Compassion Circuit
by
John Wyndham
BY the time Janet had been five days in the hospital she had become converted to the idea of a domestic robot. It had taken her two days to discover that Nurse James was a robot, one day to get over the surprise, and two more to realize what a comfort an attendant robot could be.
The conversion was a relief. Practically every house she visited had a domestic robot. It was the family’s second or third most valuable possession, the women tending to rate it slightly higher than the car, the men, slightly lower. Janet had been perfectly well aware for some time that her friends regarded her as a nitwit or worse for wearing herself out with looking after a house which a robot would be able to keep spick and span with a few hours’ work a day.
She had also known that it irritated George to come home each evening to a wife who had tired herself out by unnecessary work. But the prejudice had been firmly set. It was not the diehard attitude of people who refused to be served by robot waiters, or driven by robot drivers or who disliked to see dresses modeled by robot mannequins.
It was simply an uneasiness about them, about being left alone with one—and a disinclination to feel such an uneasiness in her own home.
. . .
