Event · event
First self-copying seed
The Settlement's seed copies itself first.
Read more in The Mirror Race
Who moved first. The Open Cities moved first. Their small Vaults gave them a replicator design in the mid-2380s, and around 2387 they sent a seed to Mercury without waiting for the years of trials the other blocs were running. The seed began making mirrors before its aiming controls had been proven, and its first mirrors turned concentrated sunlight onto the mission's own station in Mercury's Tolstoj Basin. Hundreds of crew died, most of them Raised minds working under Open City contracts, in the Tolstoj Burn. From then on the Open Cities bought most of their chips from the Parishad's fabs. The disaster taught every bloc that an untested seed kills, and it is the oldest reason behind the Accord's keep-out distances for emitters. The Settlement, which had tested hardest, ran the first seed to copy itself, around 2390. The Mandate's followed within a year or two and, doubling faster, overtook it within about a decade.