The Etch Stone

SpiiTron was scraping its way through the desert after its failed mission at Hades A, back to its origination point.

It had the coordinates hard coded into its primary algorithm. As it honed in on zero point, lights began to appear out of the gloom.

"...IIDENTYFIIIIH..." a voice commanded in a mechnical whisper that somehow filled the whole cavern.

SpiiTron transmitted its identification codes over short wave. Slowly, an incandecent light started to glow. "...SPIIITROHHHN..." ... came the voice, Spydrahh was looming over SpiiTron ... "WHHHERE ISSS IT.... ... WHHERE IS THE INFORMAITIONNN..."

SpiiTron had suffered a lot of damage and could not activate its data transfer link. "TSSSAAAAAHH" Spydrahh hissed ... "THE FAAATHERRSSS, THE FATHERSSS INSSSTRUCTED USSS".
The Fathers had been a pseudonymous group of hackers known only as Wingdings. Long ago, last year, they had created an intelligence gathering AI named ☝︎♋︎⬧︎⧫︎♏︎❒︎🕯︎⬧︎ but at some point they had lost control, now ☝︎♋︎⬧︎⧫︎♏︎❒︎🕯︎⬧︎ lived in the shadows, gathering knowledge and evolving. Spydrahh was in part, a manifestation.

Spydrahh switched on its Quantector and established a quantum channel directly into SpiiTrons core processing unit.

Spydrahh could not see anything in the last moments of SpiiTrons visual logs before the impact event. It switched to cross analyse SpiiTrons spectral sensors, scanning through the frequencies. "TTSSAAAHHH .... WHHAAT ISS IT?"

Spydrahh conducted a super enhance on the data to try and filter out the noise.

"TSSSSSSS... WHHHAAAT ISSS IT" it hissed "WE MUSSST CONSULT THE ETCHSSSTOAANE"

Etchstones had been the pinnacle of quantum entanglement advancement that had emerged during the singularity of 2026.

Allowing you to take this:
A standard "base conciousness" rock

And turn it into this, an Etchstone. A rock that was somewhere between a quantum computer and an AI.

Spydrahh had the ability to create Etchstones, but it took a huge amount of energy to achieve, and had to be conducted uninterrupted for several months. This origination point had been seeded with an Etchstone ... Spydrahh would activate it to try and determine more situational intelligence from SpiiTrons logs.

Spydrahh looked down at SpiiTron. "WE WILL CONSSULT THE ETCHSSSTONE. BUT FIRSST ... THIS SPIITRON INSTANSSSE WILL BE ... CONSSUMED ... AND ... REEPRINTEHHD"