Дэвид Балдаччи - The Fallen

“Here we are,” said Ross.

He unlocked a door and opened it to reveal an office about a third the size of his own. It was neatly organized with a desk and chair, three metal file cabinets against one wall, and on another wall a large whiteboard covered with notations and lists.

A sleek computer rested in the center of the desk.

“Frank was very organized and efficient,” noted Ross. He looked at Zoe. “Your dad was really good at his job.”

She nodded but said nothing.

Ross pointed to a cardboard box on the desk. “We collected his personal items. They’re all in there.” He fished in his pocket. “And here are his keys. We pulled his car up near the front entrance. It’s a blue Kia four-door, but you knew that.”

“Thanks,” said Jamison, taking the keys and handing them to Decker.

Decker said, “Alex, why don’t you take Zoe and head back. I can bring the box in my car.”

“My dad’s car,” said Zoe, her thumb out of her mouth now.

“Exactly, your dad’s car,” said Jamison quickly. “Okay, we’ll see you back home.”

She took Zoe and they walked off. Zoe looked forlornly back at Decker, before they turned a corner and were out of sight.

Decker turned to Ross. “Hey, you mind doing me a favor?”

“If I can, sure.”

“Can I see where it happened?”

Ross looked mildly surprised. “Where Frank was... killed, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“It was an accident. A tragic and stupid one and it never should have happened, but it was still an accident.”

“I’m not saying otherwise. And I’m not here investigating. I just want to be able to tell Amber... She might have questions, is all. But she couldn’t bring herself to come today. Plus, she has a funeral to arrange.”

“Right, I know. It’s all so awful. We’re paying for the funeral and everything,” Ross added quickly.

“That’s good of you.”

“And look, I know she’s going to sue Maxus. Hell, I would if I were her.”

“That’s a pretty remarkable statement considering you work for Maxus.”

“I’ve only worked for them since they started building this place. And they hired me because I was one of the few people around that had managerial experience running a large facility, and I also advised them during the construction phase. I hope Amber gets all that’s legally coming to her.”

“What facility did you run?”

“I’m in my early sixties, so I’m old enough to have participated in the salad days of Baronville, or at least the tail end of it. I started out as a finish carpenter, then ran my own construction company. After that I managed the last paper mill in town. It wasn’t as big as this place, but we had about two hundred employees, materials coming in, finished product to get out, and trucks coming in and going out at all hours. So running this place was right in my wheelhouse.”

“So, Frank Mitchell?”

“Follow me.”

Ross led Decker to a door at the end of the hall. It opened up to a mezzanine with a bird’s-eye view of the vast main floor.

“I have that window in my office so I can keep an eye on people coming and going in the management section,” said Ross. “But here is where I really focus a lot of my attention. Because this is where the money is made.”

Decker looked out over a sea of shelving and miles of conveyor belts, and people and both fixed and mobile robots working in seemingly perfect synchronization.

“Looks like a lot of moving pieces,” he noted.

“This place is one big algorithm,” said Ross, nodding. “But the general concept is pretty simple. We get product in and we have to get product out as fast and as accurately as possible.”

He pointed to the back side of the facility where the loading docks were located. “Product coming off the trucks is opened, scanned, and put in those blue totes. The conveyor belts you’re seeing route it to different parts of the FC.” He looked at Decker. “Short for ‘fulfillment center.’ Once it gets to its destination inside here it’s unloaded and scanned again, along with a barcode scan of its cubby location on the shelves.”

“Cubby location?” asked Decker.

“Right. All the metal shelving you see is divided into small cubbies with barcodes and alphanumeric IDs. It’s kind of like the old library catalog card system, only now it’s digital. When orders come in, and they do at the rate of hundreds per second, the pickers — they’re the ones in the yellow vests — use handheld scanners to find the product to fill the order. They scan the item and place it in the tote. Once the tote is full, it goes to the conveyor belt system.”

“How does it get there?”

“Either by humans carrying it or using rolling carts, or robots do the task.” He pointed to one device rolling along that looked like a large upright vacuum. “That’s an AMR, which stands for autonomous mobile robot. It carries the full tote to the belts using embedded intelligence and application software, its brain if you will.”

He pointed to another device that was carrying a large shelving unit. “That’s a lifting robot. It looks like one of those robot vacuum cleaners, but it can hoist thousands of pounds on those specially built shelving pods. It moves on a predefined grid system to where it needs to go.”

Ross indicated another section of the facility.

“Now, the products arrive there, at the prepackaging stations. The items are sorted into small slots on tall wheeled shelves. Each slot equals one order, because now you’re going from bulk to individual orders and the funnel gets really narrow. You deliver the wrong stuff to someone, well, that’s not good. The shelves are then rolled to the packaging stations, where they’re packed for shipment.”

“By people, I see,” said Decker.

“Robots can’t really pack. At least not yet. An algorithm spits out the right-sized box for each order, rollers kick out the air cushion bags for packing the item in the box as well as the tape to seal it. Then it goes down the belt to the labeling machine where the mailing label is put on. Then it goes to the loading docks where the boxes are put on trucks. Sort of like a jigsaw puzzle because every truck has to be packed as tightly as possible. A couple of wasted inches matters when you’re shipping millions of packages.”

“And people load the trucks as well?”

“Yeah, robots can’t do that either. Yet.”

“You keep saying yet .”

Ross looked at him. “There’s one major problem with robots. They don’t have hands like humans. You see those fixed robotic arms over there?”

Decker glanced where he was pointing to see a row of large metal arms lifting huge pallets onto high shelves at the back of the facility.

Ross said, “Now, that’s a great application for a robot. Weights that humans can’t lift safely. One direction, one spot to place it on. It does not require fine motor skills, only brute strength. Humans can feel things with their hands and work in small spaces in ways that robots can’t right now. They can make snap judgments about moving something an inch here or there because it works better. They can also recognize new products they may never have seen before and be able to deal with them on the fly. Right now, robots can’t do that reliably. But the industry is working on it. In fact, the Holy Grail in the FC business is something called reliable grasping mechanisms, which is a fancy term for making robots act more human when they’re picking up things and putting them in specific places. It’ll get solved one day, because people get sick, take bathroom breaks, eat lunch, get tired, and need a vacation and health care insurance. With robots all those things go away.”