[i][b]*Essay Warning*[/b][/i] There’s a place on Io that’s got me thinking about the Vex recently. It’s a Lost Sector called the Aphix Conduit in the lower right section corner of the Rupture, with a boss guarding it called the Ruined Mind. At first, the thing that caught my attention about this place, as well as the attention of a lot of other community members, were the Floating Cubes that can be found flying around in the area. I will be diving into this, however, there’s also another unique and very interesting trait about this place, which is the spinning Vex gate located in the back room across the open chasm. I’d like to over analyze both facets of this place, so won’t you help me indulge in my borderline unhealthy obsessions of speculation? The first thing that I’ll be dissecting on the subject are the hovering cubes. The two main visual components that these cubes are comprised of are a) the Holographic Navigational Matrix, which acts as the moving body of the object. It appears cubical in nature, with sectioned off squares forming a grid appearance, and b) a series of ever-shifting Vex geometric Orbitals that cycle around the Holo Nav. They’re constantly repositioning around the Hologram in an odd manner, like it’s trying to solve a puzzle. It’s not entirely clear what the Vex use these things for, but we do have enough of an understanding for some pretty solid theorizing. We know for sure that, because these cubes are constantly shifting and moving around the area, they are either doing one of two things; 1) Conducting some sort of experiment or task, or 2) Gathering survey data of the surrounding area. Either of these two things could have some pretty interesting implications in regards to what they’re looking for. Construct Construction: This theory is pretty basic, with the Cubes acting as Vex Construct cores. Essentially, the cubes would travel around looking for the most apt area in 3d space to outwardly construct computational Vex geometry. In this case, the smaller radiolarian-solid cubes that orbit/shift around the Holo Nav would be sort of like Vex geo-seeds. When the Holo Nav finds the perfect space to construct, it would likely stimulate it’s orbitals to signal the process to begin. These cubes would likely be implemented in Vex structures that have reached the computing limitations without accomplishing their set goals and require additional funds/resources. Although the theory’s simple, there are some pretty big holes in it. For one, we would likely see these cubes in other Vex establishments, but to my knowledge these cubes are entirely unique to the Aphix Conduit. Perhaps Guardians just haven’t been in any Vex complexes that required additional computing power. Perhaps Guardian interference with the Aphix Invasive (more on that in a bit) caused trouble with the resources they already had and these cubes are a new application for the Vex. Another hole would be that these cubes seem to be in a constant state of motion, and never seem to find the proper place to build. Unless the Vex collective have the meanest case of OCD to ever grace pseudo-biological life, that would make the constant movement suggestive of some other purpose. The Second Vault: The Second Vault(SV) theory is kind of related to the Construct Construction(CC) theory in that the cubes would function in a similar fashion in both theories. The main idea is that they are in a constant Search Mode, surveying 3d space for the best location for their given objective. The SV Cubes would start to differentiate from the CC Cubes in that they would have to be much more precise with what they’d be locating. In short, the SV cubes are looking for the boundaries to begin the construction of a Second Vault of Glass. For those of you who don’t know or don’t remember (it wasn’t really stressed all that much to begin with) there was a Vex faction known as the Aphix Invasive back in D1. They weren’t all that prominent, only showing up in a few places, such as Mars public events or the Prison of Elders, but two Very important placed they appeared were the Nexus and The Vault of Glass (I’ll talk about the implications of this a little more later in the post). We already know from the Whisper mission that the Vex on Io have a direct connection to the Vault, so this isn’t anything revolutionary, but it certainly explains some things. This means that these cubes would be constantly combing over reality, searching for the alignment of atoms/particles/[insert microbial conditions here] that would allow them to get their foot in the door of reality, so to speak. I can’t find all to many holes in this theory to the point that it wouldn’t be plausible. The Vex would greatly benefit from establishing another Vault, the cubes would need beyond molecular precision if they were to create these boundaries (given this is the method of Vault building, which is yet to be seen/understood) and as such would take a while to hammer out, the Aphix Invasive were already heavily involved with the previous Vault, and the Aphix Conduit would be a good location for something as important as a Vault (again, I’ll get into that later). The only problem I have with it is that the theory’s only speculation, but that’s the whole point of this post. Speculation. Vibrating Strings: Vibrating Strings(VS) theory strays a bit further away from the other two, with the cubes in VS being in a Motoring Mode, rather than the Search Mode CC & SV Cubes would display. This line of thought would suggest that the Aphix Invasive would be heavily involved with the Vex’s temporal hijinks, and their Conduit would be one of the many base locations for their Wormholes (yet again, this will all tie in together in the latter half of the post). The VS cubes would be like little recording units, who keep track of the changes in the future to better grasp what the Vex need to accomplish if they are to properly weave themselves into reality. In this case, the orbiting Vex Geometry would provide the Vex network with a constant feed of telemetry about the current temporal climate and future projections. The Holo Nav’s constant movement could also act as a mini experiment for the Vex, providing itself as a subject to study the changes something as minute as the constant movements of tiny cubes sectioned off to a closed complex has on the future, as well as give their orbitals ample data to observe. This theory is heavily rooted in a specific interpretation of how the Vex network operates in regards to their “Time Travel”, and if that isn’t entirely accurate, then neither is this interpretation of the Cube’s purpose. Again, this is all speculative. These three theories, while a big part of this post, is only about the Cubes in the Aphix Conduit, but the other main point of this is about the Rotating Vex Gate sectioned across the chasm in the back room. I’ll save you the senseless verbal pizzazz and just tell you that I think this is a Vex Time Machine, more specifically, an Einstein-Rosen bridge (i.e. Wormhole) that the Vex use to travel through time. The Lost Memory Fragments (assumably taken from Elsie Bray’s personal journal) tells us that temporal travel via Wormholes was declared nonviable by Golden Age physicists, but that the Vex could possible take information from their simulated timelines to change reality. This suggests that after however long, the Vex finally deduced a way to create a practical and traversable Wormhole in their simulations and went to working on real world applications. End of Part 1 Part 2: https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/247886655?sort=0&page=0 Part 3: https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/247886682?sort=0&page=0