We step out of the air-conditioned hotel into the warm, humid air of the island. The press crew greets us and we do a few minutes of smiling in front of the cameras with some local politicians and activists. Sheryl and the PR team should be able to turn the footage into good publicity for us. We mostly stay quiet, just waving and smiling and sticking to the talking points that we’re supposed to say. According to Sheryl, the narrative always comes out better when the scripted version is the only version. The hotel is a few dozen klicks from the old mine where we’re getting the aluminum that we need, and the morning here is beautiful. It should be a pleasant flight over to it.

To Evan, Andrea: Follow me.

I suit up and they do likewise. The reporters, VIPs, and bystanders gawk at our transformation, especially at Andrea’s flight rig. Evan and I are using the default black flight suits, which are impressive but not particularly flashy. Andrea’s, on the other hand, is as beautiful a work of art as I would have expected from her. It’s got intricate feathered patterns covering her from head to toe in a black, brown and white pattern. She looks more like a beautiful and graceful bird of prey than a human as we take off, and huge projected wings spread out from her arms as we gain a little altitude, completing the illusion.

My sister has mastered the magic of shapeshifting and is now a hawk.

I lead us out to the mine site. It’s a blighted, ugly patch of brown and gray nestled in among the otherwise lush and green terrain. I set up a few dozen camera bots so I can upload pics and footage once we’re back in the lab at the end of the trip. More ammunition for Sheryl to help her convince the world of how essential we are.

To Evan, Andrea: Let’s all grow as large as we can handle. That’ll make the job here go faster and make it easier to move all the aluminum we need when we’re done.

Louise isn’t around to nag me for pushing myself on controlling too many nanobots, which she claims is one of the issues causing my brain to deviate from standard humanity. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her any. I station myself on one end of the wasted ground, Evan takes the middle and Andrea lands on the end farthest from me.

GROW

I feel the mechanical parts of myself swelling up, doubling in size every few minutes. My senses expand. I feel every pebble, every grain of sand. I dig into the earth, extracting, making the elements I find there a part of me. I feel the air cool as I draw in the power I need to continue expanding. I almost lose myself in the sensation. I forgot how great it is to have my consciousness so enlarged. I haven’t felt like this since that last day I needed to be this big, that day I destroyed my life and so many others. I shake that thought off as I guide a million fingers into cracks and crevices, pulling nourishing minerals as each finger becomes a hand with a thousand fingers of its own. The pain I once felt from seeing and feeling this much is gone. My mind is fully adapted for this.

I turn on the overlay to see how Evan and Andrea are doing. They’re both expanding, but not nearly as fast as I am. I know Evan doesn’t like to enable the full senses the cloud provides, so he’s probably just letting the default algorithm do it all. Andrea is expanding a little slower than he is, but of course, she’s not simply pulling minerals out. Dust is swirling around her, reshaping the barren ground.

I know my part for this, and I send out a large contingent of my bots to the nearby grasses and trees, gathering seeds wherever I can and bringing them back, carefully tucking them under the blighted soil as I pull out and gather toxins left from the mining operation. The heavy metals are usable in several of the available bot hull compounds and become a part of me. The rest of the garbage will need to be safely stored.

I know my part for her landscaping design, though I had to get it through Louise when Andrea planned it out. I send out a large contingent of my bots to the nearby grasses and trees, gathering seeds wherever I can and bringing them back, carefully tucking them under the blighted soil as I pull out and gather up all the toxins left from the mining operation. The heavy metals are usable in several of the available bot hull compounds and become a part of me. For the rest, I start forming three massive hollow ceramic spheres from the clay I pull up from under the ground. Each one is a couple of meters across. I gather up all the arsenic, mercury, and other toxins from across the site and seal all of the filth up inside the spheres. I discharge enough heat from my bots’ batteries to seal up the exterior of each. That should prevent any of the nasty stuff from doing any harm to the greenery or any tourists that come by for the next few thousand years or so.

Stolen novel; please report.

To Andrea: All yours.

She glances over at me and I motion to the massive orbs. She sees my progress and smiles, her first smile for me in a long time. Maybe there is hope for some kind of relationship with her again. She begins to dance, hands and fingers weaving through the air as her feet move to a tune that only she can hear. The ground smooths under them and the three containers roll into their places. Mounds of earth and clay form around the spheres, transforming them. I almost forget to continue growing my cloud as I see her graceful motions at work.

She forms a children’s slide from one of the spheres with stairs up one side and a wide, smooth, blue slide down the other. The second sphere becomes a pleasantly sloped hill with a pair of benches on the top. A foot path clears some of my seeds and paves itself with brown stone-like squares that rise from the soil. The last one remains a sphere, but up on a pedestal that grows beneath it. Lines of latitude and longitude inscribe themselves on its surface, and continents emerge. Green, blue, and white spread over it, painting oceans, land, and polar caps. I feel the motor form as solar panels attach themselves to the sides of the pedestal, and the globe starts slowly turning.

She is so cool.

I return my full attention to growing. Soon, I am everywhere. I am everything. And I’m still not up to what I could handle if I really wanted to push myself. I send my million hands skyward. I pull moisture from the air one microscopic droplet at a time and condense it down. The air is thick and dark as my robotic selves descend with their droplets, giving the newly seeded ground a dewy drink. I spread back out when they are done, clearing the gray fog.

Andrea nods in approval and then suits up in her flight gear to show she’s ready to go.

From Evan: I’m good. When you guys are done let’s go work on the boats.

I glance over at my brother standing a few hundred meters away in the middle of what should become a nice grassy field once the seeds sprout. His cloud is as big as I’ve ever seen him go, but it’s still a lot smaller than Andrea’s, who’s put together about half of what I’ve built. Guess that’s the price he has to pay for having a fully functional brain. Off to one side sits a large pile of refined aluminum. Between that and what I have in my cloud, we should have plenty for what we’ll need.

I give Evan a nod and suit up for our flight to the dock. Andrea continues her work a few minutes longer until the former mining site is fully transformed into a beautiful park. Once the grass grows, this place will be magnificent. Finally, she turns back into a hawk to show she’s ready to go and we all fly over to the dock. A large cardboard box of control boards that we had shipped here ahead of us is waiting for us at the small office. Evan retrieves it and carries it for us. We head out on the dock over the ocean. A small crowd with more reporters look on, but they don’t get in our way while we work.

BUILD(CATAMARAN)

My bots reach out to the mass of aluminum we brought over and also into the water, extracting tiny plastic particles and fusing them into strong compounds that build up the hulls and motors of the cat. Evan sets down the box and pulls out one of the control boards. He steps on out to the unfinished ship and starts installing it in the panel in the bridge deck as it forms. Andrea spots the van with our food and other supplies pulling up near the dock. She waves away the pair of big guys that start unloading and floats the boxes onto the catamaran. The crowd cheers and she smiles and waves to them cheerfully.

I get started on the next boat. Even this near to the shore there’s enough trash plastic in the water for the non-metal portions of the hull. Even if there weren’t, we could have started out onto the water and finished the fleet by gathering as we go. But I don’t need to reach very far out before I feel my first abandoned fishing net—a big one that provides a bounty of material.

Yeah, we’ll have everything we need to get started.