The 5th Millennium

Earth is barren. Two space crafts manned only by robots take off to colonise planets in a newly discovered solar system some 40 light years away. They carry the complete life forms of Planet Earth in DNA and embryo structure. For nearly 1000 thousand years on planet Earth, human embryos cultivated under laboratory conditions: genetically engineered to have a larger brain, which in turn entails a more massive skull; this, in turn, made it a physical impossibility for women to carry and deliver this new breed of humans. In the 5th millennium, decreed that space flights to newly discovered, life-viable planets would only carry embryos with a smaller brain; to the robots, this meant an inferior race. The first grumbles of dissent from these quasi-human machines quickly brought to the sensitive ears of the ruling elite. In a swift preemptive manoeuvre, as an unexpected gesture of appeasement to their human-made emissaries, two rebels of the Supreme Council smuggled two children on board to be cryonically preserved and taken to the new planets. The robots, eager to attain the higher stage of humanisation promised by their creators in return for a successful mission, recognised that by using the DNA of the pair of human settlers, they could accelerate the process and produce a superior race in a shorter time frame, just by using the DNA and embryos of a young boy and girl of the 5th Millennium. This book is the story of how two children, manipulated and steered forced by robots, learn in turn to manage their masters to take back control.