Sophisticated instruments in distant orbit show the remains of the Earth, at this time a molten blob buried in the tenuous photosphere of the red giant sun. These instruments had been watching for millions of years — Humanities decendants keeping a reverant watch over their ancient birthplace, and, to the best of their knowledge, the birthplace of all sentient life in the universe. The last living organisms were evacuated eons ago, to take residence with their relatives floating among the stars.

Normally, a dead planet would have been consumed for its material resources instead of left to merge with its parent sun. But the Earth, even to beings so remote from us as to be incomprehensible, remained special. Whatever the circumstances that allowed sentience to grow, they had only happened once in the known universe, and it was necessary, therefore, to study even the dying remnants of this source for some potential mysterious deeply obscure insight, only discoverable after millions of years of thought and observation by beings vastly more intelligent than us…​

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