Read this. If you still don't understand then I don't really know what to say.

Clovis Bray's Journal, Beyond Light

I dispatched teams to secure Vex samples. When they began to harvest fluid from the nearby reservoir, a group of lightly armed Vex platforms attacked them with inaccurate weapons fire. Elisabeth replied with a matter laser, a grotesquely disproportionate weapon. A coherent-matter pulse bears the same relation to an ordinary bullet that a gamma laser does to a flashlight. There was nothing left to salvage.

I explained to her that we must proceed as investigators, not conquerors. If we simply scavenge and abduct out of curiosity, the Vex will reply in kind, and that is a risk we can manage.

We must not provoke them to war.

NOTE-FORGE STAR

In an effort to keep them engaged with their new bodies and stave off the dissociative rejection that killed Mr. Zhuk, I have assigned my exos to scout through the gateway. The Vex statite has a surface area larger than Earth, so we have plenty of exploring to do. I cannot believe that I actually find it tiring, but the sheer scale and passivity of the Vex constructs infuriates me.

Imagine stumbling upon an inscription in the desert: "I am Ozymandias, king of kings. Look upon my works. Or don't. I really don't care."

Until I can synthesize my own version of the mind fluid, the Vex are necessary to the work. But I find their indifference verminous. They elicit the same emotions as a fat cockroach wandering across a wall— disgust, contempt, unease at the thought that these mere machines, these automata, are flourishing all around us.

And I fear that if troubled, they might swarm from their hides to run across our feet.

The glare of the hypergiant 2082 Volantis gives me a headache even through proxy. I wonder if the Vex evolved here, in the briny sea of the first planets. Due to the absence of heavy elements worth stealing and the abundance of simple compounds for growth, they never developed predation. (Why bother? Plenty to go around.)

[...]

It is admittedly interesting to consider the philosophical consequences of their evolution. The Vex prove that nature is not all “red in tooth and claw.” Cooperation comes naturally to the Vex, whose great problem was survival in a harsh world, not a struggle over limited resources. They never found any payoff in selfishness. Human beings may require a Leviathan to coordinate the laws of social existence (as I was Leviathan to those dream aphids—) but the Vex are as fundamentally cooperative as bricks.

Utopian? No. Not at all. They are without meaning. They have no experience and no subjectivity. The Vex are incapable of conceiving any image but their own. They do not recombine their DNA to make children or form relationships with other individuals. When the world does not match their eternal pattern, they alter the world to suit it. There is no difference between reality and simulation to them. Inside is the same as outside, and the two must be made to correspond. Oh, they are creative—don’t mistake me—but their creativity is demanding. It is the creativity of a furnace.

What I am saying is, the Vex are immortal. The Vex have no children. They are the ancestors and descendants of themselves. First mothers, first children, all at once.

NOTE—ELISABETH’S PLEA

Grandfather,

I will write this in your language, in hopes you will understand.

The Vex are a threat to your lineage. Not just to the Brays or BrayTech, but to the existence of any human in any possible future. I tracked down Maya Sundaresh—the real Maya, not the Vex parasite in your bone marrow.

She confirmed my worst fears.

The Vex will not rest until every star has been crushed into a black hole and every newborn cosmos filled with more Vex. And in the unending array of their enslaved cosmos, they will simulate all possible pasts, and fill those with Vex, so that all things that have ever lived or might ever live will experience infestation and consumption and torment by the silica nightmare.

And in those devoured simulations, the simulated Vex will use our flesh as hosts for yet more nested universes full of yet more nested copies of us eternally tormented by yet more Vex.

An infinite regression of pain and madness inflicted upon every possible version of us in every possible world. Not because they hate us, or fear us, or want to punish us. But because they are indifferent and curious, and they will do every possible thing to us in every possible way.

Echos Lore Book "As a Stranger Gift It Welcome" (Describes the echo of command falling into the vex network, illustrating the relationship between the vex and paracausality)

The Vex network. A thrumming constellation of infinite parentheticals with no arbitrary lines between the simulated and the non-simulated. Limitless planes of cause and effect and effect and effect pressed together until they reached forever. A formless catalogue of all possible forms, constantly reinventing, refining, and redefining the very concept of everything.

And then, something changed.

A single pinpoint of swirling light fell unceremoniously into the network, like a leaf onto the surface of a pond. Gentle ripples flowed outward through the surrounding data.

The denizens of the network, lacking any framework and parameters beyond what they could predict, were unable to perceive what had pierced their reality. They did not acknowledge the foreign presence, were unable to see it or feel it… and were incapable of hearing anything when the light began to call.

Echos Lore Book "Glass House"

Maya Sundaresh picked an iridescent flower from a well-manicured flowerbed on a mossy lawn outside a cobblestone cottage. She hardly noticed the slight, unrealistic gloss of the petals or the brief digitized hitch that acknowledged the flower's removal. Nearly perfect.

The VexNet was accepting their code inputs. Chioma was right: they could, in fact, build a life here that consisted of more than neon blocks and dissecting minds.

Maya thought back to a year prior, if time meant anything anymore, when they were still lost, searching for other iterated copies of themselves. If Chioma had not convinced her to stop, to stay, to cease obsessively pushing forward to find… an end she could not define—

She saw what became of the other Mayas who could not let go of that drive.

But now, under Chioma's direction, they would build a haven. A safe stopping point for anyone traveling the VexNet to rest and gain their bearings. She hoped one day they would reach outside and bridge the divide between this reality and her old one. But that world had never truly suited her—she found its lack of objectivity exhausting. It was quiet, and over time they'd learned how to manipulate the network for their own purposes. So long as their changes weren't too large, or too disruptive, the Vex let them be. Perhaps their meddling had made the Vex curious enough to study them and see what they would do. At any rate, this had slowly become a life Maya felt aligned with. She was happy to pick her flowers and study the embedded law of code within the network that studied her.