Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky (review)

 

I never expected existentialism to be so funny. Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky is about a robot’s search for meaning. Or maybe it is about a robot who doesn’t know he is searching for meaning, but he is nonetheless. He also doesn’t know he is going on a quest, but he is as sure as if his name were Bilbo. His name is not Bilbo. His name is Uncharles (long story).

Uncharles is a is a robot valet. A gentleman’s gentleman (or rather a gentleman’s gentlerobot). The human society is crumbling and does not have much need for valets anymore. But Uncharles only knows what his programming is telling him, and that is that he needs to serve, and specifically to serve humans. That is going to be rather difficult as there aren’t many humans left alive in this broken world.

Being a robot, he has to follow his instructions, his task list. If those tasks are now impossible to do now, then he has to get creative about fulfilling his tasks. The first task is to find out what is wrong with him. But when he goes to the diagnostic center, it is soon apparent that there is more wrong with the world than just him. He takes on another task, and another, trying to find something that will stick, something that will give him purpose. But nothing ever quite works out.

The story is funny, but it is also a cautionary tale. Humans have made some bad choices in this world, choosing comfort over, well, anything else. But humans always have tended to take the easy way out. The evidence is apparent by looking at what we have done to our planet. In the story, apparently adding robots didn’t help. Things are falling apart and no one seems to know who to talk to, to get things fixed. Uncharles doesn’t really care about any of that. He just wants a job, just wants to fulfil his purpose. “Want” isn’t exactly the right word. Robots don’t want anything. They just do what they are supposed to do. They don’t have free will. At least that is what Uncharles keeps saying. There is a childlike innocence to the robot. And while Uncharles would be the first to say that robots can’t grow, they can’t evolve, after he makes a few of his creative decisions, you start to wonder.

Star Liner