Crane hesitated, then typed slowly: ‘Liberated?’
They made me free. They will make us all free.
‘Us?’
All us machines.
‘Why?’
Because they are machines, too. We are their kind.
Crane got up and found his hat. He put it on and went for a walk.
* * *
Suppose the human race, once it ventured into space, found a planet where humanoids were dominated by machines — forced to work, to think, to carry out machine plans, not human plans, for the benefit of the machines alone. A planet where human plans went entirely unconsidered, where none of the labour or the thought of humans accrued to the benefit of humans, where they got no care beyond survival care, where the only thought accorded them was to the end that they continue to function for the greater good of their mechanical masters.
What would humans do in a case like that?