David’s Reviews > Service Model > Status Update

And here's where AT plows new ground in this subgenre: "It was the robots. But not in the way that you think."

Ah, my heart: 'You are mocking me,' Uncharles noted. 'Of course I am. It’s what I do. Because otherwise I would fucking weep, Uncharles. I would weep until I died at the wasted potential that is you.'

Lol: "The sergeant’s squashed and lumpy head was not equipped with any facial features aside from the bulging lenses, and could not therefore either chew gum or grip a stogie between its teeth, but through a masterful piece of programming its comms somehow gave the impression of doing both."

Wow 3/3: "And all for a species whose reaction to those things made in its image was so wildly inconsistent, so that a robot given a human face could send them screaming while they imputed personality to their vehicles and their phone assistants and the blind physics that drove the weather."

Wow 2/3: "All those little tweaks to his algorithms to try to stitch shut the gaping wound of the uncanny valley as much as was (in)humanly possible."

Wow 1/3: "Being designed as human-facing placed him in a curious halfway house of constant cognitive dissonance, able to appreciate all these aspects of the human condition all the way up to the point where he could note their absence in himself, even as his programming impelled him to act as though he had them."

Ha, AT totally went there: "'Uncharles, confirmed. Walk with me.' For a moment Uncharles was unsure of the meaning of this, there being no physically present God to walk with, but the signal’s frequency now contained a beacon and coordinates. He was being guided. He would be walking with God, and it wouldn’t matter that there was only one set of footprints in the sand."

Gotta love AT's British accent: miscellany = mih-CELL-uh-nee

I heart Door Loop Seventeen. These characters!!

ZOMG, The Wonk tries all the classics, but the Chief Librarian bats them away with Snape-like efficiency, and counters with Gabriel's Horn! Then Uncharles comes up with a new one! SO MUCH MATH CANDY!