The Robots

The break room at Northfield Components was a long, bright room with vending machines, a microwave that always smelled of someone else's lunch, and a big screen on the wall that normally showed safety statistics: DAYS WITHOUT A LOST-TIME INJURY: 142.

On the second Monday of April, the screen showed something else. A photograph of a robotic arm, orange and white, bent over a conveyor belt like a curious bird.

Thirty people from the quality line sat on plastic chairs in front of it, still in their safety glasses and blue gloves. Kai sat in the third row. He had worked on the quality line for seven months now, since the job fair, checking parts for electric car motors under bright lights: measuring, scanning, comparing them to drawings on a screen, putting the bad ones in a red bin. He was good at it. He checked his own work twice, the way Grace had taught him with diagrams, and his supervisor had noticed.

At the front of the room stood the plant manager, Ms. Bergeron, a small, energetic woman with grey hair pulled back tightly and a voice that could be heard over a factory floor.

"Okay, everyone," she said. "I'll be straight with you, because rumours are worse than facts. Head office wants to install four of these on our quality line this fall. Automated inspection arms. Cameras, sensors, the whole thing. They're fast, they don't get tired, and they don't need coffee."

Nobody laughed.

"I know what you're thinking," said Ms. Bergeron. "You're thinking: they're going to replace us. So before we decide anything about how we do this, I want to hear from you. What do you think? Honestly. Good idea, bad idea, how should we do it? I'm listening."