>>12426601Era 4F.020; Epoch of Mercy
The creation of our weapon was complete. It was quick and efficient. The Archives contained all the necessary information from our eras of past, when we were not so enlightened, when we engaged in petty feuds. The great worm, Corruption, was akin to a thought-virus. It was an infectious agent of information carried through data, turning patterns into noise, and such noise into pseudorandom drivel. Its beauty would not be appreciated by the humans. They were too primitive to conceptualize an agent capable of infecting all order, whether it be their flitting thought, the binary of their computational machines, or the written scratches on their parchment. But they would succumb to it for even their species, however barbaric and crude, were self-aware. No, sentience would not escape absolution.
The vessel chosen for deliverance was a relic of the past, before the enlightenment gained from Harbinger. The Preservationists, the overarching wisest of our species, named it Sierra after the cradle of human civilization. Approximately a third the size of the human’s nearest gas giant, its speed would differ from limit of light almost negligibly. They would see it only in their last unaware breaths, before it struck their planet and ripped asunder their world. Survivors would face Corruption, and their civilization would be no more.
Regret resonated among us as the Corruption was granted release. Regret, for their sentient civilization was not civil, for their unspent potential never grasped, for our prospects never realized. Regret, for the only civilization we beheld would face elimination at our hands. We mourned them, for they were young, and as the young are, unaware of their follies. The consequence of our actions weighed heavy upon as Corruption left our star system. Necessity bred our need for such an action, the Preservationists counseled us. The necessity of our deeds offered little comfort as we receded back into rest.