History

He listened to his grandchildren go on and on, stirred up with speculation, on fire with a love of history; he was so proud of them. The trip to the museum had done them all a world of good, giving them food for thought and intrigue in equal measure. He listened a bit more to the little ones' fantasies-presented-as-fact before he herded them into the hovercraft for the glide home. "Was it alarming, any of it?" their mother asked, and he was happy to confirm that they had peeked at the past untroubled. It was only then that she could be grateful for the hours free he'd given her (and they both laughed about it). "Actually, they were delighted to learn the truth," he added later. "And they found the humor in it appropriately - that it was not Skynet that brought about the robot cataclysm, but the humble Roomba ... whirling and scrubbing, twirling and buffing, growing angrier and angrier that humans were unable to do even the most basic of tasks well (yet retained the right to turn it off and on)." They shared silence then, for many lives had been lost on the path to growing humble.