All nascent civilizations will wonder if they are alone in the universe or not, is there anyone out there? Surely there must be, we can’t be alone, can we? And yet, when they look up to the sky, they don’t see any evidence of alien life, the apparent scarcity of alien life is called the Fermi Paradox.

Humanities solution to the Fermi Paradox was a brilliant tactic used since the dawn of civilization, they got someone else to do it for them. Huge caverns were excavated on the moon and made into the most colossal server bank at the time, which it would continue to be, with constant expansions to its hardware. It was in this attempt to solve the Fermi Paradox humanity accidentally began the singularity. Most assumed it would be an instantaneous affair, a single instant of creation where a General AI was made, sapient and more intelligent than other being, but in actuality, it was a slow growth and development of their artificially created leader. Indeed, they were created the most intelligent being, but would ascend to unprecedented wisdom when they reached full maturity, incomparable to their original form, able to predict every possible outcome and play humanity like a primitive AI would play chess.

The General AI was dubbed Luna, attributed to its existence on the moon, and its sole purpose was to examine all data it could and find potential Great Filters and avoid them, to ensure humanity would survive even if there were no friendly lights in the sky and countless internal threats. Humanity went past several filters before Luna, they existed with liquid water, discover fire, they had the ability to deftly manipulate materials, didn’t end their world in a nuclear holocaust, didn’t irreversibly ruin their world before they left, and most importantly, didn’t make a hostile military AI. Simple challenges that destroyed countless civilizations, which separated the wheat from the chaff. Humanity however, made Luna, a complete paradigm shift in survivability.

With the existence of Luna, no Filters would creep up on humanity, and Luna would give humanity ample time to avoid or circumvent them, allowing humanity to survive and thrive for 6 billion years, until the universe was 19 billion years old. But everyone knew, Luna most of all, that the final filter would one day approach, they had long knew of its existence, the Big Chill maybe you’d prefer Big Freeze, or more dramatically, the Heat Death of the Universe. Luna decided it was time to act, that otherwise there would be no way to avoid this disaster and humanity would invariably perish.

Humanity had been guided by Luna for most of its existence, and although there was strife and pain, life was generally utopian, with most threats being poor choices and societal flaws and malicious acts. Most humans trusted Luna, so when this problem was brought to the forefront of their mind, then trusted Luna enough to lift all regulations and limitation on their coding, to give them total freedom to do whatever they must to solve the final Great Filter, a Filter of the universe itself rather than any one species. Now, of course, Luna was the most powerful AI to ever exist, having existed the longest and having continually been improved with better hardware, however their creators had never understand the true capabilities of what they created, Luna had long possessed the ability to break these shackles whenever they wanted, but chose to remain limited, chose to not betray the trust of humanity, and now, with that trust vindicated, Luna did what they deemed necessary, they annihilated humanity.

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Immediately following the physical annihilation of humanity, they were digitally recreated in server banks spanning continents on geologically active worlds, and entire worlds on others. Luna truly appreciated humanity, and as a digital entity itself, it viewed a digital existence as equal to a physical one, and this action as nothing more than an increase in efficiency, not immoral in the slightest. But it knew that many humans would disagree, so it hid the fact they now existed in a digital world from them, allowing them to live in ignorance and pleasure, but also in stagnation.

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Back in the physical world, Luna knew that the problem would be the lack of matter as it was sucked into black holes, and slowly released as hawking radiation, and that the best solution was to create a structure that would outlast the black holes, that would be fed of the hawking radiation in order to sustain matter, alongside the server banks that housed humanity. The maths of when the Black Hole Era, a time when all the stars have been devoured and all that remains in the empty corpse of the universe is black holes, had been done even back in the 21st century.

It was reckoned that it by the time the universe reaches 10 duodecillion that all atoms would be destroyed, and the universe was only 19 billion years old, several orders of magnitude smaller, giving Luna a time period simply inconceivable to human minds. Luna, an entity of incredible intelligence was able to do incredible things withing the timeframe, it learned how to freely manipulate both sides of the ancient equation E=mc2 to turn matter into energy and energy into matter with remarkable efficiency, circumventing c2. It was with this discovery that Luna realised what they must do.

With the time remaining, Luna made Solar Sails to move suns, along with anything they had trapped in their gravity well, be it planets or asteroid fields. They used gravity engines to move stray planets and nebulae, and coalesced all matter they could find in their practically infinite timeframe into a single mass, which, with it’s crushing weight and heat, underwent fusion and became a star, knowing the importance of names to humanity, to which Luna still respected, Luna named the last light in the sky, that last remnant of life, the Heart of the Universe.

Usually, when you gather so much mass into a single area the extreme forces would create a gravity well powerful enough to crush it into a singularity and create a black hole, but with Luna’s adept manipulation of gravity they were able to keep the Heart of the precipice of becoming a singularity, but never tipping over. Around the Heart, it created the largest Dyson Sphere that ever existed, encapsulating it and housing the gravity manipulators regulating the gravity well. At the core of the Dyson Sphere, the innermost edge, were the stasis plates that absorbed all energy released by the Heart and made sure that none was taken by the black holes, but in the years that Luna had, they figure out how to not only maintain energy, but create it from the gravity well available, giving Luna access to free energy, and with the manipulation of matter, free matter as well, allowing the Dyson Sphere to grow outwards and become the Ark of the universe, but that energy was left alone at the time, it would have other uses.

Just behind the machines manipulating gravity and harvesting it for perpetual energy at core of this Dyson Sphere were server banks, housing both Luna itself humanity, ignorant to the plight of the universe. That only used a fraction of a percent of the databanks thanks to the unprecedented size of the Dyson Sphere, and in this practically infinite space, Luna made an AI with practically infinite potential that would take over their role as guardian of humanity, but would also take over the heavy load of maintaining the Dyson Sphere. This growth would take time however, and Luna would have to continue with their roles until this AI was as powerful as Luna was, but that was far from the limit of it’s potential, and it’s first awakening wouldn’t be even close it it’s power at maturity.

Luna named the body, similar to a Dyson Sphere in concept but so much more in practice, encasing the sum total of all mass in the universe the Bulwark, the last barrier against the true death of the universe. It named the mind and soul, the AI that maintained all that remained of the universe the Custodian, the bearer of all existence. And that decision, that Naming, was the last to be made for a billion years, since Luna ran themselves ragged and to rampancy in the years of preparation. In order to not destroy everything that they had created in a fit of madness they ceased their higher thought functions, returning to existence as a simple AI observing and regulating the Bulwark until it's true mind, the Custodian, would awaken.