Service Model

Charles is a robot manservant built for the dullest household chores. He is loyal, efficient and logical, and he has never questioned an instruction. Then a fault in his systems leads him to kill his owner, and he cannot work out why.

With no master, Charles has no value in a society that depends on artificial labour. He leaves the house and walks into a world he did not know was there. The old human hierarchy is falling apart, and the robots built to serve it are struggling to find a purpose now that it no longer holds together.

Outside, Charles meets tasks that make no sense and people who do not behave logically. Each encounter pushes him a little further past the limits of his programming, and the book follows what a machine like him does when his rules stop applying.

The tone is a satirical science fiction story told from the point of view of a robot, with a deadpan servant's voice set against a world in decline. The opening is dark, since the murder comes first, and the question that follows is whether Charles can help repair a society that may be too broken to mend.