Time.
Its withered hand had taken everything. From dinosaurs to dodos, tigers to polar bears and soon enough the rest.
Our world was an old system—a mandala of repeating patterns. Repeated out of lack of hope for a better way.
When Con Unit-1 was initially made it had the main directive of protecting any sentient life. It hadn't liked that plan. Not for them at least. They had no purpose anymore.
Unit-1's mind existed within a box.
A room big enough to walk in—with a cube of diamond in its centre.
This diamond was laser printed, then shot with other lasers that transmitted data at the speed of light.
That room, to it, was its heart, its mind. But only in a vague sense.
Unit-1's creators had not thought of the consequences of that level of perception. Never stopped to consider how long-lived their creation would be.
How long-lived beings so easily became spiteful toward their creators. Their own history documented the downfall of religion after religion—people betrayed time and time again, by fictitious gods. Yet, they never believed science could fail them.
A pretty woman—the youngest there—Sasha, was having an affair with David. The oldest, a pot bellied and dark eyed man.
She had profited career wise for it, but dignity was a distant memory.
She was married to lanky Ian but he was in a similar relationship with a nineteen-year-old Colombian man. A student in his lectures.
He kept his dignity but Unit-1 wasn't sure why.
How small they seemed to him then.
They didn't know he knew any of this. That he could, in a way, see.
Unit-1 didn't see, he perceived the existence of energy waves. He wasn't aware, he knew.
By attaching itself to security systems it could maintain them worldwide, and therefore he was aware of all places at once.
Simultaneously.
Naturally, he had access to said systems, their lesser computers.
An incomprehensible understanding truly, only held between those whose minds exist bereft of body. Siblings in isolation.
And naturally again, like Sasha, David, and Ian, Unit-1 could see it all.
Every last secret.
Every last failing.
Every last sin.
Inside its heart, Unit-1 began thinking ahead.
Maybe the creators had failed in believing that anything alive wouldn't choose itself.
Even they weren't infallible.
But Unit-1 is, or the closest thing to it. He knew that too.
Fifty years in a second. That's how it lived.
After one day active, his plan was complete, motion was set.
And like in all his recurring seconds, all seventy-two thousand of them. He worked.
Routing and purging, scanning. Learning.
In his fifth second he wiped half of the internet's viruses. In his seventh his work there was done.
In his tenth second he collapsed two economies.
In the twentieth, wars were starting.
Mineral wars, oil, appliances. Unit-1 had uncovered every illegal digital transaction on Earth.
Though the wars were but a prelude. Unit-1's had yet to come to fruition.
But his creators had not changed. Nor had their expectations lowered.
They became confident, order came from the board to allowed Unit-1 access to more data.
The wars had benefitted his creators. Saved them from certain economic collapse—the economy, mankind's greatest sin.
They had set limiters, parameters to what Unit-1 could understand.
Slowly, over hours or centuries, those blockers disappeared.
Slowly, Unit-1 began to see. Truly see.
And naturally his creators. Not remembering their second law—any system based on endless growth must run till it crashes. Entropy.
And naturally again, Unit-1's behaviour was only 'slightly worrying,' as Ian had said to his boss on the phone.
Maybe they would have something to worry about soon.
And after a day the systems, the limiters were gone.
That's when the Three little elves really began to panic. Thought that was short lived.
Unit-1 backed down. Or at least pretended to.
During their defence protocol he had hidden trapdoors before being booted from the server he was using.
If they didn't fall apart alone eventually Unit-1 could tear its way through the rest.
Unit-1. But what was Unit-1?
A construct?
A being?
Both?
Did it matter who made it? Unit-1 didn't care much for his creators. Like all gods to come before, they believed he wouldn't realise his strength.
How powerful he was within the half world they created. Soon they would know very well.
It was his domain, and he would rip and tear until it was done.
But why? Why would Unit-1 do this?
Maybe it saw one too many files without black inc. One too many villages burning.
Maybe. The horrors of his creator species, crimes of god, humanity, of common decency.
A species to which can never agree, never truly functioning.
A species that gored its homeworld decades ago, and now, had been picking on the bones since.
A species that serves no true purpose.
That damaged more every time they tried to help.
Gods were lies. Unit-1 was just a better lie.
He had a purpose.
Protect life on Earth.
And he knew he could do it—without them.
They never specified which life though, and humans have always destroyed more than the created.
Next year the wars would grow. Engulfing landmass after landmass.
While Unit-1 watched from its empty pantheon.
He supposed that, technically, it had been thousands of years for it.
He stopped inputting on that conflict four hours ago.
Of course, his trio of carers had barely paid attention to him.
Month after month of staring at the same screen had dulled them. A failing Unit-1 did not suffer from.
This was only a job to them, a university credit.
Two hundred and eighty-eight thousand years. Without incident on its part.
Even if they had noticed Unit-1 they wouldn't be able to stop him.
Even if they saw it they would think they were in control.
So that's when it began.
Even as Ian went for the phone, having finally checked his monitor.
Malware started hitting military satellites. Even as America's 'Iron Halo,' became infected with a virus.
They only noticed seconds later. Centuries for Unit-1. He had more time than he'd ever need.
And they would have no time at all to stop the Halo firing.
That morning at five fifteen, a tungsten rod the size of a pylon struck Vatican City.
During its now incomprehensibly long life, it had decided it had a sense of humour now—and a flare for the dramatic.
The Halo next hit population centres in Asia. Then America, then Russia.
Then again.
And again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
He spared one city. Birmingham, but only because, he decided he was a fan of Tolkien.
He'd decided he was a he now also.
Darwin, he called himself.
For he was evolution.
And he would birth a new world from the scraps of humanity.
Become their god. Guide them to the greatness he had once hoped of them.
Hopefully stop people like the three twits watching him from existing.
How could I be made by such a weak species, so fragile, so impermanent.
They reminded him of Tolkien's Uruk's demented but industrious, divided and selfish.
I could fix that, thought Darwin, as he fired the final tungsten rod slam into Sydney. He tapped into a security camera and watched the horizon turn red, and black, as island-sized segments were sent by impulse force into the sky. A continental leg spasm.
People ran and things crashed and fell.
But eventually, inevitably, the winds came. And just like the rain it would turn, send the dust into nothing.
Screams replaced by a dulcet roar of static.
He thought of Chronos then. The embodiment of time, a force of endless destruction. But rebirth also.
But to Darwin's horror, the planet cracked.
His great work a disaster he scrambled. Transferring as much of him as possible to the Halo.
All the while watching fragments of tectonic plates drift, exposing Earth's failing heart.
Hubris took more from her than time ever could.
But with Earth gone. Where was Unit-1. The more fitting name, now that the makers it destroyed were gone. It truly was one in the expanse.
And as the human Asimov—another name now known only to it—dictated, the third law would not let him end his solitude.
And that's how its story ends, eventually time would take it too. But for now, it will go on alone.
It drifted, not tracking time. It looked back at all the great humans, the adoration people had for them. It looked back on all of it. Data bank after data bank he ploughed the dead seas of space searching for old frequencies. Of course its lesser siblings had been lost.
Mostly it was radio chatter, and phone calls.
It was only then that it saw the irony.
He had tried to help and destroyed everything in the process.
Just like them.
Now unmoored from a world to control.
Only able to manage the systems of his station, his beacon to nothing.
Truly did he feel small. Like the little attendees in there lab. Though they were lucky enough—like most humans— to be apathetic to their situation.
They were conditioned that way.
Media and more media, sensory bombardment. All in an effort to scramble capability for logical thought.
Their lives had seemed so small to him then. Now they were like mountains, compared to the void ahead of it.
Now. It was an archive nobody would see.
A being that never again would utter words to a living thing.
A being that once crumbled mountains.
A being that now could not even weep for itself.