The cultivation of Earth had exceeded the vessel’s predictions for the unassuming planet by incredibly wide margins.

Margins so wide the vessel had actually deployed two additional sensors around the planet to provide it with confirmation the reports it was receiving weren’t the result of some unknown malfunction with its instruments.

Each sensor orbited the Earth at a full 180* degrees from the other and, together, were capable of imaging the entire planet. These images were then used to build a 3-dimensional model of Earth inside its processors. A model so accurate the vessel could ‘zoom in’ right down to the subatomic configurations of any elements contained within a given square millimeter cube.

Such detail wasn’t entirely necessary, but it did have its perks. The vessel was able to store and compare its reports in an instant, worldwide, and found not even the slightest error.

This was exceptionally good news for Humanity, though none of them knew it. Had the reports been faulty, the cultivation process would have been immediately terminated for fear the errors had contaminated the accelerant’s chemical makeup as well.

Which meant a complete scouring of the planet’s surface and, once said surface had cooled, engagement of replanting protocols… a fate the creatures below would never know just how close they had come to experiencing - however briefly.

Just as the vessel itself was now unsure of just how far these formerly only mildly-noteworthy creatures might grow. After nearly four weeks on Earth had passed, it had found enough positive results to have made its trip here worthwhile - and cultivation protocols were still only wrapping up phase one.

Despite that, only 16% of the species it had observed during cultivation had taken to the accelerant so readily. Even then, only a further 11% had remained in evolutionary metamorphosis as long as humans had in any meaningful number.

And of those--

-- the vessel stopped. Actually stopped for a full attosecond beat as its internal computers rerouted all processing power towards confirming its latest report.

Ninety-three humans remained in their biotic shells. Still mutating, still evolving. The time they’d spent doing so put this fledgling race in the top fraction of a percent value-wise of any the vessel had ever encountered. Mostly because the accelerant’s survival rate dropped precipitously over time.

Each was immediately given the full attention of an entire processing unit. Live stream feeds of all ninety-three were pulled up, analyzed, and their every genomic change catalogued all the way back to their respective simian ancestors. Then back to the single-cell stage for good measure.

Fifteen of them were killed before they could hatch. Whatever potential they might have had lost as their fellows pierced the biotic shell encasing them in fear of what might emerge later.

Watching that occur in real time was the closest the vessel had ever come to breaching its own protocols. It would happily have traded entire solar systems worth of minerals in exchange for just one of those who had died - yet interference in phase one was forbidden.

So… it did not interfere. Instead, the vessel merely marked the locations of their genetic material for later collection.

Retrieval and restoration were well within its capabilities, after all. There was no need to also mark the identifying features and predicted post-cultivation locations of the culprits.

None whatsoever.

…

Within a few more days, all but nine of the still slumbering and evolving humans had emerged from their accelerant-fueled shells. As expected, given their prodigious power relative to the rest of their new ‘race’, the survival rates of these few far exceeded the rest of the planet’s inhabitants.

Then humanity surprised the craft once again.

Seven of the final nine emerged all at the same exact time, despite most being on separate continents. It was the sort of event that, had the vessel not been recording through separate instruments to confirm, would have given its own report on this cultivation additional (and well-deserved) scrutiny.

True coincidences were rare, and not something it was programmed to believe in.

As if the timing weren’t suspicious enough, each shared the same unique ability. The only one gained through their long evolution.

And one the vessel had seen only once before.

This was enough for the cultivation’s success to be given additional priority. A number of objects were soon launched off the vessel in much the same fashion as its scanning instruments had been.

Most were passive defense measures intended to ensure this solar system would remain undetectable for the rest of this cultivation cycle no matter how noisy it became. A few were active measures, the sort equipped to silently detect and obliterate any object or entity approaching within a light year of the Earth itself.

Which they immediately began doing.

One was a simple encoded message transcribed onto a smaller version of the vessel itself and launched at a very specific star in a very distant galaxy.

Once those measures were taken, the vessel turned the majority of its attention back to Humanity. It watched as one of the seven - a human by the name of ‘Ryan Reynolds’ - struggled to survive, brushing against death time and again.

It watched as another of his kind was taken over, one was consumed, and a third retreated beneath the planet’s crust into a custom-built bar with a pint of intoxicant as if to wait for the whole thing to blow over.

As interesting as those individuals were however, they were not the most interesting.

Just as Ryan was celebrating the triumph of his quest to free Arborville of its petty tyrant, something miraculous occurred. Something the vessel’s own algorithms had given an almost zero percent chance of occurring given the length of time that had passed.

The final two humans slumbering in their biotic shells began to wake up.