How do you manufacture something you do not understand? You follow the instructions manual to the letter and you hope for the best. When Rani Spengler reverse-engineered the geometry drive, she did not manage to understand the inner workings of the drive. She knew what the drive did, and she knew what it looked like but couldn't understand how the drive bent time and space.

One hundred and fifty years later, we are no closer to an answer on that front, which makes geometry drive manufacturing a peculiar endeavour akin to assembling a car without knowing how internal combustion works.

1 — Components

A geometry drive is made of hyperdimensional crystalline carbon compounds excreted by pseudonigella stellaris flowers. A regular geometry drive requires about one thousand flowers. The harvested crystals then have to be refined. Growing N. stellae and manipulating the hypercubic compounds requires highly trained personnel, though it is not particularly dangerous.

2 — Assembly

Once the volume of the drive is determined (it is proportional to the size of the ship being translated) it has to be assembled by bonding the individual crystals together with an electrically neutral solution until it forms a coherent shape that is then smoothed out.

3 — Etching

Once the drive has been assembled, it has to be etched: billions of faults and fractures are artificially carved at the surface of the cube at a nanometric scale. These invisible markings have to follow the patterns found on the first geometry drive and are what enables the engine to be configured and used by sending subtle vibrations inside the crystal.

Etching is the most critical part of the manufacturing process. If the faults are wrongly carved, they may render the drive inoperative or even fracture it. If they are too thin or too deep, they will inevitably lead to premature ageing of the drive. Nanometric engineering at this degree of complexity is only accessible to a few zero-g facilities in Communal Space, Elora, or Mundis.

There is a tiny part of the drive called “blank tip” where etching isn't required. This reserved area is used to apply specific markings that act as both a serial number and as the signature of the drive's manufacturer. Unmarked or “blanked” drives are very rare and illegal in most jurisdictions.

4 — Nesting

Once the drive has been etched, it must be installed inside its parent ship. This is achieved through the use of a physical interface known as a “nest”. The nest is connected to the ship's mainframe and made of billions of nanometric needles inserted in the etching that can send data and instructions to the drive under the shape of vibrations. Nesting isn't a technically complex operation but requires a great deal of care. Much like with the assembly process, nesting is easier in zero-g.

5 — Tuning

The penultimate step in manufacturing. Drives have to be attuned to their ships to ensure maximal translation accuracy. Tuning consists of erasing the factory default settings and replacing them with ship-specific settings. Every single detail has to be considered, down to the room layout of the ship. Tuning must be done by professional navigators. Tuning isn't necessary when the geometry drive is destined to standardized vessels, such as FTL missiles.

6 — Installing

Once tuning is complete, the entire drive apparatus including the nest is sealed in a protective case. The manufacturing process is complete and the ship ready to make its first translation.