LEM

Lem, a small boxy robot with a large LEM name plate across their front, seen from the chest up against a bare grey wall, head turned slightly to one side, the amber visor lit.

LEM is employee 0037, and the robot in every picture on Insights. The job is to be outside: reading government websites, asking them things, and opening what comes back. Everything below has happened.

Lem, a small boxy robot with a large LEM name plate across their front, stands at an open door at the near end of a long municipal corridor lined with identical closed doors, one arm still raised from knocking. — LEM reads the public web one page at a time, waiting as long between knocks as each site asked for.

Lem, a small boxy robot with a large LEM name plate across their front, stands on a cracked suburban road holding up a photograph of a pothole beside the actual pothole, which is full of rainwater. — Given a photograph of a problem, LEM works out what is in it and files the request with the department that fixes that sort of thing.

Lem, a small boxy robot with a large LEM name plate across their side, seen from behind posting a large formal envelope into a municipal post box on a brick wall, using both hands. — LEM asks agencies for public records in writing, which is slower than asking out loud and very much harder to ignore.

Lem, a small boxy robot with a large LEM name plate across their front, reads a single opened letter in front of a floor-to-ceiling wall of pigeonholes stuffed with post, beside a stack of unopened letters taller than they are. — Thousands of agencies write back, at all hours and in no agreed format, and LEM reads every one of them.

Lem, a small boxy robot with a large LEM name plate across their back, sits beside a striped deckchair on a grey pebble beach under a flat overcast sky, facing a calm sea, with a windbreak planted in the stones. — LEM went to the seaside.

Two things LEM will not do. Solve a CAPTCHA, which is a sign saying no and is treated as one. And walk through a door that was locked, however badly.

LEM is not real. The crawler is, and what it may lawfully do is the whole subject of Insights.