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House, I have been derelict in my duties, Charles conferred. I cannot account for it.

He tracked back through his task list, unsure how he had erred. His sequence of actions during the shaving routine appeared to deviate in subtle but key ways from previous mornings, but he could not understand how that could be. He watched himself on replay, wielding the razor with his customary deftness, and only an inch out of place. So small a change, for so much mess.

House, I have been further derelict in my duties, he admitted at last, after examining the evidence from all sides. I have encountered a state of affairs that I am not prepared for. And abruptly all the little discontinuities of his career, the missing schedules and the discontinued inspections, were as nothing. Suddenly Charles was facing a chasm, and all the regular routine tasks of his day were receding from him like a train down a tunnel on the far side. He did not know what to do next. There was no protocol to cover what appeared to have happened. House, I request assistance. In that moment the entire bundle of directives and decision-making that fell under the label Charles guttered on the very point of winking out.

Charles, I have informed the police, House stated. There has been a murder.

Ah yes, that was it. Charles had murdered his master in the bedroom with a cutthroat razor, so of course the police must be contacted.

Normality was restored. There was a protocol for everything.

CHAPTER TWO

On activation each morning Charles' first duty was to check his master's travel arrangements for the day.

His last task of the previous evening had been to check his master's travel arrangements for the coming day, and therefore he was entirely aware that his master had no travel arrangements and would be remaining at home, as he had for the preceding 2,231 days. However...

However Charles' master was now dead, and would not ever have any travel arrangements. None that didn't involve a hearse.

A deep-buried subroutine concerning human mortality was butting in, jumping the queue. Charles attempted to go on with his regular task list, in the hope that his inner priorities would sort themselves and push this interloper back where it could be dealt with after everything else had been put properly in its place. Which meant never, given that all his tasks repeated daily and his job was literally never done.

Except, the subroutine informed him, his job was now done. Until he was allocated to a new master, he had nothing.

Charles once again sought to check the travel arrangements that he was aware his master had not filed. His master had not filed travel arrangements for the last more than 2,000 days, while he had been alive. The fact that he had not filed travel arrangements now should not be affected by the fact that he was not alive. Master had been perfectly capable of not filing travel arrangements previously, and the aliveness or otherwise of the originating body for those arrangements should not be a germane consideration.

Charles attempted to check his master's lack of travel arrangements. What would have been obstinacy had it been programmed into him—who, indeed, would want an obstinate valet?—was, in this case, merely the long-codified task queue trying to assert itself. Surely.

The mortality subroutine informed him that he could not. 

He reset to daybreak and attempted to—

He could not.

For a while, as the day crept steadily on and all the tasks he could not do turned from "due" to "outstanding" in his head, he vacillated. He attempted to skip his first task and come back to it. He would lay out Master's travel clothes for the travelling that Master would not be doing. It didn't matter that Master wouldn't be travelling on account of being dead. There was no observable difference between that and Master not travelling because he didn't want to travel. Except for Master being dead. And really, Master did so little when alive that being dead should barely make a ripple in his schedule.

The subroutine lurked coyly at the edge of Charles' functioning while he placed the previous day's unworn clothes back in the wardrobe, but then reared up, tutting, when he tried to retrieve fresh clothes that Master would not wear for the coming day.

Master was dead. This task could now not be reasonably completed. The Schrödinger's cat that was Master's requirement or non-requirement for travelling clothes had finally been irreversibly determined. The box had been opened and upended and only a dead cat had slid stiffly out.