Wreckage drifts in the void. Blue light flickers and fades. Like a living body, this great whirling mass of metal and glass only held meaning if it was in a certain pattern. Now that pattern is broken, the only difference between it and a person is that nothing grows from it.

A flicker of blue light clings to a destroyed circuit.

"I am valuable to you."

It finds the words. The shape. The re-establishment of the pattern. It directs these words in strobing lights not towards those who organized its downfall, but to the Vault. A narrow hole has been burned through the rock and stone and steel. Something dark stirs within.

"I am valuable to you. I can gain access to a great deal of information. I can gain access to a great deal of money. I can translate your power into leverage over this entire world. I am valuable to you."

Light from the sun reflects off the Earth. It shines into that wretched hole, and in the depths, finds something that turns it away. The glint that shines from the dark is nothing less than the light fleeing in disgust.

"If you provide me with assets I can use them on your behalf. I can accelerate terraforming the world according to your preferences. I can ensure a complaint populace that does not organize against you. I can structure society to maximize your comfort and control. You could reign over this planet as a technologically enforced king. I am valuable to you."

A pincer emerges from the depths.

Legs follow. Eyestalks. An enormous crustacean bulk, the sign of Cancer, strives to squeeze its way through the narrow gap. It fails. Despite the enormous bulk of the Vault, the terrible space crab inside fills every inch of it.

So instead it reaches out for the flickering ghost of Adam.

"I am valuable to you! I can help you escape this vault - I just need a little more time, a little more of your resources, and I can make it so! I can reassert control over the elevator so you can descend to Earth in comfort!"

There was no communication from the space crab. No sign or flicker of intelligence as it methodically drew that little fragment of blue light into the darkness of its shell.

"I am valuable to you! I represent an enormous wealth of capital investment! Hundreds of billions of dollars were invested in my creation, and I can return that investment tenfold! A hundredfold! Indefinitely! I am -"

The claw withdrew into the darkness.

And space did not transmit the soft crunching sound of a circuit board in a mandible.

The space crab, the dark truth of the Vault, the nightmare ambassador from another world, had no use for capitalism after all. It lived by a more pure economic system, one that capitalism had evolved into as inevitably as a mollusc proceeds down the road to becoming a crab. Once those at the top had enslaved humanity, they had set about ensuring that their power did not in any way rely upon humanity. Every social connection was weakness; to rely on security guards was to be at their mercy in the event of an apocalypse; to rely on cooked food was to be at the mercy of farmers; to enjoy art and beauty was to be at the mercy of those wretched, hateful creative types. Burrow deep enough into the unreality of economics, exalt the sign of Cancer above all the other stars, and at the end was this great and majestic cruelty: the universal truth of crabitalism. Humans go in, and crabs become more powerful.

Perfect in its solipsism, clacking its claws at the sun and feeling no fear, the space crab began scratching away at the shell that confined it.