The robot valet Uncharles, in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model (2024), “Interconnection IV,” p. 251.
Uncharles has been told that he’s been infected with the "Protagonist Virus" which supposedly gives him free will and agency. An excerpt of Uncharles’ thoughts, italicized in the original:
There is no evidence of any such thing as the Protagonist Virus, especially in relation to my personal history.
If there is no such thing, why am I a mere service model, trying so hard to construct an argument against it?
These things should not matter to me. Only my duties should matter.
And yet I have no duties and in their absence the world creeps in . . .
