As the molecular printers of the archipelago settlers slowly broke down, their functionality became increasingly limited. As a last-ditch effort to extend their useful life, they were configured to continuously extrude a single, useful material (such as hydraulic cements or pharmaceutical compounds) as long as they were supplied with raw material.

As the technological backslide of the agrarians continued over the following century, these artificial “springs” became of great economic interest——but more than that, they engendered religious fervor as sects sprang up around them, supplying them with “offerings” of the appropriate raw materials and maintaining the faltering machines as best they could.

In the following decades, these few remaining printers began to fail as the radioactive material powering them approached the end of its half-life. The springs running dry led to the eventual collapse of their associated religious sects, though by this time the agrarians had augmented——and then largely replaced——their meager production with other sources.