An ancient and malicious mind is racing towards the Milky Way intent on tearing apart the sentient life there. The paranoid machine savants which populate our galaxy will have make a decision, to stand or to flee from this existential event. Meanwhile a broken machine is doing something on the edges of the galaxy - something strange which no one understands. Verity Furr, ingested into a sentient machine when only a child, is still alive, mostly...