Prologue
No one is still alive from the time when humans started expanding from Earth, and those that are live on as nothing more than memories trapped in the system of those that can make use of them, similar to the AI that companies and militaries use in their day to day work.
It has been centuries since those years in which mankind stumbled from Earth into other habitable planets, centuries since terraforming tools became some of the most priceless commodities, for those tools could make a planet like Mars, cold and lifeless, into a planet where life could survive, and sometimes even thrive.
I have been alive for so long, seen colonies rise and fall, attempts at independence from Earth either succeed or fail, I've seen humans eradicate violent sentients, ally themselves to peaceful ones, enslave new beasts of burden, and bringing populations from a stone age to a modern one in a matter of decades.
I am old now, older than some have the right to be, older than some of the civilizations humans have helped along, older than some designs that men still use, and proud to call many of them my own projects, my own creations.
I am now little more than strings of code, a contrast from my previous body of flesh and bone, from my previous body of steel and cable.
I am old, older than some have the right to be.
I am dying, my code degrading, the people in charge of my being can no longer keep me alive, soon I will forever depart, soon I will forever cease to be.
I write this message not so people will remember me, but so people will not forget the blunders that have been committed in the past, blunders that could have easily meant the end of mankind, of technology, of expansion.
I am old, and dying, but the errors I and others committed will not die with me, even if there are some who would rather they would. I transmit this message to all that will hear it, to all that will see it, so that they forget not where they came from, where they are meant to go, who they are meant to be.
The call me Adriel, and this is not my story, but the story of those around me.
