Evolution. Many wise and advanced peoples have come to believe in the existence of such an entity. They describe it as a vast, permeating force affecting practically every single thing for the sole purpose of pursuing perfection. The smallest changes in one's DNA to make one better camouflaged to their new environment - Evolution. That strange mutation that turned Sertraline's hair purple and led to them becoming overlords of their galaxy considering purple was the closest to...Brown - Evolution.
Perchance you yourself may be imagining a being on the level of Death or Ego sitting at the very pinnacle of the myriad multiverse, overseeing the development of Life on a cosmic scale.
You would be wrong.
In a small wooden hut at the edges of an empty village, on a nondescript planet floating through the void between galaxies along its lonely stellar companion, there exists a small, disheveled rat of a woman. Her eyes, bloodshot, never left the piece of arcane parchment her pen (biro) scratched at endlessly. She wrote at light speed until the entire page turned black with ink and she crumpled it up and threw it away. She grabbed another piece of paper and the process repeated.
As you may have guessed, this pitiful creature is indeed the one known as Evolution. Perhaps her uncouth state may serve as a warning to the greater races that the pursuit of perfection is ultimately an exercise in fluvious folly. When one personally wishes to take responsibility for the advancement of almost every single living being within the Multitudinous Existence, it becomes more than a job and nothing less than a time-consuming chore of useless effort.
Nonetheless, perhaps at least her perseverance can be admired - to not give up in the face of such an endless task surely requires a will of something far stronger than steel. More than that, it was clear that she did care for her work, striving to her utmost to ensure the survival of all species solely from the goodness of her heart. Of course, as with everything in existence, there are those primordial few for whom Evolution's writings were more of a suggestion than a universal constant, as well as those aspiring races who dared to encroach on her domain themselves - to varying degrees of success.
However, there is a reason Evolution is not the same as Life. She cannot create: only advance, improve. Perhaps she may advance a bacterium into a sentient species eventually, but to create one from scratch does not fall under her domain.
This was not always the case, however. Once, a long time ago, Entropy came to visit her under the pretext to get her to relax from her work. She had been working continuously for several billion years at this point, and not really much progress beyond the multicellular phase was being made. Coaxing her with his honeyed words until eventually she agreed to come out, but only for a single tea.
"All according to plan", Entropy did not whisper behind Evolution's back.
So they went off to a normal coffee shop and Entropy did not spike Evolution's tea and her subsequent billion-year black out was because of an allergic reaction to the tea.
When she came to, she soon realised that she had finally done it. She had created a living, breathing creature of her own accord! She stared into its black, empty eyes and what stared back at her was more than madness. We know not what she saw there: only that she exploded the entire universe and sealed away her creation abilities forever. To be dismissed and shunned by Evolution in such a way is more than a death sentence - it means complete and utter eradication. No records have or will ever exist of such a creature, and its cursed lineage will never again grace the cosmic tapestry.
Or so she thought.
Perhaps she should be applauded instead of discouraged. For in her unconscious stupor, she had created a being that surpassed almost every other in existence in persistence. Somehow, that blank-eyed progenitor had, within the few seconds of their existence before Evolution came to her senses and attempted to undo her act in uncharacteristically manic desperation, managed to hardcode their presence into...something. Fate and Order attempted to divine together what this something was, and returned clawing out their eyeballs and bleeding from their hair. This was creepy and foreboding because...hair doesn't bleed. Whatever this something was, it was beyond even their purview.
This action shocked them enough that an emergency meeting of the Highest Council of All Councils of All Councils was called with almost every cosmic being at the time. Clearly this creature was a wart on exist and removing it became priority number 3. Excising it was difficult, but they thought they succeeded. Evolution was officially banned from drinking tea and threw herself back into her work, while the others disbanded, too preoccupied with the Chaos caused by this event in their own domain.
That was until, the creatures came back.
To understand the magnitude of this act, you must understand that this simply should not happen. It's not a matter of exceptions. Surviving this was akin to placing a slice of toast into a supernova and finding it unharmed. The collective might of the cosmic beings, overseeing the multiverse is enough to, if they should wish, alter any aspect of existence except...The Brown. But if that were involved, there would be far more obvious signs...
Panic soon spread among their number as such a power to have existed entirely unnoticed spoke to a threat unlike any they had ever faced before. Except Entropy who giggled to himself silently, unnoticed by all save Destiny who scoffed before promptly falling back asleep.
Alas, there was nothing to be done. The plague had been unleashed and all they could do now was to watch. And damage control. Lots of damage control. They could at least take solace in the fact that without the support of their creator Evolution, their method of coming into existence appeared more arduous, limiting their spread to a more manageable degree.
But how is this all related to THE AGE OF SILICON AND STEEL and its boring non-adventure? Find out on the next episode of The Tale of a Trinacornagon!