Atom Repack 2021 · Instant

Mira stared at the liquid metal. It reflected her face in fractured silver. She thought of the desert she’d taken the grain from. A billion years of wind and pressure, reduced to a circuit board component in sixty seconds.

“Standard procedure,” Mira replied, though her palms were wet. atom repack

“Atom Repack,” he announced, as if naming a curse. Mira stared at the liquid metal

Mira pocketed the indium. Tomorrow, it would become a quantum wire in a weather satellite. Next year, that satellite would deorbit, be shredded, and repacked again. Silicon. Indium. Gallium. Arsenic. A dance of identities, matter shedding its history like a snake. ” Mira replied

With a sound like a sigh, the grain of sand vanished.