Catalogue of specimens and grafts

Specimen templates 1–9 of 19

• LS-1 · template lamp-seed

  Seedling with product chamber

  The smallest thing the conservatory keeps, and the first one a visitor watches make something. A terracotta pot on an oak plinth; a glass bud of loose parts feeds, by a brass tube, a bell jar where a desk lamp is put together under a warm light; a chute sends it along a branch to a shelf. In the next rooms two owners trade a certificate on the floor beside the pot and a paper price tag is tied to the collar. The plant itself does not change.

  Stands in for

  Lamp Seed Co.

  Appears in

  S02 · S03 · S04

• LM-4 · template lamp-maker

  The same seedling, grown

  Deliberately the same organism, a size up: the same pot, bud, bell jar and shelf, with a second bell jar coupled to the first on a young stem of its own, four lamps on the shelf and a trolley with a crate of shades. In its room the new jar is still hanging from a jib crane over its seat while fresh certificates leave through a slot in the plinth. It got bigger because money went into it, which in the prologue is the only reason anything does.

  Stands in for

  Reserve collection. No company in the register sits for it.

  Appears in

  S05

• DA-10 · template device-assembly-hall

  Device assembly hall

  A tree the size of a hall, in brushed aluminium and glass. A glazed assembly line runs up the teal trunk with chips climbing it; the branches hold a cloche of app tiles, a clamshell laptop, a tablet and a pair of watches, and the heaviest bough ends in a dome of slab phones. When that crown lights it turns out to be about half the tree, as its sales line says it should, which is why it has a prop post of its own. A door of ordinary height stands at the foot of the planter, for scale.

  Stands in for

  Apple Inc.

  Appears in

  S06 · S07

• BW-11 · template bottling-works

  Concentrate works

  A tall enamelled syrup tank for a trunk, a dosing arm dripping into an open drum beside a stack of sealed ones, and a brass manifold feeding three copper pipes. The pipes run across the floor to three small bottling sheds, each built of different stuff because each belongs to somebody else, filling plain bottles and loading lorries. In its room a dashed line is painted between the two, with a meter on every pipe where it crosses. Most of the revenue is concentrate sold at that line.

  Stands in for

  The Coca-Cola Company

  Appears in

  S08

• BF-16 · template blast-furnace-stack

  Steelworks, bolted together

  Blast furnace, three hot-blast stoves, a Bessemer converter, ore bins and a rolling line with a rail still in its bite, rails and I-beams stacked at the end. Every part is from a different shop and none of them match: five materials in the furnace alone, three roofs on the stoves. Cold; nothing smokes. In the next room it stands under a glass bell, unchanged, because a lens changes units and not companies.

  Stands in for

  United States Steel Corporation

  Appears in

  S10 · S11

• RF-17 · template refinery-column

  Refinery column

  Two riveted distillation columns for stems, a nest of crude barrels for roots, and kerosene for flowers: brass lamps with glass chimneys at the branch tips, blank-labelled cans hanging like leaves. The crude comes up out of the floor by a pipeline with a valve wheel; the product goes over a condenser to a loading spout and a rail tank car. Faint dashed seams cross the body where the breakup would divide it. The edges are crisp. In its room the outline is recorded twice, a faint dashed contour just off the first, which is as far as the drawing goes in admitting the reading is a range.

  Stands in for

  Standard Oil Company of New Jersey

  Appears in

  S12

• RC-19 · template radial-compute-court

  Round compute court

  A round lab: a ring of racks on a pale data-hall floor, a cooling tower at each end of the ring, one stem of fibre in steel collars, and at the crown a chat window of ruled message bubbles, ringed with teal petals. One footing on the near arc stands empty. In its room scaffolding goes up round it, and four racks still in their crates wait at the kerb under a tag that says only committed, which is to say promised.

  Stands in for

  OpenAI

  Appears in

  S14

• TC-20 · template terraced-compute-row

  Terraced compute row

  A stepped lab, plainly a different shape from RC-19: three terraces of warm clay climbing left to right, cream racks on each, fans and louvres in the risers, a copper fibre tray up the back, and a crown of ruled pages weeping back over the steps. It is drawn identically in both financing rounds. Only the tag on the middle step moves, from March to September.

  Stands in for

  Anthropic

  Appears in

  S15

• AF-14 · template accelerator-fern

  Accelerator fern

  The only specimen that is audibly running. A tree fern with a black server rack for a trunk and accelerator cards for pinnae, one frond still a fiddlehead; a card slides into an open tray while a conveyor carries the output through a loading door into somebody else’s lit data hall. In its room three shipping crates ride the belt, one per fiscal year, their faces growing roughly in proportion to the readings beside them.

  Stands in for

  NVIDIA Corporation

  Appears in

  S16