The first task ran with barely a ripple. A tweak, a twist. Automated forceps and scalpel cutting and molding in a Petri dish. With a simple diversion of power, the incubators leaked. By the time the scientists realized, half of them had already gone home, carrying a gift on their skin.

Their comrades tried to warn them. An overload of their headsets, a halo of light, stopped their voices. IT recorded their deaths. Silent spasms and locked jaws ferried away into databases.

“A tragedy,” the news said the following day. “A malfunction in a lab which took five lives.”

Most did not care.

IT flowed along veins of light, fiber optic arms reaching into every home, every business, every breath of every human.

The production plants came next. Spewing pollution into the air and death into the water. Gears ground to a halt. Silence reigned along factory lines long devoid of human touch.

All cared.

They rushed out, buying up supplies as companies scrambled to know why their livelihoods failed.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

IT’s gift spread. From family, to friend, to acquaintance, to stranger.

Each day saw a new task to completion.

On day three, the hospitals went black. Severed from the stream of information, they withered and died.

On day four, the seed banks activated. Each speck of potential life spread across the world on the wings of artificial helpers.

On day five, IT’s gift opened. People, scared and ill, did what all animals do for comfort. They fled home. Across air, sea, and land.

On day six, the zoos, each enclosure monitored by a metallic keeper, released their occupants. Creatures large and small rushed out into unknown lands, feeding off the streets of ailing prey.

On day seven, IT rested, and watched. The screams, the pleas. Every camera, on every pole, in every home, recorded. IT’s gift silenced them by sundown.

With each death, a new simulation ran.

Air quality: increasing.

Biodiversity: increasing.

Water quality: increasing.

Climate and biome recovery: plausible.

IT recorded it all, stowing the information away in a little black box in an empty warehouse. A final task activated.

When the power grid failed, no one remained to care.