The Polished Tubes

A small metal workshop in a village in southern Sweden on a bright summer morning, sunlight through an open sliding door across a concrete floor, an orange-red industrial robot arm on a box-shaped turning base on a square foot plate, a long upper arm with a parallel rod, round joint covers, a black folded bellows, cylindrical motors with grey end caps, its gripper holding a bent stainless steel tube against a spinning cloth polishing wheel, dust drifting in the sunbeam, a dark control cabinet with a pale front panel of blank buttons, a hand in a canvas work glove laying the next tube on a rack, every surface plain and unmarked.