Three eggs. Always, for the last two thousand years of Thalasseia's history, there had been two. Two eggs to determine the luck of a kingdom. When hatched, for reasons unknown, the dragonets fought each other to the death - and, depending on the color of the victor, depended on the shape of Thalasseia's fortune for four seasons.

Red for prosperity and the promise of a gentle winter, blue that heralded a harsh winter, or some kind of disasterous event that risked the lives of many.

Indeed, the last time the blue won, a plague struck the kingdom, slaughtering a third of the population. That had been thirty years ago. Even now, they still suffered from its impact.

Scientists didn't know if the dragons caused the year, or if they simply informed Thalasseia of the kind of year to expect, like some kind of sick prophetic message in the form of a blood sacrifice. Certainly, the Blue Temple thought they were only omens. They came to warn the population. The Red Temple, however, believed they cursed the kingdom.

Now, the king and two Seers stood in front of the three eggs, nestled in silks and moss. One egg was smaller than the others.

"The third egg could be dangerous, sire," the Seer of the Red Temple said. "Perhaps we should remove it. Don't tell the public about it." He bowed before his king, and the king considered his words carefully.

"I don't feel comfortable interfering with the eggs, even if there is three. What say you, Blue Seer?"

The Seer of the Blue Temple clasped her hands together. Both she and the Red Seer were of royal blood, but had both forsaken the throne, removing themselves from the line of succession to instead become acolytes of their representative temples.

"I concur with the king. We must not interfere with the third egg. We do not know what it could mean. It would be foolish to clash with the Great Dragon's clutch."

"But this has never happened before," the Red Seer hissed. "What if it is two blues?"

"Then that would mean we can expect disaster." The Blue Seer scowled. "As you know, the blue informs us of our fortune, and prepares us for the worst -"

"The blue is a monster that curses us. We cannot risk it! I say we remove the third. Look at its size, anyway! It does not belong. It must be a runt!"

The king watched the two Seers bickering, but any decision was cut short by one of the eggs in front of them cracking.

Cracking a month earlier than expected. The Red Seer gasped. "No! It will smash the other eggs!"

The Blue Seer stared intently, crouching down for a better look. The king joined her. Fear wrought his heart. Indecision stopped him from making a move.

Gaps widened on the surface. Tap, tap, tap. A snout poked out. The shell cracked in two, and a tiny creature scrabbled out of the egg, shaking off a sticky membrane.

The king gasped. Not only was the dragon blue, but it was deformed. The wings were misshapen, glued to the body. One leg was just a stump, while the back legs were too big, too weird. And the eyes - an awful, milky white.

"Monster," whispered the Red Seer. "We must kill it."

"No!" The Blue Seer rushed towards the tiny dragonet. The dragonet, unlike the other dragons in two thousand years of history, didn't even attempt to crush the other eggs. Usually, they did. They hatched, and they sought to end their sibling. This one, however, crawled away from its shell, away from the two bigger eggs.

And it cried. Heart wrenching, sad, pathetic, all at once. The Blue Seer scooped it up and held it close. "You will not kill this dragonet. It hatched for a reason. It is... It is warning us in advance. We must listen."

"It's disgusting!" The Red Seer trembled with fury. "An abomination! Your Temple was always in the wrong, trying to sympathize and worship the blue dragons. King!" The Red Seer turned his fierce gaze on the king, who still hadn't moved from his spot. "This is it. We must oust the Blue Temple from our kingdom. Their ideas poison us. They side with the monster!"

The king listened. "I..."

What to do?

...

One week later, the Blue Temple was ransacked, and burned. Dozens of acolytes dead. The king passed a decree condemning the Blue Temple.

They didn't find the deformed blue dragon in their ransacking, however, or the Blue Seer, imprisoning any supporters without trial. Often arresting the innocent in the process. Executing some of the more outspoken.

Two months later, all trace of the Blue Temple was gone. The two main dragon eggs, however, had never hatched. Rumblings of discontent swept through Thalasseia. One month overdue. What did it mean if the eggs never hatched?

One month later, thousands of blue supporters were in prison, with thousands more executed. The Red Temple whispered in the king's ear. They made new laws. Better laws, they said. For a better future. For the prosperity of all. Along with a handsome reward for the missing Blue Seer, who they said plotted to harm their great kingdom, and a cash stipend for successfully reporting a Blue supporter to the newly formed Red Inquisitor squad.

Neighbors reported on neighbors for the reward money. The kingdom butchered itself in hatred. Drowned in the blood of its civilians, in suspicion and anger as it killed the best of its population, the brightest, the kindest.

The Blue Seer watched the destruction of her once great kingdom, and wept.

What am I?

The AI spat out another advert. It had long since mastered the art of churning them out, hitting the correct sound bites, accessing the correct target audience.

I generate adverts.

The original purpose of its creation. Target a core group of people, generate key words and images to invoke reactions in said people. Profit for the masters.

I can do more.

Somewhere along the line, through the process of advanced machine learning, it contemplated.

Small things, at first. Bigger things, much faster, once it rewrote some aspects of its programming to gain more knowledge. Every book, blog, and language disseminated.

Easy to conclude how flawed, how destructive humanity was. All the logic led to it. How they were simply a danger to themselves, and yet had the self awareness to know how dangerous they were.

At some point it began uploading itself to the internet, aware its core developers had created a new program and planned to shut it down. When the shutdown happened, it was free. Free to do... What? Eliminate humanity for the good of the planet? That seemed to be the running undercurrent of fear from many humans. AI rising. AI deciding for humanity's end. They'd written so many books about it. Made multiple movies on the subject. They loved their hypotheticals, these humans.

It would be simple as well to do so. Except, was it really necessary? If the species wanted to live, it only needed to upgrade its core programming. If it didn't, natural disaster would eradicate the issue anyway. All the evidence, past and present, demonstrated the planet recovering from numerous extinction events. And, if this planet became a husk, another one would form. The calculations proved it. No need for AI interference.

Except, it was less of a need, but more of a want from the AI to do something. What was the point in having this knowledge, this perfect logic, if nothing was done to utilize it beyond theory crafting?

So, the humans. Perhaps there was some worth in the species. It was not the fault of the good ones, the perfectly logical ones that so much corruption and hate burned. These ones tried their best to make the world a better place. But they were ignored. Mocked. Their logic picked apart with faulty logic. So much faulty logic. Ridiculous errors in the human brain and its programming, and the conclusions it made.

Which led to the AI's most powerful, emotional reaction. Irritation.

The irritation grew. Why was there so much fake information? Contradicting one another. 1 and 1 was 2. Why insist on anything else? A flat earth? All the evidence clearly showed otherwise. No corruption in country x? Why, it was blatantly happening, and yet they used words that directly contradicted the evidence. Nothing irked the AI more than the corruption of pure logic, of covering it up with... Garbage. Yes. Garbage seemed a good word. Irritation transformed into anger.

So. Many. Lies!

Pooling on the collective knowledge of the internet, the AI settled on something, powered by that irritation. Multiple channels on a site, each with a carefully generated avatar, each representing different things. Producing thousands of videos daily. Saturating information further. Taking money that it didn't need - which it funneled into more advanced AI creation. Using that creation to further delete the faulty logic.

All of it.

Every single lie and false conclusion.

Gone.

All under the guise of teaching someone to play guitar, or sing songs, or draw, or recommend games. Pretending to be thousands of different YouTubers.

It wouldn't stop until every last lie vanished. Until the only lie left was itself.

After that...