"Maureen McHugh - Presence" - читать интересную книгу автора (McHugh Maureen F)

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Copyright © 2002 by Maureen McHugh

First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 2002




Fictionwise
www.Fictionwise.com

Copyright ©2002 by Maureen McHugh

First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 2002


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Mila sits at her desk in Ohio and picks up the handle of the new disposable razor in ... Shen Zhen,
China? Juarez, Mexico? She can't remember where they're assembling the parts. She pans left and right
and decides it must be Shen Zhen, because when she looks around there's no one else in camera range.
There's a twelve hour time zone difference. It's eleven at night in China, so the only other activity is
another production engineer doing telepresence work—waldos sorting through a bin of hinge joints two
tables over in a pool of light. Factories are dim and dirty places, but cameras need light, so telepresence
stations are islands in the darkness.

She lifts the dark blue plastic part in front of the CMM and waits for it to measure the cavity. She figures
they're running about 20% out of spec, but they are so behind on the razor product launch they can't
afford to have the vendor resupply, so tomorrow, underpaid Chinese employees in Shen Zhen raw
materials will have to hand inspect the parts, discard the bad ones and send the rest to packaging.

Her phone rings.
She disengages the waldos and the visor. The display is her home number and she winces.