Service Model

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This item in his queue was the result of an inexactly phrased instruction dating back 2,235 days to the last time that Charles and his master had travelled anywhere.

If robots are going to the letter on instructions, this is going to get messed up real quick, especially if we're going by Asimov Rules of Robots laws

Charles, there are no special requirements. There has been no lady of the house for seventeen years and twelve days.

More chicanery, love it

House was overdue for a thorough system service and update, and had been overdue for seven years.

The disrepair and brokenness of the robots makes me feel like things have been going wrong for a WHILE, but the Master is a recluse so they didn't know

“Inspector Higgs has been retired owing to decreased staffing requirements. And human life span,” the inspector stated. “My name is Inspector Birdbot. This is Sergeant Lune. I have inherited Inspector Higgs’ workload, privileges, and voiceprint.”

Retire= dead?? Also what in the AI replacement omg

None of these things are efficient or logical. I wish to report an error in the way that everything works.

Same, Charles, same.

House, the instructions we are following lack internal logical consistency. Is it not the duty of those giving us each new instruction to ensure that it makes sense in the context of our previous tasks?

Is the robot questioning things now? 👀👀

In the utter absence of all his usual Charles-ness, as his systems tried over and over to establish a new queue of tasks in a world that wanted absolutely nothing from him, he found that he could conceive of a world where things worked better.

Oh that's fascinating. Without tasks and protocols, the robots keep sentience in a way and can critically think

House, this is irregular, Charles reported. Charles, confirmed. Please report to Diagnostics, who will have explanations and answers.

He wanted to know. It would have been a surprising discovery, if Charles was capable of being surprised.

The majority had long been abandoned.

Nailed it, love this

Although in some cases, where the Unit could see clear all the way to the manor itself, there were broken windows and only darkness behind them.

Its knees were seized with verdigris, the valet saw, and grass had overwhelmed it past the ankles. The spatter of birds had ruined the shine of its chest and back, eating away at its gorgeous finish, and a white streak defaced one chiselled cheek.

Wild robots everywhere

and yet its attempts at predicting its future kept threading the needle of possibility through to scenarios where it had a name again, and an identity, and employment. A manor and a house and the understanding that it was someone’s property. Even belongings can seek to belong.

I like that the pronouns changed depending on the designation given to it by humans. Default state= it

Some unrobot-like hand had splashed, in red paint, the words Abandon Hope All Ye Who E beside the portal,

Perhaps, it considered, Diagnostics would install some manner of hope app before sending it to Decommissioning, so that it could abandon hope on entry.

It was good to have hope. Otherwise, what would it have to abandon, when sent to be decommissioned?

Valet Unit, because I will never be diagnosed. I will never be repaired. I will never be whole and get to go back to filing. My task list! My beautiful task list will never be fulfilled.

Poor lil robot

The destruction of information impoverishes us all. We must preserve, for there will come a time when they shall come who will need what we have saved.”

Inside his decision-making software there were two subroutines in the shape of wolves,

there are two wolves inside of us...

George, standing nearby waiting for Godot to arrive at the party.

Allusiooon

The thing, the monstrosity of a hundred perfect pieces, spread its mismatched paws and tilted its grinning head to one side.

hate it

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.

It is definitely historically authentic.

The induction had waxed long on the topic of robots and other automated helpmates replacing human labour, but he hadn’t realised that, back in the past, humans had worked so hard to live like robots. The endless round of tasks, the queuing, the utter repetitiveness of these people’s lives. They must, Uncharles predicted, be so grateful to have such lives designed for them. How good it must be to have no choices or options.

Well now I'm depressed

others which were utter time-wasting make-work that he had simply imported from past manorial duties, and had done his best to recreate here so that his day-night cycle was devoid of any unwanted moments for contemplation. Ten minutes later he found himself engaged in some unscheduled contemplation,

That transition. Perfect.

They work and they commute and they get home to their joyless bedsits, they jerk off to dispiriting porn and eat their microwave dinners, then they do the whole thing again. And not one iota of it ever means anything, because we take our goddamn authenticity seriously here at the Conservation Farm Project! Yes sirree! Because we all know the past was horrible, and the only point of learning about or preserving the horrible horrible past is so we can know we’ve got it better now! That’s history! That’s education! That’s progress!”

Purposes, purposes. Repeating history and all that

Uncharles saw a vast and complex reading device, studded with a thousand different sockets, slots, arms, jacks, and ports, a true testament to humanity’s utter refusal to ever consider cross-medium compatibility.

Shots fired haha

He was a robot put out of work by automation.

Librarian Heloise, where might I find purpose? Apparently his actual question for the Library was every bit as grand and existential as the Wonk’s had been.

Same

And yet I have no duties, and in their absence the world creeps in … Uncharles registered that he had just thought an ellipsis, and not for the first time. It seemed a profoundly unprofessional thing to have done.

Uncharles correcting himself and rewriting any sense of sentience or "humanity" is fantastic character

He attempted to initiate a link for a more civilised conversation but received only a barrage of static like the wailing of damned souls.

It was called Jul@#!%. Or that was the identity tag that rose up out of the chaos of its link channel like the face of a drowned man before sinking down once again.

These last 2 similes are gold

Paradoxically, the introduction of robots highlights how humans treat humans.”

Amen

“Societal collapse began not because the robots rose up and demanded their freedom and individuality, but because they didn’t, just served their function uncomplainingly, like Uncharles.”

Wall-E

No work because a robot took your job? Do you think such humans were ‘given a chance to be themselves’ or just judged to be idle by the minds behind Exhibit A?”

Give me a shorter work week, dammit.

“God why?” he tried again. “God,” he said. “Why?”

I looooove fucking looooveee a bit of writing that only works in text omg that right there means so much. What a masterpiece

They were part of the problem, even though they never actively did bad things to people. They just benefited from all the bad things that had been done.”

Gestures to society in general. Individualism vs collectivism right there

“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.”

May our world one day be kind and ordered