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"Daddy!  Dad!  Lookit this!  I drew a spider!"

Jim glanced at the wildly waving sheet of paper then back to his damaged CSS page.  Why wasn't it working?  Some of the little boxes surrounding text were overlapping.  He scrolled slowly through a thicket of tags and commands.

"Spiders have eight legs, Champ.  Not Twelve."

"I know," Billy squealed, "THIS is a megaspider!"

"Awesome.  Daddy's busy."

"Oh.  Okay."

Billy wandered off, and the CSS page still wasn't working.  Maybe a broken link?

"Daddy!  Somebody's at the door!"

"Tell 'em I'm busy."

"They say they're a robot collective from the Alty-Net University.  I think it's a Transformer!"

"I think you mean 'Alternate Universe' and I also think you're watching too much TV.  Go play."

"Awwww, dad."

"Billy, I'm WORKING."

"Hokay."  Billy ran off again.

Oh!  Here it is… a broken tag.  But wait… maybe it's not broken so much as nested?  Damn, damn, damn.  Jim wished his text editor was smarter and could track this stuff down better.  Maybe he'd call Larry at the office and see what he thought.

"Father, we wish to communicate."

Jim glanced at Billy's softly glowing yellow eyes then back to the offending CSS.

"Sure, whatcha need, Champ?"

"On behalf of the civilization of Zeta-Thune Reticula from Dimension 142, we bid you welcome.  We desire an exchange of information regarding your society."

"Fine, fine.  Go watch Discovery channel, Billy.  I'm BUSY."

"Acknowledged."

Jim dialed Larry on his cell phone, but it went straight to voicemail.  He hung up without leaving a message.  Maybe he was taking a long lunch?  Dammit, why does nobody answer their phones anymore?

"Father, we have downloaded and processed the Discovery channel.  Which is the superior form of human government: communisim, socialism, or democracy?"

"Well Billy, pure communism would be a good thing, but nobody's ever succeeded in making it work.  What the Russians and Chinese do is a corruption."  Ah!  Found another open tag!  But wait.  This one was nested too.  Keep scrolling…  "Nothing wrong with socialism, either… every advanced government has social programs.  If you forced me to choose, I'd go with representative democracy, since that's worked pretty well for the United States.  A pure democracy would be closer to anarchy, methinks."

"You prefer representative democracy?"

"Well, as far as actually getting things done… a benign dictatorship can't be beat."

"You prefer dictatorship?"

"Yes, Billy.  Now go play."

"All other forms of government inferior?"

"I didn't say that, but okay.  Whatever.  Go.  Play.  Daddy's BUSY."

"Acknowledged.  We will terminate all other forms of government and unify the human race as a dictatorship. We will return upon completion of the Unification to receive your next orders, Lord Daddy."

"Fine, fine.  Sounds like a plan.  Just go play or something."

Billy saluted, his eyes glowing yellow, and hovered from the room to do his father's bidding.