Elevators: Modern elevators are strange and complex entities. The ancient electric winch and "maximum-capacity-eight-persons" jobs bear as much relation to a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy Vertical People Transporter as a packet of mixed nuts does to the entire west wing of the Sirian State Mental Hospital.

This is because they operate on the curious principle of "defocused temporal perception." In other words they have the capacity to see dimly into the immediate future, which enables the elevator to be on the right floor to pick you up even before you knew you wanted it, thus eliminating all the tedious chatting, relaxing and making friends that people were previously forced to do while waiting for elevators.

Not unnaturally, many elevators imbued with intelligence and precognition became terribly frustrated with the mindless business of going up and down, up and down, experimented briefly with the notion of going sideways, as a sort of existential protest demanded participation in the decision-making process and finally took to squatting in basements sulking.

An impoverished hitchhiker visiting any planets in the Sirius star system these days can pick up easy money working as a counselor for neurotic elevators.

Marketing division: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. *

Products: it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.

In other words-and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxywide success is founded-their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.

*The editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent.