It was a safe world, a happy world made comfortable for its human population by the machines - and even the machines had now developed into likable, personable androids, so much more pleasant to deal with than harsh-looking metal monsters. No one questioned the existence of the operational androids who ran the cities, the services, even the government, any more than they questioned their own hedonistic existence. It was really only by chance that one human noticed how few the numbers of humans was becoming.