2024/071: Service Model — Adrian Tchaikovsky

2024/071: Service Model — Adrian Tchaikovsky

And yet I have no duties, and in their absence the world creeps in...
Uncharles registered that he had just thought an ellipsis, and not for the first time. It seemed a profoundly unprofessional thing to have done. [loc. 3157]

Charles is a valet, a robot designed to be the perfect 'gentleman's gentleman', until one day when he finds his lethargic and unsociable Master murdered in his bed. The identity of the murderer is clear, but the motive is not. Charles (renamed as Uncharles once his role as a valet is no longer applicable) sets out to present himself to Diagnostics and Decommissioning -- the beginning of an epic quest to discover what has happened to him and, indeed, to the world.

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