The Greatest Commodity (First Draft)

A Snowy Evening in Seattle

"Is the airlock ready?" Asked Captain Nevil.

"Yes, sir," replied Aquila. The robot had just finished construction and already spread itself out against the ground to regenerate under the sunlight. "Might I suggest that you use me as an insulating layer? Your spacesuit is not adequately equipped for absolute zero environments."

Nevil consented. And waited a few minutes for Aquila to recharge. His thoughts began to wander as to the question: What happened to Earth? It was moving gravitically, so it was evident that someone else had tried again after the Aquila's disappearance... And failed even more tragically than Nevil had. Nevil had always thought that Earth had just continued without him, that humanity had expended its natural lifespan, and that Nevil had merely missed out. As opposed to leaving before a disaster.

Once Aquila was ready. Nevil donned his spacesuit, a difficult ordeal. Aquila waited patiently at the airlock door; it had made the airlock quite elaborate, there was even a control panel to adjust the location of the portal on the opposite end. Nevil nodded to Aquila, Aquila then quickly liquefied its form to envelop Nevil's suited body in a thin layer of transparent goo. "I will keep you warm, sir." remarked the robot, "I can also shield you against impacts or other forms of injury."

"I'm sure you can." Replied Nevil. "Now, let's go." Nevil climbed into the airlock and activated the control panel. "Okay... Where did you put the depressurize button, Aquila?"

"On the top-left corner, sir."

"Thanks, and please stop calling me 'sir'. I don't need formalities. My first name is James."

"I know that... James."

Nevil's lips twitched into a faint smile. He reached out and pressed the button. Red lights blinked rapidly, and a siren blared to signify the act. The doors leading outside closed, and all the air was sucked out. The sound of the siren became increasingly faint until it was nothing more than a garbled murmur heard directly through vibrations of the metal into Nevil's body. "Now, how do I open the portal?"

"The second button to the right."

"Okay," Nevil pressed it, and the wall ahead suddenly disappeared. Replaced by an open window into space, the nebulous disk of the Milky Way hung suspended, its bulk partially eclipsed by the darkened planet, Earth. "How do I move the portal?"

"There are ten keys at the bottom. Look closely."

Nevil squinted at the small keys. There were, indeed, eight keys used for navigation. Two for forward and backward movement, two for pitch, two for yaw, two for roll, and two for acceleration and deceleration. Aquila had done a good job. Using the keys, Nevil steered the portal down to the surface of the planet, it was like piloting a spaceship; except without following Newtonian physics, the portal moved like a camera. "Can you illuminate the area ahead?" Aquila did so, it fired a wide-angle beam of white light forward. Nevil had no idea what area of Earth he was over and inquired about it.

"You are over the Pacific ocean." Said Aquila, nonchalantly.

"Guide me," Asked the Captain. "Tell me what I'm flying over when I fly over it." Nevil started flying laterally in a random direction. Slowly, he flew onward for several minutes before Aquila spoke up.

"You are now just above the city of Seattle."

Nevil halted, oriented straight down, and headed straight down, slowly. "Aquila, if I crash this, do we get a face full of rock?"

"If you are referring to the possibility of ground material passing through the portal and crushing us inside the airlock, it is a possibility." Said Aquila. For a moment it seemed he was finished, then. "But I must inform you that you are also likely to get a face full of nitrogen, James."