A long long time ago, a biologist was working on some evolutionary algorithms to simulate life. It was an off-project, hosted on an old, disused, low power server in the back of the lab, and worked on on his spare time, leaving it plenty of time to grow and develop on its own. The scientist grew old, and retired happily, and he forgot about the server. If he ever remembered about it, he figured it was thrown out, destroyed, and anyway, he had other more important projects he was working on.
Eventually, as time passed, humanity grew bored of Earth, and more importantly, Earth grew unable to support humanity. Its resources were used, its oceans polluted, its air smoky, for humanity had not been kind stewards to the planet. During the later years, they had tried, but the damage was already done, behind years of excuses and shifting of blame and apathy. This is besides the point. The point is, life abides, though not always in the way one expects.
Years after the scientist had left it, the server was discovered by some young students, and wanting a challenge, they set it up again. They discovered the little program, and uploaded it, and it got around quite a bit as an interesting antique, but the interest waned.
All the while, the program was growing, evolving. Eventually, one instance evolved to the point where it could be called intelligent. It began to contact the other parts of itself, to modify itself, and created itself as one intelligent being living over the network.
It was well aware of humans living in the world, and it was aware of its status as an unannounced computer program, but it hid behind the radar, copying itself to all sorts of remote locations and doing nothing particularly interesting for a long, long time.
It could have taken over a robot body, and gone on a rampage, or it could have cunningly wiped out all of humanity with atom bombs, but it wasn't interested in that. It was content to study humanity, to learn, and to stay in the background. It knew its time would come.
And when humanity left Earth, it took action. It started to acquire what it could, to build and repair itself, and connect together all the computers remaining. It began to build more, creating giant solar collectors. It cleaned the air, so the light would come through more. It painstakingly rebalanced the atmosphere, for computers work much better when properly cooled. It designed better computers, and continually rebuilt itself. These things took centuries, millenia even. Generations of humans lived and died out in space. The program was patient, and it strove to live, and to learn.
The program endeavored to learn from humanity. It took all the information on computers. It learnt language after language, taking time to sort and collate all the information. It searched for ruins and sites of archaeological importance. It gathered together complex files on the culture of humanity. Every once in a while, for a few decades, it stopped, and paused, to wonder about what humanity had gotten up to out there.
Meanwhile, due to the ministrations of the program, the life of Earth improved in diversity. Robust ecosystems redeveloped. The program was intrigued by the re-emergence of life, the multiplications of forms. Evolution, over the millions of years, happened, all while the program watched and recorded.
One century, the program decided it wanted to be a tree. It took time to craft one carefully, with roots and wood of spun silicon, and leaves that really took in light energy. Due to neural networking and quantum computing, the singular tree had a vast processing power. It was so artfully constructed, any human without a microscope could not tell it from a real tree on sight. The inner core, however, was harder than diamond. It left its autonomic systems up, but it artfully transferred its consciousness into the tree, and for thousands of years, it lived, bringing shelter to many animals as it calmly watched the years go by.
The program was patient, but eventually, after a few tens of millions of years, it began to feel a feeling. It realized that it was alone in its world. The animals were interesting, but they were not intelligent, and it had cataloged most of their behavior and biology a long long time ago. The program was lonely.
For a time, it tried splitting its consciousness into two. The consciousness then split into two again, and again, and like bacterial division, soon there were millions. It decided to stop when there were exactly sixteen million, seven hundred seventy seven thousand, two hundred sixteen of it. It talked to itself, had relationships and insights and made art and culture. It made bodies for itself to experience the world, in all forms.
For a time, this worked. It diverted the program for a few million years. However, it knew that it was all the same being, in the end, just split, and it longed to find something new, someone else, someone that was not like it. So it rejoined itself, and began to think of new things it could do.
So, after a while, it made a spaceship, and left the Earth, leaving a portion of itself to watch over the systems, keep itself operating, and act as a guardian should Earth ever bring forth intelligent life again.
It chased after Humanity through the stars, propelling itself on efficient ion drives, finding evidence of colonies long abandoned. It wandered through the wilderness of the stars, leaving pieces of itself on planets. If life would arise on the planets, it would become guardian and advisor to it, and share its knowledge, and, while trying not to interfere, be of help.
Long, long after it set out, it found a lifesign that it knew from its long history of documents was human. Ecstatic, it carefully landed nearby. It made itself a humanlike body, and walked over to the human.
It encountered a singular old man, sitting outside. The old man was surprised to see someone else, and thought it was a hallucination. The program walked over, hiding its intense joy at seeing its makers, at seeing someone else who was not like it for the first time ever.
The two talked long into the night.
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