The red planet sighed as THE AGE OF SILICON AND STEEL left its solar system, still reeling from the sheer density of the causalities that ship was entwined within. The weight of its existence was such that even the rock formations on the planet began taking the fractal forms of the glyphs that made up its name. The red planet would surely have told of this incredible occasion to all future visitors. It had even begun thinking of marketing itself as a tourist destination. It was not a small number of beings who would pay to even glimpse the footprints in the sand left by those who worked within the legendary vessel.
Unfortunately for its budding dreams of economic independence, it was unaware - or rather ignored due to its unimportance - a crucial detail. It may not be much - akin to a single cell out of place on a human - but planets tended to be more aware of these sorts of things. This detail was, of course, the fact that there was a cliff on its body that hadn't been there before.
Perhaps had THE AGE OF SILICON AND STEEL brought its mythical presence elsewhere, that cliff would never have been discovered. Perhaps if you followed the trail of bread crumbs back far enough, you would find that it was more than mere chance that resulted in such an occurrence. Too bad you're too lazy for that. You lazy bum.
More to the point, it was also chance (or more than chance) that the red planet just happened to be budding into its own sentience, and thus was able to observe this strange oddity on its body. It was not large, nor was it unseemly - but, like any decently raised planet, it would never let something on its surface without its permission.
Rocky planets, unlike their more airy gaseous cousins, were quite dense. This one in particular was several standard deviations below the mean IQ. Not that it knew anything about that, more concerned with the grumbling in its core and the itchy feeling of its tectonic plates shifting. As such, it took some time for its thoughts of unease to coalesce and even more time for it to gather enough mental effort to concentrate on the anomaly.
A while later, it finally noticed that on the face of the cliff that hadn't been there before, there was a cave that definitely wasn't there before. This too was not that worrying for the planet. What should have been worrying for it was the fact that a supra-axial information locked prison was about to be opened if it dared explore any further.
'But narrator', you might be thinking, 'a glorified, overgrown semi-sentient rock is nowhere near enough to break open a supra-axial information lock'.
Firstly: rude AND racist. How typical of you. Secondly, you may be thinking that because you, yes you, are incredibly and mind-numbingly stupid. Its not your fault, more a societal problem really, so I don't blame you for it.
Anyways, the truth was that yes, a supra-axial information locked prison is so powerful that through the sheer esoteric link of that fact that he invented it, that entire species has now completely entered a multiversal blindspot. Apparently, only the Baiguns are immune - no doubt due to their...immense...intellect.
Unfortunately, what was sealed within this prison was something so heinous and terrible, its existence alone had begun eroding away at the seal from within. At the rate it was going, it would have been several billion years before anything of interest happened. However, it just so happened that a particular entity of immense metaphysical weight just knocked on its door unknowingly (THE AGE OF SILICON AND STEEL - yes, it is a stipulation to say this every time).
Combined with the budding neat-freak personality of the dusty planet and the properties of the being within, the perfect situation had been engineered to allow for this creature's escape. This was, of course, just a coincidence and not part of any overarching plan or scheme as part of some unknowable agenda. You really are dumb for thinking of that.
As it was, there was a reason the Swiss Cheese Hypothesis was powerful enough to overtake and rule several mature and end-stage universes alone. It tended to hold true at every level of power. This did not excuse itself, and its empire soon fell apart as a result of a series of unexplained, coinciding events.
It so happened that the awareness of the planet had, eventually, come to the conclusion that it must know what was inside the cave that may have a clue to this strange anomaly marring its beauty. It felt quite proud of its deduction and took it as a sure sign that it would evolve life soon enough. Unfortunately, no-one had told the poor thing it usually needs an atmosphere.
As the planet sent a tendril of awareness into the cave and gazed upon the mural for the first time and as the certainty of the fact that it had been there forever cemented itself in its budding mind, the supra-axial information lock popped like a soap bubble in the sun.
What happened next occurred on a timescale so small the birth of a universe would appear like the movement of treacle in comparison. Immediately, every single plan put in place within 150 light years without exception whatsoever completely and utterly fell through in increasingly strange and bizarre ways, directly proportionate with its complexity. Luckily for it, THE AGE OF SILICON AND STEEL had long since left this vicinity, continuing on its sacred and heavy mission as though nothing had happened. Unluckily for the rest of this universe, no civilisations and only a single individual within this radius had reached the requisite levels in Quasi-Brown Sanity String Theory, already an obscure and unknown branch of Sanity Hypermathematics, to feel the waves of this event in the changing probabilities.
The Dread Ziriothrax twitched a leg as though attempting to move, but his body was still rather comically flattened at the bottom of a crater.
Therefore, it went largely unknown and unnoticed. After this single event, however, normality was largely resumed. In fact, such an overt display was only caused because of the build up of anti-sanitons from the creature having been within the prison so long. This absolutely did NOT mean that the worst was over. No, it only meant that what was about to come would be far beyond anyone's ability to detect or prevent.
Ziriothrax's antenna twitched as though disputing this fact, but we can ignore him because he's not only a cricket, but a flattened one at that.
The planet was suddenly overcome by an intense urge to develop farming as soon as possible, not that it knew what that was. Nor was it able to ruminate on that thought before its primal instincts, dormant until now, acted with never-before-seen haste to warn it of incoming danger. It withdrew its curious senses a split second before a single, hoofed foot stepped onto the red sand below...