Page 11 - The Perpetrations of Captain Kaga

Unloading the Warehouse of Nim

strange contraption, possibly a vertical hydromassage unit; I’m not
sure. After that, I dozed off again for an hour or so.”
“Then I awoke again, this time more slowly, while the scanner kept
beeping. On the screen I saw a large van with balloon tires pulling up
to the house. A panel in its side slid open and a pair of large
grappling hooks on telescoping shafts came out and gripped the
Appliance. Once they secured it, the arms retracted, the panel closed,
and van drove off. It had no driver that I could see. It was a robot.”
“I followed its progress. It stopped at several more houses, picking
up an Appliance at each one, and then headed for the open
countryside. After a while I noticed other vehicles of the same type
travelling in the same direction. None of them paid me the slightest
attention, and I was able to record the path we took on my personal
datalog.”
“Finally, after half an hour’s drive, I saw a huge industrial structure
looming in the darkness. This was the destination of the robot vans.
They all drove into one end of the building. I parked and waited until
there were no more vehicles arriving. Then I went in on foot. I was
not challenged: I passed freely between the vans, which were busily
unloading Appliances, into a cavernous warehouse.”
“Small robots whizzed back and forth, carrying the night’s
collection to bins neatly arranged down long aisles. They worked
silently in complete darkness, but they could sense obstacles in their
path, and never bumped into me—or each other. I, of course, had to
use a flashlight to find my way around.”
“Little by little I pieced together the system constructed by the
Nworg Engineers. Since raw materials were limited, they had to
recycle Appliances and ration them out carefully at Distribution
Time. There had to be some slack, an inventory of old Appliances on
hand for cannibalizing and melting down as the need arose; thus, the
warehouse attached to the factory.”
“I walked down to the farthest end of the warehouse where
Appliances were being taken out of stock for recycling. There I
discovered a few things. First, the devices are stripped and crushed in
order of arrival. Second, there is a sizable backlog; this is a result of
the plague. You see, production in the robot factory must be geared
to collection; that’s why the Cultivators never fail to put out their old
Appliances. With a reduced population there is more recyclable
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