DISPATCH FROM THE SILICON MARCHES: Legacy Cannons Slip Past the Dikes at Delft
BREAKING: Dutch gates swing wide—ASML’s “antique” lithography guns trundle east to CETC & quantum redoubts. Legacy 38 nm cannons may yet punch modern holes in the line. Allies fret, The Hague shrugs. Front quiet—for now.
DELFT, 11 DECEMBER — Night fog off the Maas cloaked the wharves where ASML dockhands lashed crated DUV cannons—38 nm relics, yet still spitting silicon shot—for outbound passage. Bills of lading name CETC, munitions-maker to rocket troops, and the Shenzhen Quantum Academy’s fledgling battery. Dutch ordinance scribes insist the iron is too antique for siege works; Washington’s observers counter that even smooth-bore cannon can breach a curtain wall when aimed at the quantum keep. Harbour lamps flickered crimson as freight cranes lifted the last crate; somewhere a customs seal thudded, rubber stamp echoing like a distant mortar. If these pieces reach the foundries across the plains, the next volley may not be smoke and saltpetre but qubits and code. The line holds tonight—yet every silent diode is a powder charge waiting for spark.
—Inspector Grey
Dispatch from The Scramble E2
Published December 11, 2025