The box stood by the cornfield, slowly but surely falling to pieces.

There had been a war. A conflict with an adversary dedicated to the destruction of anything unlike themselves. It had raged from Event One to the end of the Entropic Curve, and all stops in between. And in the end, both sides burned.

The box had been in the vanguard of one of the major assaults: A battle through time, causes preceding effects, history being rewritten over and over. The universe had shook under the silvery devastation of their weapons. And through luck, be it good or bad, the box had been one of the last to fall.

It had been hurled from Time itself, screaming its loss as it fell, its crew dead, or never having existed in the first place. It fell to a world the War had never reached, its ailing systems throwing up the best camouflage it could find.

Decades passed. Self repair was no longer an option; the place it drew its power from was long gone. It sat by the cornfield, slowly but surely falling to pieces. Slowly dying.