They named it the Nodule. And they made the fatal mistake of not destroying it.
The Valkyrie , an interstellar survey vessel, arrived at Kepler-186f six standard years later. They found Terminus intact. The domes were still pressurized. The lights were still on. But every surface, every tool, every bed, every chair, every single object—including the 347 human inhabitants—had been replaced. The colony was no longer a city. It was a single, continuous, seamless, breathtakingly beautiful sculpture. A perfect solid, warm to the touch, humming a low, gentle note. asolid
The evacuation order came too late. The launch bay had been neglected. The ASOLID there had bound the rocket’s fuel lines into a single, solid, useless ingot. The hangar doors were fused shut with a plug of lithic material as hard as granite. They named it the Nodule
“Day 47. The Nodules have grown together. The central mass now occupies Sublevels D through F. It is not crushing the infrastructure. It is… absorbing it. Rebar, concrete, wiring—it incorporates everything into its structure. I can hear it singing. A low C-sharp. Beautiful, in a way. My own creation. I’ve been testing my blood. I found ASOLID markers in my plasma. We all have them. The air is full of it. We’ve been breathing it for weeks. Binding the dust in our lungs. Binding the cells in our bodies. From the inside out. They found Terminus intact
…It feels… nice. Like going home. I think I’ll just rest my head on the desk for a moment…”