Absolute Entropy

The extraction system reaches through the surface of an ice body without disturbing it, pulling target materials directly from the interior. The technique leaves ice formations structurally intact — afterward, the only evidence of extraction is a slight drop in ambient temperature that instruments can measure but cannot explain. The shield array is the heaviest of any ice harvester in production, and necessarily so: dimensional phase-extraction generates feedback that would collapse an unshielded hull. The ship underneath the shields is fragile enough that this is not a theoretical concern. The name refers to the heat death state that the extraction zone locally approximates for a fraction of a second — conditions that should not exist outside mathematical models, applied to ice harvesting as routine procedure.