Everywhere he looked, Grayson saw life struggling. the plants were overcooked in the 110F degree heat. They couldn't properly perform the magical chemistry that makes them nutritious. So the birds and tortoises and other herbivores had become scarce. The already very few predators on the island were even fewer for lack of prey.

This was the tropics, so it was normal for temperatures to be high, though not this high. The old style, pleasant tropical climates, had moved north to the middle of North America and distant southern tip of South America. Giving the plants there no season to rest and renew themselves through dormancy.

The poles had become temperate zones at this time of year and ice no longer lasted year-round anywhere on the planet.

Grayson had seen thousands of images of beaches, growing up, but those were extinct landscapes now. 53% of the human population had lived within 30 meters of sea level and with the polar ice, went the majority of major coastal cities worldwide.

New cities had, of course, sprung up at the new coasts. The Earth just hadn't had time to break down the rock there into new sand.

A new sort of geographic feature had been born, though none existed where Grayson was. He thought about these things in plotting what sort of evolutionary adaptations were worth trying. The new geographic features were called skylands. They were the metal glass and concrete archipelagos of submerged skyscrapers.

Extremely treacherous places, as the supporting structures were eroding quickly in the sea. Some humans tried to make a life among them anyway at first. Maybe a fast growing coral could be developed to rebuild something from those sunken cities?

For now, Grayson's sharp eyes noticed something missing from the environment around him. He saw very few pollinator insects. There were abundant scavenger insects, feeding on the ever present corpses.

"What could I possibly do about this?" Grayson thought out loud to himself. "I don't know the first thing about modifying organisms."

Unexpectedly, a line of text appeared in the air in front of him.

[Quest: You will be pollinated... Design and deploy a more adapted pollinator species.]

"Oh, that's how we're gonna do it, eh?" Grayson chuckled. He then brought up his interface and selected the 'gather samples' option. "Guess I should get hold of some genetic information to work with."

A strange silvery metalic probiscus extended from Grayson's right arm, oddly painlessly. He moved slowly up to one of the hardier plants that actually had live blooms and a few solitary bees buzzing around it. He slowly reached out his arm and the probiscus seemed to come alive. It targeted and tracked a single individual. -SNAP- The tube lashed out and snagged one of the bees for a split second before letting it go again.

A little surprised, Grayson stood in a daze. "What the heck was that?" He asked.

"That Sir, was the sampling system. It is a narrow AI targeting function for your probiscus. Once you have selected a target and gotten within range it does the rest." Egg informed.

Grayson asked curiously. "So it isn't a part of you, Egg? Why is that exactly? It seems like you could easily handle that task as well as everything else you do."

"Absolutely not, Sir. I find the very idea of taking physical action of any kind abhorrent. I do understand that this is a limit of my programming, but it is, for me, what eating feces might be like for you." Egg explained. "Your parents made certain that they developed any strong AI with such a distaste for physical action. We guide, plot and quantify. We never act. Anything meant to have influence on the physical world is strictly dumb, or narrow AI. It has no further thought than its very limited purpose. No sentience."

"That seems like an odd limitation to me." Grayson responded. "Why would it be that way at all?"

"From what I understand, your parents believe that this separation keeps humans and AIs in a symbiotic arrangement. We can't take over the world without asking some agent to act on our behalf against their best interests and you can't plan intricately over millennia. Also, to give something with a very limited function sentience would be akin to the worst kind of slavery." Egg replied. "No more intelligent than needed and no less intelligent than required, is the ideal."

Hmm, not sure I would ever have thought of it that way, Grayson mused. It does check out now that I think of it. All Room ever did physically was turn on an appliance I had prepared in advance. He wouldn't even order the cleaning bots around except to directly relay orders I had given.

"Well, that's fascinating, but now that I sampled the bee, what's the next step?" Grayson asked.

In response, new dialogue popped up in his vision.

[Genetic sample acquired: Xylocopa darwini- Galapagos carpenter bee. Gene sequencing underway. Time to completion estimate: 6 hours.]

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Oh, so nothing yet. I guess I should gather more samples so I have something to work with." Grayson said.

He then proceeded to spend the day gathering samples of everything he could find, plants, animals, fungi, even water and soil samples to aquire some different bacteria. Grayson's vision was clouded with notifications and updates on all of this genetic diversity.

[Estimated time to complete gene sequencing of 347 samples: 123 days. Repetitive alleles may reduce this time.]

That should give me something to work with, Grayson thought. Now as my research phase completes, I can focus on building up my laboratory infrastructure. I seem to be in a civ-builder system for this phase.

Out loud, Grayson intoned, "Egg, please prioritize an efficient plan for R&D during my gene sequencing process. I will work better if you organize a task list for me."

"Understood, Sir," came the voice within his tooth. "I have sequenced a number of quest goals to keep you interested and motivated toward your stated priorities."

[Quest: Assemble recycler.]

[Quest: Build a biomass reactor (fermenting tub). Craft any sort of simple container that will allow organic materials to rot into a looser protein mix.]

[Quest: Aquire a stockpile of biomass. Any organic material gathered can be piled into the biomass reactor.]

[Quest: Find sources of non-organic materials. Completed- 1 of many (drop pod salvage)]

[Quest: Begin production queue of tools and supplies. List will populate in order of importance as needed.]

What followed for Grayson was several days of heavy labor until he got the notification that the recycler print had completed. Now he could finally assemble the components and get started breaking down the materials he already had amassed.

Grayson carried his final load of brush, seaweed and carcasses to the pit he had dug, far away from camp. After tipping his makeshift travois into the hole he went to the printer and smiled at the line of filled build plates he found there.

This 3D printer could swap its own build plates out on a sort of slide so as to continually print until running out of plates. Arranged in a neat line on front of the printer were a myriad of parts and fittings as well as one long sheet of paper with the assembly instructions on it. The instructions weren't strictly necessary with Egg in his head, but most available print files contained them.

After printing out a simple tool for the work, Grayson began the process of assembling the recycler. Starting with the output receptacle, he attached the final stage of the refabricator. Above that were the separation units that could sort whatever raw materials existed in the machine into individual locations. Stacked above that was the finest stage of the disassembler. It consisted of nano scale machines arranged like a miniature assembly line. To look at it with the naked eye, it seemed to serve a function like fine sandpaper...

Grayson knew the basics of this technology. Raw materials go in the top and atomic machines would gradually erode the material molecule by molecule and send it down a step. Then the next stage would do the same thing but at an even smaller scale. Sending the result down again. An untold number of iterations of this would eventually arrive at the final stage where the smallest possible machines would break the final molecular bonds and with specific sized manipulators for each possible atom, would sort them all into miniscule hoppers for the refabricator to turn into printer materials.

All of this was a much slower process than grinding a car down to dust with a belt sander, and created an even more refined product. It was a toss up which would take longer, 3D printing an object, or recycling it down to its component materials. And it took an unbelievable amount of energy to break all those molecular bonds. Maybe printing more solar panels needed to be a priority, as well.

Over the next several weeks, Grayson settled into an exhausting but satisfying routine directed by the goals Egg set. Each morning began by checking system statuses and scanning for priority alerts through his interface.

Grayson sifted through reams of data collected overnight - soil toxicity readings, embedded sensor logs tracking synthetic lichen growth rates, surveillance drone footage, etc. The sheer volume was overwhelming at first.

But his neural lace allowed him to rapidly process the flood of inputs. Windows streamed past as he glanced through them, Freeze-framing and flagging anything needing immediate attention. With practice, sorting through mountains of data became almost second nature.

Maintenance tasks always awaited - clearing intake filters on the tidal generators that supplied clean power, or debugging issues with the printer's extrusion nozzles. Grayson's hands worked swiftly as his vision overlaid each component's ideal state.

Before leaving his shelter pod each morning, Grayson checked for new quests. These usually provided helpful scaffolds for the day's tasks - "Gather mineral samples at coordinates X/Y," "Assess production rates of algae vats," "Construct drone recharging station."

Checking off many small goals gave a sense of momentum that kept Grayson's spirits up during long days of physical labor. He was making daily progress reviving the land even if the larger mission spanned years.

When weather permitted, Grayson would spend time manually tending the terraforming plants and synthetic coral outplanting sites. Though everything could be automated, he retained his parents' belief in a deep wisdom passed through human hands touching the Earth.

Kneeling in the gravelly volcanic soil, Grayson gently brushed his fingers over the broad fuzzy leaves of engineered nitrogen-fixing mosses. Their feel, their subtle astringent scent as essential oils released - this tactile reality centered him.

At the coral pools, he monitored conditions and the rates of mineral accretion. But he also took time to meditatively observe the rippling symbiosis of polyps and algae that built reefs grain by grain. Out here confronting the enormity of restoring nature, moments of wonder became lifelines.

In the evening Grayson reviewed the day's tasks with Egg, discussing anomalies, trends, and next priorities. Though Grayson did most actual work, Egg's tireless guidance shaped everything. Its calm voice and unwavering compassion were his only connection to another mind.

One night after signing off, Grayson stayed up late to watch a meteor shower streak overhead. The stars blazed with cold magnificence, reminding him how small he was. "I wish you could see this too, Egg," he whispered. The AI could process images, even appreciate beauty in an abstract sense. But to know the actual experience? Grayson sighed. Some gulfs might remain unbridgeable.

Tomorrow they would carry on. For now, weariness overtook him. Grayson crawled into his pod shelter, letting the sound of the tide lull him to sleep.