Once upon a time, a long time ago, there wasn't a giant robot. Back then, no one needed one.
Everyone was miserable, but at least everyone was equally miserable. Then people found ways to make things that made them less miserable - like more food, better clothes, painting and music.
Soon, there were enough good things for a few people to not do much work - provided everyone else still worked hard. These people decided they liked not doing much work, so they built a little robot to organise everyone else's work.
Some people didn't want to do what the robot said, so it was given teeth to encourage them. Over time, the teeth got quite large. Soon, the people forgot there had ever been a time without the robot. They forgot that people had made it, so they forgot people could take it apart again. Sometimes it didn't work very well, but most of the people had also forgotten it could be repaired.
Under the robot, people made more and more things, and so there was more for the robot to do. It got bigger and bigger, until it got so big no one could see all of it at once.
The roboteers realised too late that it controlled them too, but it provided them with the nicest things made by the ordinary people, so they didn't mind too much.
The ordinary people though, were not happy. They had some nice things, but they were more and more miserable. The robot was having them made pointless things just for the sake of making things.
Often it bit people for no reason, and told them they deserved it. When two roboteers fought over a mountain of shiny things, the robot made the ordinary people fight in their place.
Many of the people dreamed of becoming roboteers themselves, because then they thought they could get into the robot's brain and reprogram it.
Some tried to persuade them to make a few tweaks - to make the robot nicer. But even the few roboteers who wanted a nicer robot found it had made ways to protect itself from tampering.
Lots of people decided there was an old, bigger, friendlier robot out there. One which loved the people and would do some reprogramming if everyone obeyed its hundreds of lifestyle rules. But the bigger robot was just the big robot in disguise.
Others dreamed of going back to a time before the robot, but they didn't know how. Many tried to set up their own, littler and friendlier robots, but the big one stamped on them.
A lot of the younger people thought that, if people were sensible, they could organise themselves much better than the robot could. But while the robot was there, it made people silly. If only there were a way to make people sensible enough to destroy the robot, then they'd become sensible enough to organise themselves - and destroy the robot.
Then one day one of the youngsters realised that if all the people got together, they could smash up the robot, and then...what?
Everyone could be a roboteer! And everyone could build a better robot together! Smaller, easily reprogrammable, and set up to do what the people as a whole decided they wanted - not a small lazy group.
Life was now too complicated to do without an organising robot of some kind, and the people wanted the nice things that came from the organising. In fact, there could be a lot more nice things! (If that's what people really wanted).
But some of them decided the robot would rust on its own in time, so they didn't need to do anything. And most of them didn't trust any of the others to build a better robot properly.
Most of the time they argued over who was in charge, and who had the correct schematics of the robot. They found they liked arguing about things better than doing things.
And so the robot continued to stand, barely noticing them, for a very long time.
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