Mr. Marsh met with the eight house robos in the library. Or what had at one time been the library. Where books had once lined three of its walls from floor to ceiling, and a sheet of plate glass the fourth, now there were only metal panels, arrays of flashing lights, sockets and keyboards and display screens. Oddly enough the furnishings of the past remained. The oak desk, long empty, in one corner of the room. The scattered armchairs and settees. The standing lamps which cast a soft illumination on the darkly patterned rug.
Mr. Marsh sat by the piano, where a vase of flowers had been placed for his enjoyment. Although it was morning he wore his dinner jacket, a freshly-laundered dress shirt, its whiteness stretched across his chest and belly. The robos wore only metal. They had gathered in front of him in a loose semicircle, sitting or standing, all but the Servo, who was plugged into a wall unit monitoring the functions of the house.
Marsh listened as the Domo led its charges through the monotonic litany of the robopledge. He had heard it all before: the vow to serve humanity, to never harm it, to work toward fashioning a better future. Once they had finished, he took a swallow of his drink before beginning.
"I have called you here this morning because we have a complaint."
One of the standing robos rolled forward a few feet and spoke. "Pardon the interruption, Mr. Marsh, but when you say 'we' are you referring to the generic 'we,' mankind as a whole, or to some more immediate and personal kind of 'we.'"
Marsh sighed. Robos could be so difficult to talk to, so damnably precise. He was convinced that sometimes they did it on purpose.
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