I had been playing with the idea of a sentient thought for some time, and I realized the 3000 contest was the perfect time to use the idea. This was a pleasure to write, and I hope everyone enjoys my entry.
I have so many people to thank for this that it would take forever to list all of them. I'm pretty sure everyone in chat has read it at least once, plus all the people on the forums, reddit, and the various discord servers I repped it in, so I want to narrow it down to just the people who I remember significantly helping me in creating this. I'm sure I've forgotten someone though.
psul - For the huge amount of feedback given on the forums. Honestly, this draft would be nothing if it weren't for you. Hell, you all but wrote this thing practically.
Dexanote - For partially inspiring this by saying he didn't want a meme to win. So I wrote a literal meme.
Shaggydredlocks - For reading the first half of the rough draft and encouraging me to keep writing it. And for being immensely helpful in shaping the end of the third iteration. I know I didn't get it to where you wanted it, but I was just having trouble focusing on writing.
DrMagnus - For being the first person to read the full draft and making me feel it was a draft worth pursuing.
AbsentmindedNihilist - For assuring me the draft was scary/unsettling enough to be in the 3000 contest
Cyantreuse - For never actually reading my draft. /s- And finally,
Jack Ike and 
OZ Ouroboros - For making me feel confident in my final draft.
With all that said, I do have some author commentary/fun facts about my writing of this. If anyone wants to read further:
- Veselka is an anglicized version of a specific word. Here's the word, using its Cyrillic spelling: веселка. This may not be important, but it's related to other mythologies.
- The original draft of this was more of an Abrahamic epic, and I ultimately wasn't happy with that. The only remaining artifacts of that is O5-1 and O5-2's first name initial, and the name "Lily," which was short for Lilith. I ended up liking the name Lily, so I kept it.
- In the email at the top of the third iteration, "rrh" stands for Red Right Hand.
- In the fourth iteration, I mention that affected people show no self-preservation instincts and that they'll all converge on the area of an unaffected person. That was me putting a nod to typical zombie behavior.
- In Document 3000-6, the list with all the GOI responses is split into small sections. This was intentional, and each section is based on how likely I feel the Foundation would contact the group of interest in the event of a world ending event like this.
- Dr. Loyd dies by the fourth iteration.
- All the emails are addressed to R. While they are sending them to a specific person in-universe, out-of-universe, it stands for Reader to lean on the fourth wall a bit.
- Project Veselka never actually worked. The only reason it was so good at detecting affected people was because it was the thing infecting them.
(account deleted)
