That day's the first time an organization wasn't gonna answer to a leader, or to a group, or to voters, or to anyone. Instead it answered to a system of math. It promised easy profits, and all anyone had to give it was freedom to do whatever it wanted. It could swap out its leaders, investors, and workers, and still be the same thing. It was the first real, autonomous organization humankind ever made, that did things all on its own without someone in charge, as long as people let it into their skulls. The first software running on human flesh, with no admin and no shutdown. The first egregore. When it started killing and enslaving humans, it should have been the last. Greedy sons of bitches.

They'd been trying to get in here, trying to eat us, from the day we learned language. But humanity let them in just to have a bigger profit margin.