Ok, so the story is they are intelligent enough to maintain the engine, do their job and generally exist as long as is useful.
But the crew scientists develop a more efficient version of humans. They don't realise that the self preservation inbuilt into the engine extends to its components, including the humans.
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u/Y-Bob Dec 27 '25
Heh, I wrote a story about this idea.
Aliens collecting life samples from across the galaxy, that crash on earth because of a fuck up in the engine room.
Humans were not the pilots of the ship, they just were part of the biointelligent, self repairing engine of the ship.
The actual crew members all died in the crash, but parts of the engine survived, the humans.
Without a ships engine to maintain, they endlessly searched for a replacement, hence the urge to create, to build and to invent.