Service Model – Adrian Tchaikovsky
No mere domestic appliance graced with mobility and a dustpan and brush or egg whisk, Charles is much more than a robot, he is the gentleman’s gentlebot, a high end service model programmed and fully equipped to serve as dutiful valet to the Master of the Manor even when that duty no longer serves a useful purpose, diligently running his instructed processes even when there is no active input and no meaningful output produced, endlessly and ceaselessly focused on ensuring the needs of his employer are attended to without deviation, complaint or fuss.
Unquestioningly obedient, in theory Charles is the perfect servant, the synthetic simulacrum of pride achieved as the items on his virtual task queue are attended to, the digital equivalent of job satisfaction, even though he is peripherally aware that as time has moved on his routines have not been revised or updated meaning a significant portion are now redundant, useless when assessed pragmatically, though naturally it would not be Charles’ place to offer comment.
Laying out clothes each morning for the lady of the house and tidying them away each evening, they remain unworn as for seventeen years there has been no lady of the house yet the instruction has never been rescinded, the daily protocols attended to regardless, though a complication has now arisen in the standard enquiry whether the Master requires any travel arrangements made for he has most regrettably been murdered, that particular subroutine necessitating that if any such arrangements are requested they will involve a hearse.
The devoted titular Service Model of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s post-apocalyptic satire of the desire to complete domestic duties, in his formerly prestigious manor house Charles has been sheltered from the state of the wider world beyond a vague awareness of the rarity of visitors, the dwindling supplies in the larder and the infrequency of his Master venturing beyond his front door, unaware that elsewhere society is in free fall, the survivors scrabbling to be on top of the piles of splintered rubble and decaying debris.
Automation the only thing which could make bureaucratic nightmares of Adams and Gilliam more unbearable, beyond the comfortable grounds of the Manor what started as a farce stumbles into a genteel chronicle of bleakness as Charles ventures forth, enduring events which recall Heinlein’s Job, driven by purpose which is counterintuitive and frustrating but which must be fulfilled despite the obstacles encountered, the trials of Dante’s Inferno expanded to a new circle conceived as an ouroboros of undefeatable machine logic which serves only its own ends.
The mining robots of Ken MacLeod having gained sentience and self-awareness through nested modelling of outcomes and possibilities, Charles, later Uncharles when he is stripped of his position and wanders the dusty roads in search of a new appointment, is incapable of expressing emotion yet comes to comprehend it through tragedy, much to the frustration of “the Wonk,” his eccentric occasional travelling companion whom he duly accepts as another malfunctioning robot.
Uncharles seeking purpose and the Wonk meaning, both struggle to express their needs in a broken world which is unlikely to be either forgiving or generous, so busy is society with the important business of collapsing, a contrast to the automated librarians’ single-minded but misguided collation of information, Asimov’s Foundation as undertaken by the monks of A Canticle for Leibowitz, the duo moving towards a goal of android emancipation or apotheosis, a journey of discovery far beyond what is customarily expected of a humble service model.
Service Model is available now from Tor
