As her guests said “goodnight” to each other and went off to bed, Lynne told the house to walk up the beach and find a nice place among the sandy pines to spend the night.

“SATELLITE 14 ADVISES 82 .3% CHANCE OF RAIN . WOULD MISS LYNNE LIKE THE WINDOWS CLOSED ?”

“Yes, if it rains,” she replied. “Also, fold up the deck.”

As she lay in bed, she was bemused to think that the robot house’s verbal interface was louder and more grating than its smooth movements strolling up the coast, looking for a place to stand until morning.

She thought about Oktar. She was getting to the point where it struck her as funny and sad instead of making her angry. His obsession with living as if it were the 20th century, and his fear of robots…

They weren’t evil, not unless programmed to act that way. Programmed to serve humans, they’d even give someone a robot house to satisfy the dictates of their instructions.

She wondered who built the first ones as she fell asleep to the gentle sounds of the waves against her home’s legs.