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Chapter Two

At last survey, it was recorded that five-hundred-and-sixty-seven small astral bodies orbited the fertile, yellow planet of Arles, a body found in the Cetus constellation. The observations were carried out, compiled, and transmitted back to Earth by one of the human administrators stationed in orbit above Arles. This administrator had, one unassuming day, suddenly found astronomy as one of her new secondary duties. Francine Flynt, who would modestly describe herself as a “glorified filing clerk”, was part of the team of caretakers to the Arles robot labour population. Counting moons and asteroids and dwarf planets was not, and never had been, a passion of hers. Nor had she ever mentioned to her employers that she was unsatisfied enough with her current workload that she could take on extra duties. Document shredding and managing the stationary cupboard was just the right amount for her. Lest it be said, she was not impressed with yet another spreadsheet to maintain, and attempted to
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Chapter One

Painfully engorged with more than a day’s worth of crop, gathered painstakingly from the tangled alien landscape of the planet Arles below, the queen hummed contentedly on an intuitive aerial path back to her bustling hive. Behind her, a cloud of worker drones followed at a protective, but respectful, distance in obedient formation. One drone in particular, however, was failing. Not so coincidentally, it was also the only drone yet to have delivered its valuable payload. “Should I open the hold and let them come inside?” Said the cargo brat, into the ship’s intercom. Cargo brats, a familiar presence on every harvester queen in the fleet, were generally the children of the hive’s human administration body, put into service early for work experience. It provoked their naturally-immature outlook and demeanour into something resembling real maturity, while also teaching them a valuable trade. In most cases of this arrangement, the brats became accepted, by the robot labour body onb
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