The End of the Matter

Take a God-sized bottle of hundred-proof night, spill it across a couple of dozen light-years, and you have the phenomenon humanxkind called the Velvet Dam. A dark nebula so dense that no near star was powerful enough to excite it to glow, the Dam drew an impenetrable curtain across a vast portion of the stage of space. No sun shone through it to the inhabited region known as the Humanx Commonwealth. No broadcasts, transmissions, or birthday greetings could be sent from beyond the vast ebony wall.

It lay far above the burgeoning ellipsoid of the Commonwealth, and ran roughly parallel to the galactic equator. Yet since that which is unseeable is ever the most attractive, humanx exploratory efforts had already begun to probe persistently at its flanks.

One mission was the same as any other to the drone. Whether it sought out new information behind the as-yet-unexplored Dam or above the surface of Earth's own moon made no difference to its tireless mind. Not that the drone was ignorant, however. The enormous distances traveled by such long-range sensor vehicles rendered constant monitoring impossible. So in addition to the plethora of precision recorders and scientific instrumentation provided for sampling the far reaches of space, the independent robotic drones were equipped with sophisticated electronic brains. Of necessity, they also possessed a certain amount of decision-making ability.

Its own incredibly complex collage of minute circuitry was what changed the drone's preprogrammed course. In its limited mechanical fashion, the drone had determined that the new subject was of sufficient importance to dictate a shift in plans. So it broke from its assigned path, fired its tiny KK drive, and relayed its decision to the drone mother monitor station.

Though small, the tiny drive could push the unmanned vehicle at a speed no humanx-occupied craft could attain