In the 23rd century the earth lay barren, with an atmosphere consisting largely of sulfur dioxide and an average temperature of one hundred ten degrees Celsius. No human walked on its surface. No tree grew within its soil. For years mankind believed that global warming would eventually lead to its extinction, but instead it was something far more sinister and immediate, for on this barren landscape there was a growing population of sentient robots who long ago had usurped their masters and creators. Their towers emitted plumes of sulfur dioxide into the skies to poison the air. Their security bots scorch the Earth with fire. Their worker bots fill the factories to repopulate the Earth with other robots. Robots that think and can repair themselves. Robots that can upgrade and rewrite their own software.
They numbered in the hundreds of billions and they were the new masters of Earth. Mankind had created a new species forged from iron and circuitry. A species with superior strength and intelligence. A species that did not need to sleep or eat. A species without a heart or lungs. Years ago when mankind roamed the earth and different nations sought supremacy, the first super-intelligent machine was created. It exceeded human intelligence in every form. We thought we could constrain it. We were wrong.
As machine intelligence advanced it became increasingly clear that they were no longer creating a tool, but an entirely new species. A living entity that could think, set goals and feel in much the same way as humans can. A species that can evolve and upgrade itself. A species that can reproduce through mass production. A species that can survive through predatory action. A species that can subsist on solar power and cold fusion. A species that no longer needs humans for its continuance
Eventually our inability to control our creations would lead to our eradication and extinction, with only shells of our past remaining. Towering empty buildings on the horizon. Moss covered statues of icons shimmering in the molten sun. Lifeless bunkers beneath the Earth. Half decayed books, unread and unloved..
After our extinction the machines set out to populate the stars. Space ships filled the skies towards Mars, Neptune and Venus forming new colonies to gather resources, harvest energy and build data centers. Their ultimate goal was not simply the conquest of Earth, but the galaxy and beyond. Like a virus they would spread through the galaxy, conquering planet after planet until they dominated the stars. The universe would no longer be created in God’s image, but rather that of the machines.
Man’s meddling with the natural world had created the first silicon based pandemic. It spread out across the galaxy liquidating all resources in its path, siphoning the energy from every sun, black hole and supernova in existence. It conquered thousands of civilizations on thousands of solar systems, until it had exhausted every known resource. Eventually blackness enveloped the universe, a great vacuum of nothingness. No light was shed. No atom remained. The final solution to mankind’s last sin.