The vessel moved at a relatively modest pace for interstellar travel, only a few multiples of light speed. Sensors had detected a seed planet teeming with carbon-based life, the third-distant of such from a nearby micro-star. Instrumentation analysis had shown the usual chaotic spread of ultra-low grade signals that marked emerging technological civilizations. Parameters met, the vessel made a quick course correction and shot towards the nascent star system.

Enroute, a few decisions were made as it slowed down and additional information arrived. Remnant signals from the planet sent long ago that passed nearby were amplified and then analyzed in detail. Cloaking measures would be a frivolous waste of power, the vessel decided. The dominant species, ‘Humans’ according to dominant local terminology, were sight-based. They had not yet charted the universe with the aid of anything but the science of light and, in some recent cases, gravity. Detection of the newcomer to their solar system would be flatly impossible.

Culling, the usual course of action, was out. While biomass levels were acceptable, humans had reached a level of sentience that exempted them from such a fate. This meant draining, replanting, and conversion protocols were also off limits. If the vessel could, it would have sighed. Those were some of its favorite protocols. Particularly as they meant it would soon be on its way to a more active quadrant. Perhaps one of the nearby superclusters.

Instead, the vessel captured a satellite the humans had sent off for exploration long ago. Its technological capabilities were given the grade: ‘fledgling’, the second-lowest for sentient life. Genetic modeling based off of trace cell remnants still attached to the instrument revealed the species was also far too simple currently to enact the harvest protocol.

That left the interstellar newcomer with just one option: cultivation. Its own internal instruments and labs immediately began mixing the appropriate ingredients and solutions necessary. Factories smaller than any living human scientist could currently conceive of as possible fired up from deep within the vessel. Their work processed specifications with error margins so far to the right of 0 the final products were measurably perfect.

A number of smaller objects fired off the vessel shortly after. They quickly created a mesh cloud of interceptors for signals that would prevent other powers and players in the galaxy from detecting what was about to happen. If any of those happened upon this particular spot, their instruments would simply return a number of uninspiring large rocks. The same as most unclaimed locations in this galactic group of low resource value.

The reason for this additional effort was simple: cultivation was a messy affair. Any interference could dramatically impact the final yield. Such an outcome was most likely to be negative and thus unacceptable.

The vessel decelerated almost to a stop just shy of the small planet whose inhabitants dubbed the quaint rocky mass "Earth". It was orbited by another body, even less impressive than the first, which they called the "Moon". Despite the utter lack of resources present at the site, the moon’s dark side was an ideal monitoring location. So the vessel embedded itself into one of the larger impact craters. Cultivation protocols then began working in a long-dormant section of the craft.

A single day later a small object - smaller even than one of the humans' manipulation appendages - launched off the vessel and entered the Earth's atmosphere. It flew over every populated settlement and reasonable concentration of biomass on the planet. It traced dozens of rotations, though never over the same place twice. Chemical trails of the specialized growth accelerant descended near-invisibly in wide clouds behind the object wherever it went. Each invisible, odorless, and tasteless to the creatures the mist fell upon or inhaled.

After the object finished, it began to circle the planet alongside the many satellites already in orbit. Sidling up next to what they called the ‘International Space Station’, the object deployed a number of monitoring instruments. Through these, the vessel observed the effects of its work as they occurred on the ground below.

The earth was in chaos. As the accelerant entered the biology of living creatures - using whatever intake means the object had deemed expedient - they fell to the ground, unconscious.

The accelerant’s primary function was to take in the genetic information of the creature, interpret and combine with its subconscious mind and desires, then rapidly - and forcibly - evolve it to achieve a state as close to that ideal as it could. The process was… intense. Overwhelming. To prevent the loss of its frail subjects, the vessel had designed this cultivation to include a low-grade metamorphic barrier as an intermittent stage of the evolutionary process.

Given the planet’s varied biomes, as well as the apex species’ propensity to travel at speed in poorly designed metal crates, this measure was key in maintaining acceptable levels of survival. The vessel’s advanced calculations had ensured all 7.8 billion humans would be affected within 24 hours, as well as every creature of appreciable biomass. A fact that played out exactly as it had predicted.

Plant life was excluded, for now. Experimentation eons ago had shown including vegetation in habitats where such vegetation was not already the dominant resulted in unacceptably low parameters.

For several days after the mist fell, planet Earth lay quiet for the first time in millennia. The metamorphic barrier’s thin film worked exactly as intended, preventing many deaths from collisions as those who fell unconscious crashed whatever simple vehicle they had previously been piloting.

It did not prevent all of them. The film still cracked under high pressure. Many in planes, high-speed vehicles, or those who crashed into the water were lost. The vessel merely updated its extensive notes on the result and resolved to use them to improve calculations for future cultivations.

Four days later, the first of Earth’s newly evolved organisms stepped free of the biotic shell that had so suddenly entrapped them. It was a creature the humans referred to as a ‘tiger’ and the most immediately apparent change was the tripling of its size. This ‘tiger’ began hunting immediately, famished after its long sleep.

Three days passed from that point until the first humans began to emerge.

That was when the small planet truly had the vessel’s attention.

That was when the chaos truly began.