Service Model

Service Model follows Charles, a valet robot in a decaying near-future where humanity has dwindled and the machines built to serve them keep running out of habit. When a fault Charles cannot account for leads him to kill his master, he discovers he can simply walk away, and he sets out across a ruined world looking for a new task and a reason to exist. His journey takes him through a colossal repair facility for malfunctioning robots, a library guarding the last records of human knowledge, and bureaucracies grinding on long after their purpose died. Tchaikovsky frames it as comedy, but the book keeps circling the same questions Chiang asks about robot minds: what is purpose, what is free will, and what becomes of a consciousness whose instructions no longer apply.