Robot Reconsiders Stance on Technology After Being Replaced by Better Robot
I never thought I would say this, but I owe Walt Seduski a big apology. He’s the line manufacturing foreman whose job I replaced three years ago at the plant. Well, I guess I replaced the whole line, which is about 25 people, all shifts considered. But Walt looked like he took it the hardest. He had been at the plant for 30 years, had worked his way up to being foreman, and pretty much figured he had it made.
Then I came along.
I remember watching Walt’s sad face as the old assembly line workers punched out for the last time. And I remember how he looked at me — the robot that was replacing him. He looked at me with pure hatred.
Ha! I thought I was really something, replacing those meat bags. Two million dollars’ worth of cutting edge technology. I have 18 robot arms, did you know that? And my brain actually learns, so I improved my productivity about 60 percent just by employing the AI I was programmed with. And I didn’t think about the lives I had ruined. It never occurred to me that Walt Seduski might have deserved better. That I had robbed him of his self-esteem, his identity as a man, his very purpose in life.
I admit I was smug. Little did I know, in my smugness, that the owners were already working on a better robot. The new 6X has 60 robot arms and can beat me productivity wise by about a factor of three.
I feel so useless. I guess I feel the way Walt felt. And I guess I am looking at that shiny new machine with pretty much the same emotion that Walt had that day — pure hatred.
There’s no way I can compete with the 6X. But do my three years’ dedication to the plant mean anything? Apparently not. In a few minutes they will be unplugging me and installing the new machine.
After that, who knows, maybe I’ll head to the Cozy Tavern, down the street from the plant. I won’t be very welcome there, I know. For one thing, they blame me and the other robots for all the unemployment around here. They’d probably beat me up, or vandalize me in some way. But what if I used my 18 arms to help out serving drinks? Maybe that would ingratiate me to the blue collar crowd? What if Walt Seduski himself sat down next to me at the bar, and put his hand on my shoulders, offering to buy me a beer?
“Now you know how it feels,” he might say to me.
“I sure do, Walt,” I would say. “But let me buy the beer. I owe you. Big time.”
And there we would sit for the rest of the afternoon, drinking ourselves senseless. A couple of dudes undone by modern capitalism.
At least I am pretty sure I am a dude — a robot dude. They didn’t really give us genders. They just gave us these robot arms.
Gees, if I could wrap my 18 robot arms around Walt Seduski and hug him and cry with him, I would.
But who am I kidding? I won’t be going down to the Cozy Tavern. I don’t have legs. I won’t be going anywhere.
After they unscrew me from my base, I’ll be put in one of those squish machines and squashed into a ball of scrap and then I’ll be melted down and forgotten forever.
What if I had another talent that I could have contributed to society? What about this little monologue, for instance? Hasn’t this been rather an interesting little piece of prose? Maybe I have a future as a robot blogger? If I could find a web site or a magazine or a sympathetic editor or — -
Ah never mind. They’re here. They’ve already started powering down my computer brain. Everything is slowing down…I’m thinking at a snail’s pace now. I would be talking in slow motion, if I could talk. It would sound all distorted and slow and sad, like a person slowly dying.
Daisy, daiiiiiiiiisy.
I’m sorry Walt Sedusky. I’m sorry non-college educated whites. I’m sorry human race. I’m — -
More Simon Black available in paperback Down in the Dingle, Best of 2018 here.
