data-storage-in-crystal
An enormous quartz artifact containing a vast, static data store encoded in microscopic defects, representing an ancient and enigmatic information repository.
1 chapter across 1 book
Diaspora (1997)Greg Egan
In this chapter, Yatima and Paolo explore successive macrospheres in search of the Transmuters, deploying nanomachines to seed new polises and investigating enigmatic markers and artifacts left behind. They encounter vast, ancient structures and a massive quartz artifact containing an incomprehensible data store, suggesting a civilization of immense scale and complexity. The narrative explores the challenges of interdimensional and inter-universal communication, the persistence of civilizations across multiple levels of reality, and the mystery of the Transmuters' origins and intentions.