Crackerbox

The crackerbox is always in the Hub. It sits on top of the reactor, in between the cooling caves, and draws power from the reactor and water from the caves. It is the molecular kitchen and manufactory where all stuff is printed from designs floated on the foam.

Origins
The crackerbox developed from the crack kits used in the survivariums to make the bacto-fungal sludge that was their primary nourishment taste a little better. With time and thought, people perfected the ability to make simple flavours and textures from the basic sugars, amino acids, aromatics and fibres. After the Flowering, this became the fastest growing tech on the planet, even more than detox. People rapidly learned how to manipulate molecules using enzymes, lasers, quantum effects and substrates, and they designed tools for the crackerbox to use from these. They figured out ways to print food, clothes, tools, furniture and objects of daily use.

Design
The crackerbox isn't actually a 'box' as a network of nested tanks in which stuff is made. It weaves around the root system of the baths, taking nutrients and water from them, and giving back waste to be recycled. The two systems talk to each other all the time. The outer edges of this network turn into a ramification of delivery points, some inside the Circle of Love, some in the Circle of Games, and some accessible to all. The circle of love gets stuff made in record time, while a slight delay may occur outside, depending on traffic. The traytables where stuff is delivered are actually the mouths of peristaltic cargo chutes.

Methods
All the wealth of the basha in terms of proteins, sugars, fats, starches and metal salts is stored in matrices, sterile honeycombs of cellulose that keep the basic building blocks pure and bonded. When an object is to be printed from the crackerbox, the whole design is fed in from the foam. This is a coded instruction to the crackerbox to manipulate compounds, grow them on structures, conjugate them, lay them down, bead them or break them.The final product is created, finalised and packed by robotic arms if necessary, and then delivered to a traytable. Some very complex objects may be made in pieces and assembled by hand, or a person may print, say, a loom and wool in order to weave by hand and make gifts.