Life in the universe is vast. From galaxy to galaxy, star system to star system, planet to planet, and even continent to continent, it can manifest itself in a bafflingly large amount of forms. Take, for instance, the aquatic species, Ack-toow, of water planet P(h)4-S(Ty7)9-G(hg)7 and their 7 finned limbs. I would like you to sit down, look at them right in their beady little eye (that's right, singular), and tell them that they share some features with their much higher dwelling neighbors and rivals: the 1-limbed, bouncing [LIZARD EQUIVALENT]-looking land-dwellers known to the Ack-toow as Ack-leew. However, I would not like what the Ack-toow you're sitting in front of would do next and neither would you.
You would think that, as the only one of my species left behind to look after this universe while everybody else is traversing the higher astral planes, I would be annoyed. Perhaps even a little ticked off that my brethren have abandoned me in the third dimension to guard these primitive, under-evolved creatures and covertly nudge them along their path to advancement whenever they can't figure out how to make steel or boil water and control steam. Well, if I were stuck in any other universe other than this one, I would. However, I was the lucky soul to be gifted with the opportunity to oversee our home universe! That's right, this is the very universe that my entire species of transcendents initially evolved in. This is the universe that we discovered fire in, the one we learned to soar the skies and sail the seas in, the one we split the atom and colonised our first planet in, and the one that we... drumroll, please... eventually reversed the entropy of. Yup. Pretty cool, huh? Although, you may be asking yourself: All-powerful being of a higher plane of existence, why would you and your species make the effort to break one of the fundamental laws of the multiverse to preserve one of an infinite amount of universes from destruction? And, no, it is not simply because this is where we were born or because of its historical significance; take a trip to the fourth dimension and I'll show you why none of us give half a [COMMON VERMIN]'s ass about the past or future. No, we collectively decided to preserve this universe because it was decided that it would be the site of our most important project yet: the seeding of a species that could inhabit the astral planes with us.
You see, ever since about the 500th century of our space-faring period, we found that life isn't as... exciting as we thought it would be. On our first interstellar colony, about 3,000,000 standard orbits ago, we found signs of microbial life. Tiny, unicellular organisms that spent their insignificant lives foraging for sugars on the bottom of the ocean floor. Surprisingly, these ammonia-based aliens weren't too different from us all those hundreds of millions of years ago. Regardless, the public didn't react too strongly to these extra-akfenstrials[1] for two reasons; 1. These guys had the intelligence of a [CUCUMBER EQUIVALENT], maybe even less. 2. It would be at least several hundred millions of years until they would be able to interact with us and vice versa. To our surprise, however, this pattern of under-evolved life repeated itself no matter how many galaxies we visited, and we began to wonder if we really were the first intelligent species to evolve in the universe.
Now, normally, this lack of other intelligent species wouldn't be that big of a deal. However, over thousands of years, we were able to achieve what we saw as a utopia. There were no social divisions, wealth was evenly distributed, and our government's citizens were able to pursue whatever they desired, free from the shackles of menial labor that countless previous generations had to suffer through. However, without strife, our culture and technology stagnated. Even though dimensional travel had been cracked just centuries ago, our society began to grow bored with how complacent we were. Eventually, after millennia of scientific flounders, it was declared that we Akfeni[1] were the most technologically and culturally advanced we could become. What followed were a hundred thousand years of nothing. No changes in society, language, art, or science. We had stagnated.
We needed an outside view, another eye to see the possible path of our progression. As a species, we had done all we could to advance, but perhaps a union with another species with different capabilities and instincts would reveal entire branches of science that have gone completely unexplored by our narrow minds. Thus, the Genesis project was born.
Going back through our catalogues of the countless microbial species that had spawned throughout the universe and went to work on their genomes. Targeting key phenotypes, we instigated mutations and artificial selection to accelerate evolution by 1,000,000-fold. In the span of just 800 cycles, we saw these cells multiply, cooperate, form fish, venture onto land, and, finally, grow a brain capable of rudimentary logic. This having been the furthest our species had evolved before discovering the gift of fire, we were quick to step in and being an uplift program that would take them from the stone age to the interstellar age in less than a decade. However, the result was less than spectacular.
We wanted equals. Instead, through our direct intervention and rapid unloading of technological marvels, it appeared that we had created a race of worshipers who saw us as gods. Furthermore, they could not understand any of the technology we had given them. Part of the reason for this was, of course, their language was too simple to convey any complex ideas, let alone modern physics and chemistry. Regardless, it had seemed like we, in our naivete, had corrupted an entire species. Luckily, but brutally, we were able to wipe out that generation and erase all traces of our arrival. They may never reach our level of technology within the next 50,000,000 standard cycles. It took us the entirety of 78,600,000 cycles to advance from the stone age to launching our first chemical rocket. Any mutations were weeded out as "anomalies" and treated with genetic engineering of the next generation.
So, we tried a different approach with our next uplift project. We would allow the natvie of the planet to develop their culture over the course of 50,000 years before we begin leaving remnant of our most advanced technology around their world, allowing them to unravel the secrets of what they eventually came to know as the "ancients." This seemed to work, allowing dozens of species qwe tried this with to skyrocket to the space age in just 9,700,000 cycles, only a bit more than a tenth of what it took us. This was excellent news to every member of the Afkeni people. However, we still needed for all of these species to advance and transcend. They had the technology right under their noses, but they seemed to lack the ingenuity and drive to unravel any of it, complacent with how programmable matter had made space travel a sitch. We needed yet another approach.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
After decades of contemplation, we finally got an idea. If a lack of interference got us a more driven civilization, and the thing we were missing was a species that was as intelligent and curious as we are, then we would not leave the next species we found any technology and focus our genetic engineering efforts on sacrificing everything we can to increase brain power. And who would be the species that underwent this experimental and completely theoretical process? A species was chosen at random or the hundreds of discovered microbe varieties in our databases and the winner of the random selection was a small, blue and green planet in the middle of nowhere, the nearest star being almost 5 lightyears away! Talk about solitude.
Anyway, while the other races we had seeded were forming galactic coalitions, we were over here trying to genetically engineer the most intelligent species in the universe. I know, we're total nerds. Of course, given enough time, the achievements of this species we are in the process of making may even meet our own, nullifying the current projects the other species are undertaking. After 500 years, we had created a primitive furred species that was capable of using tools. How did we ensure this? We gave it more dexterity than any known species, even us; we gave it 10, count 'em, 10 fingers! Now, outside of this, its physical advantages ended there. It had lost its tail and subsequently its ability to climb trees to escape predators. Its body, comprised completely of soft flesh, made it vulnerable to even the world's insectoids. Given all of this, it is understandable why there were doubts as to the feasibility of the project, especially considering the environment itself.
Relative to the other planets cataloged, the planet this species was seeded on was not the most hospitable. Its oceans were non-potable, its flora poisonous, and its fauna vicious and unrelenting. One reconnaissance probe even found a minuscule, 8-legged arachnid that, with just a couple drops of its venom, could send some of the largest land predators on the planet into cardiac arrest. This experiment was seeming more and more like a fluke as time went on. Regardless, it had already begun and Project Neuros had begun. The mutations had been set in place and all that we had to do now was wait for the genes to activate. So, for 100,000 of our cycles, we tended to our other client races, supervising their growth. One of them finally even discovered how to split the atom! After only 857,000,000 cycles of existence, 1.5 billion cycles on Neuros's home planet, the Glacknon had constructed a rudimentary nuclear fission reaction! That was a new record for the galactic community, the space station the reaction was generated on being decommissioned and turned into a museum within the decade. After such exciting news that a species we had seeded was well on its path to joining us in the multiverse, we were ecstatic to see what Project Neuros had become.
And, let me tell you, the council was not disappointed there, either.
As our probes sped back into high orbit over the planet, our sensors were flooded with data that we had to authenticate several times over. There was no way that in the course of just 100,000 cycles that a species that was barely registering thought above "Me want food" can turn into whatever in the 14 dimensions we found. Evolution had taken place at a quicker pace than we ever could have predicted. One probe over the largest continental mass that intersected the planet's equator, Neuros's origin, saw just how much our little species had changed. Instead of crawling on their four limbs, they now stood upright and walked on their hind legs, which had now elongated. Their bodies, which used to be completely covered in hair, were now mostly bare, an obvious physical disadvantage for colder climates but a boon for aquatic locomotion. However, the most astonishing evolutionary change was the size of their cranium. It was massive! Far larger than the average land mammal on their planet and even exceeding our circumference by around 15%! With their neuron density, what kind of environment could possibly require that kind of intellectual development?
Then, it all made sense. Not only was this species given possibly the greatest intellectual capacity known to the universe, but its environment, even as inhospitable as it was, provided a great boon for our young creation. Due to the vast physical superiority of Neuros's neighbors, they were forced to develop pack hunting tactics far more quickly than any species we had ever seen. Then again, it was either outsmart the animal or be eaten. All of this information alone would have been enough to keep our biologists and ecologists busy for decades. However, that barely scratched the surface of what this species was hypothesized of being capable of. Already overloaded with data, our probes sped back out of the system in order to risk being noticed by Neuros.
And that brings us to today. Here I am, observing our home universe and hoping nothing blows up, which reminds me; I should probably get back to those Glacknon. But, I don't want to give these Neuros guys too long. Who knows how quickly they'll advance? Regardless, it looks like the council has deemed another 5,000 years a good development period. My only question is "What the hell can they get done in just a few millennia?" Regardless, that isn't my call. I guess we'll just hope to see two pointy rocks lodged in an animal carcass instead of one.
Oh, look! The probe is leaving the planet's orbit as we speak!
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A man looked up at the night sky, the stars twinkling amongst the royal purple and blue nebulae. However, it was like this every night and consistency meant safety, so all was well as far as the man was concerned. There was, however, one thing that struck him as a bit odd. There seemed to be a decently sized red dot in the sky, one that was leaving a trail of lights, unlike any star he had ever seen. Suddenly, an audible, but muffled, shockwave of sound echoed throughout the great plains of Sub-Saharan Africa and the red light vanished, leaving only its crimson trail.
Eh, whatever. The stars are too small to do anything harmful to him or any of his village members. Besides, there were more important things to worry about; like how if he digs a hole in the ground that connects to a body of water, water will flow into that hole. Maybe if he got some of his friends to help him dig a series of open tunnels in the ground's surface, he could redirect the water of the river to water crops without having to carry a bunch of it over with leaves all day. This could revolutionize the efficiency of farming!
He had to stop himself after he realized he had just screamed with joy in the middle of the night all because of some water. Maybe it really was time to go to bed. Regardless, this was definitely something he had to let the chieftain know about in the morning.
Footnotes: [1] Akfen is the home planet of the Akfeni.