The Abandoned Luna's Return
She was still sitting by the obsidian pillar, her hand resting on the stone that held our mother captive.
"It means we reclaim the raw materials," the Adjuster said, clicking his pen again. *Click-click.* "The carbon, the water, the unspent mana, and the stored data of the local consciousness. We break it down to its base components and redistribute them to more... stable sectors. Andromeda, for example, is currently undergoing a beautiful expansion. They could use your excess water."
"You’re going to melt us down?" I asked, a surge of adrenaline finally cutting through my exhaustion. "You’re going to turn five billion people into 'raw materials' because we’re not profitable?"