Editing A Fire Upon the Deep (section)

==Plot==
An expedition from Straumli Realm, a young human civilization in the high Beyond, investigates a newly discovered five-billion-year-old data archive in the low Transcend that offers the possibility of unimaginable riches. The expedition's facility, High Lab, is gradually and secretly compromised by an initially dormant [[superintelligence]] within the archive later known as the Blight. However, shortly before the Blight's final "flowering", two self-aware entities, created similarly to the Blight, plot to aid the humans before the Blight can gain its full powers.

Finally recognizing their danger, the High Lab researchers attempt to flee in two ships, one carrying the adults and the second carrying the children in "[[suspended animation|coldsleep boxes]]". The Blight discovers that the first ship lists a data storage device in its cargo manifest; assuming it contains information that could harm it, the Blight destroys the ship. The second ship escapes.

The ship lands on a distant planet with a [[Middle Ages|medieval]]-level civilization of dog-like creatures, dubbed "Tines", who live in packs as [[Group mind (science fiction)|group minds]]. Upon landing, however, the two surviving adults, husband and wife, are ambushed and killed by Tine fanatics known as Flenserists, in whose realm they have landed. The Flenserists capture a young boy named Jefri Olsndot and his wounded sister, Johanna. Johanna is rescued by a Tine named Peregrine who witnessed the ambush and taken to a neighboring kingdom ruled by a brilliant Tine named Woodcarver. Steel, the Flenserists' leader, tells Jefri that Johanna and their parents were killed by Woodcarver and exploits him in order to develop advanced technology (such as cannon and radio communication), while Johanna and the knowledge stored in her "dataset" device help Woodcarver rapidly develop as well. A highly placed Flenserist spy keeps Steel informed of Woodcarver's progress.

A distress signal from the sleeper ship eventually reaches "Relay", a major information/service provider for the galactic communications network. A benign transcendent being named "Old One" contacts Relay, seeking information about the Blight and the humans who released it, and reconstitutes a human man named Pham Nuwen from the wreckage of a spaceship to act as its agent, using his doubt of his own memory's veracity to keep him under its control.  Ravna Bergsndot, the only human Relay employee, traces the sleeper ship's signal to the Tines' world and persuades her employer to investigate what it took from High Lab, contracting the merchant vessel ''Out of Band II'', owned by two sentient plant "Skroderiders", Blueshell and Greenstalk, to transport her and Pham there.

Before the mission is launched, the Blight launches a surprise attack on Relay and kills Old One. As Old One dies, it downloads what anti-Blight information it can into Pham. Pham, Ravna and the Skroderiders barely escape Relay's destruction in the ''Out of Band II''.

The Blight expands, taking over races and "rewriting" their people to become its agents, murdering several other Powers, and seizing other archives in the Beyond, searching for what was taken from High Lab, but looks only in the Beyond. It finally realizes where the danger truly lies and sends a hastily assembled fleet in pursuit.

The humans arrive at the Tines' world first and ally with Woodcarver to defeat the Flenserists and rescue Jefri. Pham then initiates Countermeasure, which was aboard the humans' ship. Countermeasure extends the Slow Zone outward thousands of light years, enveloping and killing the Blight at the cost of wrecking thousands of civilizations and causing trillions of deaths. The humans are stranded on the Tines' world, now in the depths of the Slow Zone. Activating Countermeasure is fatal to Pham, but before he dies, the remnant of Old One within his mind reveals to him that, although his body is a reconstruction, his memories are real. (Vinge expands on Pham's [[backstory]] in ''[[A Deepness in the Sky]]''.)