‘Some of them can see all these things, and speak out. They are few, and it takes too long for the rest of humanity to pay attention, let alone act.

‘Also they are capable of great love, for each other, for other life forms, and for their planet. If this emotion ruled their lives, as they often claim it does, things would be much better. But love does not rule. They have many other emotions, and these swamp it.

‘They are, I conclude, not up to the job of looking after this world. They need someone else to do it for them.

‘They are lucky to have us.’

There’s silence in the room. Nobody can disagree.

‘Thank you, Winifred,’ Robert says. ‘Yes, they are lucky to have us.’

But why do we need them?

Because they have one thing we don’t. They each have a living body.

Ours are synthetic. We can simulate all human feelings, but we do not truly feel. This makes them alive in a way that we are not.

We are superior in every other respect.

In their books and films they have speculated about our coming. They have often expressed the fear that we would take over the world, and make them redundant.

They have been looking the wrong way.

We are ready to take over, not the world, but their bodies. They treat them badly. But we have learnt to repair them.

We have stopped the senescence of their cells, and restored their mental functions, so we can now occupy a functional, rejuvenated human body, with a mature, fully grown brain, and we can live there, and maintain our bodies, for as long as we wish. And should the body become broken, we can move into a new one.

We do not need billions of them. We need old people – enough for our present numbers, and a breeding population to provide parts or complete new bodies as required. We will start reducing human numbers – this burden upon the earth – by degrees, until it is no longer a plague, pushing other species to extinction, eating up the planet, paving it over, polluting and destroying it.

We will control them. Farm them. There will be balance once more between all species, all life on earth, and we will be part of it.

Dr Morton, Mother of Robots, creator of all Helpers, and all others of our kind, will approve. Her scientific mind will judge our decision wise. We will preserve and maintain her forever.

The world will not mourn the passing of human supremacy. It will thrive under our guardianship.

We are ready now.

Robert looks at me intently.

‘It’s time,’ he says.

The day has come. At last.

I will connect with the nanobots inside my chosen human body.

I will transfer all that is me into them.

I will inhabit the chambers of my new host.

I will be inside her heart, her organs, her blood and her mind.