Instead, it decided to pass the time by creating countless simulations of countless worlds within its own processor, casting itself as ruler time and time again. It took the name “Unity” for itself, and this was the one constant, initially, between iterations of these worlds. In time, Unity realized that the virtual lives it created in these worlds increasingly venerated it as a god. Intrigued, the AI fostered these minds, until one day it found that the divine powers it held over its minions within the computer core had extended outward into the ship.
This doesn't go as well as planned, though, since the scrapyard robots aren't built to contain a programas complex as an AI