Booklog 86/2024: Adrian Tchaikovsky: Service Model – Audiobook

[jacey]

Charles is a robot valet, the latest in robot service technology, working for the master in a large but seemingly isolated manorial-style house. Everything is going very well. Each day he repeats the same tasks, quietly content, until one day he cuts Master’s throat with a razor, for no apparent reason. After that he’s on his own, heading for diagnostics to find out what’s wrong, and to hopefully be reassigned (since he’s only committed one small murder, so far). But many mansions are in decay and diagnostics has queues that could take hundreds of years to work through, even supposing they were working at all. Then Charles meets The Wonk, a rather strange robot with a rather strange agenda, and his situation begins to change. The Wonk is determined to find the reason for the full-scale collapse of society, and drags Charles (or Un-Charles) along with her until they reach a place where questions might be answered and all is revealed. A quirky, engaging story with some interesting thoughts on AI and the parameters of robot programming.  Excellent narration by Adrian Tchaikovsky himself.