Eons ago, a species of highly intelligent beings evolved into digitizing themselves and everything about themselves.

Their reasoning for transcendence, two-fold:

Environmental neglect and they ravaged the ecosystem. Nothing useful remained.

Immortality. Corporeal existence proved a finite lifespan, no matter the cybernetic upgrades or extensions. Digital would last forever.

So the species encapsulated themselves in a crystal of infinitesimal matrices. Powered by their sun, and protected by a supposed impenetrable transparent shield.

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The night of a solar eclipse—Hunta and his younger brother York went on a scavenger hunt.

"Don't stare at the sky! Blindness!" Hunta yelled to his brother.

They carried a torch, climbed a steep mountain, and reached its summit.

York found the crystal, darkened, for only during a solar eclipse it remained vulnerable and its shield's recharge power low.

He grabbed the crystal and felt its smooth texture, and saw through it with his torch a prism of rainbows.

As the sun began to show up again, the crystal lit up.

York yelled, "Fire!"—He tossed the crystal over the mountainside, and it shattered.

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Eons later, York's progeny devastated their ecosystem and resorted to technology to transfer their people's consciousness and wisdom into a crystal with a supposed impenetrable shield. Their reasoning—digital, after all, would last forever.