The Ring of Horns

A long laboratory corridor in Toulouse on an overcast autumn morning, flat grey daylight from a far window, pale green linoleum with a fresh chalk line, beside a bare cream-painted wall a low mobile robot, an open octagonal frame of bare aluminium tube on small castors, around its rim pairs of cream-coloured ultrasonic horns turned toward the wall, on top a turntable carrying a box-shaped laser rangefinder with two large round lenses, a thin radio antenna, inside rows of circuit cards and grey cable bundles, at the front a red mushroom-headed switch, every surface plain and unmarked, a hand in a blue shirt cuff resting on the switch.