Professor ManGronk, of the archeological expedition to the lost world of Earth, was the foremost expert in his time, which was the year 10,063 AD. He was a human being, born, raised and educated on the planet Peinderslosh in a galaxy accessed by hyper-spatial craft via an inter-dimensional conduit linking two galaxies as twins. Those two galaxies were the Mebuelorn Nebula and the Milky Way.

     ManGronk was thirty years old according to the orbit of Peinderslosh around its parent star, Mixelflogin. He had been educated by way of cybernetic surgery and chemical therapy. There was a microscopic doohickey in his brain, which gave him several thousand years worth of the knowledge, wisdom and experience from his entire culture. No small mind in this man. There were at that moment three hundred sixty two billion, nine hundred eighty three thousand, three hundred seventy eight humans in his culture, all of which who, in some fashion or another, had contributed to ManGronk's personality. Not to mention the eons of recorded memories from beings past. Suffice it to say he was a smart son of a bitch. Actually he was a smart son of a synthetic, highly mechanized womb, filled with synthetic amniotic fluid controlled by a sentient machine.

     ManGronk first became interested in the lost world of Earth around the age of 15 minutes when he choose the field of archeology to be his life long pursuit. The robots were proud to announce his decision to his parent, the sentient robot whose job it was to provide maternal love and guidance for the 6000 babies sharing BabyGronk's birthdate. BabyGronk was determined to travel to Earth as soon as his body matured enough for him walk and control his bodily functions himself. In the meantime he endeavored to become an expert on the subject. This he was by the age of 3 months. Still the rigors of inter-dimensional travel were much to rough for an infant and he was forced to put off his explorations until he was a toddler of two.

     Now old enough to endure the trip, BabyGronk embarked. The inter-dimensional journey between galaxies was a grueling, queasy, time distorting, barf bag of an hour, and the trip to Earth was an equally tedious hour as well. Nevertheless he arrived without mishap.

     Upon initial sensor sweeps it was clear that there was not a single sentient thing to be found on the lost world of Earth. It was also clear that no one had been there in ages. BabyGronk was excited, feeling as though he was discovering something for the first time. In a sense he was, for every human being alive had long since abandoned the home world and the Milky Way for the Mebuelorn Nebula and the planet Peinderslosh.

     The reason for this was well known. Unlike the Milky Way and the Sol system where Earth found its home, on Peinderslosh, in the Mixelflogin system, of the Mebuelorn Nebula, Human beings could fly.

     BabyGronk knew that Humans had vacated the planet Earth around the year 3022 AD. Therefore he needn't search for evidence of civilization in the accumulated dust and ruin of the past 7000 years. He decided that he would collect as much information as he could, on what primitive life on earth was like from that point back, and then return home to analyze the data. To this end he dispatched 14,000 archeology-Bots to the planets surface as he delighted himself with the stream of data collected by the godzillion clusters of sensors installed in his hyper-spatial flying saucer.

     The entire job took less than one Earth week. After that it was back to Peinderslosh where BabyGronk could resume his studies of the data for the next thirty odd years while doing all the normal things humans do like eat, sleep, sex and fly.

     Now thirty, ManGronk had made some fascinating conclusions concerning the lost world of Earth and its very primitive inhabitants. He was preparing to give a lecture on the subject, a lecture that could be received by anyone of the three hundred sixty two billion, nine hundred eighty three thousand, three hundred seventy eight humans in his culture. All the inhabitants of the Mebuelorn Nebula were fitted with two-way sub-space communications arrays in their skulls. This allowed them to participate in any event without having to be there. People referred to having attended an event as "I witnessed that" and so on, never having moved.

MEMO: From the Magistrate of the Database

This is a textual transcript of ManGronk's lecture. Sadly, the automatic audio/visual portion can not be conveyed to you because you are not fitted with a Cranial-Comlink.

Because of this unfortunate gap in your present communication abilities it may be difficult for you to understand some of the transcripts. It is also noted that you do not possess the Microbial Database of the Ages. This of course severely limits your overall intelligence. We suggest that you use an antiquated thought system once referred to as an imagination. Thank you.

     ManGronk began.

     "My fellow forms of sentient life, let me tell you a portion of the fascinating results of my 28 year analysis of the artifacts recovered from the lost world of Earth. As you know Earth was once home to Human beings. Many of you may find this hard to believe but the evidence suggests that Earth was in fact the planet of origin for the species. I shall go into detail concerning my theories on that at another time. Henceforth, Sensor probes, both saucer and robot, revealed ruins of many great civilizations there, but I should like to confine this lecture to the subject of the empires therein and of the curious kings in the very last great civilization before the migration to our beloved Nebula.

     Our research has revealed some interesting facts. The most shocking of these was that people in the latter half of the 20th century on Earth actually could not get along with each other because of differences in skin pigmentation! Ridiculous as it sounds the evidence proves this to be an unarguable truth. Just as today there were white people and black people and yellow people but no green or purple people. However in those ancient backward times on Earth the whites and the blacks were polarized against each other in spirit and in some cases in violence or death.

     It came to pass that two great kings were held in high esteem by the primitives, one white the other black. I was enthusiastic to discover these two kings, as well as to discover enormous documentation of their rule in various forms. Oddly I also discovered that the two kings had absolutely nothing to do with the government of their subjects but ruled a mysterious domain known as "POP".

     Let me address the White King for he came to rule prior to the Birth of the Black King. I tell you now that the documentation although seemingly complete was extremely primitive. I found the words of the White King recorded on strange obsidian discs that when rotated beneath a crystal stylus produced sound. There were millions of these discs. The White King spoke a very strange language, that I have yet to decipher, and it was set to the most wretched attempts at music I have ever heard. All of his words were presented in this manor.

     Another strange thing about the White King was his attire. He wore a tight fitting, white one-piece suit with a high stiff collar. The suit was festooned with jewels and had an enormous golden buckle in front. Like all humans back then the White King had hair on his skull. In his case it was the color black and appeared carefully sculpted to better his features. In all visual records of his appearances before his subjects he was notably sweaty. This explained, to my delight, the presence of a small towel found in almost all his portraits.

     These portraits were predictable in form for almost all that my robots unearthed were painted upon a fine, fuzzy, black material. We believe that the Kings subjects madly collected these paintings and discs and never failed to attend his many appearances, in his kingdom deep in the desert, of the northern continent, of the Western Hemisphere, of the planet.

     There were relatively few visual recordings of the king but in the ones we were able to piece together we think we might have stumbled upon the source of his power. Curiously he seemed to have formed legions of devoted subjects all of whom were female. Having such control of a sizable number of females would gather many male subjects as a matter of course. His aptitude in gathering female subjects seemed to be due to his ability to cause them to scream, cry and become otherwise hysterical at will. We can only speculate what he may have been doing to them to cause this to happen. Whatever it was it allowed him to become very powerful during his rule, in evidence, the width of his belly.

     Now, I shall speak of the Black King. Well into the reign of the White King we find the appearance of the Black King as a child who spoke the same language as the White King and set to awful music as well. My staff and I feel that the child was not yet crowned king and so there was no challenge to the White Kings rule of the strange domain called "POP". The child had a gigantic and bulbous growth of hair upon his skull. We found that this particular hairstyle was common among people sharing his color. We were able to recover numerous artifacts from this period of the future king's life and cataloged each to correspond with the various stages of the child's maturity into a young man. For a period the future Kings words were recorded on the same discs as the White King but abruptly there seems to be a development in technology and the recordings begin to appear on a type of magnetized tape. Then they appear on miniature versions of the obsidian discs only now set in light scanable plastic.

     Prior to these events there is evidence to suggest that the child king's words were having an impact on the White King's rule over the POP. In fact we believe that the stress of this Black Kings emergence led directly to the death of the White King for he died before the child had earned a crown.

     One might think that the Black King would simply replace the White King but not so. The White King had been so for many, many years and his memory would not likely evaporate merely because the man was dead. It is here that we see the Black King earn his own crown and simultaneously begin a life long obsession with becoming more POP than the White King. It is our theory that it was not enough that the Black King had the admiration of his own subjects world wide but that he desired the White Kings subjects to swear allegiance to him as well. This would mean besting the legend of the White King. One of the problems in this was race. As difficult as it is for us to comprehend something so absurd, the white people didn't like the Black Kings words as much as the White Kings words. We feel that this may have been racially motivated. Oddly the Black King may have been among the first to try and truly integrate his society. But I digress.

     Given the fantastic amount of documentation of the life of the Black King we have come up with some startling conclusions. Unlike the White King the Black King succeeded in getting his image in every corner of the globe. He made regular appearances in all forms of the primitive media of the day. He wore pants that were too small and seemed to have lost one of his gloves but people loved him because he could make his body move like an ancient robot. His ability to hypnotize people is clear if one pays close attention to his appearances. Right after his subjects would begin to act like robots themselves. There was one appearance we discovered where the Black King demonstrated his powers by setting his own head on fire! From what we can gather he was at the height of his popularity at this time.

     It is here that the most peculiar things begin to occur. First the Black King begins to dramatically alter his appearance. It starts with his nose, which gets noticeably slimmer and then amazingly his skin pigmentation begins to change. We can only conclude from this that the Black King had seen no other way to win the favor of the White Kings subjects but to transform himself into a white person as well! This is wholly supported by the careful documentation of his life. Over time he becomes paler and paler and his nose gets thinner and thinner until he is literally the whitest person on Earth having bleached all pigmentation from his skin! Yet still he was no more famous than he had been as a black man. It is our belief that this was because he was already as famous as a human could be and far more famous than the White King had ever been. But this amazing tale does not end here. The Black King's obsession with fame led him to do something that my colleagues and I could scarcely believe. Yet it appears to be true.

     Although we were never able to translate their strange language we were able to theorize as to the meaning of a set of coincidences both in imagery and cryptography. There comes a time, late in the life of the Black Kings rule, that he is pictured often with a white female that bore a remarkable resemblance to the White King. Also any time the woman is shown with him the cryptic writing beneath her image has seven characters identical to that of the White King! As the two are shown in romantic form we can only conclude that there was a union between them. What we have concluded is that the Black King actually took as a mate the offspring of the White King! The very pinnacle of obsession!

     In closing I should like to say that we are studying closely now the years after these I have told you about. Let me tease you all by telling you that shortly after his mating with the daughter of the White King the Black Kings nose fell off! Can you believe it? What a tale!

     We are also trying to learn the strange language of these beings but it is difficult for the words are transmitted through the air by sound or written in their primitive glyph. But for what it is worth I shall leave you with one of these cryptic messages.

KING OF POP WEDS PRESLEYS DAUGTHER