This tale is from the Richard Lederer and Stan Kegel book mentioned below.

It’s a long, long time from now, and machines have developed into sentient beings. Starting with the high-tech space stuff, a whole new set of different mechanistic species have come into existence. The machines are not only sentient; they are alive in other ways as well. They even produce offspring and evolve.

At first, it was just the super high-tech orbiting stuff that achieved self-awareness, but soon more terrestrial devices gained intelligence. Unfortunately the machines loathed each other, and war broke out between orbiting and earthly devices. Humankind had already moved out into space, but at the discovery that our original home world was in a crisis situation, we returned.

By the time we reached Earth again, all the original machines had been destroyed. The descendants of those original devices were still battling, trying to obliterate each other, an ancient blood feud where one planetary region wasn’t big enough for the two mechanical clans.

The future humans had to make a decision that would end the war. But it was clear that humankind had been in space too long as there was no sympathy for the terrestrial machines. And that’s when we found ourselves backing the satellite kin.

“Space Opera” by Lynn Ka-Ming from “The Ants Are My Friends” by Richard Lederer & Stan Kegel (©2007 Marion Street Press) “Back in the saddle again” from “Back in the Saddle Again” by Ray Whitley, from the film “Border G-Men” (©1938 RKO) and the theme song of Gene Autry.