Starfall It took many days to watch the star die, it's hydrogen envelope stripped off as her orbit decayed into the relentless pull of the black hole. My sensor spines tasted the acrid flavours of helium and iron as her core spun relentlessly inwards, throwing out a burnished gold tail of escaping plasma. That tail was flung out in a vast arc millions of miles in length like an arm thrown out to grasp some hand hold, some chance of rescue. There was none. I watched alone. Occasionally my shields and outer hull were buffeted by high energy particles; their insistent pressure jolting my processing sub routines making me aware again of my nature as an observer. Perhaps this is how my creators feel when their day dreams are interrupted. Many many weeks later all but the faintest traces of the star were gone, nothing more than a vague pattern on my sensor arrays - a burn on the back of the retina. Had I not been a construct AI I may have cried then, or perhaps felt a great feeling of loss. Instead I swung my hull away and pulled the spatial fabric towards me as I flew back home. In my memory core though I can still hear that haunting cry of her fall and I wonder what that means. Fin.