CHAPTER 53

THE FARM COUNTRY

During their travels, our friends passed every kind of farm imaginable. Some farms grew crops in vast fields and orchards. Others grew crops in great glimmering greenhouses. Some farms let their animals graze through open pastures. Others kept their animals confined to small enclosures. Some farms had old-fashioned barns and sheds. Others had modern laboratories that made meat, eggs, and milk without any animals at all. There seemed to be an infinite number of ways to produce food for humans.

The farms were teeming with robot workers, and Roz couldn’t resist spying on them as she carefully slunk past. The robots worked the fields and machines and livestock, their bodies shining in the sun, shimmering in the heat. This must have been how Roz looked, back on Hilltop Farm. Were any of these robots like her? Were any of them quietly dreaming of escape? Or were they all just mindless machines, content with their place in the world?