Your Service Is Required

by Jeff Walker

From the author of space opera novella The Long Lost War and the sci-fi fantasy series Outer Red, Jeff Walker brings you his vision of a dystopian society in Earth’s distant future, where robots rule over of what’s left of humanity - a science-fiction drama centered on one man trying to survive in a machine-dominated world.

Earth is now under the control of two artificially intelligent rulers, Angela and Malcolm; they govern the planet and use humanity to service their needs. David 00472 is one of those daily service attendants that must obey the commands of the two AI overlords. David becomes a person of interest to Angela as she helps him to improve the quality of his life. David, suspicious and fearful of her sudden concern for him, is cautious about her true intent. Malcolm, ever watchful of all humans, is unsure why David 00472 has become Angela’s pet project. Is this part of their cruelty? Do they delight in using humans for their amusement somehow?

David meets a man, another human service attendant, who will change and challenge his notion of freedom and what it truly means to be free.

Genres: Science Fiction, Dystopia

Audible Audio

Published December 29, 2021

About the author

Jeff Walker is a Canadian writer of science fiction, sci fi/fantasy, and paranormal/horror/weird fiction. His books comprise distant worlds, futuristic timelines, scary inter-dimensional beings, and protagonist characters of diverse personalities. So, basically... they’ll keep you interested. The 2020 Author Elite Awards placed his book The Long Lost War as a top ten finalist in the category of Science Fiction. Not too shabby, right?

Besides writing and continually looking at social media posts (we’re all slaves to it!), he tries his best to parent two energetic children with his loving wife, and keep his sanity while working his day job as a Custodian. He started out writing fan fiction (Batman Beyond, Doctor Who, The Transformers, Blade Runner...), but soon honed his talent and focused on original stories with characters to call his own. He’s a major geek for anything related to comic books, Star Trek or Star Wars, and anything dealing with the supernatural or paranormal.

And yes, he thinks the sequel trilogy of Star Wars was disappointing. (Who wouldn’t think that?)

You can follow him on his website blog, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. TikTok, not so much, he’s still trying to figure it out.

"There is no greater challenge than creating a story from scratch. A hard thing to do when basically everything has been pretty much created by now. But, that is the challenge isn't it?"

Reviews

[Joshua Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeff Walker paints a bleak picture of a dystopian future ruled by two AI in Your Service is Required! David is just trying to make his way in a world ruled by machines. But when one of the AI overlords, Angela, takes a keen interest in him, David’s world gets turned upside down. Walker does a wonderful job of building a realistic picture of what an AI run world would look like, and bringing it to life through the lens of David! I loved the Anthem or 1984 feel of this one, and the twist of having two AI in charge made things really interesting. If you love classic dystopian tales mixed with sci fi, come get unshackled with Your Service is Required!

[Eric Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Humans are self-destructive, overly emotional, and environmentally neglectful beings. While the world burned, humanity sat by and did nothing. As a result, two AI identities devised a plot to reverse the damage and save humanity from itself. The world’s population is reduced to the number deemed necessary by Angela and Malcolm. Obedience is maintained by fear of death. David 00472 knows no other life than his daily required service to the AI. When Angela starts giving David more attention, he is conflicted with his new freedoms and thoughts that there is more to life.

Your Service Is Required is a new dystopic warning by sci-fi writer Jeff Walker. In 1950, Asimov warned us about a future shared with artificial intelligence. In 1968, Clarke showed us what could happen if we gave AI too much power. Since then, many other authors have written about the benefits and horrors of AI, and now Walker has added his thoughts and warnings about our future. Combining environmental destruction with an aggressive AI takeover, Walker has seized upon much of humanity’s anxieties. Walker’s compelling writing not only reflects David’s concerns but also alerts the reader of our path to destruction.

[Nancy Foster]

I am one of the judges of team Space Girls for the SPSFC4 contest. This review is my personal opinion. Officially, it is still in the running for the contest, pending any official team announcements.

Status: Cut
Read: 30%

Don't let the soothing robot in the cover fool the reader, the AI in this book are sadistic to the extreme. Malcolm wants to murder every human, whereas the more level headed Angela coaxes humans and seems to give them a bare modicum of leeway before killing them.

Common to lots of other futuristic dystopia novels, humanity is bad, robots become sentinent, opt to kill 99.9% of all humans, leaving behind a measly 100,000 selected at random to live confined to a small class city toiling as their slaves as they reverse the ecological damage.

Readers could figure this book as what would happen if the movie I, Robot let Viki control the world, become crazier/more powerful over time and kill most humans.

Daniel is cue the stereotypical insert vaguely likeable protagonist that lets the reader get themselves sucked into the story. A ridiculously short amount of time after being born, he was separated from his biological mother, raised by robot nannies being controlled by AI Angela, constantly watches fellow humans being executed for even the most trivial of reasons and his life controlled to beyond ridiculous extremes where even having a faster heartbeast when seeing someone standing in front of you getting shot to death attracts unwanted attention from the killer robots.

As expected, he's depressed, has few incentives to live, but for unexplained reasons, doesn't attempt suicide yet (but given how unhappy and lonely he is, this would have happened soon). His life starts changing when a random guy called Aaron tries to engage in small talk on ths bus for no apparent reason. Daniel freaks out, tries to shoo him away to no avail. The AIs grow fed up with Aaron's apparently totally out of line behavior and he's frisked away by killer droids to his unknown fate.

Ever since, Angela starts acting weird with Daniel (we still don't know why at the end of the 30% sample). He gets longer work breaks, more hours to sleep and seems less standoffish when he's daydreaming about a blond woman he has spotted in the bus a few times.

Things start turning weirder when he's sent to a daycare facility to fix a door and sees something that would have definitely gotten him killed if the robots ever found out.

Most of my issues with the book are more surrounding the worldbuilding. While I didn't care about Matrix 2 and 3 (the 1st film is great, 4 is popcorn nostalgia that I'd see again on the bus), there is one thing I recall from the sequels that shall not be named that resonated with me regarding this book. The Matrix world Neo lived in is not the first one. Apparently the AIs tinkered with several versions where one was perfect and everyone was a happy millionaire and other versions were ridiculously totalitarian. In both scenarios, humans died off at higher rates, where excessive happiness lead to anxiety disorders from boredom to the other extreme culminating in mass suicide.

And this is one thing that I kept on feeling was missing in this book that would have fit in perfectly. In a world where even children are conditioned from a young age never to play, laugh or have friends, there would be zero social bonds, no hobbies, and the excessive boredom and neverending fear of death would force humans to rebel, because that's the way humans are.

Instead of an uprising, humans would just commit suicide in massive numbers, especially as children. Given the city only has 100,000 people (roughly the amount of people that can fit in some of the largest stadiums), humans would naturally rebel against robots with the last thing they have left: the decision to kill themselves when and how they want.

And given the fact the book adds the tidbit robots employ human slaves for certain delicate tasks that can't be performed by machines, it is quite like the Matrix where there is a synergistic relationship between the robots and the human slaves that both give them a second purpose of being the rulers and keep their machines functioning. Get rid of the humans, and there would be a time centuries into the future where the robots will stop functioning.

This sends me to the second worldbuilding point of the novel. I was quite surprised so many adult humans would jitter whenever someone was sent to their death or shot in front of them. Since humans have zero filial bonds and are conditioned to be indifferent to death, the book explains very well that children exerting unwanted traits are killed off long before they reach adulthood.

Daniel is born only around 80 years after the AI takeover, so the gene pool hasn't been concentrated enough, but given daycare centers kill 1 child each day on average, unless women are forced to birth more than 10 children, only the children with the lowest empathy personality traits will reach adulthood. Even though robots would be efficient killing off humans with disorganized sociopathic tendencies, people with psychopathy alongside very low impulsivity would certainly thrive in such a society and have ample chances of breeding. Give it enough generations, and instead of psychopathy being present in 2% of the population, it will grow exponentially with each passing generation until the vast majority of humans are like this.

In such a scenario, humanity's days would be counted, for taking away the fear humans have alongside pretty much every earthly pleasure including sex and this could become a very violent and dangerous society within a few more generations. A world where elevators, closets and any dimly lit hallway without cameras could be places where clever serial killers could snatch an unsuspecting victim, kill them quickly and merrily walk to the next job. Even though society in Daniel's time still have plenty of emotional empaths that somehow manage to survive to adulthood despite the constant threat of death, I could imagine these small cracks beginning to form.

And concerned about the rapid loss of human genetic variability, I could see Angela being forced to intervene.

Now, I liked the protagonist even though Daniel doesn't really have anything at first sight that makes you want to root for him, and I also liked the author's writing style. Despite voting it to get cut, I am likely going to read the rest of the book and give it the full review with a starred score. For people that liked dystopia books that feel more like psychological imprisonment stories, this book will certainly be worth reading. :)

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three out of five stars

I won this book through a goodreads giveaway! I typically don't go for dystopia fiction, as I feel it gets repetitive. This definitely had a 1984 plus robots vibe. Overall, the writing was decent and there was some good descriptive imagery to craft this fantasy world. Honestly my main issue was that right at the end of the book a large twist was thrown in that didn't quite have enough explanation. I understand keeping things mysterious but not in the last chapter. Without spoiling anything this technology hadn't really been discussed or brought up but then right at the end characters had new capabilities and endless power capabilities. It seemed rushed and forced. I wish the reveal had happened maybe 75% of the way through, that way I would have had more time to interpret the reveal. Overall, a decent read.

[Liz (Quirky Cat) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Are you a fan of dystopian novels with a fair amount of science fiction and technological debate? If so, then Your Service Is Required will be right up your alley. Thanks to the fantastic cover, this book initially tempted me, but the description sucked me in.

Our worst nightmares have come true – machines rule humanity. Two machines, specifically – Angela and Malcolm. It is David 00472's duty to serve and repair the AI overlords. However, there was no way to predict that Angela would take a liking to David 00472 or that Malcolm would note it.

As you might expect, Your Service Is Required sometimes gets pretty bleak. It's a dystopian world that portrays one of humanity's biggest fears. Well, one of the biggest fears since the advent of technology and computers is.

It would be unjust to describe Your Service Is Required as bleak and leave it at that. It is also clever and insightful and a brilliant read full of twists and turns. And when I say twists, I mean that they were genuinely unpredictable!

Read more reviews over at The Book Review Crew

[Norma · Rating 4 out of 5]

( Format : Audiobook )
" You need a friend. "
A future world dystopia where two AIs named Angela and Malcolm command the remnants of the human population (only 100,000) to complete work tasks, under the constant supervision of drones. Any infringements of orders are subject to the death penalty and contact is forbidden, even speaking might be considered a very reflux enterprise. The story is viewed from several points of view, including that of the two AIs, but mostly from that of Jack who, like the others he meets on his travels to assignments, is fearful of committing any offence which might result in his service no longer being required. But he secretly longs to get to know a blond woman he sometimes sees on his transport.

Written very simply, and without much attempt at characteriseation, Your Service is Required is a quick read at only just under six hours. It would, however, have been improved by reducing it in length still further, losing some of the middle to latter action.The narration by Nathaniel Priestley is excellent, well paced and modulated with individual voicing for the various protagonists. His performance definitely helped to enhance the experience.

I received a freely gifted complimentary copy, at my request, via Audiobook Unleashed. Thank you.
there is definitely an old style science fiction feel to the writing, a little bit Brave New World, though different in subject matter. An interesting concept but somehow it didn't quite fit right. Nevertheless, it is enjoyable and mostly holds the reader's attention. Recommended.

[David Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good attempt

I have never written and published a book, so I give much credit to the author on accomplishing this feat.

At the end of the book, the author writes a short epilogue that I think was titled ‘before you go’. In this epilogue, the author succinctly summarizes the topics they were exploring in the book. For me, the book was simply too long and I do not completely agree with the views the author expressed in the epilogue and throughout the book. Further, during the course of the book, the author (in my opinion) was unable to construct convincing arguments to support the topics they were exploring.

For me, the book felt a lot like the movie “OBLIVION” mashed with “THE GIVER” with some elements of “THE MATRIX” thrown in.

Not my cup of tea, but to each their own. Try it and see what you think.

[Lowell Buck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not bad.
If you enjoy dystopian scifi, or the book Turing evolved, this book will scratch that itch.

I doubt i will re-read it. theres not much that you could miss on the first read through, and the twist & turns aren't the most surprising.

[S. Bavey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The setting for Your Service is Required is a bleak, post-apocalyptic version of Earth where humans are no longer thriving and those few that are left are mere tools utilized by the two AI overlords, Malcolm and Angela. Against this backdrop we get to know David, a poor downtrodden human who exists to perform tasks in a mundane life with no human contact, made to eat his own waste products and do whatever tasks the AIs assign him. He is depressed and desperate for human contact, yet frightened of repercussions from Malcolm should he act on his impulses. He falls in love with Elizabeth, a woman he sometimes sees on his way to his service assignments and their tentative relationship and the guilty feelings it engenders in him becomes a large focus of the remainder of the story.
Angela seems to suddenly start taking an unhealthy interest in him and this singling out scares him.
I found this dystopian story intriguing, and felt empathy for David and Elizabeth and was rooting for their relationship to succeed against all the odds.
Thank you to the author for giving me an audiobook code for review purposes. The narrator, Nathaniel Priestley was clear and the pacing of his narration was perfect.

[KDS · Rating 4 out of 5]

With AI and it’s impacts on culture and society very much in the public eye right now, it’s only natural to start seeing stories return to the forefront that use their platform to discuss the impact and project the horrors that could unfold

Your Service is Required is very much at the extreme end of that discussion, where two AI constructs have collapsed civilisation and brought humanity to its knees and kept a small number around to maintain the robot drones. With this achieved, they set about restoring Earth to its natural state allowing the environment and animals to flourish undisturbed once more.

That’s the background. The story itself focuses on designated human David 00472 whose life we follow through preset sterile routines set by the AI. Humans eat recycled body waste, have no recreation time, are terminated at 45 and are punished by instant death if engaging in unauthorised conversation with others or heightened emotional states. But things start to go very wrong for David when one of the AI’s takes a special interest in him and appears to strike up a forbidden friendship..
Think Matrix meets Logan’s Run meets The Machine Stops. Then make it a Twilight Zone episode and that’s what you have here.

The basic premise is excellent and where it succeeds best is in visualising this sterile, dystopian nightmare. Everything feels scarily too real at times, even though some of the details are a little far fetched (I’m not actually sure a person could survive on their given diet here). The story unfolds in a gripping fashion though, as the AI’s deeper plan slowly reveals itself which David becomes unwillingly involved in (with one particularly harrowing scene in a hidden lab)

There is a slightly over bearing approach in showing how humanity engineered its own downfall and flashbacks seem to serve to show bizarre scenes of humans doing idiotic things to help make that point. The explanation that AI did all this to save the world at least adds a multi layered wrinkle to it all. However it is all told with a light touch and never gets bogged down. I liked David’s confliction between his conditioning to live in such a regimented way since birth and his natural human instinct to break free and explore. Perhaps the only real flaw is that as David becomes increasingly more rebellious, the story uses him to explore the nature of love and friendship, but because it rarely delves deep into these layers, these passages feel somewhat forced and awkward to read.

Overall I really enjoyed this slice of dystopian science fiction which has a few twists and turns along the way. And despite it being in desperate need of a proof reader (the typos and missing words are everywhere in the version of the ebook I bought which will likely be corrected in time), it’s an extreme, but poignant discussion of the dangers of giving over our humanity to the artificial.

[Donald Gretler · Rating 1 out of 5]

Jeff Walker, your work is so embarrassingly bad it's as if you never even tried. Your ideas are stale, your plot is nonsensical, and your writing is devoid of passion. It's clear that you think your work is actually worthy of praise, but it's obvious to the rest of us that it's nothing more than a half-assed disaster. All that's missing from your stories is a good dose of reality and a warning label. Feel free to keep writing, but you'd be wise to keep your delusions of grandeur to yourself.

[Gunner221]

I just finished this book and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys excellent science fiction. It gives a brand new take on intelligent robots controlling people. AI plays a huge roll in this book. Read and enjoy.

[David Pospisil · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a clever dystopian tale of an Earth controlled by AI's after near destruction by humans.
Very interesting world and characters.