CHAPTER ONE

Son of the Son and Sun in the Rocking Chair

     Before Pot, it may have all started when Space Shuttle number 105 reported that it had sighted ants on the surface of the planet. Houston… we have ants. Copy. And then everyone in Thailand downloaded a picture of an ant. The thing is… these ants walked on water. They had long spidery-like legs that made them look like tiny fragile ships. They were photographing the planet. They were sent here. At first, they took little interest in the planet. They had concluded that we were a break-off colony of clones, a collection of survivors from a long ago star system. They had made the observation that each robot was connected to a miniature computer, some sort of communication device that was carried in a hand and apparently transmitted commands and instructions to each unit. It was decided that these androids represented little threat to intelligent life elsewhere in the universe - mostly they killed themselves. The data transmitted back to the star ship indicated that the number one cause of clone destruction was through their own actions against one another - they were their own best enemy. The problem would resolve itself. The spidery graphite legs of all the cameras retracted and each unit lifted straight off and into space and gathered, waiting to be recalled to the mother ship.