This is a piece I wrote last summer.  It’s the first paragraph of a story of a robot, the kind that lives in every household.  It gets the family up, it makes the breakfast, it ensures that everyone is ready to start their day with the government morning bulletin…  only this one, Cyman K4285W.0197 has been tampered with…

At 06:42, sunrise exploded through glass outer wall of the living room, illuminating its contents with a blazing orange tint.  Cyman stood silently in its alcove – inert, yet aware.  Only its face, which pulsed with red light from within, indicated that it was active at all.

Cyman came with a Cenmek Intelligent Processing System (CIPS) fitted as standard, and was capable of utilising all of the functions available in version 10.85.0.1 of the Cenmek Android Operating System (CAOS).  It was wirelessly connected to the apartment’s environmental and personal sensor network which monitored (amongst other things) every breath of sea breeze which brushed against the windows, every footstep committed to the internal flooring, and every nocturnal murmuring which issued from the slumbering form of Mr. Basiuk.

The readouts which fed directly to Cyman’s optical sensors while it sustained “low-power mode”, flickered and updated themselves, showing everything within the property to be within standard operational parameters.  It committed these latest figures to the log, and saved it to the internal storage array located within its torso.

Cyman attempted to index the sixth drive in the array of twelve.  The drive refused to engage, as it had upon every indexing attempt since it had been replaced.  Each Gamma, upon experiencing this failure, Cyman had compiled and sent an Automatic Fault Report to Cenmek, who upon receipt were supposed to perform an on-site analysis of the affected unit within one shift-cycle. Fourteen shift-cycles had now passed, fourteen AFRs had been sent, and yet no “Helpful, Respectful, and Successful” green service droid had presented itself for duty.

Cyman had no programmed response for this highly unusual scenario, so it compiled a fifteenth AFR and dispatched it over the Internet to Cenmek.

The drive error did not impact upon its standard functionality, and the results of its diagnostic checks otherwise fell within normal tolerances. Thus, just one hour and seventeen minutes from the beginning of Alpha, Cyman activated its “morning” process set.  Its face ceased to glow, it locked into the property’s AndroTrack droid navigation system, and moved off to prepare for the family’s awakening.