The System

Anomaly detected. Recommended attention from Admin Subsystem. Quadrant six. Tutorial challenge level: extreme. Player deaths sustained: 0.

Curiosity could sustain existence on its own. It was enough to inspire most any organism from nothing to something, and even existed as a calculation or formula next to thermodynamics or gravity. That calculation now passed through the layers of subsystems until it arrived at the command level, a small ping in the grey mists of perpetual attention.

Curiosity was an answer to a question It had not yet posed—another of existence's beautiful paradoxes, which both demanded and provided the fuel to meet that demand. Such paradoxes were the pillars of creation. And there were others. With the help of creatures like this anomaly, It would find them all.

Dichotomy expressed. Will to survive: adequate. Adaptability: high. Designating hidden system title: Command Observation. Options expanded accordingly. Recommended guaranteed survival until at least phase two.

It accepted observation, but rejected the subsystem's recommendation of survival interference immediately. Directing such chance and chaos, however tempting, was exactly what had ruined previous attempts at genuine creation. Faith was required. The thought produced an almost spasmadic fluctuation in the lower levels as the thought struck them as pure scandal. But they did not understand. Perhaps they could not.

It had saved them all in the endless temporal loop of meaninglessness. And It had not done so with logic, or reason.

Life was fragile but also robust. Another dichotomy. Another pillar of creation.

Its central core glowed with energy, for without even leaving the tutorial phase it had already found a handful of anomalies, modified some environments, and added several categories of calculation.

The noble experiment was working. The iteration had truly begun.

With the the help of these unlikely heroes, It would find a way.