Reader, I don’t want to bore you with every detail of our robot’s farm routine. Many of her tasks were incredibly dull; others were quite unpleasant. I’ll just say that on any given day, Roz might have to be a mechanic or a veterinarian or a gardener or a plumber or a cleaner or a landscaper or a carpenter or an electrician, or all of the above. Farm life kept Roz very busy indeed.
Of course, she did have help. You already know about some of the machines, but the entire farm was equipped with technology that made life easier for everyone. Doors and gates opened automatically. The cows wore electronic collars that kept track of their health automatically. When a cow’s udders were full, she simply had to stroll into the parlor, where she’d be milked by gentle machines automatically. All that milk was piped into storage tanks, and cooled, and bottled, automatically. Once the milk truck was loaded up, it drove away and made its deliveries automatically.
Mr. Shareef managed the business side of the farm. He dealt with customers and handled money and ordered supplies. And he did it all from the comfort of his home office. Now that he had a robot to do all the farmwork, he hardly ever left the house.
Roz was more content than she had ever expected to be. Most of her time was spent outdoors, with animals, under the wide-open sky. Even while laboring in the fields she could always stop to smell the flowers, look up at the clouds, feel the cool air drifting out from the trees.
And yet Roz was living two lives. When she had the farm to herself she could play with the calves, or run through the grass, or chat with the wildlife. But whenever the Shareefs were near, Roz had to pretend to be a normal robot. She could never let them know who she really was.