A year passed, during which Nevil learned how to cope with his loss of Humanity. With the guidance of the robots, Nevil gradually learned how to function as a robot.
It was high noon. The bluish-gray sky was littered with fluffy clouds.
"CAW!" Nevil crowed. In his mind he was laughing. But outside, he was a Raven. "CAW! CAW! CAW!" He was perched in a tree. He'd learned to give up the notion of having a human body as an absolute necessity, though he was planning to use it continuously while raising the new population of Earth.
It was so long ago, already, since he'd been Human; and even longer since he was the commander of a warship. He remembered those who once served under his command, and silently cursed himself for having failed them.
It was interesting, Aquila's story. Apparently, as Nevil lay nearly dead on his bed. Harvey had attempted treason and murder, only to be subdued by Aquila and erased. Nevil's mind now occupied what was once Harvey's body. Nevil didn't feel too bad about this. Harvey had been insufferably arrogant and convinced of his own superiority -- not to mention that he betrayed Nevil and attempted to kill him. Harvey reaped what he sowed, and he had sown trouble.
A gust of wind blew through the trees -- exactly what Nevil was waiting for. He lifted his wings and took off, riding the breeze through the air, flapping occasionally to keep himself up. He flew in the direction of his Estate, zigzagging slightly to the left and right so he could see ahead of him as the eyes of a Raven are mounted on the sides and thus can't see directly forward.
His Estate, a large mansion maintained by robots, grew larger in his vision until he flew over the stylized brick wall surrounding the property. And soon he came in for a landing on the porch railing. "CAW!" He called. Then spoke in English. "I'm home!"
He morphed back into his default human form and entered the building.
Inside, there were numerous robots working discreetly to maintain the huge structure. Nevil left them to their work.
He went to his library. A massive room lined with bookshelves of epic proportions. A Cathedral of books. Nevil had personally raided thousands of libraries over the years and used his robots to raid millions more. He had more books than he could ever have read in a human lifetime -- a good thing for him, that he was no longer restricted by a human lifetime.
He perused the shelves, picking a genre and searching for a book to read. Somewhere on these shelves were copies of his own books, works he wrote during his long stay on Luna.
Nevil was surprised to find Aquila waiting for him. The gray blob -- in human form -- sat in a large armchair. Aquila had a small book in its lap. It closed the book and turned to Nevil. "I was trying to see what you find interesting in these."
Nevil picked up the book. He read its cover, Bear, an old Canadian erotic novel about a relationship between a woman and a bear. Nevil winced at the thought.
Aquila eyed his reaction. "I read most of the book while you were out." It said. "I find the content to be highly explicit, James. And socially unacceptable by human standards."
Nevil threw the book out the door. A robot came and picked it up. "Can you take that thing outside and burn it, please?" Nevil asked the robot. It made no reply other than to depart with the book, hopefully, to destroy it. As it left, it glanced at the cover, flicked through the pages, and afterward held it with two fingers as if it were a dirty rag.
Nevil turned back to Aquila. "I assure you that most books are not like..." He reddened. "that." He said, somewhat embarrassed.
"It doesn't matter," Aquila said, brushing it off. "I was wanting to ask you about gravitics."
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.
"It's an airless world composed primarily of silicate rock." The robot explained, transmitting words over radiowaves into Nevil's audio sim-nerves. "It's also tidally locked. The dark side of it is rich in gasses, a mixture of nitrogen and carbon dioxide."
"Sounds good," Nevil said. "I'll go in for a landing on the terminator."
He brought the portal down. Lowering it down onto the sterile surface of a once verdant world. At the terminator, the shadows were long.
He and Aquila stepped through the portal. The rock was hard beneath his feet. He squinted his virtual eyes looking towards the sun, a massive hulk of foaming plasma looming in the sky, many times bigger than a full moon.
"It's beautiful out here," Nevil observed. "A beautiful desolation, sharp and stark. This is the fate of most earthlike worlds."
"What do you plan to do here?" Aquila asked.
"Aquila," Nevil replied. "go back into the portal, and bring all the robots. I have an idea."
Aquila obeyed. It went back inside, and the portal blinked shut.
Nevil explored the land while he waited. The landscape was highly mountainous. Nevil bent down and examined the rocks at a low point between hills, he picked up a pebble, and found it to be greatly rounded -- the planet once had water.
He climbed to the peak of a small mountain, the effort being nonexistent as he was no longer human. He barely registered the lack of air. Despite still feeling human, he was living in a vacuum, and it had no effect on him. The peak was eroded. Continental drift had ended on this world a long time ago, this preserved the results of its long-gone elements.
The portal reopened, Aquila and several hundred more robots emerged.
"Alright!" Nevil said. "I want you all to build a massive nanofactory."
Nanofactories were facilities designed to mass-produce nanites, microscopic machines connected together in a network that obeyed commands from an operator.
"Dimensions?" Aquila asked.
"Five by five by five kilometers," Nevil replied.
"That will take several weeks."
"I can wait."
The robots went to work, coalescing into a humongous glob of gray putty, spreading out in a thin layer over several kilometers of land, gradually dismantling the rough topography until a flat foundation is cut out. Then construction would begin.
Nevil decided to pass the time by exploring the planet and searching for signs of ancient life.
The factory was nearly complete. Nevil could see the shape of the structure outlined in the mound of gray goo that covered the emerging factory.
The final touches took only a few seconds. Nevil watched as the robotic mass retreated off the creation of their efforts to reveal the factory. A massive hulk of metal with an output hole to release millions of nanites per second. There was a small control room attached to the side, inside it was a computer console and a chair.
Nevil was awed by the glorious bulk of the factory. He called Aquila, who had just broken off of the Claytronic puddle, to meet him in the control room.
Nevil went into the control room, and soon Aquila was at his side. "You called me, James?" It asked.
"Yes," Nevil replied. "I've already searched this world, there's no signs of past or current life here. I want you to program the nanites to convert the entire planet into a massive gravitic engine."
"Why?" The order was too big to not warrant an explanation.
"A planet-sized gravitic unit would be powerful enough to move entire galaxies and see far beyond the known universe. It has both scientific and personal value to me."
"As you wish." Aquila took the seat and began typing code into the computer, writing the software for the nanites. The robot typed like a human for only a few seconds before just connecting itself directly into the computer for fast data-transfer.
Five minutes later, Aquila disconnected itself from the computer. "I've finished entering the code. Do you wish to review it?"
Nevil checked the screen. Over a billion lines had been written. "I think I'll take your word for it." He said. "So this will work just like any other gravitic unit?"
"Yes, James. It's nothing more than a bigger and more complex engine. It will work just like any of the engines you've used prior."
"Will it have an easily accessible control system?"
"Of course. Every square kilometer will have a control room and console."
"Thank you," Nevil said. He rarely thanked Aquila. But felt it important given that the robot had considered what Nevil would want and made the design to those specifications. "Let's start this thing."
"You want me to run the program?"
"Yes."
Aquila tapped a button on the keyboard, and the machines whirred to life. The factory began to scoop thousands of tons of regolith into processors, splitting them to the atoms and rearranging them into the necessary elements, then assembling them into nanites; microscopic robots. The process took only a minute to produce the first batch.
Nevil stepped out of the control room and hiked to the output port. It was like a perpetual waterfall of sand pouring onto the ground, the nanites looked like sand in such great quantities. Upon splashing against the ground, the nanites scattered in every direction, Nevil turned around and ran.
He returned to the control room. "The nanites won't attack us will they?" He asked.
"Don't worry, they're individually smarter than that. I've programmed them to be able to recognize native planetary material and avoid alien objects like people, parked spacecraft, and surface structures."
"How long will the conversion of this planet take?"
"At least a decade, unless we build a second factory."
"A decade sounds fine. I have ideas for things to do while I wait."
"What?"
"I plan on finally repopulating Earth."
Two hundred artificial wombs had been built. Each one occupied currently by a growing fetus. In the five years since Nevil had begun this process, several thousand children had already been grown from frozen embryos rescued from the hospitals. The robots were already strained in the raising of so many children, each robot being a parent to at least ten kids.
This latest batch would be the last one grown from the tubes.
Aquila, being unable to holographically mimic the human image, was able to avoid the responsibility. Nevil simply stayed out of it, ordering the robots to describe him to the children as 'The Elder' a mysterious figure that is best left alone. Children stayed quiet in his presence, likely imagining some sort of dire consequence if they were to bother him.
A home had been erected several miles apart from Nevil's estate, it was built exclusively for the children to live in under robotic surveillance until they were old enough to have their own homes.
Nevil was flying, in the form of an eagle. Flying provided a great stress relief. He soared over the young forest, a field of saplings. He flew out over the ocean, several miles out until the land itself disappeared. He dove steeply down into a stoop, descending rapidly to pierce the water like a bullet. He changed into a fish and began to explore the deep waters.
These oceans had been frozen solid for nearly two-hundred thousand years. It was hard to believe that anything could have survived, but geothermal activity kept small pockets warm at the bottom, providing a sanctuary for some aquatic life. Though all other kinds of sea life had perished.
It was obvious that the oceanic reseeding was going well. There were already plants growing on the rocks, and small quantities of fish could already be seen huddled around the growing clusters of plants.
Satisfied, Nevil climbed back to the surface and swam to shore. He returned to human form and pulled himself onto the beach. He stood up, shifted shapes for a moment to expel water, sand, and other foreign bodies. He turned back into an eagle and flew home.
He arrived at dusk, entering the mansion and going up to his bedroom. He no longer needed sleep but found it comforting to read in bed while holding human form.
He was thoroughly engrossed in the book when there was a knocking at the door. "Come in." He said.
It was Aquila. "James, I've just completed my survey of the planet currently being converted."
"And the results?" Nevil asked.
"The process is currently fifty-six percent complete. Over half the planet is already converted."
"Good!" Nevil said. "You may leave now, Aquila." Aquila turned and left.
Nevil returned to his book.