The general picture was that Ymir would not be anything like the traditional idea of a spaceship, in the sense of an orderly, symmetrical piece of architecture. It would be more like a flying robotic anthill, constructed out of a natural found object. The robots crawling around on and in it had general instructions as to what they were supposed to be doing, but could make their own judgments from moment to moment to avoid collision with other robots, or from hour to hour as to when they needed to recharge their batteries.
( Neal Stephenson )
[ Seveneves ]
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