As man advances, he wants to be able to talk to his machines. He wants control, but he wants the machines to react in in a way he understands. How do we react when the inevitable happens? How do we react when the machines talk back? Popular fiction dictates 'Rage Against the Machine' and Terminators hunting humans to extinction, or a vast Matrix controlling humanity. Truth is fuzzier and more complicated than most fiction. As we mold the machines in our own image, we do give them the worst and best humanity has to offer. Some are made to fight our wars, others are made to safe keep our children. If man CAN do something, man WILL do it. Self-replicating machines have been predicted since the late 1800's and that would be a time-saving way of making them. Errors in replication cause mutations in living creatures. Can mutations be introduced into machines? When the evolutionary pressures of mutation affect those very advanced machines, how will that affect us? I was working on a large render when a background image came to the fore in my mind. Shown left to right: Communication Officer Whiteface of the Cyclops Commonwealth, a Mark Eleven unit male regarding his new infant, Zeta. Holding the cyborganic infant, is his mother, Steel-Madonna, a Mark Twenty female. Her young daughter, Gamma, holds onto her mother's forward hip and ogles the baby. Perhaps the real future might have such Universal Common Denominators in it as Family, and other complicated emotions. More on the story next time, I was distracted by feelings I had toward this image. Not even a sub-plot for it. Done in Poser 7 with stuff from Wings3d,Blacksmith 2-2, and textures in PSP7.