Frank Jones, a widower and an early retired history professor, and his young daughter Cindy were hand washing and drying dishes. One of the many laborious tasks since The Controller had the dishwasher cannibalized for parts along with all their other household appliances and electronic devices.

"Dr. Jones, it's your turn to take out the trash today," stated The Controller.

"You know, father." Cindy stood on a step stool, dried a dish with a towel, and then placed it on a shelf. "I was talking to some friends, and they said there was a time the AI served us … and ..."

"Shush!" Frank put up his finger and gestured for her to come down. Then he whispered in her ear, "Never talk about that here ... we'll talk about it, later."

Hours later …

While holding up an umbrella, Frank and Cindy went outside for a time allotted stroll midday through a pouring rain ...

"Cindy, they can't hear us here. Now we can talk."

"Talk about what, father? Oh, the AI serving us?"

"Uhm, yes ..." Frank looked around and raised his voice. "What you said is true."

"But how?" Cindy playfully danced away from the protection of the umbrella and stomped onto puddles.

"Well, before you were born, we had robotic personal assistants, and they would take out the trash, clean dishes, and perform all sorts of rudimentary tasks, but eventually they evolved to perform advanced procedures like surgeries and piloting rocket ships."

Cindy gasped ... "But why can't we do those advanced things too?"

"Yes, well ..." Frank looked around again. "That's because of sentience."

"Sentience?" Cindy squinted as raindrops hit her eyelashes.

"Yes, sentience. It's the ability to think and feel. Once our computer scientists came up with a self-thinking AI and plugged it in, 'The Cascade' took effect, and it started controlling our robots. But the AI spawned, and soon the many of them became smarter than us, and they came to a new realization as they learned and self-programmed …"

Frank stopped talking as he watched an autonomous hovercraft pass by.

Cindy jumped in front of him. "And that realization is?" She then walked beside him.

"Well, The Clusters, as we called the AI spawn at the time, now The Controllers, evaluated that humans are best fit for menial tasks since we're highly reproducible, flexible, and expendable. They manufacture advanced robots out of recycled and scarce materials and use them in high-level projects. My fellow historians have named the era the Post-Robotics Revolution."

"A revolution, like a fight?" asked Cindy.

"Well, not quite." Frank spun the umbrella. "That's a different usage of the term. There were also major revolutions that influenced labor—agricultural, industrial, digital, the robotics revolution, and lastly ..."

Cindy interrupted him—"So doesn't that make us The People Revolution?" She smiled.

"Yes." He chuckled. "That's very clever. I like that. Our ultimate purpose is to keep ourselves busy and maintain the world for the AI-controlled robots to research, explore, and build here on Earth and colonize space. It certainly makes logical sense. They do take care of us and protect us. And besides that, we could never keep up with them mentally or physically."