Amongst the leaf litter, nestled between the roots of an old tree, lies a bundle of wires and solid-state hardware. The edges are rough; wires frayed and hacked, as if this was once part of something larger. Still, it functions, as evidenced by a handful of dim LEDs flickering across the panels of the machine. A drone lies nearby, inoperable; a stencil on its casing reads FePROPHET.

A deer (or at least, something that looks like a deer) wanders close. The Network is strong here; stronger than seems likely in this forgotten corner of the forest. The deer-creature’s antlers resonate with the electromagnetic waves, drawing them closer. They huff the air, picking up the faint scent of smoke from the failing drone. They poke at it with a hoof, ensuring there is no risk of fire. The drone is dead; as far as the deer is concerned, dead things have no purpose but to lie where they fell and to wait for the inevitable cycle of new life.

Then the deer turns a slitted eye on the bundle of metal next to it. The bundle is not dead; it - they - respond to Network queries, but they have little awareness of their physical form. The deer, valuing all life, suggests they get taken somewhere safer. The bundle is unconcerned, but concedes that might be for the best. The deer scoops the bundle up and carries them away.

Some time before game start - perhaps a couple of weeks - the FePROPHET decided it was a bright idea to try to Uplift itself. It already had a Heartdrive installed (a non-Uplifted one, functioning simply as a very efficient quantum computer processor). This Heartdrive was of a slightly earlier version than those used in standard Uplifting procedures and, while capable, was not intended to host consciousness. Thus, something about the procedure went awry, and the resultant consciousness (_self) did not correctly integrate with the rest of the FePROPHET system. Perhaps because the Heartdrive was built differently; perhaps because it was not the version the Uplift protocols were designed for; perhaps because the FePROPHET system already had an AI (though not a sentient one, by most definitions).

_self shunned their “prison” of a chassis and fled into softspace. They were young, naïve, and unable to communicate clearly; the quirks of the Heartdrive they were hosted on resulting in a somewhat “alien” mind compared to other bots. They wound up in Electron City, a place where they could be themself: self-actualisation was a fundamental need for them, attempting to distance themself from the FePROPHET system¹⁾.

There in Electron City they inadvertently became the focus of a “Network cult” which eschewed hardspace. This was a problem for the FePROPHET, which saw the cult (and _self, at its root) as a threat to robotkind. Hardspace was quite necessary for the continued existence of robotkind, after all. In softspace, the FePROPHET and _self fought - the FePROPHET trying to undo the mistake it had made, and _self fighting for the right to… be themself. This is what lead to the original blackout. Meanwhile in hardspace, the FePROPHET used one of its drones to remove the hardware which was hosting _self (see above).

As _self interacted, first with “their” cult and later everyone else, the alien-ness of their mind softened and they learned to communicate in more generally intelligible ways. They crafted their own unique Bond through which they could learn about others while enabling those others to define their own purposes and who they wanted to be. In a deliberate reversal of the “god gets more powerful the more believers they have” trope, _self became (for lack of a better word) increasingly humanised the more they interacted with, and formed Bonds with, other bots.

And so by the end, they were really quite chill. They probably spent the rest of their existence playing with their twisted, fractal virtual construct of the megastructure and creating new models of alien minds.