A few centuries before Adam's time.

Julien Labrouste was one of the handful humans left on the Moon. The satellite had become a desolated scientific outpost, as it once has been at the very start of the human expansion. The golden period of the Moon had occurred just after the planets war, when the newly appointed Peace Council split the solar system in separate territories with distinct political systems: Earth, Moon and Space.

The Earth has been declared an ecological sanctuary and the Moon was to be its guardian. As a very first political step, the heaviest weapons were rounded up in Earth and Mars, confiscated from the belligerents, and brought onto the Moon. They were handed over to a group of humans with the licence to kill any human endangering the natural reserve. The nuclear and bio engineering technologies were banned from Earth at that time as well.

All the humans, whether terrestrian, martian or else, had been allowed for another 50 years to travel freely in and out of Earth's atmosphere. But after that deadline, they were dubbed to have made their irrevocable choice: either live on Earth in Nature, like the first humans, or adapt to confined habitat in deep space.

That choice was illustrated by tearing up the 6 colour flag originally representing humanity, its habitat and its evolution at the same time. In the 2 lower horizontal bands, brown represented soil and green was for plants. The middle bands displayed blue and white for the sky and the clouds. The top section featured black for space and yellow for stars.

As could be expected, the partisans of progress did not shed a tear while removing the brown and green bands to create the four-colour flag of space. Whereas the partisans of regression were happy to tear up the black and yellow bands which they considered a perversion.

The majority of humans chose Mars and set themselves the goal to accelerate the terraforming of Mars which had been interrupted by the war. The minority chose the mother Earth and accepted a ban on a second child as a reasonable compensation for living in a negative growth towards harmony with Nature.

A remaining group of humans, probably wishing to redeem themselves, settled onto the Moon to enforce a demilitarized zone around the Earth. That small but powerful lot was mostly composed of former soldiers and was also short lived, due to its zealous success at creating a boring no-man's land. They were smoothly replaced by scientists, who were attracted by this absolute quietness.

Julien was a proud descendant of that scientific community, which main feat consisted in creating killer robots.

The humans were prone to emotional tides when they fought their own kind. The robots were psychologically more reliable. So the scientists found reasonable to extend the licence to kill from human soldiers to robots. And they worked hard on the technicalities.

The robots were so far built with an utter respect for human life: the so-called first law of Azimov ingrained in their logical processor. Julien's ancestors had managed to tweak this rule so that it now induced a respect for all life forms rather than just humans. The so-called law zero was indeed necessary to allow the robots to kill humans in order to protect the Earth.

Since then, the moon scientists had watched the Earth.

They had observed over a few centuries the receding of the humans, in parallel with the slow progress of the apes. Indeed, raising intelligent species up to the level of the human being seemed to be the logical next step for the humans on Earth. And the primates had been the obvious choice because they were so close to humans.

The human demise was vividly observed by the scientists descending on Earth on the few occurrences when they had to pre-emptively organize multilateral talks to prevent conflicts between human clans.

'Empathy and consensus were,' they repeatedly said, 'the only peaceful alternatives to war. The humans still present on Earth had a moral duty to reach the peace their returning ancestors had sought.'

Often as an afterthought, the scientists also reminded them to avoid pollution from chemicals, plastics and eventually metal. And they were quite successful with that later part of their message.

Knowingly or not, with the combined effects of time and lack of critical thought, the scientists actually created a religion among the earthlings, which despised technology and promoted orang-utans as near-equal to human beings...

And all went well for a few centuries.

There was not even a case when the Moon robots had to intervene and fire inwards on Earth. Though there were always occasional refugees from some outwards conflicts between Mars and Neptune which did propose themselves as target practice for the ever new weapons devised on the Moon.

When it became clear to all that the Neo-apes were indeed at par with the new Neolithic earthmen, things kind of changed. There were no more goals to achieve for the humans, and the apes had none from the start.

Political tensions reappeared but this time between humans and apes. Most of the primates wanted to be legally equal in all; and that included removing from the scriptures that Men had raised Apes. Some of the most pious humans started to warn for doomsday. The Earth was about to reach the boiling point and start of all the wars.

And on the Moon, the dozen of scientists left, started to argue onto which trajectory they should set their laboratory population. Some hoped humans could tame the dolphins which were perceived as the next most intelligent species, though, without technology, swimming along the dolphins was only a dream. Some others, who were worried about the apes having no religion, cunningly proposed that the apes should raise their own children species. In the ensuing cacophony were enumerated:

• the parrot, for its speaking abilities,

• the pig, for its intelligence, and

• the elephant, for its memory.

In despair, they sent onto Earth a randomly-chosen scientist to proclaim a randomly-chosen nirvana. But in the moment of truth before a large audience, that scientist, Julien's father, prophesised that both humans and apes were to raise dogs to their own level of consciousness. The proposal of a common goal was unexpected but it solved the day.

On his return, he had warned his son. 'Julien, you must be aware that our most difficult task is facing us. I know I always raised you to be proud of our role. Indeed, we obtained the robot protection and we are about to succeed with the apes. But you will face bigger issues than I.'

'Do you mean, father, we could fail to raise the dogs?'

'That is most likely, dear Julien, if you do not pay attention to the pitfalls around. It will take them ages to make them talk or to grow their pawns into prehensile fingers. But the biggest risk is war, for sure. It will ruin everything. So the dogs are just here to buy time, until the apes are perfectly ready. We can't announce yet to the entire humanity that there are other intelligent species.'

'But when can we talk about it then?'

'I guess they first need their own culture, but we must avoid war to be the main component of their history. Give them time, like the dogs. But during that time, I fear that some of us may want to redirect the research. We scientists hold a great power of influence which is even a religion down there. That may attract ambitions.'

'But why seize religious power?' worried Julien. 'And could there really be a traitor among us?'

'Just be aware, my son,' he forced himself a smile. 'Be aware...'

He had often thought of those words and he had vowed, since the untimely death of his father, that he would keep an eye on his fellow companions. Surprised as well as sad to be proven correct, he had recently discovered that an unofficial landing had happened on Earth. The earthman he commissioned to investigate was now returning fresh news to him.

'Commanders! Ô, Commanders. This is high-priest Wochan requesting your higher knowledge and foresight. We have witnessed once again a metal object arriving from the sky in the Uratu territory. This time, one of us has been able to locate it and made contact.'

'Perfect,' rejoiced an impatient Julien. 'Could you describe what happened then? What have you seen or heard?'

'The scout said he had heard it ordering the apes to raise octopuses like the human have raised orang-utan. This is almost unbelievable and therefore it requires the attention of your higher mind. Ô, Commanders, what it is you command?'

'Wochan,' scowled Julien, 'have you been able to see the prophet who spoke those words?'

'Ô, Commander, my shame is complete because I cannot answer. There was no prophet to be seen. The sound came directly from the object, and that being clearly metallic, we do fear it is a bad omen, Commander.'

His deep slow tone emphasized the gravity of the situation.

'Commander?' worried the high priest, who had heard nothing but silence for a full minute. 'What it is you order? Do you wish us to attack the object?'

'There is nothing worrying about metal,' finally came the answer, which was a perfect imitation of Julien's voice. 'I wish you to be at peace with your human neighbours as well as with the apes,' it added.

Meanwhile, the real Julien had expelled his last breath of air and his lips were already blue.

The voice of Julien nevertheless resumed down on Earth. 'I'm happy to announce that the mission of men on Earth is now completed. You can now enjoy the gardens of Eden forever, provided that women give birth to only one child so he receives all the love he deserves. Convey those words precisely to all around, as those will be my last.'

Julien died on those words, actually without hearing them because the air in his room, carrying the sound and also providing oxygen, has been thrown into space via the airlock that was still open.

The Life Protector, as the moon robots called themselves, finally closed the valve to the outside void when he was sure that Julien's corpse was inert.

Though it is difficult to visualise the body language of a robot impersonated by a room, it emitted the equivalent of a condescending human shaking its head in disapproval.

Down on Earth, the flabbergasted priest managed to babble 'Very well, Commander. We once again pray your superior understanding.' And after a little pause, he regained his composure and added resolutely, 'It is an incredible honour for me to be the recipient of such an important message. Ô, Commanders, in the name of humans on Earth, we salute you.'

And thus ended the first ever pre-emptive action of robots onto human beings, which eventually got recorded in the rather secretive department of archaeology of the University for Robots.