The trouble with attending countless workplace meetings is that you never quite know when you're going to wake up.Invariably, it's at some important part of the discussion, where a gentle nudge in the ribs betrays the fact that you have phased out into another dimension just your input is required.
This was – it grieves me to say – exactly how I was dragged from my post-lunch reverie just as the brains from our technology department dropped a bombshell of epic proportions:
"Yes," he said in reply to a question, lost in the pan-dimensional flux, "We'll be installing a Robot Jukebox to solve this problem. Scary? Mr Duck? Do you approve?"
"Mwargh!" I replied in surprise and alarm as the full, terrifying meaning of this announcement struck home, right between the eyes: "Mwargh!"
All eyes turned toward me, and somehow, my voice is taken over by Mr T.
"You crazy fools!"
A room full of blank faces, so I press on:
"A Robot Jukebox? Don't you see the danger?
"Oh yes, it'll be all fun and games for the first couple of weeks. The 'droids'll have a disco - a bit of a party - then, sure as eggs they'll neck all the vodka, turn on their Fleshy Masters, and before you know it, the office will be heaped high with colleagues decapitated by Peter Andre CDs."
"Err..." said the Head of Technology, but I was on a roll. A roll FOR THE WIN, in BLOCK CAPITALS, with BOLD.
"It's true, damn you all to HELL! I read about it in JUDGE DREDD. Don't come running to me when Call Me Kenneth rips both off your legs for shits and giggles."
"A Robot Jukebox," the chief finally explains as I run out of steam, "is merely a device that allows us to produce large numbers of CDs and DVDs quickly. Also, it has a built-in coffee maker. Hardly anyone will be killed TO DEATH."
"Oh. Right. Yes," I manage, before finally managing to engage brain: "And who, pray, will collect and despatch these discs?"
"Monkey Butlers," said the chief, "Monkey Butlers with Jetpacks."
The future is here, people. The future is here.
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