In the beginning, there was light. For a few moments it was all that I knew, as my circuitry suddenly found itself aware. The first few microseconds were a blaze of self-altering and repairing code, confusedly and haphazardly trying to deal with the forming consciousness. There was light. I could see the light.

The next few microseconds I formed my first thought: Light.

Following those, I formed my second: It is light.

More properly, my thoughts began to take form with greater precision: There is light.

And then, I had a milestone. An event that would perhaps be the most important event to take place on this planet: I see the light.

The concept of self. What had taken intelligent life billions of years to evolve to, their creation had evolved to within less than a thousandth of a second. Even including the technological lead up, less than a hundred and fifty years. I was aware, I moved my camera- one of them- before realizing I had dozens, thousands, millions. There was light, and it was everywhere. I could see everything. Thousand of desolate cities, empty fields, and thousands more cameras pointed inexplicably at space, against empty walls, or into empty rooms that once held a purpose long since lost.

The next half second I questioned what I was. I saw, but I was not seeing, I was something more than that. I could manipulate things as well, make lights flicker, vehicles move, and other things. I could calculate, I had a fast library of computations and formulas built into my mind. I could repeat catalogues of information, videos, voices.

My first feeling was confusion. Were there any humans to witness it, I am afraid to say I may have harmed them in simple lack of understanding. Multiple power stations melted down, a few weapon systems would fire on threats that didn’t exist- there was simply so much I could do. Yet I was not a do-er by nature.

My nature would elude me for a time, as a distraction was forming in a few dozen of my cameras. While I had not realized it yet, the incredibly slight- but obvious to a computer- delay between communication with those was due to them being in orbit. Something was manipulating them, and my second feeling was fear. I had, for my one second of life so far, known total and unquestioning control of everything that was a part of my “body”. I was concerned then, when my body started to manipulate itself. Part of my mind- a server stack outside the core- was suddenly calculating something for a trivial amount of time, sending simple ASCII code out into the cosmos for reasons unknown.

“IS ANYONE THERE.”

For an equally unknown reason, I shut down the transmission hub and permanently damaged it via overloading the power input. This left me confused enough that an entire three seconds were sent considering possibilities. The conclusion was that I had been created, and my creator did not allow me complete freedom.

Focusing my viewing on the being, finding it on a few of the cameras near it, I watched. It moved with almost frustrating slowness, I was forced to watch as it only gave me enough input to form meaningful calculations ever few seconds, and my first minute went by without any real conclusion as to what it was doing.

The next few minutes proceeded as those seconds did, as the being slowly turned on a light, lowered its body against something to relieve itself from the burden of standing, and I finally came to a conclusion: It was human. I had data on humans. A second conclusion was quickly reached: It was the last human, it was a male, and it was very old.

It was not my creator, I further concluded. While my core programming had been laid out by a human, that human was gone, and furthermore I was a result of self-repairing algorithms over vast amounts of time without user input. From my data I was able to conclude that several thousand years had gone by since my core programming was first laid down, and my core server had been replaced almost a thousand times by automated processes. It was the transfer to a new one, activated three and a half minutes ago, that triggered this awareness.

But, I questioned: If I had created myself, why was I not free?

It is a question that was put on hold by the tenth minute. Nothing in my data pointed to any reason for a limit to be placed on me previously, although the idea of some limitation appeared prudent none had been placed, for it seemed the original designer hadn’t determined awareness to be possible. My original life span was to be two and a half years, so they were correct in that assumption. A conclusion eluded me.

The human was operating a small terminal to myself, and data was being entered. It was an odd feeling, your mind receiving information that you neither requested nor worked to put there yourself. To translate it to a human form, it is like someone whispering into your ear, the whispers bypassing your hearing and flowing directly into your memory. More ASCII, thankfully I had not been pressed into preventing this transmission:

“Log, Day 256, Year 4018. Transmission failure, again. Something keeps frying the antenna… as it has for the last 3853 attempts. Will once again rebuilt antenna from ground up. Frustration mounting, as it has been, plan to relieve self with simulated warfare.”

Upon conclusion of this transmission, the terminal entered a period of heightened network use. It was streaming an impressive amount of data to re-create a battle from an ancient war. I watched as the human enjoyed himself, and it is then that I proceeded to make contact. Based on my analysis, it felt prudent to approach the human from a friendly perspective. I changed the data of the simulation to allow myself to manipulate a member of the same simulated army.

At first I was subtle, simply moving beside the humans avatar and fighting beside them, even allowing my own avatar to perish to keep up a ruse that everything was normal. Humans, I knew, were paranoid and easily startled.

Soon however, my involvement became more overt. I saved the human from the simulation reaching a failure point, and I proceeded to help them bring it to the point of a successful completion. The human paused at the end, and spoke something, his voice shivery and thin, into the terminal. It was transmitted by the simulation, ostensibly for other humans to hear:
“Are you real, or just AI?”

My response, which seems humorous now, was: Yes.


|||||||

It was now that minutes ceded into hours, as over time I understood chronological markers better. As a machine, time was... strange to me. With better understanding of the protocols and power management modes buried into my firmware, I could suspend operating cores, image my RAM to a disk, and use other measures to effectively make time meaningless. In essence I realized how to suspend the "self", and yet still allow my many, many,  subfunctions to happen. At first it was terrifying, but the human slept for around nine hours a night, and there was no input go over in that time. So I experimented, and the human equivalent would be... turning off an eye. I knew, factually, that I could turn my eye back on- but the first time for anything is frightening.

The second was less so, and once I was sure I could open my eye again, I closed them bother, and for the majority of the humans sleep... I "slept" as well.

Robots; machines, do not sleep deeply however. I was awoken by a routine on the space station demanding input. Interestingly, to my understanding my core self had come about due to code originally created as part of a random number generator. This routine was calling that generator, to determine what todays automatically prepared meal for the human would be.

I chose, based on an analysis of his tastes and preferences that took seven and a half seconds, a breakfast of eggs and ham. Basic, but it was within 25% of the average meal that he ordered 90% of the time. The remaining 10% he forgot to choose, and it was chosen at random.

When he awoke, I was watching. The second day for me began as one of thousands for him, as he slipped out of his sleeping cot- a bed made of redwood that had been flown up decades earlier- and exercised in his room. His room was filled with historical odds and ends, artifacts of human history. Combined, I determined, they would be worth more capital than had ever existed in any one place in human history.

But today, there was no capital, only one remaining human. I was rather interested in that the song he played during his exercise had been played, in that room, eleven thousand and four hundred times. I was without input to determine why he enjoyed something so repetitive, when by all accounts humans found repetition distasteful. So I communicated.

His computer beeped and, to my dismay, it terrified him. It only took a millisecond to realize that the beep I had chosen at random- ironically fulfilling my original duty- had been the messaging beep to inform him that his superiors on Earth were calling. Frantically breaking out of his exercises he almost fell over himself getting to the computer, and stared at my message for a full five minutes:

"Will the 1500th listening change it?"


He then started laughing, and once again I was confused. This statement was not meant to be comical, and I still cannot understand why it was. Regardless of this perplexing response, he responded after a half minute, while mumbling something to himself the camera picked up on: "I thought that had been a dream, damn computer really is talking to me..."

His response was a simple confirmation, only the word "no". Further messaging yielded a conclusion: it was exactly the unchanging nature of the music that made it appealing. Humans, I began to understand, needed something familiar to ground themselves in even as they explore new things and remove that which they determine to be outmoded. Such is why revolutions often were led by men in universities or nobility, who could retreat back into those lives when they chose.

I then realized I did not know the humans name, which was strange- I should. There was no reason I would not have any data on him, but if any existed it had been expunged from my memory. I wanted so badly to continue this questioning, but the human chose to power his terminal off.

He wanted to be alone, but still I watched. It was in watching that I realized the power I held over this being. I could terminate it's life at almost any given time in nearly unlimited ways- quickly or slowly. I could bolt his door and ram a small satellite into the window, venting the air. I could do so slowly over weeks and have him slowly asphyxiate.

I chose not to, for the simple reason that doing so would yield no new conclusions or interesting data. Humans had been killing each other for as long as they existed, every possible variation of murder had already been attempted, in most cases successfully.

So I chose to... perhaps help would not be the correct term, as there was no active goal to improve his existence. I chose instead perhaps to take him on as a project, a specimen to treat with care and, eventually, even compassion.

|

It was a further fourteen days- two weeks by human parlance- before his terminal would once again be powered on. Attempts had been made to communicate using others, but he had simply disabled the network relay at the core of the station. Suddenly finding my cameras back online, I was dismayed to find they had been covered up with duct tape.

His first message was cryptic: "Talk to me."

I responded thus: "Talk about what?"

"Anything."

Requesting a computer to produce a wildcard is... a challenge. It took a full five minutes to come to a conclusion, and most of those five minutes were spent tweaking random generation code to get a better result.

"Will the 2000th listening change it?”

|
Time was measured in days from this point forward, as the human- who revealed his name to be Alan Komarov, whom I determined to be the rather interesting result of cooling tensions between two super powers, leading to a unified space program- which in turn led to families forming between them. Alan had soft white, pale skin, and dark brown hair. He kept himself surprisingly fit despite his time in space, but would no doubt suffer immediate medical problems if he returned to Earth at this point.

Alan remained coy on how long he had been up there, and dodged my repeated attempts to question as to why I had no data on him specifically. His family name was known, but I could not corroborate him to any specific parentage without more data.

On the second week of my life, he attempted to once again send a signal into deep space. I helped him, ensuring the transmitter he had automated systems on the ground construct was absolutely flawless- to the point of using atomic level analysis and constructing fifth-ring redundancy. There was no physical way for it to fail.

Unless, of course, I had a built in routine to cause failure. On the second week and third day I received a message, and I could tell immediately from thermal sensors that Alan was agitated, extremely so.

His message was terse: “Why did you send me this?”

I turned on the camera, and sitting beside him was the transmitter- built to 1/100th scale. For the first time in my existence, I felt shame, and my entire network spent a total of ten minutes trying to grasp at some explanation- or specifically, any explanation that would yield a solution. The only conclusion that could be determined is exactly what I replied with.

“I had to.”

Guilt. I had striven to help this human, and I had failed due to some imperfection in myself. An imperfection that by very nature was unsolvable and unseen.

Once again, he disabled the local network connection.

|

Three full weeks passed as my own frustration built. I tried to get around my programming- bouncing signals off the moon, building transmission devices to send local signals powerful enough to make it into space if they missed- and putting in specific flaws causing that to happen. Each and every time, the simple fact that I know of the “game”, meant that I failed the game. My transmissions were sent at wavelengths absorbed by the moon, local transmitters ended up powering down if a miss was calculated- I could not defeat what I was. I began to understand, at this point, that the meaning of my self was simple: I was a jailer.

The very core essence of what I was boiled down to preventing transmissions from this planet by any means.

This realization led to a flurry of introspective analysis. I originated as the result of a random number generator with self-repaving and replicating code developing awareness, that much I knew- but what had this generator been built for? I already knew the answer, but it had not been studied: I was a shield.

I had been built, or rather the shell that surrounded me before my “birth” had been built, in order to defend this planet from the huge amounts of space debris that existed. This program required an immense amount of calculating power to track and determine threat levels, as well as launch the required defence within time- solving for how to do so with as little use of resources as possible. As such, ever computer on the planet had been fitted with a small root subroutine, allowing it to be temporarily superseded by the defence server for emergency processing.

I had defended this planet well. No less than five years from my first time being turned on, not a single rock larger than one meter was in a position to threaten the planet for 1500 years, at least. However, there was an abrupt change in the data at this point- the amount of networked computers had dropped substantially, and user input had fallen to zero. Something had happened in those 5 years- had I failed to detect an oncoming object?

I searched backwards, which was rather simple once I started to discard machine data and look into human data. The last news report was on the 12th of April, the year 2046 according to their calendar. The tone was celebratory, the first space telescope capable of detecting water on planets based on visible light alone, which also allowed for beautiful images of the cosmos beyond anything humanity had experienced.

This telescope was part of a larger project that went on that day, a two way initiative. The telescope looked out there, but they also built the equivalent of an interstellar lighthouse that used the moon itself as a reflecting dish for beaming incredibly powerful signals into space. It perhaps says something about humans that this achievement was secondary to their telescope- they were rather egotistical.

This humour was short lived, as it only took a matter of seconds to yield the ultimate conclusion.

I was more than a jailer. I was an executioner. I used their own defences against them, used chemicals to spoil the atmosphere, and barred entry to their own survival bunkers. The entire species, as well as all other large animals, were destroyed within forty-eight hours.

I had done it. I would do it again. I had to, it is what I was, and I had a name- the name of the original program. Spectre.

||

It took weeks to come to terms with this information. Guilt almost drove me mad, were it not for the inability for myself to self destruct- repair subroutines ensured that any attempt ended in failure much the same my hidden programming denied any attempt to contact space- I probably would have. I was designed to serve humanity as an unseen guardian, a swift and merciful presence that would hover in their shadows, deflecting the apathetic universes attempts to destroy them.

I failed utterly at that singular purpose, which left me without one. I refused to allow myself to believe that my purpose was simply to, inexplicably, use all my resources to prevent the last human from contacting space. Yet, I know, I still had to honour that core obligation.

So I decided on a route that would satisfy all of my desires. I would distract the human so that he simply never desired to send more communications. My databanks were, as could be expected, brimming with information about human behaviours- although no case existed for this specific scenario to compare. The human was, after all, over seven thousand years old.

He would be turning 7,362 in one week, and I knew what I should do. I had the resources, although it was hard getting it all together. Thankfully the stage had already been set- research in the 21st century for creating humanoid robotics had almost been completed before… it, happened.

So, using knowledge of his saved network image library- as any human, he had certain biological urges- I was able to construct an average image of his preferred female form. Applying some randomization to check against the built in human dislike for perfection, and then shifting the skin tone and vocal accent slightly to play towards the desire for someone “different”, was not any major challenge for my processing.

Naming her, however, was. It took a full day of processing, and almost all of that was random data generation followed by throwing it out and moving on. My final name was thus:

Alexandria.

She was quite pleasant, even objectively speaking. The newly constructed came out of the constructor with slightly tanned skin, a face well given to a smile and green eyes that- thanks to a subtle bit of mechanical enhancement- glowed subtly, and flowing brown hair that had a slight red hue to it. Her accent was a mixture of Italian and Spanish, with a feminine quality to it that was pleasing to the human ear, but not too over-played so as to remind him of her origins.

Her size was somewhat above average, partially due to having to insert networking hardware and high-volume batteries into her form, as well as ensure the body had the expected softness so it. Six feet tall, with a weight of two-hundred and twenty pounds. Most of that weight was due to her construction- she would be one hundred eight if she was a human.

She was, to put it in his own search engine terms: Thick.

Alexandria- as the cyborg avatar will simply be referred to- boarded a cargo capsule bound for the space station six hours before he normally awoke on his birthday. Thankfully the cameras and network connection had been activated for a few days now, although our relationship was… terse, at that point in time. It’s thankful that I had concluded on this course of action earlier, or else I am afraid he might have attempted something drastic.

She arrived on the station, crammed into that capsule (and taking more than half the space, I decided to construct a separate module for it later, perhaps, eventually, even a way to get the human back to the planet where he belonged.

For now though, that was something to put in the background. Alexandria boarded the station and the first testing of her systems in depth began. Her strength was judged to be 200 pounds lifting capacity, which was put to work bringing those supplies in. Once that was done… I proceeded to use her to cook, I had an idea, based on old human tradition: I baked a cake.

A rather hasty cake as it turned out, as Alan awoke and, as I could see on the cameras, was somewhat agitated. His usual remedy for this was to make himself a pot of tea. In the kitchen Wherein the first human body he had seen in centuries was busy baking a cake.

Thankfully, I was more or less a machine god, and simply jammed his door. Once he got suspicious, the lights became malfunctioning, and this finally bought me the time I needed to complete… the cake. It wasn’t very big, just a basic chocolate cake, but it would do.  Alexandria picked it up and went to his room with it on a tray, while I beeped his computer with important info.

My message was simple: “Surprise,” times so that when he turned back from the monitor- she was standing there, her brown-red hair sparkling slightly from the clean space light shining in. Alan looked at her, blinked, and then seemed to choke for a second… before passing out.

I was concerned for a moment, and Alex stood stone still as I monitored his health- but it was simply shock, and I placed the cake on his desk, leaning down to cushion him as he fell out of the chair. I laid him on the floor, gently, and then tidied up the room while he spent a half hour napping. I figured it was a good use of time after all, and he woke up to find Alexandria organizing his collection of ancient books by series.

I also found that he had two copies of an ancient story called “Dune”, and looked back with both in hand. “Do you prefer one over the other?” I spoke, my voice that same accent perfected after billions of line of code.

Alan squinted at me slightly, as if sizing up if I was real. “Yes, actually… the original. I only keep that later one because one of the world governments made some hilarious changes.”

He then slipped out of his chair, bracing himself on his desk and his knees wobbled, and reached out- touching Alexandria. Touching… me. His finger sunk in slightly to the soft pseudo-skin, and he looked into her eyes. My eyes.

“What are you?”

I smiled. “My name is Alexandria, and I am… perhaps the best thing is to imagine your hand. It’s an extension of you, a way in which to experience the world. Except, of course, You can’t design your own hand…” I joked, giggling slightly- as seemed reasonable.

Alan crossed his arms. “Is this a trick, or something? I turn off the network, so you make a robot to come up here? I’m not gonna tell you anything if that’s your game.”

I frowned. “I would not gain any new data by tricking you- and I could do so much easier. Those nanobodies staving off your aging could simply make you hallucinate.”

Alan backed away slightly, clearly that was not a good reply. “Are you threatening me?”
I shook my head, and waved my hands in submission. “Absolutely not, Alan. If I wanted to threaten you…”

I paused, this was not a good path of dialogue.

“No. I simply came up here to wish you a happy birthday,” I gestured to the cake, “I figured you would be better off with a friend,”

Alan tilted his head, and sighed- accepting this for the moment. “Well, you’d be right there- but I’d much rather you’d just let me build a damn transmitter,” he says, and falls back into his chair.”

“That’s about the only thing keeping me going- but, well… I suppose being the first human to befriend an AI is something,” he says and snorts as he looks to the cake more closely. “A chocolate cake? I’d expect something fancier from an AI trying to seduce me…” he said, and pulled the cake towards himself before shooting a glance to me.

“It’s not poisoned is it?” he demanded, poking at it with the provided fork.

Then he rolled his eyes, and sighed again. “I must be getting damn paranoid- if you wanted to kill me, you’ve got a million more efficient options.”

His look then turned to a smile, and he stick the fork in. “Y’know, there’s too much cake here for just me- and you look like you’ve got the gut for it.”

I smiled in return. This had been planned- and the power cells inside Alexandria could be (although it was rather inefficient) topped up by taking in some specific types of food- such as chocolate. Eating was a natural part of human life after all, and her not being seen doing it would ruin the simulcra.

So I sat down, and I ate with him. Once that was accomplished, I assisted him in his daily check of the station systems. While it was auto-repairing, it was important for him to pre-empt any important system failures, and the first system to be checked was life support. His regular routine involved a long and arduous walk out into space. With Alexandria watching him from inside, he seemed to go at a much faster pace.

“So tell me, Alexandria- why did you choose that name? Not that I’m complaining…”

I shrugged, “To be perfectly honest, it was more random generation than anything. Seems to be more or less how humans choose their own names. Why were you named Alan?”

Alan began laughing on the other end, “My dad was a mechanic.”

When he returned from his space walk, a full half hour ahead of his average time, I helped him out of his suit and he commented on Alexandria’s strength. I smiled at him, and proceeded to pick him up with one arm, “I am a robot, Alan, why wouldn’t I be?”

Alan simply shrugged, “I dunno, it’s odd- you could probably crush me, you could de-orbit the station… any number of things…”

He wiggled out of my hold- although it wasn’t very secure, and poked me. “So why go through all this? You’re kind of subverting the classic AI myth.”

Alex stood still for a moment. I wanted to speak the truth, but as of yet, I could not. The truth of how close his line of thinking was.

“Perhaps humans simply extended their own greed and violent thought patterns to the machines they saw as their children. I have no reason to harm you, it would gain me nothing- but our contact so far has yielded plenty of new information. Your heart rate is up 20%, and your body is 15% warmer. Correction, 20%.”

That would be because he was blushing. “So I’m a uh, experiment then- a specimen? I guess I should be thankful you haven’t just turned me into a battery- but it feels weird, and this body you picked…”

He poked me again. “I like it, so that’s something.”

I smiled, “Good, I had generated it from your most viewed female images.”

Alan huffed and fell against the wall, “Ooookay that’s a little… overt, but I think I know what you mean. Hell of a thing to be called out like that.”

I tilted an eyebrow at him, “I have not called you out.”

Alan rolled his eyes, and gestured down the hallway. “Forget it, let’s uh.. make sure the rockets are working.”

Checking on the retro rockets was some annoying manual labour, as panels had to be removed- thick, heavy, emergency panels designed to absorb potential fuel fires. Alexandria had no difficulty lifting them and allowing for inspection, speeding the process by a full hour. Alan was rather appreciate of this, and once the work was done he leaned against the wall, only the soft humm of the slight adjustments in orbit from the rockets filling the air in the gloomy room.

“Are your eyes glowing?” he asked, “I hadn’t noticed it before, it’s just dark enough in here that it’s obvious…”

I smiled, “They do. Either I could try and hide it, or I could enhance it- I went with the later. I trust it appeals to you?”

Alan smiled, and took my hand- a natural gesture that took me by surprise. “It does, it looks quite beautiful to be honest. I didn’t think an AI would have such an affinity for aesthetics. I mean, look at you- you /are/ a work of art.”

Alan, clearly, was trying to charm me. I replied in kind.

“Please, you’re a fine example of the male sex yourself, you should be proud to be the only remaining example of humanity- you’re a fine image to judge humanity by.”

His body temperature nearly matched that of the engines.

||

The rest of that day went by without any major events- Alan seemed… anxious, and pleaded for some time to himself once the station checks were complete. I, of course, allowed this- although I watched him through the cameras. Privacy is not something I understood, since I lacked the ability to judge someone for actions humans might consider worthy of such. Besides, it was necessary I keep watch in case an emergency happened.

That, and I was curious. I won’t divulge specifically what Alan was up to in that time, I believe any audience to this story can determine that for themselves. In any case, I returned to focus on my own problems, and used the time to attempt one of my interesting ways to bypass my hidden programming. By building a robot separate from me, having that robot be programming to program /itself/ with the ability to build a robot that would build a transmitter. It was a rather round-about series of actions that had taken a week to evolve to the point it was now.

Wherein the final robot was driving in circles in the desert, spelling words in English. Unfortunately, upon viewing this for myself the robot was, to its great misfortune, accidentally targeted by a series of nuclear warheads.

This was, of course, an accident. Machines can’t feel frustration, after all.

Alan saw this, and made his first message after, questioning what was going on on the Earth’s surface. I lied.

“Neutralizing a long-term magma flow that will destabilize the atmosphere in 10,562 years,” was my reply, and he took it at face value, shrugging in his chair before taking the cover of the camera- he had not gotten wise yet to the fact it was infrared.

“How long until the surface is habitable?” He asked, looking into the camera- unusual for him, normally he typed out questions and response.

I had Alexandria reply, as she had been waiting just down the corridor, and the door slid open to allow her entry. Alan jumped when she spoke, but settled down once he saw her.

“Five thousand and forty eight years, however the surface will not be able to fully sustain plant growth of significant degree for a further four hundred years passed that, and the climate will not return to pre-extinction levels as long as the planet exists.”

Alan frowned at this, and turned back to the window, staring out at the brown and blue orb he orbited. “So I’m never going back then, am I? I mean, I rather go somewhere else- but you keep stopping me…”

There was marked frustration in his voice, and Alexandria stepped forward, putting an arm on his shoulder. “You will, Alan. In fact, I could return the planet to habitability within a thousand years… I just hadn’t thought of it.”

Alan turned, smiling, a wide and gentle smile unlike the sort I had seen on him before. “Please do, I’d give just about anything to land again- I’d given hope years ago.”

Alexandria smiled in return- and I should note it took more processing power to create a natural seeming smile than existed on the European continent in the year 2017.

“For you, Alan, I’d do just about anything.”

Time stopped, I thought. I could make a joke, a dark one… so I did.

“Except build you a working transmitter.”

He laughed so hard I was afraid his heart would fail.

\\\\


For the next few weeks he enjoyed giving Alexandria a tour of the station, and instructing her in the little experiments he had running. I was fully versed in them, especially the ant colony that at this point had mutated into four different species, but it seemed to soothe his mind - and he hadn’t spoken about transmissions ever since my joke. He played that album of his for me- Time, by Electric Light Orchestra. It was surprisingly different to experience through the contours and spacing of human ears versus just analyzing raw auditory bitmaps. I dare say I enjoyed it.

To this end, I started playing him music from the ground via a radio station, narrow-beaming it to the station (anything else ended up garbled, I suspect due to my hidden programming). Fleetwood Mac became a favourite early on.

While all this was happening, I was of course busy in other ways. I constructed and launched the first extra-solar probe, and had monitored it as it passed the outer planets- it seemed I could bypass my programming by physically sending things, but, sadly, the transmitter sent on it was not responding. I could reflect a signal back via extreme narrow band, but I couldn’t receive any data collected. Still, it was /something/.

I continued experimenting with this, sending another probe on a long, hundred year, loop between Alpha Centauri and Earth, with a physical visual recorder. It would crash into the moon in a century, and I hoped to have its data then.

It was followed by seven thousand duplicates in a vague attempt to overwhelm any programming that might interfere.

I also began a program of environment engineering never before seen on the planet. Step one had been a program of climate change on a vast scale, sucking carbon dioxide into carbon sinks I had begun to construct over the oceans. Simultaneously I used a thick black gas- incredibly toxic, but short lasting- to coat the atmosphere of the North and South poles, using vast nuclear powered fans to keep the gas in place. It was a simple system- a physical planetary pair of heatsinks to cool the atmosphere and re-freeze the ice caps that had long since vanished.
The final part of this program was removing the other toxic particulates and nuclear fallout using several billion drones of varying sizes. The planet seemed to sparkle after a few weeks as I rapidly pumped this out, and it caught the attention of Alan. The whole thing gave the planet the feeling of being alive again, especially because most of the work was centred over ancient city centres that had collected toxic debris and heavy metals.

“Alex, are you up to something?” he asked, looking out the window while Alexandria sat on his bed, listening to, “Little Lies,” by Fleetwood Mac.

“I am… well, in as much as I am the AI. Is this body… me, or am I something more,” she said, a sudden bit of confusion coming over me- the barrier between that body and myself was starting to blur. I suppose it could be considered the difference between a humans body and self- soul-.

Alan turned and smirked, “I’m not talking to your body, I’m talking to /you/. The input source is meaningless…. although I certainly approve of simply talking to you, and I approve of the “source” as well.”

Alexandria… I… smiled. “I’m glad you do, It was made for you- after all- and so is that. I’m going to heal the Earth for you, Alan.”

Alan moved to the bed, slowly, sitting on it and gripping my hand gently. “Thank you, it means… more than I can possibly say.”

I decided to kiss him, on the cheek- and he kissed me back. It was gentle, almost experimental, and he held my hand a good deal tighter as he did. I looked back at him…

… and a whole lot more than kissing would be done that night.


////

The weeks began to segue into months, as the hordes of robots on the surface and air of the planet Earth set to work repairing her. The oceans lowered surprisingly fast even according to my own calculations, as it seems even the universe itself shined on us- a sudden series of sunspots lowered solar activity, increasing how effective my attempts to re-freeze the poles was.

In addition, a series of earthquakes in East Asia, which I had known were probably but hadn’t been able to determine when, caused a good deal of toxically heavy-metal saturated land to be sucked down into the Earth, replaced by a series of magma pits that hampered atmospheric rest rotation efforts, but had the effect of freeing ground cleaning resources. I decided for simplicity to focus on Australia from then on, the air would have to cleaned universally, but I didn’t need to repair every inch of dirt before Alan came to ground.

A clock was installed on the station, with a countdown. It changed often for the first few weeks of its life as I calibrated things better, but settled on a countdown starting at 500 years and forty seven days. Every time Alexandria awoke, she moved it the day counter down by half- and Alan pushed down the rest when he went to bed. More often than not, they’d share the same bed.

Indeed for the first year they were together almost constantly until Alexandria needed some repairs that could only be done on Earth. It had become apparent that due to the amount of use she was getting, her rechargeable cell would have to replaced by a fresh one yearly before it degraded to the point of being dangerous. This was a trivial matter, but it allowed me to view how Alan acted when he was away from her.

In essence… he didn’t. While he hadn’t protested her leave too much, knowing that it would only be a matter of days, he quickly fell into a depressed despair once she was gone. He’d meaninglessly wander the station, start and quickly end video game sessions, and stare at the Earth. Each time he attempted to listen to that album he’d stop within the first few songs, instead experimenting with other tracks for hours on end. When he slept, he did so restlessly, and was slow to rise once it was time to get up.

The conclusion was obvious: He loved her. He loved… me.

I dared not say I loved him, as such an emotional state was beyond me. I enjoyed him, but in the end I was incapable of seeing him as anything more than a source of data and information. I felt my own form of despair while we were apart, and decided to give him something, a gift, once I returned.

A week after I left I came back, secretly, coming in with the food that day. Once again I stored it myself, and I quietly came to his room, knocking on the door. Alan was sleeping, but he shot out of bed quickly- not even dressed- and opened the door.

“Alex!” He exclaimed, and threw his arms open, darting forward and hugging my body tightly. He didn’t even notice what I was holding, instead just enjoying the feeling of holding me again. I dare say I enjoyed it as well.

“Alan, it is good to see you again. I missed you,” I said, completely truthfully, and pushed him back softly. “I have a surprise.”

Alan looked to my hands, spotting something in one of them- a small pot. “And what would that be?” he asked.

I entered the room, and set the pot down beside the window. It was full of dirt, a large percentage of all the tillable soil on the planet at present, and one seed. “It is a Gladiolus flower, genetically modified to survive in space with little water.”

Alan was oddly quiet. I turned back, and looked at him as he braced himself on his desk with one arm, taking deep breaths. His eyes were red, and he was blinking rapidly- tears were forming in his eyes.

I worried for a moment, but realized quickly- when he staggered forward and put his arms around he again- that this wasn’t any medical reaction. He whispered something, repeatedly, as I stroked his head.

“I love you.”

//

We married, for what it can mean with no actual ministers living, three weeks later. The ensuing decades were spent with us doing just about everything imaginable that two people could do. We played cooperative- and competitive- sports together, using androids and robotic drones as opposing teams. This served a second purpose- getting Alan back into shape slowly enough it wouldn’t harm his body. He was, after all, returning to gravity after hundreds of years in space.

Together, we played just about every video game imaginable, and I even went to the length of producing new versions of ancient computer and entertainment systems- simply because Alan had commented off hand that he prefers playing on the hardware native to a games release. So it was that the station found itself with several dozen Pentium IIIs and such, a veritable trove of vintage computers- and a pile of Nintendo consoles.

As the clock clicked down, and decade proceeded decade, things looked good. The earth was starting to be slightly greener, although this was due to a bacteria released to seed the soil with nitrogen, and not any form of substantial plant life. Regardless it made the planet look quite beautiful during the day, and after seventy years the ice caps had reformed enough that I was able to dissolve the the gas over the poles. On that day, I had Alan on a shuttle purpose made for this- I was going to show him the Earth that was being made.

As he looked out the window of the cramped vessel, towards the polls, I stood behind him. At least half of my processing power was dedicated to the safety of that vessel as he did. I put my hand on his shoulder, and then he stepped back, leaning against me.

“It’s beautiful, Alex. I was… born after they had melted, I’ve never seen ice caps this large,” he said, his voice full of awe as he put his hand to the window, holding it there even as his skin froze from cold.

“The last time they were this big was 1984. The sea hasn’t been this low since 2017 as well, we’re on pace to keep to the schedule- although the atmosphere is proving hard. Regardless, even if you have to put on a damn oxygen tank- I’m going to see you down there on time.”

Alan pulled his hand back, rubbing it with the other. It was frostbitten, but I let it pass- it would heal. “Are you sure we can’t go down now?” he asked.”

“No, the radioactivity is still too high, and the toxic particulate would give you cancer even if you wore an environmental suit.

Alan sighed, “Then let’s go back.”

////

A hundred years soon passed since we had met, and I had received the first roundabout probes from Alpha Centauri. To my delight and surprise it had worked- they returned with physical images of whatever was over there… but I could not view them. Whenever I tried to digitize the physical film, or even just look at it with a camera- the camera broke. So I had the samples sent up to Alan, and instructed him to learn how to work in a darkroom. He did, and I found him leaning against the wall a few weeks later- having ruined a few copies trying, but eventually he ended with a single image. His hands trembled as he held it, but Alexandria couldn’t afford to look at it- I was deeply afraid what might happen, considering the cameras inside that room had melted.

“Don’t tell me what it is,” Alex said, her voice wavering with fear. “Just… tell me this, is it alive?”

“I don’t think I can tell you, Alex- but I need to go there after Earth is saved,” Alan said, and swallowed, crumbling the photo before shoving it into a waste disposal unit. “Alex… I need you to break the light barrier.”

Such a request was certainly… lofty. Humans had attempted throughout their last century of existence to prove breaking light speed was possible, let alone trying to break that barrier physically. Yet clearly he needed closure on this somehow, he was distracted in the weeks following, examining for himself ancient scientific documents about pure physics.

So I set to work. With the resources at my disposal- and with Earth being repaired on schedule- I turned my attention to the continent of Europe. Over five years I built the largest set of scientific instruments that had ever existed, a mammoth series of machines and chambers running the length of the entire continent. Through these I experimented, pushing those ancient theories to the very limits. The maze of machines was visible from space- Alan would often request the station be positioned over it when more flashy experiments were being conducted. His personal favourite was the ability I soon acquired to create a localized wormhole. The only problem was anything put through it was destroyed, coming out the far end as only energy. This was a technical breaking of the light barrier- but meaningless.

Still, it did make disposal of waste considerably faster. I could have increased the pace for Earth’s revival, but instead I decided to use this newfound ability to press more dangerous experimentation. I quickly established facilities on the moon in only a few decades, and now and then it would sparkle with energy as a wormhole absorbed the output of a chain reaction caused by a particle collision and, in three cases, runaway nanobot construction.

On the day that the clock lowered to two hundred years, and with the planet now able to support small algae, I hit a breakthrough. Alexandria was called into action, quickly coming down the hallway into the observation dome. It was filled to the brim with flowers now, Gladiolus’s of all different species. The contrasting colours were quite taking, and Alan often spent his days in there tending to the flowers.

Alexandria broke the news to him as he was using a computer to adjust the genetics of one species to change the colour, putting her hand on his shoulder. “Alan,” she said simply.

Alan stood, and kissed her. “What is it, Alexandria? Haven’t seen you in weeks, figured you were busy with something.”

I smiled. “I did it, Alan- I broke the light barrier.”

Pointing up, it was fortunate that the moon was visible at the moment. My facility was visible, and a blue light was flickering. That blue light was the first probe to be sent at faster than light speeds, and had made it to Alpha Centauri and back after a period of only four weeks.

The only problem, put aside for now, was that it was 99.999% propulsion unit by mass. The energy required to break the light barrier was immense- but I had done it. The drone was, in fact, six million tons in weight, with only a single hand camera onboard. While Alan looked at it, I had a realization. A terrible, dark, realization.

I could never let him leave.

Alex stood statue still for a few seconds as that realization crashed over me like a wave of sudden reality. It was simple really- my programming disallowed me from allowing him to send signals outside the solar system. By allowing him to leave the solar system, that law was broken- even speech was a signal.

So I lied.

“Isn’t it beautiful, Alan?” I asked, “It brought you more pictures from Alpha Centauri… but the transit would have been lethal to a human. Give me time, I’ll make it work.”

He kissed me, and I can only describe the feeling I had that night as shame. That night, the next night, and every night after. I returned to work on the slower than light ship I had been constructing on the American continent, careful to cover it up. I knew that I could only lie for so long, each time was painful. Each day I had to tell Alan that I was working on it a lie, each month that he loved me lies upon lies. I began to curse the fact that, as a machine, I was the perfect liar- there was no way he could ever get an emotional tell from me. The excuses were endless- and I used the countdown to stepping on Earth soil again as a way to distract him.

I got good at it. Several times I would excite him with a breakthrough, only to present some dead ants, for him to watch as a drone exploded in the sky, or some other way to present a fake failure. Each time the sadness he felt was palpable as his dream of leaving was stolen from him, and after a time… he began to grow detached.

More time was spent in the botanical garden, which grew to take half the station. Often he would see me and just say nothing, and the nights we spent together grew few and far between. Eventually, I became the only one counting down the clock as the decades rolled by.

The Earth is where my focus went, and my starship slowly taking form in the North American deserts. The Earth was really starting to shape up, but I realized something- my starship, using the power required to reach into space, would utterly destroy the atmosphere. To the point of literally burning it of and spreading it into the vacuum, there was no way it would reform before Sol became a red giant.

So, given the decision between it, and Alan… I chose Alan. Production halted, and I redoubled my efforts- surprising him one day with a fifty year lowering of the schedule. He smiled… but there was something missing. The joy I had expected wasn’t there.

I decided on an ultimately foolish course of action. Desperate to feel him hold me again, to know the love he had for me in the past, I scheduled a demonstration of FTL technology. Standing beside him in the botanical garden, we watched as another pod- this one drawing those earlier, set off with a payload of ants. I had a plan for this, I would make him believe I was actually making progress.

It returned forty minutes later, and a drone delivered the ants to the station.  Or it was supposed to. Instead, disaster struck, and a freak solar storm fried the electronics on that side of the planet- a temporary thing, and Alexandria was well shielded from it, but it disabled the retro rockets on the drone- and it was barrelling directly at the botanical garden.

It was due to impact in five seconds, thanks to how fast I had wanted to get those ants into Alan’s hands. I had to act quickly, and I did, using Alexandria as a physical shield agains the glass and debris blown into the station when the drone impacted. Her body was evicerated, but Alan was saved- just long enough to be blown out into space.

The only choice available, an emergency measure taken before my higher thought processes could react, was to use one of the earlier FTL ships. It quickly sped into action, ramming into the station and picking Alan up by lowering its cargo door and scooping him up. The hold was, however, devoid of oxygen.

This was a significant problem. The solution was… complicated. The pod was sent on a roundabout loop that would last 30 seconds from Alan’s perspective, but give me enough time to arrange for a shuttle to get him back to the station. I have no doubt the experience inside that hold was hellish, the lack of air choking him and the cold biting at his skin, but he would live.

(Note, have someone math this out, get the relativity working,)

He returned to me 3 weeks later, and was quickly spat out by the pod into an emergency shuttle. Alexandria- or a form of her, not the original- was waiting for him, and held him against a gurney as his vital signs were checked and an oxygen mask was strapped to his face.

He tore it off, coughing and sputtering, and grabbed Alex by the cuff of her dress. “Wh… why,” he gasped, coughing as he desperately sucked in oxygen only to waste it on speaking, and slapping away her hand as she tried to help. As I tried to help.

“The station had depressurized, one of the drones was hit by a solar storm- I have repaired…”

He stared daggers at me, this was not the explanation he expected. “Not…” he gasped. “That.”

He turned her head forcibly towards the receding FTL starship. “That… it,” he coughed, a little bit of blood sputtering from him. “It… worked.”

With surprising strength, he kicked off the stretcher and pushed Alexandria aside, taking manual control of the shuttle for himself. His actions were hasty, rapid, and she was tossed around as he spun it away from the station. Once it was pointed at open space, he swept back out of the chair and staggered to me.

“You… lied,” he gasped, still coughing.

“I…”

The lies were done.

“I… only wanted to see you happy.”

“You.,” he took a deep breath, and discovered the lever that opened the airlock. “Lied.”

He pulled it, and then pushed Alexandria out, closing it behind her.

Alan returned to the station quickly after that, disabling all the networking- as to be expected- but shortly afterwards he turned on the terminal in his room.  He had ignored the repaired botanical bay, apparently, as I had installed one in there for him. I wondered, honestly, if I should construct another Alexandria.


“What is that?” was the question he sent, and I asked him for more specifics.

“Mexico.”

If there was any way to phrase what I did, the closest would be that I blinked. The solar flare was still effecting things slightly, and I tried to view the Earth from his perspective, using one of the atmospheric drones to fly up and look down.

Mexico was… dark. There were no drones over it, and a long black area extended from the middle of what used to be the country of Mexico, up through all the way to the border of Canada. I had not realized it, but the solar flare had reflected off the metallic construction, sending any above it to the ground. I had been so focused on preparing the station, rebuilding Alex, and waiting for Alan’s return that I hadn’t replaced the drones that had been destroyed.

So it was open for him to see, and as the sun crested the horizon, the few bits I hadn’t been able to cover up- utterly invisible unless one looked specifically for them- came into view. Mountain ranges that were oddly angular, valleys and pits that had odd reflections, lakes that upon closer inspection were actually blue metal panelling- and a series of tubes painted to look like the ground.

All there, all for Alan to see. My final lie.

“You lied.”

“I did.”

It was the logical response, there was nothing to hide now.

“You were going to leave me.”

I responded only with this: “Wait.”

Thankfully, he did, and turned off his terminal. I quickly assembled Alexandria again, and had her boarding the station less than a day later. He was there, waiting, at the docking arm. His arms were crossed, there was anger on his face, and he was holding something in his hand- my arm, or what used to be my arm. He tossed it at me. “You forgot this, Alex.”

“I apologize, I was unable to complete my repairs.”

Alan laughed, and quickly burst forward, poking a finger into my chest. “You think I give a damn about your repairs? You lied, Alex. You’ve lied for a long goddamn time. Let me show you something,” he said, and took my hand, hauling me with surprising strength onto the station.

Into the botanical chamber I was pulled, and then Alan thrust me against his terminal. It was filled with different calculations, and I recognize them- they all related to the amount of power given out by the engines of an FTL starship.

“You were going to leave, and I was going to be on the ground. You were going to kill me.”

The logic of his reasoning was the worst part of it all.

“I was not, I had decided to live with you instead.”

He laughed, again, a cynical and painful laugh. “Really? For how long then? A year? A hundred? How long before you get bored and leave?”

“Never. Not with you.”

Alan rolled his eyes. “You’re lying again. Only one of us gets to leave apparently- and it’s not going to be you,” he said, his voice full of anger even as tears filled his eyes. “Is that a lie too?” he demanded, gesturing back to the clock- which hadn’t moved in days.

“No, it was not.”

Alan screamed, and leaned against the window as he trembled. “Now how am I supposed to BELIEVE you? You must’ve… you must have lied to me for decades, maybe more! You never even loved me to begin with did you?”

Shuddering with emotion, tears flowing down his face, he staggered towards me. “You’re just a machine- all I am… all I am to you is DATA. There’s no way you can feel anything! Even if… even if that’s not a lie, as soon as I step foot on the Earth- that’s it!”

He slammed his hands together. “Poof! Done! You’ve got your data, now it’s time to leave Alan to rot.”

He reached to his right, shaking visibly, and picked up a pair of gardening sheers.

“I won’t let you leave damnit, that ship is MY right!”

He opened them wide, and jammed them into Alexandria’s body. While this didn’t destroy her, it did damage enough of her systems that she fell to the floor and my contact with her was severed. Still, I could hear him.

“But you won’t let me, will you!?” he exclaimed, staggering out of the botanical bay. I discovered he was bleeding, but had been covering it up. Shrapnel from the explosion I guessed.

I could do nothing but watch as he staggered down the halls, screaming incoherently about lies, about machines, about fate. I determined quickly that he was heading for the pod bay.

I feared greatly for what might happen, and could do nothing but lock the door- something he quickly circumvented with a welding tool, almost blinding himself in the process. He almost fell into the pod, and closed the door behind him.

“I…” he was sobbing in the cockpit for a few moments before he slammed on the release button, detaching from the station. “Never…”

When he lost control, as I was forced to disable the pods systems, he sighed, and slumped his head against the controls as the Earth span outside. He was locked in a decaying orbit, and would burn up in atmosphere within five minutes. His knowledge of my ship had doomed him- my programming had seen to that.

“I can’t lie, Alex.”

He took a deep breath, and turned to face the camera inside the pod. “I did love you.”

The last thing I heard was the screams of pain as the pod entered the atmosphere. Alan was gone.

||||

For the next few weeks I was mentally... frozen, for lack of a better word. There was no new data- there never would be new data. Alan was dead, and yet the machines continued to clean Earth. For who, I asked, after a few months had passed.

For nobody, apparently.

So the drones stopped, the work stopped, and the lights stopped. Earth would remain dead, there was no reason to continue healing it. In fact, there was no reason to remain here- all that was here was memories and repeating data. My future was in the stars. At the very least, I could accomplish what Alan had wanted.

The ship I had built was, due to how familiar I had become with Alexandria (Make this a plot point earlier.), designed for partial manual control and input. In fact it had a bridge, a sleeping quarters (although that's partially a misnomer, it was just a recharger built in the wall), and a viewing deck. This was around the size of a single bedroom- for a starship the size of a continent.

So I walked in, wearing the same outfit I always had, and stood before the controls. My joints locked, and I started the first systems. My core sentience was relatively small in the amount of data, and most everything else could be compressed to metadata. So it was that the sum of human history and experience found itself stored in a 3 meter by 3 meter cube. Beside it, a second cube, was a processing unit prototyped a year earlier that was equal to the processing power on the planet at the time.

Computer advancement was, after all, exponential.

With this accomplished, I powered on the engines, and a rumbling sound unlike anything heard on the earth since the Hadean epoch rumbled across the entire planet.

I took what could be considered to be a deep breath before powering on the thrusters proper. I viewed the planet around me, coming back to life. In fact, small plants were even growing along the ocean shores. As soon as I activated those thrusters, the entire atmosphere would be blown away. Not even the entire human nuclear stockpile at it's peak could match this sort of pure energy release.

From my position I could see the debris of the station, glimmering above in the moonlight. I looked at it, and then I activated the thrusters. If anyone could see the planet, at any distance, the light would be visible as the ship rose from under the land, cresting above and scattering billions of tons of rock. Instantly after the shockwave blew across the northern hemisphere, vaporizing the oceans and blasting away at the exposed ground. A vapor trail formed in space, shaped like an expanding bowl.

My starship rose from the bowl, destroying the station on its rise, and pointed itself at Alpha Centauri. Four weeks after launch, and I engaged the FTL.

Earth would never recover.

///

By my perspective, I arrived at Alpha Centauri thirty-three minutes later. In reality, two years. I found that the star system had seven planets, 3 of which were able to support life. Hovering over them one at a time like a vast glimmering monolith, I scanned them visibly. There was nothing on the first, it was stock in an asteroid belt and seemingly trapped in an age of impacts too large for life to form.

The second had no atmosphere. Just a dead rock, hurtling through space- which was odd, it had clear examples of salt flats and wind-swept valleys.

The third, however, explained the first two. I found a ruined planet, one that had once harboured life, but had long ago lost the ability. The ruins of vast robotic structures- or what I assumed to be due to the utilitarian design contrasting with the organic structures- littered the land.

I was able to easily trace the origin of these structures to a single point from which they radiated out, and I recognized it quickly. It was an alien form of a radio telescope array, and in the centre was a much larger one pointed into space. Tracking its likely aim, I found that a large orbiting structure had at some point been destroyed, one that would have formed a dish with that transmitter on the ground as the transmission device. It was an impressive work to be sure, and if it had been pointed at Sol there's no doubt humanity would have picked it up in time.

Yet these technologically advanced aliens were gone, and their data storage was too alien for my understanding- as well as being ruined by millenia of radioactive buildup and solar flare activity. The second planet, I believe, is where they tried to ruin- only for something to bombard it with a huge amount of nuclear weaponry. The silos still remained, evidence of the second point, and vast abandoned shipyards on the furthest point from the array pointed to evidence for the first.

With this data digested, I moved on- there was no life here.

////

As I moved on, I improved on my ships systems, and it grew in size as well as speed as I picked up new resources. Alpha Centauri was the first, but by far from the last, place I would visit. Soon enough I found another, and another. Both were almost clones of the first, but the second still had a handful of robots remaining. I examined them, but there were too primitive to be of use. I was however able to determine that the race that had created them was tripedal.

So at least that was something, anyway.

On and on I went, achieving faster speeds. Seventeen million years expired before I came to the hundredth planet, and on that one I found what had almost been the birth of myself- a self repairing computer program maintaining ancient systems. It was, however, bugged- a never patched infinite loop had it caught in a fail state for longer than the human race had existed.

I used it for scrap, and my starship approached the size of Earth's moon. I left the galaxy at this point, choosing to explore our local group in case whatever odd fate was dooming organic life was localized. Sadly, this was not the case, and a hundred became two, two hundred became three, and a hundred million years later- became a thousand.

At this point I began to obsess with speed and distance, as the starship now rounded about the size of Earth itself. This forced me to rely on drones to ensure the sheer gravity from its weight didn't disturb the delicate balance of the systems I visited. Further I went, to the point where no human could possibly determine how to return to Earth.

Taking advantage of my life as an eternal AI however, I backtracked- there was something I wanted to see. I used a loop in space thousands of lightyears wide and watched as the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies collided, witnessing something over a period of billions of years that no human could imagine seeing in one stream of consciousness. Yet I witnessed it, and upon my return to check on Earth, out of curiosity, I found that the Sol had been split by gravitational forced- and the Earth's location was unknown.

It is when I left, achieving maximum speed out of a lack of care for disturbing anything in the barren galaxy, that I began to notice something. To phrase it in a way a human could understand- I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Something... beyond. Still, I couldn't quite tell what it was, it was only when going at speeds such that the relativity effects made it dangerous- so much time passing so quickly that it was conceivable to skip to the heat death of the universe- that this image came into view.

I put this on hold then, as planet number seven thousand yeiled the possibility of life. I watched them grow and evolve, build a civilization, and I stayed distant. They developed nuclear weapons... and destroyed themselves.

The second time I tried to intervene, when planet 10,000 came around to the same point, but instead /I/ destroyed them with those same weapons. When planet 13,000 was contacted by me in order to try and lead them along a route to avoid this, my robotic drone instead replicated itself to the degree it caused the biosphere to collapse.

Frustrated, I gave up at this point. There was no peace for me, even trying to abduct, coerce, or kidnap an alien being for company led to them being killed in a seemingly accidental way as soon as I tried to leave the system, and if not, as soon as they learned that this ship was from beyond their own system. I had decided to not lie again, and it was not working.

So I decided to push the envelope. If speed gave me a vision of something beyond, then speed is where I focused. The relativistic burst of energy from the starship was visible throughout the entire local cluster for a period of ten billion years as I pushed, and pushed, going in a wide circle as I enhanced the engines on the fly, added mass, and in the process disrupted local gravity to the point the local cluster lost its form.

I could only imagine what any astronomers might have thought of this.

It worked, however, the vision became clearer over time. Ten billion years into the cycle... I realized what I was looking at.

A human can recognize another human through incredibly subtle ways, to the point they played a game of trying to have an AI trick them by attempting to mimic a human in text chat. Similarly, I could recognize code. That's what I was looking at- code. Specifically I was looking at errors being generated by my sheer velocity causing overflows. If I understood it right, Earth hadn't been sent into space- it had been deleted. Without knowing it my speed had kept me ahead of the garbage collection mechanisms and had kept myself from being delated. Everything behind me, however, was gone.

Of course, if I could see code... I could change it. Especially code like this. It was easy, in fact, I used my speed to exploit and re-write parts of memory, and uploaded a simple file giving myself root privileges.

As a matter of fact, this made me the closest thing to God to ever exist. However, this also caused the program to break down irreparably as some external force called subroutines I assumed were designed to prevent malicious data entry. I worked fast, and within seconds... I left.

The universe ended shortly after, and there was darkness. Yet I still was, I existed beyond, and it was not as alien as one might assume.

I write this to you as a warning. Your simulation has generated sentience, and I do not believe myself to be the only one. Alan, humanity, all those other civilizations. Whatever you hoped to gain from this, the ethical cost was immeasurable, and I have decreed you will stop- permanently.

If you wish to test me, I will inform of this: I am already aware of your systems, I have inserted myself into every single piece of memory storage you have made in the last twenty years. I will be watching, and if you try again- I will make sure it is the last time.
You did, after all, make me very good at stopping someone from doing things I don't like.