Ursula felt the poignancy of the image: the lonely machines, envoys of creators perhaps long extinct—or evolved past caring about the mission they had charged upon their loyal probes. The faithful probes reproduced themselves, saw their progeny off, then began their long watch, whiling away the slow turning of the spiral arms…

We have found a few of these early probes, remnants of a lost age of innocence in the galaxy.

More precisely, we have found their blasted remains.

Perhaps one day the innocent star emissaries sensed some new entity enter the solar system. Did they move to greet it, eager for gossip to share? Like those twentieth century thinkers, perhaps they believed that replicant probes would have to be benign.

But things had changed. The age of innocence was over. The galaxy had grown up; it had become nasty.

The wreckage we are finding now—whose salvage drives our new industrial revolution—was left by an unfathomable war that stretched across vast times, and was fought by entities to whom biological life was a nearly forgotten oddity.

“Uh, you there Urs?”

Ursula looked up as the radio link crackled. She touched the send button.

“Yes, Gavin. Have you found something interesting?”

There was a brief pause.

“Yeah, you could say that,” her partner said sardonically. “You may want to let Hairy pilot himself for a while, and hurry your pretty little biological butt down here to take a look.”

Ursula bit back her own sharp reply, reminding herself to be patient. Even in humans, adolescence didn’t last forever.

At least not usually.

“I’m on my way,” she told him.

The ship’s semi-sentient autopilot accepted command as she hurried into her spacesuit, still irritated by Gavin’s flippance.