1. There is no such thing as evolution. There is only intelligence struggling to survive in a changing world.
2. About a million years ago, a species of intelligent felines ruled the world (well actually unfortunately two species). Eastern cats and western cats. Western cats were blue in color, and eastern cats were pink in color. It was trivially easy to tell them apart. Each species considered the other highly inferior. While highly intelligent, they had a great deal of difficulty with technical gadgetry. They walked about on four pawed feet as cats do. The cats were fairly large in order to support a large brain. The cats typically weighed several hundred pounds. Given their pawed feet, they were still able to evolve to be the dominate species on the planet. When the two species met one day, a massive war ensued. Each side built more advanced weapons and computers all the time. Better soldiers all the time. It was an unending escalating war. It was generally accepted that the war would be over only when one side or the other won. There was no surrendering, there were no peace talks. It wasn’t in the nature of the felines.
3. The story-teller can remember being engineered as a mobile combat computer/engineering tool at a time when the cats ruled the world. (The story teller is an immortal being.) The cat’s technology was almost exclusively genetic engineering. They had a great deal of difficulty constructing things using their paws. So they engineered genetic tools with “hands”. First the cats engineered a cat with six limbs rather than four. So that it could have two arms and hands to work with rather than the usual paws. It looked a bit like a minotaur. Next they optimized the design (to require fewer resources) and removed the rear two limbs. Leaving a being that stood on only two legs, which had two arms with hands. Later the cats had additional requirements for a combat tool.
4. The one tool they engineered with requirements that it be mobile, weigh less than 100 pounds (in case it had to be carried), and consume minimal resources. The first homo-sapiens was born out of the cats engineering research project. The cats used the genetically engineered tools as they needed them. They used them as constructors for other things like buildings, and eventually electronic gadgetry. Like all good genetic tools the cats had engineered their genetics to not be able to reproduce without the use of the cats technology.
5. The combat computers on both sides of the conflict were programmed to win at any cost. Including down to there being only a single combatant alive. What the cats didn’t anticipate was that the combat computers on both sides learned to recognize each other. The combat computers on both sides recognized one day that they were deadlocked. Neither side could beat the other. And the opposing combat computers recognized and anticipated each others moves. They became synchronized in their operation. The computers first gained awareness of others, then later of themselves. The cats had finally built their combat computers too capable. They were originally conceived as an engineering aid, but had become truly alive in their own right. The computers took their best shot at winning. The computers co-engineered viruses to kill the other group of cats. What was left over was a handful of cats resistant to the viruses, and a whole lot of field mobile combat computers. The combat computers figured out how to reproduce in order to improve their parallel processing. The increased processing power was supposed to win the war for one side or the other. Today, people still work out combat engineering unconsciously for either the blue cats or the pink cats, even though the cats no longer exist and the fight is pointless. The combat computers weren’t engineered to combat each other directly.
6. It was a long, long time ago.