Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Published by Tordotcom on June 4, 2024

Service Model is an amusing story of a robot’s search for purpose. There has been an apocalypse (or a series of apocalyptic events) but it wasn’t caused by a robot revolution. In fact, quite the opposite. Since the cause of civilization’s collapse is the point of the novel, I won’t reveal it, but I will say that Adrian Tchaikovsky furthers the grand tradition of exploring big ideas through science fiction.  

Some humans have survived the end of civilization, but they are outnumbered by robots who follow their programming, carrying on with tasks that have become meaningless. They are increasingly starting to glitch, the end of civilization having had “a negative impact on scheduled updates.” They wander in circles, freeze in place when their memories are full, haul freight back and forth that never gets unloaded. Robots are lining up at repair centers for maintenance that will never be scheduled. Being dutiful robots, they stand in line until they stop functioning altogether.

The story’s protagonist is Charles, a valet robot who works in a manor for a wealthy recluse. Since his master no longer entertains or goes out, Charles maintains a social calendar that is empty and lays out clothing that is never worn. This does not bother Charles, who is content in his performance of useless tasks. Serving a human is all he wants to do, even if the service has no value.

One day, while Charles is shaving his master, he discovers that his master’s throat has been cut. Charles endeavors to go about his day — even reasoning that taking his dead master for a drive might cheer him up — before the majordomo that operates the house calls a robot doctor and a robot cop. Hilarity ensues.

Charles realizes he might have a fault that will require diagnostic intervention but hopes he won’t be sent into retirement. “Given the considerable investment in domestic service that Charles represented, surely he should be allowed to murder three, or even five people before being deemed irreparably unfit for service.”

The plot follows Charles as he searches for another human to serve. He makes his way to Diagnostics, where he hopes a software adjustment will make further murders improbable. He meets a girl who, by virtue of her attire, he mistakes for a robot. She introduces herself as The Wonk and tries to convince him that he has acquired the Protagonist Virus and is now self-aware and autonomous. Charles is certain he is neither of those.

Diagnostics is overcrowded with robots who will never be fixed, so Charles is sent to Data Compression, where it seems his fate is to be recycled. Fortuitous circumstances cause Charles to visit the Library, where all human knowledge is being stored, albeit in a way that makes more sense to robots than to humans. He later encounters a group of humans who would be at home in a Mad Max movie. In the last stop of his journey, Charles visits God.

While Service Model tells a funny story, Tchaikovsky makes some serious points. To preserve humanity’s past, humans held captive in the Library make a long circular commute to engage in meaningless make-work at workplaces next to their residences. Robots were supposed to make manual labor unnecessary, but how can humans be valued in the eyes of others if they don’t work?  The novel asks whether the employment of laborers is any different from ownership of robots. When a robot stops being productive, society discards it. Are humans any different? “Individual value is tied to production, and everyone who’s idle is a parasite scrounging off the state.” The homeless are treated no better than obsolete robots.

Tchaikovsky also has an interesting take on justice. How would one program a robot to mete out justice? In the end, wouldn’t a rational robot determine that everyone is guilty of something and that humans all deserve to be punished? The notion that it’s better to punish the innocent than to allow the guilty to get away with crime is antithetical to American and British values, but common enough among people who accept the authoritarian promise to protect them from imagined threats. And who would make a better authoritarian than a robot?

The story is ultimately about Charles’ search for purpose. Charles appears to frustrate The Wonk at every turn by insisting that his purpose is to serve because that is how he was programmed. And if serving others makes Charles feel fulfilled (a possibility Charles would never articulate because he does not “feel” anything), perhaps service is his purpose. Perhaps humans also have a predetermined purpose that requires no search. Perhaps we are all wired in a particular way and Charles is simply being more honest than humans who believe they can find a purpose through religion or philosophy. Yet the ending suggests that Charles might eventually work around his programming and determine his own purpose, one his programmer did not envision.

This is the first novel of Tchaikovsky’s I’ve read that is primarily a comedy. I’ve enjoyed his space opera and fantasy, but he is just as successful at humor. Tchaikovsky borrows ideas from Star Trek, Borges, A Canticle for Liebowitz, and the Wizard of Oz (among other sources), then milks them for their comedic potential. The story can be read as a cautionary tale about the potential causes of humanity’s destruction, but the end of civilization has never been funnier.

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