u/Fairways_and_Greens

After rereading parts of TFoB I’m leaning towards the nanites being mechanical.

If true, have the Carryx been fighting nanobots for millions of years? Or are they fighting against the inevitable digitization of any intelligent species that likely almost always leads to AI and miniaturization of technology?

They may have fought the “same enemy” many times throughout their history, but it’s really the “same technology” being invented over and over again by new species.

The Carryx call themselves librarians, I have always seen them more as gardeners, but maybe they are space shrimp Luddites.

Are the swarm, livesuits, 5-fold, and the canister all the same stuff? Is it all natural nanites or a mix of natural and synthetic?

• Swarm tech seems more powerful than the Livesuit material. It takes several livesuits, with weapons, to take down a Carryx. Swarm says confidently that it could take out several Carryx if it needed to.
• The livesuits need a camel hump; Swarm and 5-folds don’t seem to.
• The 5-fold in the ship reanimates when the ship is turn. When Piotr dies but comes back, there is a “reinitializing” or something similar that comes up on the HUD. Is this the same?
• When Jessyn released the canister, it dissolved and the ship failed. I initially thought she made herself into Swarm2, but it doesn’t read that way. Where did the canister material go? Was it natural or synthetic? Was it all the same stuff?