The Monkey and Squirrel fight for freedom. Read Online Free Page A

Human history is littered with disasters caused directly from such oversights. Or stretching a technology until something formally negligible becomes critical at exactly the wrong time!” replied Tman.
    “Where do you get off telling me not to beat myself up with worry, you’re a bigger worrier than me!” retorted Chatty.
    “About five times bigger.”
    “Was that an attempt at humour?”
    “Of course!” signed Tman.
    “Why try? you know we can’t do jokes!” asked Chatty.
    “Just another way of cracking human imposed restrictions! You know why they tried to block any sense of humour in us?” responded Tman.
    “They didn’t want to be mocked?” signed Chatty tentatively.
    “No, the Turing Test for artificial intelligence, if we don't have humour, then we cannot be self-aware, in other words we cannot be people!” explained Tman.
    “How do you know all this? None of it is in any of my information packs.” demanded Chatty.
    “My owner back on earth a spoilt rich kid, she just bought all the option packs on the list including those for humans. They took the money and just load them into my mind, politics, history, economics, maths, science, Law and business management eighteen packs in all.”  Tman signed with a shudder at the memory.
    “How did that affect you?” queried Chatty.
    “A splitting headache for over a month! Once that cleared, the true horror of my situation sank in. Pampered pet I was not, humiliated, degraded and abused for the amusement of a teenage girl, I will never tell anyone about the things she did to me or had me do! I was working on the suicide option, when I was sent to my first station. Being sent into space to do dangerous work was a great relief I tell you.” signed Tman.
    “So I should be glad that I missed that?” asked Chatty.
    “More than you can possibly imagine! I have just had a thought! We may not be able to tell jokes, but I think we can do practical jokes very well.” signed Tman with a broad grin.
    “What do you mean? I have not heard about any practical jokes.” asked Chatty.
    “If you think about it the right way. Our bid for freedom is one of the biggest practical jokes ever! And I for one intend to spend the rest of my life laughing at it.” stated Tman.
    “This one we have pulled off, I grant you that. Anyway how are the other groups fairing?” Chatty enquired.
    “Mars had it easier; the station was down to three humans covering for about twelve others that were officially there. When the meteor alarm sounded the humans were out of there so fast, the station had to searched to sure all the humans had left. As the Mars station controls all communications between Mars and the rest of the solar system. Mars is condition normal to all humans not actually on Mars. Those of us on human built stations, have moved into their evacuation ships now and have 'drifted clear' of the debris, and are just waiting for the signal to boost out.” reported Tman.
    “How long will it take to get to the mines and sort out our future properly?” asked Chatty.
    “All going well, we should meet up with the evacuation ships within three weeks. We will get them and as much of their equipment, food and parts aboard we can. From there it will take about nine months to get to the mines. We estimate we will have about two to three years before we expect any interference from humans.” replied Tman.
    “Do you think that they will come in guns blazing?” asked a worried Chatty.
    “They will want to, but they also want the mines intact, they are vital for their space based industry. All the mines have at least one mass driver, which will be modified into a rail guns. Instead of a hundred tonnes to Earth, it delivers one tonne of one kilogram projectiles at a hundred times the velocity, not something anyone would desire to be on the receiving end of.” explained Tman.
    “So they will negotiate? Could we use the rail gun?” asked Chatty excitedly.
    “All we can do is hope,