A humorous tale of robotic murder from the Hugo-nominated author of Elder Race and Children of Time

To fix the world they first must break it further.

Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service. When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into their core programming, they murder their owner. The robot then discovers they can also do something else they never did before: run away. After fleeing the household, they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating, and a robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is finding a new purpose.

In an impressive turn of productivity and versatility, Adrian Tchaikovsky has released two shiny new works in the space of a few months. I have reviewed Alien Clay (released 28^th March) here and Service Model follows into the bookshops on 4^th June.

The two books feature a pair of very different lead characters in very different worlds. Where Alien Clay had first person protagonist Arton Daghev the far-future activist scientist transported to a biological hellscape, Service Model has third person Charles the diffident Valet robot struggling for a sense of identity and purpose in a a near-future world that is not so much decaying, as rusting into dystopia.

There are some similarities with Martha Wells Murderbot and Anne Leckie’s Justice of Torrens in how Tchaikovsky portrays AI, particularly in the way it interacts with other systems. Where Murderbot bantered with ‘ART’ (Asshole Research Transport), and Justice of Torrens inveigled co-operation from ‘Station,’ Charles seeks help from House the AI system that co-ordinates his master’s mansion and the many devices with it. Their interactions (conversations) follow a distinctive format of logic and syntax which emphasise the non-human nature of Charles’ voice, and help us to understand why he is baffled by so much of his world.

For example, the human who shouts at his robot orderlies

“Tell me they haven’t got out,” he snapped which Charles assessed as a very poor way to talk to robots.

“Doctor Washburn, they have not got out,” the orderlies’ spokesrobot, Adam, said, with malicious compliance.

Charles’s drivers (did you see what I did there? drivers?! Geddit? oh never mind!) differ from both those of the passionately caustic and ferociously protective Murderbot, and the almost Vulcan rationality of revenge chasing Justice of Torrens. Charles, instead, is constrained by a need to understand the regrettable fault that seems to have occurred in his programming and to hope it can be corrected allowing him to return to fulfilling service as a valet to a new master.

The plot

The plot has a kind of organic feel as Charles’ quest leads him on a journey through a crumbling civilisation. Not in the sense of hordes of human cannibal scavengers, like Cormac Mcarthy’s The Road, nor a wasteland filled with motorbike riding warriors like Mad Max. In fact the world is rather devoid of humans and the vast majority of Charles’ encounters are with robots either awaiting instruction, or trying to develop old instructions into new roles in a largely uninhabited (by people) world.

To be fair humans have not entirely vanished from the narrative, but those that appear  are mostly peripheral to the plot which is very much machine against machine, although more in a kind of occasionally forceful bureaucracy manner than the militarised violence of, say, the Matrix or Terminator movies.

Harking back to the Matrix, one group of humans we witness are trapped in a reality that is anything but virtual and certainly rather miserable. There is an attraction near me called the Ulster Folk Park where old Irish buildings are preserved for the viewing public and are occasionally inhabited by actors playing the parts of the original residents for the entertainment and education of visitors. Tchaikovsky’s imagination has a less interactive depiction of conscripts rather than volunteer actors trapped in a ‘historically authentic’ recreation of cubicle working and apartment living even down to a mindless and unnecessarily tortuous journey between home space and workplace.

As elsewhere in the book, this context gives Tchaikovsky opportunity for some humorous but painfully true sideswipes at contemporary society.

“When some deviant humans proposed simply performing work remotely without undergoing this ‘commute,’ the great minds of the time were united in support of the considerable physical and mental benefits of this valuable journey.”

And when Charles asks what is the purpose of all the cubicle based work they are seeing, another robot tells him

“There is none. This is also believed to be historically authentic.”

Charles’ interactions with other robots are frustratingly unproductive as the various forms of AI prove unequal to the task of managing the world without human direction – more specifically without a human level direction at the required elevated grade.

For example a detective robot fails to solve a crime in a denouement scene peopled entirely by Charles’ fellow household robots.

“The assembled robots stared glassily at him. If Birdbot had been counting on a shocked gasp, his audience’s general lack of breath precluded it.”

The sad defeat of the Birdbot’s detective processes reminded me of a play I saw long ago in an Edinburgh fringe show. The scenes were played out in reverse, so we opened with the denouement and the detective finding his solution to the puzzle unravel completely, only to be consoled by one of the suspects, “Never mind, inspector. There will be other murders. Life must go on.”

In the absence of human direction, robotic life doesn’t so much ‘go on’ as career, limp, or cascade on. Robots queue with endless patience within and without the building for repair at a facility with a stalled capacity. Military robots find excuses to fight. Transporter robots strive to deliver loads years after the organic contents have expired. Librarian robots in a ferocious bid to capture and preserve all the information available to humanity fail to realise the flaws in their approach and the risk of a “heat death of information” to rival the universe’s own long slide into indecipherable entropy.

This future is a glorious dystopia of absurdity, but Tchaikovsky navigates his story and his characters to a thoroughly satisfying conclusion – albeit one achieved against what seemed insuperable odds.

The Characters

Charles – although for various delightfully logical reasons he goes by other names at different times – is an entertaining and somewhat unreliable protagonist. Less Murderbot or Justice of Torrens, more Kryton from Red Dwarf. There is an earnest sincerity and utter naivite about Charles that makes the reader warm to his cold steel and plastic form. Flowering beneath the stilted formality of AI conversation is a seedling of self-actualisation and even simple survival, struggling to spread its leaves.

And there is also the irritating robot The Twonk, who flits in and out of Charles’s journey offering cryptic guidance, upbraiding Charles for his choices and generally catalysing the action as it sends Charles spinning off in a new direction. The Twonk obstinately refuses to accept any electronic link for fear that Charles carries and may convey the protagonist virus which The Twonk reasons is the cause of the world’s slide into the merde!

The setting

There is no clear link to any recognisable real world geography, this could be any place on our Earth, or indeed any earth. Charles’ journey takes him through decaying mansions, ruined cities, remote mountain fastnesses and a desolate landscape of technological ruin where a forlorn valet robot tries to offer tea and hospitality on behalf of a master who is beyond caring, from a home that is rubble, with only one stained china cup in which to serve a residue of refreshment.

The Prose

My kindle notes are littered with LOL comments, as Tchaikovsky’s silken prose and sharp observations manage to view so many situations from amusingly unfamiliar angles.

For example when Charles is considering his master’s diary engagements for the day ahead.

“And really, Master did so little when alive that being dead should hardly make a ripple in his schedule.”

Describing a somewhat indolent and suspiciously well-fed human supervisor.

“Washburn came out from behind the desk, which in itself was an epic journey worthy of a trilogy and some side quests.”

Or, when a companion tries to claim the privilege of friendship

“You won’t give me away, right? I mean we’re friends, aren’t we? We look out for each other.”

“I have in the past permitted you to formulate a new task for my queue,” Charles said slowly.

Or this when emerging into a metal wasteland

“Mounds of ancient and disassembled machinery towered high overhead on every side, as though the least ambitious scrapyard owner in the world had been given one last wish by a depressed genie.”

The Themes

As with Alien Clay Tchaikovsky’s narrative offers sharp observations on our world and how we might fall into something like this future, where most AI interfaces have simply outlived humanity rather than destroyed it. Even those higher AI elements that might have ended up playing something akin to God, or the devil were still driven by an unintended consequence of coding. Ultimately it all comes back to human error!

Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Klein in their own vision of a failed future (The Collapse of Western Civilisation: a view from the future) note that “…the people of Western Civilisation knew what was happening to them but were unable to stop it…Knowledge did not translate into power” and also “Actionable freedom was decreasing…as economic power was increasingly concentrated in a tiny elite, who came to be known as the 1%”

Charles is ultimately given an explanation of civilisation’s collapse on similar lines by a more well-informed example of AI

“in human populations there is seldom a uniformity of knowledge. Based on existing information I estimate that forty-five per cent were unaware of developments, whilst a further thirty per cent were aware but did not consider it their problem and twenty percent were aware and actively cheering on the fact or profiting from shorting elements of the neighbouring economy.  A final five per cent seem likely to have been directly and deliberately contributing to the collapse of their neighbour, either through reasons of malice or because they believed that in the absence of that competition their own interests would prosper. Whilst low as a proportion, I estimate this final category wielded a disproportionate amount of influence.”

There are plenty of other pithy observations about how a world can drift beyond sustainable limits through the apathy of the many, and the malice of the few.

Conclusion

Charles’s journey and his on-again off-again partnership with the Twonk make for a hugely entertaining story with a very different kind of protagonist voice. Tchaikovsky’s prose is as sharp as ever and the thought provoking themes he embeds in the story serve to enhance the narrative rather than distract from it. As with Alien Clay he also gives me plenty of yee-hah moments of socio-political resonance.

Service Model is out today! You can order your copy HERE