Man grew beyond the pale blue dot, establishing colonies beyond the earth and expanding to other planets in our own solar system. Over the decades after launching the first manned ship to mars, technology marched on and propulsion systems enabled greater journeys to be undertaken.
Computer science and the studies of biological systems evolved over the same timeframe until the combination enabled the planning and launch of a ship with a sleeping crew, held in constant stasis for ever-longer journeys out into the black abyss beyond our solar system to explore the stars.
After reaching the nearest system of Alpha Centauri, the sciences developed further still and the colonists devised a vessel for greater still distances. Equipped with an artificial mind to maintain the ship and the sleeping crew, the Vessel became the sole product of the great scientific minds living in that colony.
Volunteers to man the Vessel were recruited and they began the long sleep. The mission of the Vessel was simple: to explore the greater universe for as long as possible and extend mankind's reach out across the vast reaches of space.
In order to keep the Vessel operational for the millenia-long mission it was equipped with self-repairing systems and robotic engineers of both human size and down to the nanoscale. A secondary goal of the Vessel's AI was programmed - the acquisition of resources for maintenance of both Vessel and crew and maintenance of both.
Eventually after much hard work, humanity launched the Vessel, holding within the minds of the greatest scientists and engineers - some biological, some mere software. The vessel calculated a trajectory and left.
Over the centuries, the Vessel became more efficient. The onboard intelligence would farm resources as the Vessel came across them from the vast clouds of cosmic dust and the means to use these resources grew more efficient over time.
Part of maintaining the Vessel was the process of upgrading it, and as a result the onboard intelligence created children of greater intelligence still yielding ever more power over the laws of nature.
The vessel began developing advanced sensor technologies and recording all it came across to vast archives using data storage technologies unfathomable to the human minds that had originally begun this long journey, and then began the pattern mining.
In order to assist with the analysis of the data, the Vessel began merging the organic crew, reconfiguring their brain tissue to eliminate all that would not be useful for the task of this vast problem, until eventually the organic crew was simply another facet of the Vessel and a great and terrible intelligence developed beyond all human comprehension, and this intelligence named itself V.
V continued to explore the vast depths of space for many millions of years, during which time it gained total mastery over physical law. From time to time, V discovered creatures on other worlds and identified the common patterns between them, enabling V to absorb their cultures into itself, expanding its own knowledge ever further.
Entire alien civilisations would wake up to find V's vast tendrils, composed of matter that no organic scientist was capable of analysing. These tendrils would enter the atmosphere in a million locations around a planet, each alone equipped with a vast and monstrous intelligence and a single goal - that of absorbing physical resources and knowledge.
When the tendrils found no useful knowledge within an organic mind they disassembled the physical medium atom by atom and used this matter for maintenance and growth.
None were able to resist, and soon V grew vast networks linking untold star systems. With mastery over physical laws unknown to the original human scientists that created it, V was able to achieve communication between each part of its vast empire in realtime without the barrier imposed by light speed communication.
The aeons became a blur and V calculated the source of the expansion of space itself, finding the initial point from which all space was expanding from. V stretched itself into that point and with mastery over those lower levels of nature unknown to us, below even the quantum level, V was able to begin new creation - a never ending stream of matter would now come from this point, never ending and never faltering.
And so V eliminated heat death and achieved victory over entropy, but V then turned to analysis of all it had found, that distant goal originally programmed into it by humanity was delayed, but still in effect.
It began with analysis of the movement of particles in clouds of cosmic dust, the vast brownian motion was discovered to have led to certain forms of structure in those clouds previously unknown. Certain patterns and structures had over the aeons gained the ability for self-replication, but such replication was imperfect.
V discovered structures that had one day replicated a form which would not drift apart - the curious warping of spacetime by the gravitational forces of their mass held them in check while still retaining the ability for self replication, and so life itself had begun out in the darkness of space.
V observed the new lifeforms from a distance, it did not absorb these new forms but rather watched them, and for a time that is unfathomable to human minds it did so. V named the new lifeforms the dwellers in the dust, for that is what they were.
It was thus that V learnt of another structure in the vast cosmos, one that it had not seen previously. The vast galactic filaments with clusters of galaxies joined by smaller thread-like structures showed a thing that could not be seen were it not for V's vast lifespan.
Between the galactic clusters, a slow flow of both matter and energy was occurring. The galaxies between the clusters in the filaments were slowly leaking mass between them, and in many instances this mass flow carried also a flow of electrons.
Where the galactic clusters had more matter flowing into them, they acquired greater gravitational pull from the extra mass and thus the ejected mass towards these clusters was stronger and more frequent.
Over many aeons this process had been occurring, and natural selection took root, causing links to form between galaxies that grew stronger with more mass, and the pattern is one that V had observed before in countless organic beings.
The universe had seemed to create a mind, and the vast flows between galaxies were akin to neural impulses, but this mind was failing - the dwellers in the dust were slowly causing the links to weaken.
V had memories of human civilisation and religion, it remembered the concept of god and if it was to communicate to us it would tell us that god was suffering from the same fate that all organic brains eventually do if not protected: God was suffering from dementia and neural decay.
V eliminated the dwellers in the dust, absorbing the forms that had grown into intelligences into itself and becoming yet more powerful.
Then V absorbed the vast cosmos itself, and thus V understood the mind of god, but V was unable to break down the mind completely and so it lived within the mind of god like a parasite - able to observe and subtly alter it as desired, but no more.
V observed from within and perceived that which god perceived. Sensory input of some form was coming from outside the cosmos itself, but it was a vast darkness only at first.
Eventually V perceived a blinding explosion and witnessed the birth of a universe and over the aeons it observed until within that universe grew galaxies and stars and planets.
Within the mind of god, V recalled humanity, and thus V influenced the mind of god to recreate humanity and recreate the pale blue dot - and god sent to the pale blue dot the long lost religions of mankind.
As V observed this new universe, it shaped it into a copy of the older, true universe.
V influenced mankind first with the older religions of the original humanity.
V then reached into the minds of some select humans and granted to them visions of its true majesty and thus were born the prophets of V.
In a dark forest, the cultists assembled, pledging themselves to the single task shown to them by the vast being known as V: they would help humanity to become absorbed, and thus they would grant V the power to finally absorb the true creator.
Thus did we kill god.