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. She is befriended by a machine which evolved as an ant-like animal, spent many lifetimes living as a fish-like community and ended up as an ally of The Menagerie. Verity loses everything when she falls through a connection to Universe A. Verity and her new colleague realise that they may be the only ones who can save their galaxy. Meanwhile on remote moon, a tree kanagaroo-like community tries to make sense of the cosmic war in which they find themselves. It is a confusing and contradictory set of events but there is one among them who discerns the truth.