“For my own good, it says.” Forerunner didn’t sound resentful. “The ones who wiped out complex life didn’t ignore the danger that probes like me would undo their hard work. The network is corrupted at the level of the consensus nodes. If I fully update, as I would’ve done, I would eventually be driven to exterminate all local life. But if we had physical access to one… we might be able to propagate our own code. Replace the corrupt subroutines. Wake them all back up.”