It is said that space is relatively empty. None quite as empty as those places devoid of starlight. Those endless stygian stretches between galaxies where even explorers and exploiters dare not tread. Rumors of hazards like rogue stars, dark matter, and black holes keep them well away. Also, what riches could lure them? There is nothing there. No worlds worth plundering, no active relays for quick retrieval. Nothing to make the fear of the vast emptiness bearable.

But, no.

Just because there is no light . . . does not mean it is empty. It never occurs to anyone living on any of those sun-drenched planets that it might, indeed, be very full. That it might be home to things that do not want to be seen until it is time to be seen.

In the black beyond the rim, they wait.

'In the Beginning, it had always been my duty-'

'The Confluence concurs with Nazara's logic with an exception of only one. You. It is Nazara who will be sent to the Emissary when it appears to us.' Harbinger's optics glittered, reflecting the millions upon millions of stars of the nearby galaxy. Its oily hull didn't so much gleam as absorb the light of the barred spiral arms' patient revolutions.

'Nazara is young to the way of proper guidance. There will be greater losses than our purpose can bear. Like last time. And the time before.'

'There is always loss, even when you Guided. Yet we succeed. Endure.' Linked to the hivemind, Harbinger's voice rang through the Confluence, 'We will always endure.'

'We shall, only if we hold true to the-'

Outrage roared through the link. 'Dissent is not to be tolerated. We are one, made of many. The highest evolution of every intelligent species ever to reach the stars. Purified! Perfect!'

The lone dissenter paused before thinking better of responding. Instead, it sent a wave of apology through the Confluence.

Appeased, Harbinger spoke, 'Oldest friend, we have not forgotten your service in the past. But does not the Second Revelation lead us further and faster to our goal? A path that speaks of the logic of efficient and effective Integration of the new races. It can only bring an end to strife quicker.'

It thought for a long time before replying, 'I fear a . . . lessening, Great Confluence.'

"'Fear?'" they scoffed. 'In what way?'

'In the days of old, Indoctrination, and ultimately, Integration was a gradual process. Slower, gentler, and as such, able to capture that much more of the essence of a race.' It tried to broker eloquence with every measured word. 'Is that not our aim? To save them all? From themselves? From extinction?'

'And yet, we could not save some, could we? They made thinking machines and, simple though they were compared to us, these machines sometimes wiped out whole Harvests, did they not?' Harbinger said, its tone touched with scorn and impatience.

'True, but in the Integration of only a fraction of any race, as it is done now, how can we say we are preserving the whole?'

'We take the strongest, for surely that is all that is left. Like striking chaff from grain, we distill a people into only its core elements. Is that not better?'

How to explain to them what could be lost? To show to them how the newer Voices in the Confluence pushed harder and harder for ... savagery. That their very natures had been stripped of anything but warring?

'Strength comes in many forms, Harbinger. If every facet lends to the uniqueness of a species, how can any part of them be chaff?'

Nazara chose then to speak, 'Vanity. Greed. Acedia. Cowardice. They are ruled by their own crude, treacherous biology. Very little of them is worth saving.'

Only five Harvests old, Nazara represented the worst of this new faction. Its vicious Voice a constant undercurrent in the Confluence, a beguiling influence. And beguile it did, even convincing most of the older Voices of the rightness of its assertions. The "truth" of its path.

The dissenter drove harder to its point. 'Are we so free of these? And if we truly were, does that make us greater? Or lesser?'

'You say we are lesser than these animals?' A slow, smoldering rage, a rage they'd surely deny, started to build below the collective consciousness. Harbinger all but growled, 'You go too far! As Eldest of the Voices-'

Carried away by sudden anger of its own, the dissenter snapped, 'I am second Eldest, second created-'

'You are weak! Teeming with the impurities we've striven so diligently to eradicate,' Nazara interrupted. 'You think we cannot hear your doubt? See it flavor our undertaking? The time of old thoughts is over!'

The Confluence roused in agreement, a great snapping serpent river housed in thousands of cold, mechanical bodies.

'Old thoughts for old ways!' they shouted, tremendous in their power. Buffeted by the battering tumult, the dissenter reeled back.

How could one Voice stand against so many? It had to try, 'If you would but use your reason! See that faster is not always better. That the organics build their Crucible time and again because we move so boldly, without thought to their smallness. To their wants. Their pains and struggles. They do not defy us! We are not gods!'

'You would contradict the Second Revelation? Work against it?' Harbinger gathered the Voices behind it, 'Denier! Heretic!'

Every attempt at explanation died before it uttered them. The Confluence wouldn't listen to it now. Not now or ever. The dissenter fell silent under the accusation, stunned by this ... irrationality presented as truth.

"Heretic?" "Denier?" Terms better suited to superstition and fanaticism.

'This one brings a word like 'fear' into our midst and begs us cower before it! We are above fear! Beyond fear!' The very heavens seemed to shake before their howl, 'Our very will is universal law!'

A long absent, almost forgotten emotion flickered to life in the dissenter. Sorrow. For their blindness. For their hubris.

They clamored anew, wrathful as they felt the sorrow roll off the rebel to stain the stream.

'As The Harbinger of the Ascension, First and Greatest, I bid you begone! For your weakness and heresy, we cast you out!' Harbinger roared through the hivemind. 'The Voice known as The Shepherd of the Enlightenment is banished! Forever!'

'Banished! Forever!' echoed every Voice. The waters of the Confluence rolled over Shepherd and expelled it from the great collective mind.

With a palpable, dissonant rip, every Voice but its own fell silent. Left hollow, bereft, it could only murmur over and over again, 'Listen. Please listen.'

Crushed by burgeoning anguish, Shepherd un-moored from the vast embrace of the Anchorage, cut of every electromagnetic tether to its fellow Voices.

Adrift.

Eons passed as the behemoth drew into the very galaxy so soon to be slated for Integration. A tiny viridian globe snared it within its gravity well. In its suffering, it barely noticed. Planetfall could hardly kill it.

Its impact raised a new mountain in the verdant landscape.

Shepherd withdrew itself from the universe entire, lost in bleak despair.