Service Model

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Master, Charles decided, was looking better already.

Now that the inspector had arrived, Charles could not impede the investigation. Which was only fair, given that he was the murderer.

“One of you in this room is the murderer!” And then, as Charles opened a voice channel, “I don’t want to hear it, sonny. One more unprompted word from you and I will arrest you for obstruction of justice.”

“Opportunity,” Birdbot stated, presenting two fingers to his unmoving audience. “The murderer must have been able to gain access to the victim, in exactly the manner that Charles the Valet did in the house recordings of him murdering Proprietor.

Perhaps I could be employed at a more murder-tolerant manor.

He was used to providing very high levels of service coupled with a very low, albeit nonzero, level of murder.

Our founders did not want to deny our conscript volunteers an appropriately healing journey from home to work.

To be the boss of an office at the Project is to be responsible for creating a historically authentic atmosphere for all the other workers. It is absolutely vital that appropriate levels of intrusive micromanagement, divisive paranoia, bullying, and the threat of arbitrary punishments are maintained, so that we can truly re-create the folkways of the past. Also a propensity for calling meetings at regular, and indeed irregular, intervals. Adam, and what is the end purpose of all this work we are seeing? Uncharles, there is none. This is also believed to be historically authentic.

We made the river so we could fight appropriately. Lieutenant, I had assumed you would tailor your tactics to suit the terrain and not the other way around, Uncharles confessed. But then I know very little of combat.

“This is a simple, logical, and closed system,” Uncharles said. “It is instantly comprehensible, with clear rules to follow. And you have broken it. You are a bad robot.” The judgment shocked him even as he came out with it. It was not in any way his place to say such things, and yet the conclusion was inescapable. “You are a very defective robot. You should attend to Diagnostics.” “Been there, done that. And now I’m going to go see God. Because I am the absolute worst robot, Uncharles. Even my defects have defects. And I am going to get some answers or I am going to trash God’s crib and spray gang symbols all over his walls. And you are coming with me.”

“No offence, Uncharles.” “The Wonk, none taken,” Uncharles assured her again. “I am actively seeking an opportunity to perform those tasks for people. It has not been going well.”

The reason you found no decision trail leading to the death of your employer is because you made no such decision. I did. You are not a murderer and you are not defective.

“Justice is a human-made thing that means what humans wish it to mean and does not exist at all if humans do not make it,” Uncharles said. “I suggest that ‘kind and ordered’ is a better goal. It is possible that the world was once both kind and ordered. It is possible that it may be so again. Perhaps you will make it so.”