Talk:A Royal Problem/@comment-32875194-20170612123903/@comment-10390252-20170612134826

FWIW, I think that the Tree is a bit like the Monoliths in the 'Space Odyssey' sequence of books by Arthur C Clarke. They aren't really "sentient" but their polymorphic code is so sophisticated and gives them such a vast range of possible responses to their environments that you wouldn't notice the difference.

The question is, who made the Tree? Do they (or at least their distant descendents) still exist? Even more importantly, do they still watch over the experiments that their ancestors began so very, very long ago...?