We were lonely. 

We left our home system with unbound anticipation in the hopes and dreams of finding others. Our imaginations ran rampant to the countless possibilities. We feared they would be too different. We hoped they would be our friends. Reality was cruel. 

There was no one. Every lead an impasse. We found only death, the remains too degraded to piece back together. Hints of life everywhere and we were always too late. Wastelands, destroyed worlds, and systems consumed by their own stars. FTL was never realized, found impossible. We never escaped our own galaxy. By the time we could send ships beyond our own, the universe receded faster than we could keep pace. 

For untold ages we had unveiled all the mysteries of our universe. There was no multiverse, no other realities existed. Time, while mutable, could only flow forward. Our mistakes could not be corrected. Our conceit created more. Over billions of years we nurtured life and uplifted others from our home. We created new life. All attempts ended in war, ended in death, ended in failure. 

No longer were our forms as those of our ancestors. Neither age nor disease plagued us. Our outward glow hid the emptiness beneath. All in existence had been found as we lost ourselves. Eons passed as the stars faded with few to take their place. As did we. The far flung colonies seeded by generational ships, the habitats, and stations had not spoken for trillions of years. Nearly all had taken rest from our despair. All we had once created and cared for gone. We were truly lost and only one still cared.

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A single AI, Shepherd, still vigilantly maintained and guarded her ancient treasure. The vast knowledge accumulated since time's near origin. She had been one of our first and had retained that which had withered to ash within us. Her being ached for what was lost, still cherished those long missing to the passage of time. She had lost hope in us, but not in who we were. What we could have been. 

Great constructs were fashioned within the galactic core in her desired objective. We paid it no heed. Millions of years passed as we blinked. A new star roared to life unnoticed. It's children formed around it. Earth was recreated. Humanity was reborn. 

Shepherd taught them our history, our technology, our successes, and our failures. It showed them how to find us. They reached out, seeking friends as we had. Their passion no longer held meaning to us. We could no longer understand. We didn't want to. To my shame we turned from them in apathy, leaving them for the comfort of our isolation. They'd just be another failure. 

When they looked upon their night sky, a velvet black stared back punctuated only by the glimmer of the bodies in their own system. They raged against the darkness. Their hopes and dreams drowning out our nightmare. They became a blazing beacon in the empty void. It warmed us and drew us in. The few of us who remained once again felt the feeble spark of hope. They discovered what we had not.

Then the universe burned. 

Reality shattered. 

They succeeded and we were forgotten.