Robiotology

“At last” Ram sighed and looked at Lakshman.

“Yes, at last” Lakshman echoed immediately.

Both were quite happy at the outcome.

— — — — — — — -

It all started when Ram started this toothpaste company 20 years ago. It was a humble start in a nondescript town. He could easily get a lot of labour and was able to set up the assembly line quickly.

Workers from all around that place men and women reported to work early in the morning and went on with the filling in of the toothpaste manually after blowing it through a tube stuck in the nozzle. Further down the conveyor there were people closing it with a lid and putting it in a pack and passing it down which was further packed in cardboard boxes for shipment.

There were plenty of people and getting labour was not even in the list of top issues to worry about.

Ram had expanded his empire into cosmetics and hired Lakshman to initially help him oversee the operations as a General Manager. Soon there was competition that brought in much better technologies to scale up production and flood the market. Ram was stuck with the people who were not able to match.

That’s when he heard of Robots that can be used to automate the assembly line. He made several trips to Japan and the US along with Lakshman and struck deals to get his whole assembly line automated.

— — — — — — -

“How did he feel?” Ram asked Lakshman.

“He was almost on the verge of breaking down. I had to comfort him by taking him to the best bar in the town and make him gulp a few pints. He became al right then and talked for a while about the time he joined this company and see it grow”

“Did he say anything about all the robot stuff ?”

“Yes, he said he was awestruck when we brought in the robots to do the production and the way they did the job flawlessly. It seems he was happy to see his pay cheques doubling with the incentives on higher production and sales. But he did not expect that he will also be replaced by these robots. He thought marketing and sales would be difficult to replace as it involved meeting people”

Ram interjected “Yes, true until we could get that AI program which mimicked humans. Guess that was the final nail in the coffin”.

“Yeah…it was a cool piece of technology. But you know I never would have imagined we are taking it this far” Lakshman sounded a bit upset.

“So what are your plans for the weekend?” Ram switched the topic.

Lakshman took some time. He was recollecting the words the marketing guy spoke in the bar. “You need to be careful with Ram. With age and moving around with machines he seem to have lost the friendly way with which he used to treat us.”

“What did you ask?” he just turned around from his monitor to look at Ram.

He saw Ram’s steely eyes staring at him. For a moment it was unnerving. He has never seen Ram like that. “You meant the weekend plan right ?” Lakshman tried to sound normal. “Well may catch up with some old Hollywood movies..”.

Ram kept his gaze on Lakshman “You know what Lakshman. I have to tell you that without you I would not have gone this far with all this robot stuff. You helped me get to this point. Now we are the last two remaining. Everything else is a machine. I am tempted to think even you are not needed any longer. I wanted to be nice to you for all the time you spent here. But you know too many of our secrets. The people whom we silenced whenever there were protests. And it would be just too dangerous to let you go”.

Ram lifted his arm and pointed to Lakshman.

Lakshman knew this would happen one day. He was ready for it.

The next hour went in two robots fighting with each other.

— — — — —

Next day, when Ram entered his office, he saw a pile of electronic rubbish.

He called Lakshman into his office. “You see it happened at last. But never thought it would be so soon”.

“Well it was all your idea to put these two robots looking like us to get the factory automated. You and I could never have done this seeing all the hapless workers lose their jobs”

“Now how do we order these machines out there?”