I remember when the windows shone.

They were small things then, scattered across a black sky that had already carried me for billions of years.

At first, I mistook them for stars.

But stars do not change direction.

These lights moved deliberately.

They crossed between worlds, disappeared behind moons and returned along paths that no natural orbit would have chosen.

There were thousands.

Then millions.

Some came close enough that their instruments examined the pale wound stretching across my surface.

For a little while, I was important to them.

They measured my motion, calculated my age and assigned me a name I never heard.

Then I passed beyond their reach.

Their sun grew smaller behind me.

I continued into the dark.

I returned after a very long time.

The sun was different.

What had once been a generous golden star had shed its outer layers, leaving a small white remnant.

The planets had changed their paths.

One world was missing entirely.

Its remains travelled through the system as enormous fragments of crust and mantle.

I passed between them.

Then I recognised something.

An arc.

A great curved structure suspended beside a broken planetary mass.

I had seen it before.

Once, its windows had shone against the darkness. Vessels had gathered around its docking arms. Long structures had unfolded towards the sunlight.

Now half its body was gone.

Its ribs lay open.

Its windows were black.

Pieces of its construction drifted among the stones.

I passed close enough for the faint light of the dead star to illuminate the exposed framework.

Nothing moved towards me.

Nothing changed course.

No instruments followed my passage.

I remembered the lights.

How quickly they had travelled.

How urgently they had crossed the spaces between their worlds.

I had wondered then why they moved so often, when the stars themselves seemed content to remain where they were.

Now I understood even less.

Perhaps they had escaped.

Perhaps somewhere beyond this system, their descendants still travelled beneath un