The Greatest Commodity (First Draft)

The Claytronic Man

The inquiry caught Nevil's interest. "What about it?"

"Perhaps we should work on more things relating to gravitics. You used to pass the time that way."

Nevil thought about this. He had once performed experimentation with gravitics. And the universe still hadn't quite recovered! Dagger and Odysseus had not yet found an equilibrium. And Earth was still in a state of recovery.

"You know." He said, fingering his beard, simulated, of course. "You may be right."

"You used to do work with clay," Aquila said. "Perhaps you could use gravitics to build a sculpture."

Nevil's thoughts went wild at the suggestion. "Yes. A huge gravitational machine, built of celestial bodies dancing around each other -- stars, perhaps."

"Indeed, you could do something like that."

"I'll think about it," Nevil said. Though he didn't need much encouragement. He searched the shelves for a book, climbing one of the tall ladders, he eventually found the book he wanted and took it. He went up to his room to read it and consider.

It didn't take Nevil long to lose all interest in the book and start imagining the celestial structure. He began to plan and design.

The drive had been built. The airlock erected. The portal programming successfully downloaded.

The new gravitic drive was bigger and more advanced than any drive ever built before. Capable of reaching far beyond the Local Group and opening portals to galaxies in distant clusters.

Standing in the airlock, Nevil picked a random galaxy and entered its coordinates into the gravitic drive. He pressed a button on the control panel. And the airlock closed, emptying the airlock of all air and sealing the doors outside. He then pressed another button and activated the drive.

A gaping hole appeared before him. A solid-black abyss looking him in the eye. He grabbed a control stick and re-oriented the portal until a grand elliptical galaxy came into view. A beautiful glowing orb of geriatric stars. His human programming restricted his vision to the visible wavelengths; he saw reality the way a human would.

He pushed forward on a throttle stick. It was like piloting a spaceship without submitting to relativity. The stars remained still to his perception, no relativistically accelerated movement. Moving at a few lightyears per second, he slowly crawled towards the galaxy.

He turned out the lights inside the airlock. Only the dim glow of the dials showed. The Galaxy loomed in the portal, gradually getting bigger and brighter.

Eventually, the starlight began to become noticeable. The airlock walls beginning to become visible, tinted yellow.

He crossed the boundaries of the galaxy and was soon enveloped by stars, the density getting exponentially greater.

He crossed into the core area. At this distance, the stars were clustered so tightly that the distance between them was only half a lightyear or less. The walls of the airlock were illuminated dimly with a warm yellow tint.

The starfield was beautiful. A billion suns, scattered across the sky. Nevil was exploring an alien galaxy.

He turned towards a star -- a red giant -- and closed in on it. He slowed down to just a few times C and entered the star system.

The star expanded rapidly into his view. Filling the room with orange light, a sunset tint. It was a sickly, dying sun, bloated and red, soon to be dead.

Nevil spotted a planet about one AU away from the star, perhaps once earthlike. Not able to discern its features from a distance he asked Aquila, who was standing next to him, its gray form appearing brown in the orange sunlight.