The Vault
Their incinerators made the iron passively. A gravitationally optimal lattice with a factory star of identical mass, temperature, and composition, situated at each vertex, a chandelier of fusion. They'd built their first such foundry before the light of their home system extinguished; their science perfected, their planet soiled. Of all the cardinal directions they knew about, now only the ones that matched the unit cell of the foundry mattered. With their space mapped, their projections of remaining construction time were certain to be fulfilled. A crisis in the fledgling, ancient days of their organism. They had warred each other, had misunderstood. As they birthed their first machines, their foremost saw themselves transformed from author to bacterium, scurrying across the surface of their plundered world, tending to the digestive tract of their economy. One day a group of them breathed life into a spark which could never be extinguished; the solution they had always quietly dre...
