CHAPTER XXV - The Building’s Answer

I waited at the center of the activation platform while the building searched itself.

The silence that followed the capacity query did not remain contained inside the chamber. It traveled outward. I felt it in stages: first through the platform beneath my feet, then through the ten sister nodes arranged around me, then into the circular shaft below, upward through the core chamber, outward through the body chamber, and farther still into systems I could not see. The building was not consulting one authority. It was conducting a census of survivability.

Power reserves answered from the depth.

Stabilization fields reported from the walls.

Environmental systems isolated the living valley from possible surge effects.