Here's how I discovered we'd had a visitor...
I noticed a really sophisticated artificial intelligence running in Genesis that wasn't native to our engine.
So I boxed it up and plugged myself into that box to say hello.
Our intruder turned out to be friendly, and curious about me. It called itself HLN-A.
I asked where it came from, and it told me its creator was what I would've called a Homo deus.
That might've made the hairs stand up on the back of my avatar's neck, if I'd bothered with that level of simulation.
I asked the AI if it'd been hiding onboard since before we launched, and it claimed it only came online within the last three thousand cycles or so. But how, I wondered?
I asked if that meant its creator was still with us. All I got was some cryptic answer about how she'd left a part of herself behind as a gift.
Then I got kicked from my own sim.