The Golden Arm

A computer laboratory at a university in California on a late afternoon, warm sunlight falling in stripes through venetian blinds across a grey linoleum floor, on a sturdy wooden table a mechanical arm about seventy centimetres long clamped to a short steel post, its segments of gold-anodised aluminium, small blue electric motors at the joints, bundles of thin coloured wires bound along the links, a silver cast shoulder joint, at its end a small golden gripper with short fingers closing on a plain pale wooden block, behind it a tall grey computer cabinet with rows of small glowing lamps and blank panels, a folded empty wheelchair standing against the far wall.