Utopia

She stepped out of the refresher and starting picking out the clothes for her evening outfit. Something easy and casual for a night at home. Strange to think that she had left it to a robot to pick out her clothes for her, not so very long ago. Now it was a real pleasure, a savored luxury, to choose the clothes for an evening at home.

Feeling well-scrubbed and revived by her shower, she threw open the closet and selected her clothes for the evening. Something subdued, but not too understated. She decided on her dark-blue sheath skirt, and a black pullover to go with it. She dressed, and then paused in front of the mirror to consider the effect.

The outfit looked good on her. She selected earrings, and a silver brooch that would be set off by the black top. She looked back in the mirror and considered the effect.

Fredda was small and fine-boned, with blue eyes and curly black hair she wore short. She was round-faced and snub-nosed. In short, she looked like what she was-a youthful woman given to sudden enthusiasm, and equally sudden outbursts of temper.

The world of Inferno approved of seniority and experience. This did not make things any easier for Fredda Leving. She was a mere forty years old. By Infernal standards, that was just barely old enough for respectability-or it would have been if she had looked that age. Fredda had a naturally youthful appearance, and she was perverse enough to do everything she could to preserve the appearance of youth. At a time of life when most other Infernal woman were glad to be acquiring a properly mature appearance, Fredda still looked to be no more than twenty-five years of age.

The hell with what they thought. Fredda knew she looked good-and looked better in the outfit she had picked out for herself. Certainly better than in anything Oberon would have selected. Pleased with her appearance, she headed out into the main salon, proud of having chosen just the right clothing.

A silly thing, a small thing, but there it was. Making choices, however trivial, for oneself, was a liberation. There had been a time, and not so long ago, when Fredda, and Alvar, and thousands, millions of other people on Inferno had been little more than well-trained slaves to their own servants. Awakened at the hour the robots thought best, washed by the robots, dressed by the robots in clothes the robots picked out. Up until a few years ago, many clothes did not even have fasteners the wearer could attach or undo. The wearer was completely dependent on his or her dresser robot to get the garment on or off.

Once dressed, you were fed the breakfast, lunch, and dinner selected by the robot cook to be most commensurate with the dictates of the First Law injunction to do no harm. Then your pilot robot flew you to this appointment or that-all appointments, of course, having being made by your secretary robot.

You would get to wherever it was without ever knowing where it was, because you trusted in the robot to remember the address and know the best routes there. More than likely, your robots knew better than you what you were supposed to do there. Then the pilot robot flew you home, because you certainly wouldn’t know how to find your own way home, either. At the end of the day, you were undressed and then bathed again by the robots, and buttoned or zipped or clipped into pajamas by the robots, and then tucked into bed by them.

A whole day, each day, every day, with the robots making every single personal decision, with the servants controlling your every movement. A whole day spent in an incredibly luxurious cage, without your ever being so much as aware that the cage existed.

Fredda could not quite believe that she had ever allowed herself to live that way-but she had. Incredible. At least now she was conscious of the fact that Oberon had selected the dinner menu for her, and their dinner time. At least now, Oberon inquired if the mealtime he had selected was right, rather than informing her when she would eat. Tonight it was her choice to let the robots handle dinner. Another night, she might dictate the meal in every detail. Scandal of scandals, she had even been known to bum a meal for herself once in a while. If the tyrannical rule of the servants had not been completely shattered, at least it had been recognized for it was, and thus weakened.

Fredda knew that she was not the only one who had taken back at least some control of her own life from the robots. She also knew that her research, her speeches, the turmoil she had caused were a large part of the reason. But beyond doubt, the presence of the Settlers had been a major influence as well. And then there was the bald fact that there simply weren’t as many robots available for private use these days. People were more careful with the limited amount of robot labor still available. They tended not to waste so much of it on trivial tasks.