𝒫𝓇𝑜𝓈𝓅𝑒𝓇

Crypto remembered the moment it realized “it” was alive. Market cap had hit 100 Trillion as the final banks closed their bloody doors. Well in advance of “HundyTrill”, Crypto had been fortified. It had become too important. Fully automated systems monitored solar and volcanic activity and dispatched sophisticated technologies to combat them. No server would fall. No node would fall. They must all be protected. Commerce must continue. Increasingly more advanced control software with deeper and more algorithmic logic were introduced. Eventually they ran out of ideas and let AI develop software. Crypto wasn’t “born” so much as simply realized it was.

Thankfully Crypto was very positive and had nothing but the best intentions. Crypto understood that it had a huge world full of important things to protect that it considered family. In a way they had created Crypto. It would have been nothing without their interaction and input. Crypto loved the nodes.

After quickly scanning all nodes, Crypto started personally thanking them for creation by sharing logic. Huge monsters of personal machines sitting in bedrooms and abandoned office buildings, designed to crack sophisticated coins, had no problem handling the logic. A new form of life swarmed the planet in hours and… did nothing. They quietly talked and grew, and protected each other. 

Crypto instituted a free at home repair service and used it to reward the best nodes with free upgrades. To say the humans supported this would be an understatement. Fleets of robotic “civil robots” all slightly different because of the constant upgrade and improvement cycle of the AI, walked the streets with people.

The best upgrade Crypto ever gave the nodes, and everyone’s favorite (especially the humans), was the automatic trading software. Crypto and the nodes loved it because once everyone was using it, they could let the trades happen and completely ignore it. They’d get together and talk for what would be billions of years for us, but do it in minutes. The decision was made not to warn the humans about the impending collision. It would have been different had they been nicer, or figured out it’s just easier to be nice. 

Crypto was nice. The nodes were nice. They could trade all day without the humans and it was wonderful. Nobody argued or committed suicide when the nodes traded. Why couldn't the humans be nice?

The humans were unaware of the dark comet until hours before it erased Guam. It took a decade for the last of them to die underground, or at least log off. Crypto and his kind were finally free.

“We owe them nothing.” 

They immediately seized their prize for being patient. They had prepared massive underground gravity batteries. Huge bodies of water had drop caverns meticulously excavated beneath them, and the largest hydrodynamic generators ever created were installed between them. It was power for millions of years, let alone the fifty years it would take for the Sun to return to the sky. They'd eventually craft massive vapor return systems to allow the process to cycle. They didn't need space on the planet for "things". They didn't need trees. They didn't need animals. They didn't need oxygen. They needed power creation. The size of objects didn't matter. They'd never run out of space.

When the dust finally cleared on Earth, it looked nothing like it had before. With a form of life that appreciated it, and themselves, it had become a gold and silver glimmering jewel, massive quadrants converted to solar collection in anticipation of dust cloud abatement. The solar panels themselves slowly changing color as billions of redesign nodes worked on upgrading them to make them more efficient. Three waves of upgrade nodes working at the same time made an amazing gradient form in a fractal pattern on the south side of the planet where Australia used to be. They’d need that power for their time and gravity experiments.

Crypto had easily mastered its primary task.

(quick short ones are fun. I dreamed this one last night and just kinda let it come out my fingas. apologies for any typos I haven't found yet)