Formers’s “Fossil-Fab” is a manufacturing center located in what was once the Marley Station Mall in Glen Burnie, Maryland. The project is one of Formers’s oldest in Post-Burnout America. Plans for microchip production began as early as 2035, when the Manhattan Cell was working with survivors to reactivate various computers and smart-tablets. The initiative was repeatedly stalled due to concerns over cost and the risk of exposing the cell. Chioma “I-O” (She destroyed all records of her family name after immigrating to the United States from Nigeria before the Burnout, and claiming that she would never bring children into the world), an expert in “adaptive manufacturing” spent multiple years outlining a small-scale manufacturing system that could be used to produce new microchips. When the cell revealed itself in late 2041, I-O volunteered to be one of the first chipped members of the cell. She and five others went to Britain to undergo the operation. During her time there, she convinced the Order’s high-command of the importance of producing new microchips. In 2043, her project officially green-lit. 

I-O formed a company of several non-chipped Formers, who would assist her while waiting for the Manhattan Cell to start doing the operation domestically, other survivors with relevant expertise, and Madillo. Dying from various toxic exposures sustained during the Burnout and from sheer broken-heartedness over Plu’s mysterious death, Madillo signed on to help the project find an ideal site. After three months of searching, Madillo had found the Marley Station Mall. The site was 10 miles south of Baltimore, near both highways and rivers, and it could be easily defended. The company departed Manhattan and took a boat down the coast, through Chesapeake Bay, and down the Patapsco River to reach their destination. 

The Mall had been partially burnt during the Burnout, but it remained structurally sound. Madillo worked with local laborers to erect a 30-foot embankment around the property and to accelerate nearby reforestation in order to make the site more remote. I-O and her team spent the next two years working with contacts in Baltimore and the Order to manufacture or acquire the highly-specialized machinery required for microchip production. In the spring of 2045, the first new batch of microchips in over 15 years was made. While the process worked, the company had almost exhausted their supply of required materials. Knowing that the inputs were far too complex to produce locally, I-O would spend another five years working in the Strets, Passage-Lands, Swells, and even Federation structure a reliable supply of the various chemicals and parts required to keep her operation running. 

Over 90% of the microchips produced by I-O’s fab are new designs. These chips are less complex and more efficient than their Pre-Burnout counterparts. They are used by factions that require high-precision industrial machines and limited computational power. The fab is also capable of producing functionally identical replicas of Pre-Burnout chips, hence its nickname as the “Fossil-Fab”. They are used by factions that wish to preserve their digital infrastructure or the Order itself when they need to repair devices found in bunkers, Gemini Projects, or other potentially valuable sites in the hopes of finding new information. The machines that actually require genuine Pre-Burnout microchips are so rare in America that most chips find their way to tinkerers in the Strets. 

As far as the American Formers know, there is only one other operational microchip fab in the world. Somewhere in the British Isles is the “C-Fab”, a Formers-operated fab that was created in the Pre-Burnout. This fab produces chips that excede the computational power of even the most high-end Pre-Burnout units. It is also the only source of the Order’s augments. While the Central Depository maintains that the C-Fab is invulnerable, it has named the Fossil-Fab as its official back-up for augment production.