Once, a long time ago, there was a War.
This was no ordinary war, no small w war. No, it was a War, fought between powerful and sophisticated civilizations on a galactic scale.
There were two sides. They had strange, fell names- Arm and Core. And they fought each other for thousands of years, fighting like godlings over the fate of their galaxy.
Cities burned. Nuclear fires engulfed continents. Planets were shattered into drifting pebbles. And after the dust settled, the survivors used their technologies to rebuild, renew... and rearm. Their technology was so sophisticated, that they could repair almost any harm, come back from any disaster.
One side used robotic replicants of its finest minds. One side used cloned bodies wrapped in robotic battlesuits. This was what the war was about- whether or not to stay in bodies of flesh, or become immortal machines, perfect in every way. Arm's fleshy citizens were immortal, too, of course- nanotechnology made disease and aging irrelevant. It made for a very long war.
The war went on... for a very, very, very, very, very, very, very long time. And on, and on, and on. Pretty soon, both sides were having endless meetings in their Departments of Planetary Repair, with topics such as "Macro-Structural Ramifications of Planetary Crust Collapse" and treatises on "When a Nuke is Your Friend". Core scientists even held a symposium on "The Perfect Leveler".
It all got... rather boring.
Arm's citizens used biochemical memory-transfer devices, so that when a citizen died, their nearest clone was activated, and they continued their lives with only a minor interruption. People referred to this as a "pause", because they became so blase about being ripped up, burned to crisps, or disintegrated.
Core's supposedly-souless AIs were, of course, just copies of real sentient beings, and developed their own foibles. For example, one Krogoth, sick and tired of being referred to as A1JKk9192-192312KAiT Series 1902020 (imagine trying to include that in an introduction- "hi, I'm ... um... A1" ) decided, in a fit of pique, that it would forevermore be known as "Bertie", and painted itself a rather silly shade of blue. It ran around with a pack of Storms on huge, titanium cable-leashes, and started a hit ultra-wave show called "Bertie's Cookin' Now", which was a bit silly, considering that a "Kroggie Tart" was the size of a bus, and contained equal parts tire rubber, plutonium and old ball bearings.
In the end, like most wars, it was settled by a pair of the stoutest warriors. Peewee pilot Jerry Dios XXXXVIVIXXI and AK sentience AK18293049280290-121992kk823-121 Series 1723188-a met on the horrific, radiated hell of Phlegum XI, and a very strange thing happened: they had a conversation.
Jerry: "AK! Prepare to die!"
AK18: "0101000001100101011001010111011101100101011001010010000
1001000000010000001010000011100100110010101110000011000010111
0010011001010010000001110100011011110010000001100100011010010
110010100100001"
... long pause
Jerry: "Hey, uh... we seem to be out've power here. Damn Stall..."
AK18: "010010010010000001110111011011110111010101101100011001
0000100000011100100110010101100001011011000110110001111001001
0000001101100011010010110101101100101001000000111010001101111
0010000001100101011000010111010000100000011000010010000001010
0110110111001101001011000110110101101100101011100100111001100
10000001100010011000010111001000101110"
Jerry: "Well, this sucks! We can't... y'know... fight the War."
AK18: "010110010110010101100001011010000010110000100000011101
0001101000011010010111001100100000011010010111001100100000011
1010001100101011100100111001001101001011000100110110001100101
0010110100100000011110010110111101110101001000000110001101100
0010110111000100111011101000010000001110000011101110110111000
1000000110110101100101001000000111011101101001011101000110100
0001000000111100101101111011101010111001000100000010100000110
0101011001010101011101100101011001010010000001100111011101010
11011100111001100101110"
Jerry: "Weeeeell...." (scratches head) "since we can't fight, um... you mind turning your insta-binary translation device on? Kinda, y'know... boring... to just sit here waiting for the Stall to end..."
AK18: "010010000110110101101101001011100010111000101110001000
0001100100011000010111001001101110011010010111010000101100001
0000001110100011010000110010100100000011011010110000101101110
0111010101100001011011000010011101110011001000000110100101101
1100010000001001010011000010111000001100001011011100110010101
1100110110010100100001001000000010000001000001011010000110000
1001011000010000001100111011011110111010000100000011010010111
0100001011100010111000101110 ... whew, that gets really old."
Jerry: "Yeah, you guys must, uh... take forever to order a pizza, right? Heh."
AK18: "What is this... 'pizza'?"
Jerry: "Hey, I have a couple of spare ones... lemme... damn, this thing is cramped... ah, here we go..." (gives slice to AK18) "Hey, can you even eat that?"
AK18: "No, but I'd like to. It'd be a lot more interesting than this War thing, and I'm sick of recycled germanium ore with boron flakes."
Jerry: "Hmmm...."
AK18: "Hmmm...."
... and that, as they say, was History. The "Pizza Peace", as it quickly became known, spread throughout the Galaxy, as both sides realised that the War had been fought over the Dumbest Reasons Ever. Arm and Core quit fighting, and instead "engaged" each other in competitive cooking contests- "Latinum Chef" became an instant success throughout the planets.
But all was not right in the worlds. A deeper, more disturbing Evil had arisen....
