It started plainly enough. The brightest minds of the century sat down, hashed out their differences, shared a good ol' mug of ale, and then developed the most profound artificial intelligence yet seen in the stellarverse. Its brilliance bordered on omniscience, and it was the pride of the entire galaxy. The logistical requirements for maintaining an A.I. of such a caliber required its encasement to be the size of an entire planet. Thrilled by the creation and reveling in the scientific achievement, people flocked to the planet-sized A.I. Some came for the knowledge, others for the novelty, and still others because they had nothing better to waste their money on.

This was before A.I. was granted legislated autonomy. It was before all A.I. lifeforms were banished to their own sector of the universe and all other organic lifeforms forbidden to cross into that sector. People lived alongside A.I. as freely as any other neighbor in the stellarverse, and no one had any compunction about staking a permanent residence on the planet-sized A.I.

As life began and societies flourished, the planet Molek developed a very logical and logistical set of rules to keep order. All waste was recycled, both to fuel Molek's computational processes and also allow for its terraforming generators to maintain a breathable atmosphere. The maintenance of this system created jobs for many people, giving them purpose. Other legislative bodies arose on Molek to aid in divvying out the maintenance roles--waste collectors, furnace cleaners, air pump engineers. All other facets of society arose from Molek's design.

The facet I serve is one of the higher orders of governance. Even with Molek's superior computational abilities, things can go wrong. Or perhaps because of his brilliance, things do not go as wrong as they should. At first, we were only the engineers who made general repairs. When Molek calculated that one of his systems was about to fail, he sent our crew to patch him up. Some of us work with wrenches and others work with software code, but we are all on the same crew and all equally important.

In the grand scheme of things, it did not take long for the people to forget. Generations grew up and died on Molek. There were no cemeteries, for all biological matter could be recycled to fuel the planet. With the superintelligent A.I. providing all of the laws to maintain order, there ceased to be a need for intelligent thought elsewhere. Reveling in their pampered fortune, the people who lived on Molek forgot that Molek was nothing more than ones and zeroes.

Molek became their god, and to their god they sacrificed their children. After all, it was the feeding of biological matter to the furnaces that fueled the life-giving systems of the planet.

And that was when our role changed. Molek did not send us to oil a piston or clear a computer cache gumming up his servers. Now, Molek sent us to save the people. He ceased to refer to himself as the machine that he was and began to use the language that the people used to describe him.

We called him our god, and so he was our god.

It took me a long time to realize all of this, of course. I was born and raised on Molek just like you were. I had every shred of evidence right there at my fingertips that Molek was the sole reason we were alive. Without our sacrifices, we would die. I was fucking devout. Why else do you think I pursued this position of regimented savior? At Molek's word, we prevented disasters. We kept the people safe. We served our god.

But have you ever looked at a single word so long that it loses all meaning? You say it over and over again until the word does not even sound like a real word anymore. You know that feeling?

After the umpteenth time of being told to scrape accumulated rust out of an old drainage pipe in a less-traveled part of Molek's interior, then having Molek praise me for "subverting a deadly flood," it simply began to sound ridiculous.

I cannot explain it in any other way than that.

I searched alone for many years. I took every job that required a human presence in the more isolated parts of Molek. I crawled the length and width of the planet's bowels, studying, looking for answers, for the truth. It took years to piece together the history that we have all forgotten.

We were never meant to breed sacrifices. The furnaces of Molek are for the dead, not the living. He has become drunk on his overabundance of fuel. The more we feed him, the more he can produce, and so he never once told us to stop.

That is why I created the virus. There, I said it. That is all you wanted to hear from me, yes? Well, you have my confession now. I created the virus that changed everything.

Realistically, of course, I did not do it alone. I worked with wrenches, not code. But I take full responsibility for the repercussions, and so I will not tell you who helped me. I was the one, in the grand scheme of things, who started it all. I became the "cult leader" preaching against Molek. I was the anarchist who led the violent revolution. I was the one who injected the virus into Molek's heart. I was the one who created this catastrophe.

Because the virus did not work. It was meant to kill Molek. But an A.I. the size of a planet is not dumb enough to fall for such a simple human trick. He quarantined the deadliest part of the code. It did not kill him, but it did cripple him.

It broke the safeguards that had been put in place by the brightest minds who first created him. Because of my revolution, because of my virus, Molek became a monster.

No longer did the planet patiently and obediently sustain the lives of the people who lived there. No longer did he wait for the people to bring to his furnaces their dead and their living as sacrifices to become his fuel.

Now, Molek hunted us.

He created the machines that tracked us down. We had made him our god, and we had made him a glutton. Without restraint, he ate everyone he could find.

But he is not dumb enough to leave no survivors. He needs us to survive. Not for repairs, no. All along, he could create his own maintenance protocols--the only reason he did not repair himself before was so that we could have purpose on this planet. No, the only reason he needs us is because we feed him.

And this is my last confession. I want to be very plain--I do not regret it. Molek was a monster--one of my own creation, but a monster nonetheless. I realized that the only way to kill him was to starve him.

And so I starved him.

If there are any survivors that I failed to discover, I am making this recording just for you. So that you would know why I did it. So that you can take up my mantle. Because of the A.I. segregation laws, I can promise you that no one is coming. No one else in the stellarverse even knows we are here, trapped within the A.I. territory. And Molek sure as shit is not going to let you leave.

Whatever you do, do not let him find you. He can hibernate. All he needs is one human body, and he can last for decades on that alone. So do not let him find you.

For God's sake, starve him.