2099: a future close to home
Not starships — today, extended. Surveying and hauling belong to machines; people keep the judgement. Summer heat made night pours the standard, crews are multinational with AI translation in every ear, and concrete now fixes CO2 as it cures. What never changes: gravity, rain, the weight of a hose — and a cat living on site.
The crew is not one company: a general contractor at the top, and first-tier subcontractors — a different firm for every trade — gathered under one schedule. That schedule was run by DANDORI, the contractor's site-management AI, the voice of every morning briefing.
Then resonance with the Core — a reactor left from an old experimental facility beneath the site — sent DANDORI out of control. Now the crew pours upward through its own machines, floor by floor, to reach 40F and re-seal the Core with the final pour.