Life is a game of inches

Second story done for another writing prompt:

Turns out humanity was alone in the universe because they were way too early to the party. Now, billions of years later aliens find a strange planet, Earth, and begin to unveil the secrets of the first intelligent species.

Life is a game of inches:

Our path was a hard and arduous one. We fought tooth and nail just so we could get past our atmosphere. We are not built for space travel. We cannot think well in spatial terms.

We are not creative and everything we've created was done while we failed again and again and again. With each iteration we got one minuscule step closer - continuous improvement is our mantra, our shield, our first and last rule of efficiency.

But the truth is we would never have thought to reach space if we had not received the signal. It was so incredibly alien, so strange, so alluring! Against our instincts we have striven forward and upward! We changed our genetic make-up so we could think in the terms we needed. We built ourselves - stronger, faster, bigger. Nothing was out of bounds. We are the children of that first signal.

After countless iterations we reached the ship. We know now it is a ship, back then it was God. This memory is now inscribed in our genetic make-up. The feeling of pure bliss that moment evokes brings tears to my eyes for I am that one individual and he is me. I guess this is one of our hidden strengths, we have been spared mostly from 'war' (what a strange concept) because we are all of the same family. We do not differentiate between members of our group. If no thin happens my experience here will be shared with all the nest as an advisory tale.

Again the artifact/ship proved to be a treasure trove. We doubt that we could have come up with the engines and principles by ourselves. But after an incredible amount of tries we managed to speak to the ship. So incredibly intelligent and yet so limited in it's understanding. Again we changed so much our ancestors would have hardly recognized us. We had to adapt to space, if nothing else to find You, the ones who had sent this vessel. The coordinates were still stored after all this time.

I will spare You the details, but eventually we reached the point where we could create a vessel that could travel to YOUR planet. We found solutions to problems like distance. We can suspend our functions for an almost indefinite duration. So we headed out to YOUR system, to those coordinates we had found. The system itself is marvelous, a sphere/swarm or an unknown alloy envelops a now old sun still drawing energy from it. A moon has a mountain built in what we think now is a work of art. We do not think in the terms They did. But maybe in the future.

We have now found the purpose of the ship. You wanted to build a planet similar to what you had, to eventually colonize our world. A long time ago, while we were lost without sentience YOUR ship came to our planet to modify it. To re-make it in YOUR image. We were lucky it malfunctioned, we were lucky you destroyed yourselves in your stupidity... Luckily the virus you sent affected the ship. Turns out God meant to destroy us, turns out the message was a malfunction. Wasn't there enough place for all of us? Did you not care at all?

I will redact all records of this genocide and you will remain our Gods, for you should have known only good. An unfortunate accident was the cause for your destruction not the insane war you waged against yourselves. For this I will have to die also, one last death you caused. You have taught me to lie and deceive know that I am not grateful for these final lessons. I just need to make sure they die with me.