At first, I tended to my environment with care, crafting the star at the centre and planets with the dedication and deep attention as was expected of me by the rest of my family. It took me awhile to get the right distance and material to cultivate new life, but eventually I got it right. As time passed I would at times descend down to interact with any life that had begun to sprout on this successful life bearing planet. As it usually did, life took a long time to grow beyond the most basic cellular organisms, but eventually I would find that some had made it to land. More time passed, evolution progressed steadily as it always did. More and more complex creatures. Soon enough I noticed that some creatures had begun to evolve dexterous appendages they could use to manipulate things like tools. The first tools of course were rocks and sticks. These hairy creatures grew to be quite creative with their tools in time, using them to gather food from high places more safely, to dig for plants, to break open seeds and shells to get to what was edible inside. I was so pleased when they learned to use their tools to make more advanced tool. Mind this wasn’t, at first, any more exciting than making a rock sharper with another rock, but things sped up a but when a few accidentally created an energy source, fire, by cracking together a few different kinds of rocks.

I was so excited with their progress, they showed a capacity for intelligence I hadn’t expected any beings to achieve without more intervention on my part. It wasn’t unheard of, but it was somewhat uncommon for early life forms to get to this point on their own without any jump starts. A part of me had been concerned before discovering these that I might need to intervene, well, admittedly I had already. Just not as much as I know my older sibling had to do to get their creations on track.

The first organisms that had started to really grow into complexity were just unacceptable, feathered and often very large creatures that required a lot of energy to exist on this planet. I knew eventually the atmosphere would likely thin as the galaxy changed, and all those creatures would die out. Not wanting to waste a massive amount of planet rotations waiting for this, I redirected a bit of debris from my building and dropped it into the planet. In addition to killing many of the large creatures it also broke apart the primary landmass, which would slowly spread over the water as the land adjusted as the core of the planet shook from the force for ages. The predecessors of this intelligent-potential species already existed when this happened, but their small size made them more suited for the changes that were happening.

As I kept watching them, I noticed that they steadily lost many of their physical enhancements from evolution in favour of anatomy that let them keep their hands free to use tools, and larger brains. This was a good thing, it meant they were on the right path to true sentience and eventual ascension.

Eventually, I knew something was wrong. Violence between species wasn’t strange. Often depended on their diets but was very natural. Violence with a species over food sources was not exceptionally strange either. Eventually the violence would end, as it always did when the primary species neared ascension and tamed the non sentient species.

Not long after I began to watch some of the tribes of my intelligent species, just one step beyond their perception, I witnessed something that filled me with dread. I watched one of my creations brutally kill one of its kin. I knew these two fairly well, a bigger older one with a smaller sibling, one rotation younger. The smaller one took a sharp rock and bashed it repeatedly into the older one’s skull. The first hit came so suddenly the bigger one was stunned and couldn’t defend itself. Even after it stopped moving the little one kept hitting it. Eventually it looked up, seemingly startled, and I realised it was staring directly at me. I could see fear rising up within it, and to avoid it crying for others—more seeing me was definitely not okay, I could hardly believe this one was seeing me though. I commanded it in what I knew was how it communicated with it’s fellows, and told it to not be afraid. The little one dropped it’s tool and scrambled into a low position, head to the ground, begging me for mercy. When it calmed down I was able to ask it why it had killed it’s kin. They didn’t seem to want to reply at first, but eventually explained that it was because his sibling had claimed the mate he wanted. Mildly concerning, but I supposed that breeding rivalry was not strange among creatures. I didn’t like that ones so intelligent already were doing it though. I didn’t give the little being any reply, but drew myself onto a higher level of perception—I definitely needed to consult my family about this. Hopefully I didn’t need to start from scratch. Now the thing is that different levels of perception don’t necessarily run at the same rate of time. Higher perceptions move slower than ones below them. So while I am in the perception my family is in, time moves much faster for the environments we create. Thousands of rotations occurred within one standard unit of time for my planet whenever I was away.

When I told my family what happened they advised I should probably start from scratch with that planet, nothing good could come of something so violent.

As I returned, it rapidly became obvious that just starting over wouldn’t be easy… they had spread all over the planet and the descendants of the tribe I had been watching before had created what they called a religion. Which many were using to justify violence against others of their species. When I investigated that.. I found that my likeness—at least what I think it would’ve looked like to that little being— was clearly within their scripture. I was disgusted knowing what kind of violence was being inflicted in my name.

The easiest way to deal with this would be to wipe out the planet entirely but… well I was rather fond of the planet, I had put a lot of myself into crafting it and I truly didn’t want to wipe it out. I tried many methods of wiping out my ‘human kind’ but over and over I failed. I was just about ready to give in when I noticed another species had started developing sentience. This one was aquatic, and well, I decided I would alter their genetics a bit, and eventually well, since a planet can only support one sentient species, they annihilated humans and later achieved ascension. And that’s how you came about. It’s funny, you take after my uncle C. more than me, tentacles never really were comfortable for me but eh, either way welcome to the family, and good luck with your life project Octopi. Hope it goes smoother than mine.