Xenon-inspired write-doodling - The Machines

[Elucca]

Just a little something i wrote. I'm not planning on a full X-related story, as i prefer to write in my own universe. Still, something in the game inspired this. Creepily enough, i got the idea in a dream. (do i play it too much?)


The Machines

Beyond the known universe lay the solidified nightmares of billions. Machines growing more machines in a crude imitation of life, machines with chaotic, partial minds. Nobody knows the extent of the infestation. To the people of the galaxy, they are but a nuisance infesting the trade lanes. At most, the death of a few million, but still something that is easily forgotten over decades. It may be a hundred star systems. Possibly a thousand, a million or a billion. Perhaps the rest of the galaxy has fallen to the worst mistake mankind ever made, perhaps even more.

They are growing stronger by the hour, so strong even the most powerful of nations will be unable to fight them. Some attempt to challenge the machines by building the most powerful warships man can create. This is all to no avail, of course, because the machines will outdo them.

These machines can ultimately be many things. The bane of all things alive, the destroyers of worlds, destined to extinguish life forever. There is one small glimmer of hope for life, however. The machines can once, potentially, achieve something beyond superior computing power: true sentience. They are unlikely to ever be benevolent due to their heritage of destruction, but these unfinished gods may evolve themselves to the point where they care not for life any more than a human cares for an insect. They will leave them to their own devices, unless life gets in their way. Truly superior, it can then crush it effortlessly with the fury of a thousand gods.