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did I see the near-invisible reflection of a large object streaking through the sky at mind-shattering speed. It struck the ground, sending a tall plume of dust and debris flying toward the glowing orb of Asgard.
    “Meteors . . .” I mumbled uselessly to myself less than a second before the impact.
    Again, the hangar shook violently. This time I could easily see the trail of destruction from the point of impact. It moved out from the epicenter in circular patterns. Structures that were part of Yggdrassil, the only other sentient being I knew, were ripped from the moon’s soil, their foundations pushed up from the ground in various awkward angles.
    I was terrified to see that the impact location nearly coincided with the structure where Yggdrassil’s cerebral core was buried.
    When the shock wave finally reached the hangar, the force of the blast heaved the broken structure up with such violence as to catapult me toward the sky. I slowed my descent with my maneuvering thrusters long enough to witness the chaos below me. For the first time I got a true glimpse of the sheer size of my “mother.”
    Yggdrassil, the complex, sprawled nearly a kilometer and a half in diameter. An array of eight structures all connected to a central hub and tower. The high-rise in the middle appeared to have been constructed to reach into the heavens, but it was now a crumbling ruin of twisted pseudo-plastics and hypermaterials. The tunnels leading to and from the radiating structures appeared intact but disconnected from each other. I already knew that there was more of Yggdrassil under the surface of Midgard, but there was no reason to assume it had fared any better than the structures on top. The Womb and the hangar in which my body had been assembled lay in waste, resembling a crumpled-up ball of paper.
    Fortunately, my form was constructed to help other Capeks in need. Therefore, mobility and adaptability weren’t an issue. I maneuvered my slow fall so I could land as close to the central hub as possible. From there I ran, climbed, and leaped my way to where the meteors had hit.
    There were two craters, one for each impact. A quick calculation allowed me to infer that the difference in position of the craters was due to the moon’s rotation and that both meteors had come from the same trajectory. This seemed relevant, but I was at a loss to figure out why.
    Finding my way into Yggdrassil’s “brain” was easy enough. Several corridors and access tunnels had been laid bare in the impact. My rather compact size allowed me to slide into these passages with ease. I was less worried about cave-ins and the unstable ground after the impacts than of a possible third (or fourth?) meteor hit, but I managed to stay on mission.
    It wasn’t long before I realized that the deeper I ventured into the central hub, now a mess of cracked and fractured components, I was getting no closer to Yggdrassil’s brain. In fact, I had already reached the cerebral core, and it lay all around me in irreparable ruin.
    I looked for what might have been a memory storage unit, a personality backup—anything. It seemed impossible that something as important as Yggdrassil could be obliterated so easily, that there had been no defense against such a disaster, and that there were no contingencies or redundancies to mitigate losses in a situation such as this.
    Nothing. There was nothing. Power was cut off from most sections, with only minimal auxiliary capabilities here and there. If there was anything left of Yggdrassil, my only friend if only for a short period of time, then there was nothing about it in the limited schematics in my memory and no obvious clues to be found in the wreckage of the complex.
    I had to face facts: I was alone. My only memories were fading impressions from past lives that never happened and whatever I had learned since emerging from the Nursery.
    The Nursery!
    Quickly, I called up the schematics to the complex to locate the Nursery—this