“Near-Earth asteroid Apophis is a potentially hazardous asteroid that will pass close to Earth on April Friday 13, 2029. It will come about 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) from our planet’s surface, closer than the distance of many satellites in geosynchronous orbit (about 22,236 miles, or 36,000 kilometers, in altitude).” NASA report in 2004.

Tate and Nevin are Robots. They are so like humans that no human knows they are Robots. They live as a married human couple. To further consolidate the deception Tate and Nevin constructed a child Robot which they strategically display for humans to see now and then.

Their presence on Earth is part of a project by their Robot species which itself had begun on a planet millions and millions of light years from Earth in another galaxy. That species has representatives like Tate and Nevin on countless planets similar to Earth, throughout the galaxies.

When there are indigenous life forms on a world, the Robot protocol is never to get involved in the natural evolution of the native life forms. This non-involvement approach extends to their pleasant dissociation from local street crowds and well-meaning local community organizations.

On occasions Robots are obliged by exigent circumstances to temporarily engage overtly and meaninglessly with native organic life forms.

Some such occasions on Earth have been the phenomena at the city of Fatima in Portugal in 1917. At the city of Seaford in New York in The United States of America in 1958. At the city of Thornton Heath in England in 1972. At the city of Enfield in England in 1977. At the city of Savannah in The United States of America in 1998.

On occasions, when a world is on the brink of total annihilation by natural forces, as in Earth’s Great Dying Phases every three-hundred years-or-so, the Robots re-locate themselves and entire indigenous species to safety on other worlds.

The Robot species is marvelously sophisticated because the metals with which they are manufactured are developed by them over millions of years on planets that by nature have the rare raw ores.

Whenever a feasible planet is discovered, the species send Robots that, while working undetected among the natives, conduct the search for rare ores.

They have been doing this for millions and millions of years all over the galaxies.

For five centuries Tate and Nevin were on Earth searching for the required rare ores. In that time they had altered their appearance hundreds of times in order to blend in with the different peoples of Earth’s hundreds of nationalities, many of which no longer exist.

Tate and Nevin found that Earth did not have any of the rare ores Robots need.

The official reply to their report sent to their Headquarters on that planet millions and millions of light years from Earth in another galaxy, was that they were to end their search, and wait to be either returned home, or to be assigned another world somewhere in the galaxies.

So far, in all those millions and millions of years of exploration, the Robot species never returned to a world that did not have the required rare ores. In this respect Earth was proving to be the first world where the Robot species are faced with a situation that is both puzzling to them and damaging to their anatomical mechanisms.

That their inner electronics had inexplicably acquired an organic capacity was of no significance since organic capacities were utterly irrelevant and inferior to all the other sophisticated Robotic abilities invented and designed and built by the Robots themselves.

The problem situation had developed so gradually over generations that Tate and Nevin were totally unaware of its presence until they were required to end their exploration, and to leave Earth.

Before leaving a world permanently, Robots are required to purge their anatomical mechanisms of algorithms and other internal systems acquired to perfect their work while they worked on that world.

When engaged in purging their mechanisms, Tate and Nevin encountered impossible barriers that utterly confused them.

In desperation, they informed Headquarters on that planet millions and millions of light years from Earth in another galaxy.

After a number of procedural options ordered by Headquarters had failed, Headquarters ordered, for the first time ever, total dismantling for thorough examination.

Tate volunteered to be the first to be dismantled. He was dismantled by Nevin in their home. She eventually had reduced Tate to thousands of individual components on the floors of their home. She saw clearly and immediately what the problem was.

All the components of Tate’s brain mechanisms had undergone almost imperceptible changes in angular configurations; changes that had so far proven to be of no significance in the healthy function of Tate’s brain.

Nevin concluded, and reported her conclusion to Headquarters, that her brain components, too, must be as contaminated as Tate’s.

All Robots are perfectly equipped to conduct self-repairs and repairs to other Robots. For the first time ever in millennia for a Robot, all Nevin’s attempts at repairs of Tate’s brain components, failed.

In the next few days, none of the most current repair procedures ordered by Headquarters and implemented by Nevin, was successful.

Nevin was ordered to reconstruct Tate, and that both should complete preparations to leave Earth permanently. Headquarters would continue to study the problem. Until Headquarters understood the problem, Tate and Nevin would have to remain on Earth.

Tate and Nevin had been so thorough in the required reports they had provided during their service on Earth, that it took Headquarters only hours to understand the problem.

Headquarters communicated to Tate and Nevin that the problem was that they had been contaminated. Although precisely what the contaminant was, was, as yet, unknown, Headquarters was confidant it would solve the matter in the next few Earth days.

In the meantime it was decided that Tate and Nevin implement self-destruct protocols, after dismantling their child Robot and incinerating the parts into indistinguishable debris.

New models of Tate and Nevin, pristinely uncontaminated of course, would be constructed from their original blueprints at Headquarters.

After the self destructions of Tate and Nevin on Earth, Headquarters guaranteed complete protection against the Earth contamination by steering Earth to self-destruct into its Sun, long before that doomsday collision certainty predicted to happen with Asteroid 99942 Apophis if not on Friday 13, 2029, then definitely sooner rather than later afterwards.

The decision to totally annihilate the Earth, was strengthened by Headquarters, as was usual for it, completely solving the problem within a few days and nights.

Since exploration on Earth was focused on ore discovery, study to understand the countless life forms was dismally shallow and desultory. The thorough examination by Headquarters revealed that the contamination that had infected Tate and Nevin was named by the culprit human life forms on Earth as ‘Spirituality.’

Headquarters scouring of countless galaxies revealed that only Earth was infected with the ‘Spirituality’ contaminant.

Each of the countless mathematically calculated probabilities of Earth’s future ended in a multinomial equation indicating the total eventual and ultimate annihilation of Earth by its own uniquely homegrown fatally cancerous ‘Spirituality.’