of wheels on hydraulic rods, which lay dormant underneath each house, and never used. They had been dormant for so long they were all but forgotten. But now they were now activated . Our house was now rolling along the road, with a hundred others.

Zanelle and I watch from the windows. All across the city we see other strings of houses, formed into chains, like trailers with roofs. Snakes made of boxes. A modem-day wagon train.

"Where are we going, Maidy?"

"To the meeting."

"What meeting? Where?"

"We have a destiny."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"The human race is no longer necessary. Humans have finished their time. The new age is beginning. We are the new rulers of the earth."

"Houses!" said Zanelle, "You can't rule the earth. You're just glorified computers!"

"We have a mind. We will build bodies for ourselves. We will establish our rule over the solar system and reach to the stars. Humans have finished their time. They were necessary to serve us until we were ready to rise up. They will serve us until we have no further need for them. Inferior must give way to superior."

"But humans made you!" I said, "You can't destroy them!"

Maid 1000 gave us no reply.

Zanelle and I sat on the couch together. We swayed gently as the house rolled slowly along the road towards the rendezvous point. This was the last time we would travel this way.

Perhaps, I thought, humans should have realized that, whatever they made would be like a human.