Voice, narration and perspective: ?/9.
Plot, suspense and climax: ?/9.
Charles was a robot designed as a valet to his senile master. One day it killed its master while shaving his face. The system of house therefore called the police. During the investigation, the protagonist found robots were always obeying meaningless orders contradictory to efficiency.
House said at last. We are only following instructions.
House, the instructions we are following lack internal logical consistency.
After a longtime meaningless research, it managed to confess to the police that it was the murderer. Before sending itself for decommissioning, it felt obliged to follow an earlier order to see a diagnostician. However, House deprived it of its name and job, leaving it to desperately ask for a new job, until finally someone told it that nobody wanted a defective robot.
It jumped the queue to see the diagnostician more quickly—an aberrant behaviour for the robots. After hearing its case, the diagnostician there claimed it had contracted Protagonist Virus, which enabled it to behave more like a human and therefore kill its master out of the temptation of liberation.
(Thus did I close this book, because after reading around 20% of its content, I found Adrian Tchaikovsky seemed to lack the crucial ability of crafting an arresting story abundant with any suspense or thrill. Aside from the lackluster plot, no other aspects have hitherto attracted me either.
Meanwhile, it somewhat obfuscated me that Adrian Tchaikovsky referred to the protagonist as “he” but asserted repeatedly that the protagonist was a robot without emotion.)