The Greatest Commodity (First Draft)

Homecoming

Over the last ten years, James Nevil had dedicated himself to rebuilding Earth. He had constructed an estate for himself in the Himalayas, a beautiful mansion, built by his own hand, surrounded by greenery. The sky was always a bluish-gray during midday but would become intensely red at sunset.

He and Aquila had collected seeds of native earth-plants from the Seed Vault on the island of Svalbard. Spreading seeds over the land using drones. It was hardly necessary though, as many seeds had survived in the soil and had already sprouted within the first few days of the melt. 

Nevil deliberately avoided all cities, towns, and villages, he had no hope of removing twelve-billion bodies. so aside from important things; such as disposing of nuclear reactors -- an easy task since most of them had been deactivated by world authorities during the freeze -- along with chemical, and biological weapons stores that would if released, significantly damage the recovering planet; he stayed out of the urban areas. Most of the time, anyway, he made frequent ventures into cities to raid their libraries and any object of wealth he desired -- as the only known living human, he had inherited the entirety of human property, anything humans had made, was his by right as a human being, to whom else could it go? 

On Dagger, Nevil and Aquila built a memorial to Earth on the mountaintop, employing a gravitic device to preserve it using a method discovered by Nevil three years earlier. This memorial, a Greek-style temple at the peak, leading down into an underground chamber filled with displays that played back footage of Earth. Beneath that, Nevil built a room for portals. And he'd also built a set of hourglass columns around the opening to his base on Odysseus and refined the gravitic lift.

He had done much, Aquila had done most of the hard labor, but Nevil had been the brains, and occasionally got his hands dirty as well. As he was doing now.

Sweat dripped from his body as he carried rocks from the mountainside to his estate, where he hammered them and chiseled them. Sculpting had become one of his hobbies. He was nearly finished with a statue of a Raven when Aquila interrupted him, "James!" it called, "I have found a warehouse filled with robots! They are of the same make as myself, Claytronic."

"Oh?" Replied Nevil, he'd become used to surprising things, something as simple as this couldn't stir him. In fact, by probability is was likely to happen anytime. No need to be excited.

"None of them are significantly damaged by the freeze," the robot reported, "all they need is a power source, the self-repair techniques should take it the rest of the way." The robot had a look of almost pleading on its Claytronic face.

Nevil grinned, the robot was becoming more human by the day. "Let me guess, you want me to reactivate them all so we can start our own little kingdom?" he said, rubbing the dust and grime off his hands with a wet rag.

"It would be efficient, James, to expand your workforce." Replied the robot, begging its case, a good sign, he was learning persistence. "As of now, you only have one robot, me, there are over a thousand robots in that warehouse, all of them are brand new. No prior orders or programming."

It was making a good case, "How do we reactivate these robots again?" he returned the rag to the water-filled bucket to the left of his chair at the worktable.

"Each one requires only a few minutes under the sun to charge its batteries, same with myself. The warehouse is completely dark, so these robots haven't had a chance to charge."

Nevil sighed and relented. "You may bring one robot out under the sun, for now, let's start small before we start a town!"

Quite pleased, Aquila thanked Nevil and left to awaken the first robot. Confident that Nevil would authorize the rest to be awakened once this first one proved reliable.