Author: Ken Poyner
The robot has seen his finger smashed by the iron press. His job is to slide uncoiled metal plates into place for the iron press to complete flattening them. But the press came down while the target was still being settled into its brackets. He has to report to the maintenance supervisor, suffer damage assessment, be queued for repair. The maintenance supervisor has seen this before. It is a regular fault. He could order a recalibration of production floor timing, ensure this stops happening. But he is an older model, and not all of his grievances have been zeroed out.
Excellent short piece. Until I got to the last sentence, I was wondering how you could wrap this all up with so few words left. And then I read the sentence and I understood how!
Great drabble, really well written. Top notch!
Thanks for sharing this story, and for the framing of human experiences in a techno future. Interesting!