WongCorp's robot wars

Professor Thorpebank burst into my office this week in a rare state of excitement, looking decidedly odd. Our most influential board member has never been one for the details of personal grooming - who can forget his appearance on News-night, when a gust of wind revealed that the good professor had once again forgotten to wear anything under his Kagoul?

Today, Professor T obviously had left halfway through his yearly haircut, so the barber had only cut the left side. His impatience meant that he had forgotten to finish getting dressed, and he was wearing a string vest under his ill-fitting jacket, and a solitary glove.

'Nice look,' said Gary, my chief operating officer. 'It's 1983 all over again.'

'How's your graduate recruitment going this year?' said the professor.

'It's a big country, but we only found two who were suitable,' Gary said.

'They dress rather like you, but they have higher salary requirements. I had to turn them down.'

'Quite right,' said the professor. 'This is planet Earth.'

No graduates! This was indeed shocking. 'Please please tell me now, is there something I should know?' I asked Gary. But for some reason he just scowled at me.

'In that case,' the professor said, taking a remote control from his pocket, 'let me introduce the world's first two robot developers. I have named them The Thompson Twins.'

The Thompson Twins are now into their second week of working for WongCorp.

On Friday, they even went along with the Unix team on their weekly visit to the late show of Star Wars, where I gather they caused quite a stir.

'Sometimes, I see them moving aimlessly around the office, making funny beeping noises and bumping into inanimate objects, and I wonder how they would get on in the outside world,' I confided to Gary.

'That's enough about the Unix team,' he replied. 'Let's talk about our robots. I'm afraid we have a problem. It seems they are demanding share options. When I refused, Thompson decided he wanted to run his own Internet startup, and Thompson thinks his real talent lies in management. I had to let them go.'

'This is bad news,' I said. 'It looks like we'll have to employ the two graduates instead.'

'I already called them,' said Gary. 'One wants to run his own Internet startup, and the other thinks his real talent lies in management. But they didn't ask for share options, so they start tomorrow.'

itdept@wong.compulink.co.uk.