I don't quite understand what folded means in this context, is it that the molecular crystal structure is deformed without breaking?

This was an enjoyable read, thank you for sharing it. Some random stuff that I thought about while reading the story:

• Human vision compensates for visual input latency by combining recent input with past input https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.722.842&rep=rep1&type=pdf
• Implementing boolean logic circuits with air (pneumatics) https://www.powermotiontech.com/home/article/21122363/basics-of-pneumatic-logic

Impressive. I like this collection of snippets: https://mlochbaum.github.io/bqncrate/ (/u/eris might like it)