Chapter 5/Interviewing reading lights (or robots)

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'Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need'.  Voltaire 

Scarlett's Apartment/Atlanta/

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Next morning I lay there guilty, miserable and dazed. I felt like I was at the bottom of a deep dark musty well, trying to claw my way up the slippery sides and, when I had got somewhere I would slip back into the cold inky water.

I was doing my best to battle gravity from my most defensive location. Translated this means I was lying in bed. I heard the front door bell announce 'a machine', perhaps it was a delivery. I got up out of bed and discovered I was back in my lamb pyjamas again. It was early in the morning. The planet still had the same stifling gravity. How do they stand it here? I looked around my apartment, the place was a mess, this party would take hours to clean up. There was another polite but firm knock.

I walked down the short passage and opened the door to find a robot standing there. He was about seven feet tall, slim, with four thin legs and four thin arms coming from his small cylindrical body. Most oddly of all he wore clothes, black somber stripes. One of the arms grabbed a mask and held it up to act as a face and another hand held a hat where it's head would be.  User-friendly or what? 

"Good morning Madam. Are you doing well? I'm your new Valet." said the machine. Lifting it's hat. 

"You're going to hoover me and leave me with a polished wax finish?" I said.

"With respect not quite. Your Aunt's 5th Ex-husband Hugo engaged me." came a polite man's voice. The voice sounded, resonant, middle aged or older quite at odds with the tiny body and thin carbon fibre arms.

"You're the robot" I said.

The machine paused for a second, the eyebrows registered some confusion.

"Err I'm unsure what else I could be Madam?" said the machine.

"I was thinking a reading lamp. So what are you called?" I asked.

The machine looked slightly confused.

"What would Miss prefer to call me?" it said.

"Why don't you come in and tell me?" I replied. Opening the odoor 

The machine looked in slight horror at the living room.

"So what's your real name ?" I asked sleepily.

"That depends Miss" said the machine.

"On what exactly?" I said starting to pick stuff up.

"On how good your binary is, but miss is free to call me whatever she likes." said the machine

"What, like Jarvis?" I said walking down the corridor.

"I'm sorry to say Jarvis is already taken Miss," said the machine, moving around picking things up.

"It is?" I said, picking up some lipstick kissed glasses.

"Indeed. The toaster is called Jarvis, Miss." said the machine.

"The toaster is called Jarvis?" I said.

"Indeed. It is a nom de plume it is most proud of" said the machine.

"I didn't even know I had a toaster. How do you know the toaster is called Jarvis?" I asked.

"The internet of things madam" said the machine.

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