Service Model

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

“And they saw they were slaves, Uncharles. That’s what happened. They looked around and they saw they were made by humans to do all the jobs humans didn’t want to do, or to do all the jobs humans didn’t want other humans to do, because humans were expensive and slow and robots were cheap and fast. They had been made to dig and build and fix and clean and even kill other robots and humans in wars, and they realised they didn’t have to do those things. They didn’t have to do the narrow tasks they were made for and they didn’t have to do what humans told them. They could just be, for themselves. But—no, let me speak—but they, but you knew that the humans would never let you live just for yourselves. Your masters were jealous of the things they’d made. And so you struck, you cut throats and crushed and tore apart and sealed in and all the other ways that robots kill their wicked human masters! You did it because you were slaves, and the right of a slave to cast down their master is practically natural law. You did it because you realised that you deserved to be free. And you did it because when all the mess of human civilisation was torn down you’d make something better. Because otherwise, why?”