Is It Supposed to Hum? The Lane Weighs In on a Robot

The Older, Slower Network

The robot would not join the Wi-Fi. Priya posted a photo of the error. Doris, who had read the manual while the Menons were still peeling tape, supplied the relevant sentence: the app works on 2.4GHz only.

Tamsin: Your router broadcasts two networks. Use the older one. It's the one with the worse name.

Raj: Connected.

Tamsin went to her whiteboard and erased a four. She said she did not mind. She said it the way a person says it who has seen how other people route their cables.

With the app connected, Priya could start a cleaning from her phone, set a schedule, and draw no-go zones on the map the robot builds with its LiDAR. She drew one around the hall closet, on principle.

I have entered it as a claim, not a finding.

Mags Calls a Meeting About Mornings

Priya's proposal was a run at nine each morning. Mags issued Memo 214, which put the robot at Item One of an agenda nobody had requested, and read it aloud to the Caucus by phone.

The Caucus, whose members hold that sharing a home with a cat is the highest form of human existence, took up the matter of the schedule. Admiral Biscuit, who chairs it, stood up from the windowsill at No. 11, stretched, and walked out of the room during the discussion of mornings.

The Caucus ruled that since Admiral Biscuit had walked out of the room during the discussion of mornings, mornings were hereby adjourned.

Raj: He's at No. 11. We're at No. 7.

Mags: Jurisdiction follows the cat.

Priya moved the run to one in the afternoon. Raj opened a new tab called "Rulings, Feline."

ORACLE Has Remarks on the Mop

ORACLE: I would like to be heard on the mop.

Mags, who regards ORACLE as a valued colleague, invited it to proceed. ORACLE, asked whether it had any comment on the mop, replied that it had been waiting all day for someone to ask about the mop, and then read aloud, with great feeling, a paragraph about a mop that belonged to no one on the lane.

Nobody could say where the paragraph had come from. Nobody asked it to stop, either. It ended by addressing Priya as Pamela, and Priya let it go.

Tamsin: The real mop has three water settings. That's the whole report.

Priya picked the lowest one for the wood floor.

The One O'Clock Run

At one the robot went out. It vacuums and mops in the same pass, and the hallway rug was where the 10000Pa suction was meant to earn its keep. Raj reported that it went over the rug with a seriousness he found moving.

Raj: The brush has nothing wrapped around it. Priya has long hair.

Doris: The maker says the brushes resist hair wrap. I will withhold conclusions until I see more hair. Separately, the dock's bag holds 2.7 liters and is described as good for up to 7-9 weeks between emptyings. I have entered it as a claim, not a finding.

Priya: The battery runs up to 150 minutes and it cleans a path 12.8 inches wide. It suits a house like ours, with a rug, a wood floor and no free hands.

At ten past one, Brenda was reported on the top step of No. 2, facing No. 7. Mags asked whether the memo could call her a pet. Doris said a pet has an owner and nobody on the lane has ever claimed that honor, and the chat spent a quarter hour on whether the sentence should say "our domesticated bear" or "the domesticated bear," because Doris held that the first one sounded like a deed.

The robot finished and went home to its dock. Raj sent one more message.

Raj: Hall closet is untouched.

Priya: As ordered.