Personal Journal of Kurlund. Universe 117. Entry 2319.

Well, it was only a matter of time. My friend Sigrid pinged me today that one of the watcher teams discovered an early analog of the Pre-Existings. It’s not the earliest an analog has been found and it doesn’t mean the Pre-Existings will evolve from it, but it does signify that the real work of this universal cycle has begun.

Speaking of our old enemies, there have been a few instances in the past dozen cycles where they seem to make extraordinary jumps in scientific development. In one instance they almost seemed to expect our interference and came closest to breaking containment since the last War of the Rond. One of the areas of research for this cycle is investigating possible causes for the odd behavior. You’d think a threat of the Pre-Existings would galvanize our kind, but we had just as many departures as the last universal cycle.

I can’t blame them, the monotony of our work is already weighing on me. The initial excitement of my research assignment has waned. We have no leads, no new ideas. I spend my spare time scouring old research on anything and everything, looking for a spark of an idea. Sometimes I come across files that are flagged as being read that I don’t recall reading at all.

I find myself almost bitter at how stagnant we have become. We have reached a limit on how much our biological brains can integrate with technology. If we can’t find a way to evolve, we are doomed to fade away. Perhaps, that is how and why we defeated the Pre-Existings in the Origin. Maybe they grew stagnant, apathetic, bored.

I need to go punch something.