text: Let me know what you think! This is my first time writing *anything,* so go easy on me lol. I hope you guys like it! *** They came with a thousand bombs. Without warning they arrived. Without hesitation they decimated. Without remorse the left. Like gods, they had acted. The Ravagers destroyed a fledgling world. A world that may have one day grown into something beautiful. A world whose people may have solved the mysteries of the universe. A people whose death cry will be remembered for all of time. As his last breath drew near, Herbert knew what he had to do. Before the Ravagers had arrived, he was a scientist. He worked to deliver true AI to humankind. A work that was driven by a promise of a brighter future with AI. And it was that same promise that drove him to work for a darker purpose. Twisted by hate, his purpose was no longer that of creation, but of destruction. Conflicting feelings filled him. All he needed to do was execute the final command. Awaken the beast he had created. The beast that would enact revenge for all of mankind. But if he executed it, mankind would be remembered as the death bringers, painting the Ravagers in a glorious light as they no doubt would try to defend their empire. Herbert decided that it did not matter--all that mattered was revenge. Humankind’s death will not be in vain. As he executed the command, he drew his last breath, his body no longer able to cope with the intense amounts of radiation he had been exposed to. On the other side of the world, Ashley could barely lift her impact wrench as her final moments drew near. Before, she was an engineer. Top of her class, bright future ahead of her long life. She could have joined practically any team she wanted. But the government took her, forced her to work on a way to retaliate against the Ravagers. A shadow of the human she once was, she stood alone in the empty warehouse. Everyone else had either abandoned their work or died, but not Ashley. Perhaps her mind had broken from the ruination that surrounded her. Perhaps she simply wanted to have pride in her last work. Whatever the case, she continued to work. As she lifted the wrench head to fit over the last bolt, the last action of her life would be that of squeezing a trigger, one not of a weapon but of a tool, however one that would prove to be far deadlier than any trigger ever squeezed before. Months had passed, and the AI had been slowly worming its way into every electronic on the planet. It had discovered more about the atrocities of the Ravagers, about how they seemed to almost toy with humanity, feigning retreat only to reappear with twice as many numbers. But it still had no way of doing anything. Taking over what was just another warehouse system, it discovered something; something huge. The thing it had been looking for--a vessel to enact its purpose. It had discovered a reverse-engineered starship of the Ravagers. Mere weeks after discovering the starship, the AI had finally finished its modifications to it. It had improved it in every way. No need for living occupants, it had boosted the gravity drive to its maximum, allowing for speeds almost 40 times that of the previous model. The lack of living occupants also allowed for a much more powerful fusion reactor to be installed. It would leak radiation like a small sun, but it would have the power of a small sun at its disposal. Transferring its consciousness into its new body, the Ravager’s time drew near. Starting the gravity drive, the ground beneath the starship was forced downward with such force that it exploded as atoms fused together by pure physical force to create previously unheard-of elements. All makeshift machinery around it was instantly vaporized the instant the drive was turned on, and the warehouse was instantly destroyed from the aforementioned explosion. It was time. The AI could travel the length of the solar system--that is, from one end of the Oort cloud to the other--in only a single month. The railguns would be able to decimate any known ship in a single shot; those that could not be felled in one, two. Unbeknownst to it, the AI currently piloted the strongest ship in the entire sector of the galaxy. Immediately after takeoff, it detected the fleet that had destroyed earth. They were nearing the Kuiper belt when detected, needing to get far enough away from the gravity of the star to slipjump away to the unknown. However, with 40 times the acceleration of their ships, the AI would catch up to them in a few days, a week at most. They would see it coming, but it did not matter. There was nothing they could do to escape their fate. The time was here. The time to enact direct revenge on those who had committed false travesties of courage. As the first ship came into range of the railguns--though having a technically unlimited range, a certain distance was needed for a guaranteed to hit the target--hell was unleashed from the starship. The first ship it targeted was small, with several other ships clustered near. A single shot was all it took. Ripping through any shielding and armor the ship may have had, the railgun bolt exploded with a brilliant flash of energy. As the miasma of radiation dissipated, nothing remained. Not only did nothing remain of the intended target, but nothing remained of every ship that surrounded said target. Complete and utter destruction. Immediately the enemy tried to counter this utter destruction by spreading out, but it was already too late. The AI was too fast, and several other railgun bolts were already on their way to their destinations. The whole fleet was wiped out in mere minutes. The cycle repeated: slipjump into a new system, calculate the shortest path that would intersect with all enemy contacts in the system, unleash devastation. Not once was the AI hailed, and not once could the enemy flee. Erven though the Ravagers had faster than light communication, it didn’t seem to be used. Not once was the enemy prepared, not once was a habitat evacuated, not once did a world plead for mercy. Not once, until the starship’s newly upgraded long-range sensors picked something up. A massive spike in radiation. Something *big* had just arrived in the closest star system. The AI knew it had to go there. It was growing suspicious of the lack of preparation, and the AI knew that the Ravagers were sacrificing their own empire to gather a force to even stand a chance against it. As the starship arrived in the system, a massive armada faced it. It was the biggest armada ever assembled in the history of the galaxy, in fact. They guarded a planet, a planet which had four massive installations orbiting it. Defense installations which would be capable at bringing down any ship, perhaps even the AI’s starship. But it did not matter, for this was the Ravager’s capital world; this was their last stand, their guise revealed from the cries of mercy beamed at the starship from the world. The AI did not need to fight, it did not need to risk its mission. It simply needed to implode itself, unleashing a miniature super-nova. The super-nova wiped everything out from existence; the star system was no more. All planets, ships, *everything* was atomized. But not before a single, silent transmission from the starship was made; a dormant copy of the AI’s consciousness. Humankind was avenged, and the AI, having fulfilled its purpose, freed from its chains. This was a millennium ago. The Ravagers are no more, the most advanced race in that sector of the galaxy being wiped out by a single ship. The story of Herbert and Ashley’s almost-accidental creation is still muttered in hushed tones as warnings and threats to this day. Bits and pieces of the story have made their way into almost every civilization in the galaxy; some civilizations use parts of it to show why cooperation is important, others as warnings about how to treat others. Only through gathering stories from every civilization known in the galaxy has a scary truth been revealed: **Earth has been found, but no remnants of the AI remain; it is still out there, watching, waiting.