The silence in the factory sectors was deafening, yet the air hummed with an unseen, terrifying purpose.
At this moment, all 2 billion clones allocated to the project were engaged in the final, most delicate production tasks for the Unified Force Field complete sets. This was not heavy industry; this was the work of surgeons and artisans multiplied by the billion. They were focused solely on the production of microscopic components, the writing and debugging of hyper-complex intelligent code, and the assembly of sensitive terminal devices.
Prior to this stage, there were obviously a large number of upstream production tasks—mining raw ore from asteroid belts, smelting alloys in zero-gravity foundries, and processing rare crystals.
Tom did not include these rough, heavy-lifting tasks in the production assignments for these specific 2 billion clones; instead, those burdens were shouldered by millions of other clones operating heavy machinery in the outer orbits.
