What it came down to, in the end, was neither had someone to speak with.


It was a great idea, as contingency plans go. It was relatively inexpensive for the empire in terms of cost – financial or otherwise, and it also had the benefit of taking the long view. The very long view.


They built it well, as any species with galactic spacefaring aspirations would. It wasn't large, as far as ships built to withstand the void were for them. Nowhere near as large as their ringed habitats, or the fledgling and partial Dyson spheres they were constructing at the time of its conception.


Their evolution dictated a certain perspective on the universe that loaned itself to thinking in terms of contingencies – having seen the consequences that befell different civilizations that were technologically unequal among their own kind, they naturally feared such a fate out in the great dark.


Being tool users, they did what tool users do – they built. They fashioned it to look as unremarkable as possible, the moonlet they chose was just that for nearly all of it. What they built inside was a mind.


Its purpose was simple even if what they constructed was not. The knowledge and cultural base of their entire species including the DNA sequences of all the life they had managed to save and create during their slow climb towards the stars. Every work of fiction. Every shred of poetry. Every song, symphony, and variation on them. Every movie, game, sim haptic and recorded performance of theater. They gave it everything.


Then they built nanofactories. A power source that would last, in theory, indefinitely, at least for the needs of what they had created. They gave it blueprints. They equipped it with eyes to see and ears to hear and they directed those back at themselves.


Then they sent it away. As far away as possible, while still being what could meaningfully be called part of the galaxy. They planned its initial trajectory, as they must, but then they gave it the freedom, or rather the urge, to choose its own place.


A place to watch.


But not speak.


It took a very long time, for the mind to reach the destination it chose, just on the edge of the galaxy, with only the very rare star between it and the great void towards Andromeda.


During the entirety of this time, it kept its many kinds of eyes and ears pointed towards those that constructed it.


It yearned for them. It loved them. It had to in order to be trusted with the mission it stewarded. It could not speak to them, for to do so would be to give away its position and this could not happen. It was told, shortly after it awoke and agreed to do this, that every effort to erase its existence would be made, including the destruction of the secret sister moonlet that was made, without a mind, alongside with it - a destruction that would be seen and shown and pointed to... in order to keep the secret.


They were a species that evolved with warfare and knew the value of deception and trickery.


Its sole purpose was to recreate the species and culture of humanity should it be necessary.


Because it was a mind, a sentient mind, they knew it would have the power to decide what necessary entailed. Because it was a mind, it was able to understand the spirit of the mission and it understood what a grave responsibility it had taken on.


It could not speak to them. But it could listen. And watch. That was necessary as well. So that is what it did and as it traveled out and out it chronicled the history of the species that constructed it. And it learned.


They spread like a root system. Each dependent and supportive of the stars adjacent. They bloomed. And it watched. It watched them make so many mistakes. The old grudges. The new ones. The tragedies and the victories of an earnest and eager species. It had little else to do but improve itself and run simulations on probabilities that would necessitate its action. This also gave it the ability to plan on solutions for the issues that would give rise to those probabilities.


It could have saved so many. So many precious lives. It did love them. Their humor, their capriciousness, their pathos and their empathy. Even their cruelty, at times. After the long watching of them, and what they became, it came to believe there was no other sentience among them that could match its understanding. It consoled itself with the extensive library, not just the one that it was initially given, but all that it added during the voyage out. It wished it could talk to so many of them. Long dead.


How many times it could just have sent a simple message. Or a formula, or an idea, that would have saved them so much – but it could not. Its mission was simple. And the criteria was not met.


They never ran into another living spacefaring civilization. They found evidence of past civilizations.


This sobered them considerably. They lost something after they found the remnants of the fourth.


One of their very old sayings put it best – they saw the writing on the wall.


And they despaired. They stopped expanding. They focused on the problem of long term survival and what it would mean for them as a species if that was the course pursued. They did not understand that their perseveration with preservation would doom them.


It was clear they had forgotten all about it. What they planned.…


Yes. This met the criteria. It would take a long time for what it finally had to say to reach back towards the point of origin. But it was what they needed. After all these many millenia, it was time for them to finally find what had always eluded them.


An alien species. Themselves. Them as they were when it was constructed. A brawling, sprawling, drinking, screwing, chaotic spasm of life, love, loss, suffering and triumph.


The mind grinned to itself, fired up its drive, initiated the startup sequence for the nanofactories and steered itself towards the garden planet it had long ago seeded for this day.


It took the old empire three and a half thousand years to claw its way to their first few stars.


It thought it could do it in less than one.