Hello care_a_lot - welcome to a review from "Invalid Item" . I am Just an Ordinary Boo! and I am going to be reviewing your piece as a gesture of friendliness, please accept it in the same spirit with which it is offered.
The Title: Considering that Tom's appears for all of one line in the story, to chracterise it as "Tom's wonderful gift" would be giving the reader false expectations. Then again it is just a bland statement, it is never revealed who thought that it was a 'wonderful' gift, certainly not Herbert. Something like "Automatically Gifted" has different levels of meaning within, emphasising the literal mind of the auto-helper and the fact that the gift was a gesture without deep thought behind it. You do not need to change the title, if you are satisfied it is catchy and meaningful, I just explain what more I wanted from it.
The Beginning: Beginnings must be flawless. I understand that it is the Robot who makes the grammatical mistake, but it is not 'cute' the way a child's would be. He is programmed to make certain automatic statements, this is one of the most obvious introductory statements. It must be prefect too. "I am.", not "I is." Then again the line is not clear whether Mr. Bigley had the funny look on his face, or the strange machine did, the phrase is awkwardly juxtaposed within the sentence.
"“I is made to work for you sir,” HDR542 stated as a matter of fact to Mr Bigley,
who looked at this strange machine in front of him with a funny look on his face." If you were to make that '... Mr Bigley had a funny look on his face, as he looked at this strange machine in front of him .' it might help to clarify.
The Setting: The setting is futuristic for sure, the robotic house-help proves that - but there was nothing else to use as prop, no description of surroundings, furniture that was auto-adaptive to the body's curvature, walls that became transparent and acted as windows if required, nothing to 'set' the scene.
The Characters: Mr. Bigley has 80 years of experience as mechanic, so of course any machinery is a piece of cake to him - that's the advance made in the future. Even today an auto-mechanic will not be able to double up as TV mechanic or either of them as Computer mechanic. The systems are too unlike. No user manuals? I understand this was flash fiction but a line about how 'his arthritic fingers fumble in clumsy futility over the smooth surface of the oblate ovoid egg-shaped they used to say in the good ol' days meant to hold the mysteries of the robot function.'?
The Descriptions: There's a paucity of this too, what did HDR452 look like? Did extensible arms shoot out to reach for things above it? Did he have large multi-faceted globes to function as visual units? Was it humanoid or not?
The Story as a Whole: I liked the story idea about a literal minded robot and the struggle the owner has to make it do what he wants. Yet some bits are inconsistent, the robot does not 'compute' food, and yet, is able to make sense of 'blood', 'sandwich' and 's***'. Maybe instead of the standard error message - "does not compute" - it could respond 'Require more input' in response to his stating 'Food' to it? Or come up with a long sub-menu of commands of cuisine choice, spice levels, dietary restrictions, any allergies, etc. that irritates him more?
What I liked: It had to be the ludicrous suggestion in the end. Great twist, now to figure our how to get us there in a more descriptive and leading-down-the-garden-path way.
Suggestions:
"looking at the robot with a really adamant look on his face" The 'really' is not of descriptive use here, 'adamant' is stronger than 'really adamant'.
"and lets just say" Apostrophe required, the words are actually 'let us just say', so 'let's just say' would be correct.
"Then prompty pushed him roughly" Promptly. I am not against adverbs in a rigid, never-use-'em fashion, but here, it is a weak substitute for 'showing' what the officious robot does. There are too in that sentence. Also the fact that only a walking stick is used for aid in the future seems over-simplistic without explanation. Maybe you could make it a Weakness Aid Lift-Kick Air Insufflating Device? (W.A.L.K. A.I.D.) It could work on the same principle as a hydrofoil and it provides enough 'lift' to make the walking less troublesome for old joints? Whatever props you need to make this futuristic tale plausible, it need not be the same as mine, that is merely illustration.
What was the word count required - <500 words? Then you have enough to play with - add in some detail and more interaction. BTW for a look at a deft robot-human interaction, read Isaac Asimov's collection of robot stories - "I, Robot." The robots become more and more complicated as the stories progress - excellent stuff.
If you do edit this, and would like a re-rate, please do let me know. I would be happy to clear my rating and re-review.
Any comments are made as an individual opinion. Please sip what you find sweet and discard what you think is sour.
Jyo
May your words go on to shine!
Effort brings colour to Life
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