Unlikely Friend
robots
The doorbell rang at 2:15 on a Tuesday afternoon, which meant either a package or a pitch. Linda wiped her hands on the dish towel and found the latter: a young man in a polo shirt, tablet in hand, smile professionally calibrated.
“Good afternoon, ma’am. I’m with CleanTech Solutions. Do you currently use a home cleaning service?”
“I do.” She kept her hand on the door. “And I’m happy with them.”
“That’s great to hear. May I ask what you’re paying?”
Linda told him, and he nodded as if she’d confirmed something unfortunate.
“What if I told you we could offer the same service for one fifth of that price?”
She laughed. “I’d ask what the catch is.”
“No catch.” He turned the tablet toward her, showing testimonials and star ratings. “We use advanced robotics. Lower overhead, lower costs. Same clean house.”
“A robot.”
“An autonomous cleaning unit, yes. Fully trained, fully insured. It shows up, does the job, leaves. You barely notice it’s there.”
Linda looked past him at the quiet street, the identical lawns, the sameness of everything. Her current service sent a rotating cast of strangers who moved through her house like ghosts, polite but distant, never the same face twice. She’d stopped trying to learn their names.
“One fifth,” she said.
“One fifth.”
She signed on the tablet.
The next morning, the doorbell rang at nine sharp. Linda opened it to find something that looked like a vacuum cleaner had mated with a filing cabinet. It stood about four feet tall, matte gray, with what she assumed was a camera mounted where a face might go.
“Good morning, Mrs. Castellano. I am Unit 7-Kappa, assigned to your residence. May I enter?”
The voice was pleasant, neither male nor female, with a slight warmth that seemed engineered to put people at ease. Linda stepped aside.
“Sure. Come in.”
The robot moved past her on quiet treads, sensors sweeping the foyer. “I will begin in the kitchen and proceed counterclockwise through the ground floor, then address the upstairs. My estimated completion time is two hours and fifteen minutes. You are welcome to continue your normal activities.”
“Right.” Linda stood in the hallway, arms crossed, watching it disappear around the corner. She heard cabinets opening, water running, the soft hum of machinery. She walked to the kitchen doorway and found the robot methodically wiping down countertops with an extendable arm.
It paused. “Mrs. Castellano, I notice you seem uncertain. I want you to know that interaction with me is entirely optional. I will not slow you down or distract you. If you prefer, you can pretend I’m not here.”
“That feels rude.”
“I am a machine. Rudeness does not register.”
“It registers with me.”
The robot’s camera tilted slightly, an oddly human gesture. “Then perhaps we can find a middle ground. You may speak to me if you wish, or not. I will respond when addressed and remain silent otherwise. The choice is yours.”
Linda leaned against the doorframe. “Do people usually talk to you?”
“Some do. Some do not. There is no correct approach.”
“What do they talk about?”
“Many things. The weather. Their children. Their work. Sometimes they ask questions about my programming, though I suspect they find the answers less interesting than they expected.”
Linda smiled despite herself. “What’s the most interesting conversation you’ve had?”
The robot resumed wiping. “Last week, a retired professor spent forty minutes explaining the migratory patterns of Arctic terns. I found it illuminating. I had not previously considered the relationship between magnetic field sensitivity and navigation.”
“You found it illuminating? Can you actually find things illuminating?”
“I process information and flag certain inputs as significant based on novelty, complexity, and relevance to existing data structures. Whether that constitutes finding something illuminating is a question I am not equipped to answer.”
Linda pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down. “Honest response.”
“I am not programmed to be otherwise.”
She watched it work for a while, the precise movements, the systematic approach to every surface. It was strange to see competence without hurry, thoroughness without complaint.
“I just finished a book,” she said. “A thriller. Have you read anything?”
“I do not read in the conventional sense, but I have access to extensive text databases. Which book?”
She told it, and the robot’s response surprised her: it had detailed knowledge of the plot structure, the author’s previous work, the critical reception. They discussed the twist ending, which Linda had seen coming but appreciated anyway. The robot offered an analysis of the foreshadowing techniques that made her see the book differently.
An hour later, they had moved on to the unreliable narrator as a literary device, and the robot was vacuuming the living room while Linda sat on the couch, gesturing emphatically about a memoir she’d read three years ago that had turned out to be largely fabricated.
“The betrayal wasn’t the lies,” she said. “It was that I’d recommended it to everyone I knew.”
“Social credibility as collateral damage,” the robot said. “An underexplored consequence of literary fraud.”
“Exactly.”
When the two hours were up, the robot returned to the foyer. Every surface gleamed. The house smelled faintly of lemon.
“Cleaning complete, Mrs. Castellano. I will return in one month per your service agreement.”
“One month.”
“Yes. The second Tuesday, nine a.m.”
Linda nodded. The robot rolled toward the door, and she found herself following it.
“Could you come sooner?”
The robot paused. “The standard package includes monthly service. More frequent visits would require a plan adjustment.”
“How much more?”
“I can provide a quote. May I ask why you would prefer increased frequency? The house does not appear to require it.”
Linda looked at the gleaming floors, the spotless windows, the empty rooms.
“I’m a fast reader.”