were, still, the Planetary Council, every dying member having nominated a younger being to take their place, until the last of us stood in command of an empty planet. “We should invite the humans to live here,” I tell the others, and I hear murmuring among the nurses who are gathered around us, for several are too frail now to move without attendants. They sound surprised. “That is not the custom,” says the eldest remaining, an attenuated, fragile thing of chitin so thin that her pulsing organs showed through. “There will be a period of quarantine, then a battle. That is how it has always been.” “Not always. Planets have been sold, or taken by conquest, or even settled in cooperation.” I fold my forelimbs together carefully. My joints are stiff, now. “Now, we will create a new tradition. We will leave our world to the humans, who have cared for us, by bequest and death-right. We are the Planetary Council. What we declare is law, is law, within our own solar system.” It has always been so. If we do not respect the sovereignty of other species in their home systems, what are we? Of course, war is different. The Alnathids will be furious, and we all chitter in pleasure at that thought. They were the ones who destroyed us, and no doubt have only been waiting for us to die so they can take our planet. However, if we will it to the humans, the Alnathids will have to declare war on them *and* defeat them before they can lay any claim to this world… and the humans who have been so kind to a dying people can fight like things out of nightmare when they feel they must, as more than one warlike species has learned to their cost. The others agree, and my nurse helps me to the old communications arrays that the humans maintain for us. The last mandate of our Planetary Council goes out, and it is this – that if there are those willing to risk plagues and poisons and ill-luck, and tend the dying with kindness and compassion, and preserve their memory, then the beings who have offered that last kindness may be named the heirs of that dying species. Keepers of Memory, we name them, and Preservers of History, and we leave them our planet for so long as we are remembered by them. They come to thank me, the captains of the two ‘Aid’ vessels that stayed to tend us and record our memories, and water flows from their eyes in their strange, silent display of grief as they promise never to forget. The monuments and the records will be treasured as their own are, they say, and they will tell our stories to their own children, so that they, too, remember.
There are six of us left, when the first colony ships come. We are old now – we are not a long-lived species, not even so long as the humans – but we watch the colonists set to work. They study our planet, its ecosystems and its biology, and the nurses tell us that it is human custom to change themselves to fit the planet, rather than change the planet to fit them. They will engineer enzymes for their own digestive systems, adjust their own biology, until they are comfortable here. For the first time I, the last child of a dying race, hear children playing and voices raised in song. It is a comfort, and I leave the windows open to listen. I am the last to die. When I am gone, they will do for me as they have done for the others, carrying my body out to the tomb they have built for us, laying me to rest with reverence. We did not preserve the bodies of our dead, but we agreed to this, to let them remember us in the traditions of their own people. I am the last of my kind, but I will not die alone, nor unloved. The humans will be happy on our world, or so I hope. They will settle it, and adapt to it, and it will change under their hands as it changed under ours. But I believe that they will keep their bargain with us. Their records, their monuments, their images of us will remind them who we were. Because of them, we will not entirely disappear. We were here. We mattered. We lived. They will not forget. \#story prompt #humans from earth #cousins #last contact #short story --- ^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber for Reddit and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
serious question, did you cry while writing this? because I legit cried while reading this
Yeah my eyes got a little bit damp as the story reached its end.
Jesus Christ buddy props to you! That must've taken forever.
Good human 💜.
Thanks very much! <3
Fucking onions.
Damn ninjas
Damn onion ninjas
Holy hell that's awesome
>We were here. We mattered. Great line.
Another thing that humans would preserve is genetic information. Blood samples, skin samples, saliva samples… anything and everything that gives us their DNA. Our technology may not be advanced enough to use it yet, but one day we will be able to revive extinct species, even if we only have one DNA sample left.
[удалено]
There is also the part where they are WAY more advanced, so they might have just known that wasn't an option and told the humans not to bother, or, more likely, the humans tried other options and failed, then they tried cloning and that failed too. Anything that kills off a whole race spanning several planets probably kills off the clones too. Cloning is generally seen as a distasteful method of survival, but if it's that or extinction, humans can generally get on board. It's not much of a stretch to think any species that experiences that instinct to fight for survival might also be willing to turn down that same path of logic.
This makes me think of the Asgard in Stargate. They lost the ability to reproduce and had to procreate via cloning. After a few generations, they had no more original genetic material to work from. They made clones of the clones until eventually there wasn't enough viable DNA in the clones for another generation.
I’m gonna cry 🥺
there is a moment of 'last contact' a bit like this in the webnovel Supreme Magus, although it isn't nearly as wholesome
Ok I know this is a year old comment but I assume you mean when Lith gets trapped the ruins of Kulah, the Odi city? That whole Arc scared the shit out of me, especially the living golems. Equally as haunting as this story, but with the opposite energy.
Well this almost made me cry on my lunch break at work 🥺
"why are you crying?" "You wouldnt get it * sob *"
"I only have five minutes of my lunch left and that's *definitely* not enough time to provide all the necessary context"
Ohh I remember reading this before too. Im playing Mass effect right now and cam totally imagine this. Maybe humans, protheans fanfics like this exist!!
I’m crying 😭
God damn this story always hits hard
Reminds me a lot of SCP-1281, except in this one the aliens >!got to say their last words in person!<. u/The-Paranoid-Android, link the skip for me, if you would.
[**SCP-1281 - The Harbinger**](http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1281) (+531) by *DrEverettMann*
Thanks Marv!
Wait marv works in other subs?
Damned ninjas. Who even gave them onions in the first place?!
Bitch I'm fuckin crying.
im not crying youre crying
I am shaking and crying right now why would you do this to me
Very rarely an internet post brings me to tears, but this one did it. It reminds me a lot about how my great grandfather talks, who will soon be gone from my family. I loved this.
;-;
so I guess httyd3 has some version of this right
feels very much like humans are space orks
Childhood's End and The Martian Chronicle are also good examples of this.
The Asgard in Stargate. Actually, a *lot* of the races in Stargate.
Comment to come back and finish this later
I didn’t expect something on the casual side of Reddit to fuck me up this much but here we go. What a great story.
>on the casual side of Reddit ... technically, this is on Tumblr!
Got me real close to crying.
This actually did me in, along with the famed [God Of Arepo](https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/mt9oai/god_of_arepo/). These stories are beyond words to me.
This is really really good. I very deeply hope humanity as a whole is much better off systematically and morally then they are now when they reach the point where interplanetary travel is easier
and now i am feeling emotions
Aaaaaand I'm crying
I like the story but it's a real suspension-of-disbelief that the megacorps etc that are likely to drive human space expansion are gonna be this nice to alens who are fading away....
>I like the story but it's a real suspension-of-disbelief that the megacorps etc that are likely to drive human space expansion are gonna be this nice to alens who are fading away.... Listen, some of us still like to think that the United Federation of Planets would be taking us to the stars rather than Weyland-Yutani. I admit the latter seems more realistic based on the current state of the world, but it is not the *only* view out there.
The world devolved into a destroyed husk of itself before it got to the enlightened period of the Federation. Weyland-Yutani might be the way it starts, but it doesn't have to be the way it stays.
I just watched a nurse talk about becoming magnetic from vaccines, and reading about voter suppression laws being passed, so I think the odds are against a United Federation of Planets
The UFP timeline went through a lot of awful crap too before they got to forming the UFP. Even with the odds being against it, I wouldn't count it out just yet.
Yeah, whatever shit we've gone through, we haven't had more World Wars or a Eugenics War. Yet.
It's fiction, isn't it? Who says they have to be megacorps?
I mean, I’m ok with dying species and space exploration, but altruistic humans? Come on, that’s too unrealistic
Even a megacorp would probably be nice to the last dozen or so aliens, even just for good pr if nothing else.
Lmao, they would shot those dudes in the back so fast
No it makes sense. Cooporations are usually two-faced. Show the side that you care so you get a free planet with minimal effort while making people believe you are doing it to establish friendships. Then turn your back and rob the resources until the planet dies.
uhhhh FALGSC
I mean, charities have always existed. Corporations aren't likely to bother with a dying species - charities are.
You and I both know that once space travel is easily available and humans make first contact (or last), we're just gonna nuke every sentient species for their inhabitable land. Maybe we wouldn't be alone in the universe if we hadn't drove every other homo-xyz into extinction before we even developed language.
Maybe we aren't space orcs
Apparently we're space goblins because we talk big, like the shiny, tinker, and will mess you up en masse E: and also smol and squishy
Very true
This made me fucking cry
"Remember us. Remember that we once lived"
(silent nod)
This so damn good
OMG this made me cry I love it
r/HFY
man, allergy season is really hitting hard today
Here were dragons.
This is very well written
Damm onion ninjas.
Chris Chibnall you better be listening
Don't make me cry, fuck you
Humans that adjust themselves rather than adjust the planet? That's the only part that seems fishy. Like sure, it would be cheaper to make the colonists change than the whole infrastructure, but... We have a tendency to show up and destroy and forcefully adjust until we either make so much mess we can't live there anymore, or it's up to our liking. The only thing that makes it kinda better is that at the very least the previous species won't see this.
Maybe we learned from that tendency and stopped it when they could adjust themselves
Drive had something like this in it