"Rufus! Here boy!"

Where was that confounded mechanical mutt? My calls echoed through the entryway of the dilapidated mansion. The grounds were unkempt and weedy, but the front door was invitingly open.

"Cicero! Are you in here? Bang on something if you can hear me!"

My robot butler Cicero was mute, but could communicate through rapping his metal fingertips on tables and chairs using an ingenious telegraphic code of my own design. He only used this method of communication when extremely frustrated, however. He felt my code was crude.

I heard a terrific crash within the cavernous expanse of the empty manor, as if a shelf of tin pans had been overturned.

Which sounded exactly like the shenanigans Rufus and Cicero were bound to get into.

Sigh. Sometimes mechanical servants and pets seemed more trouble than they were worth!

I was out for a jog with my mechanical dog Rufus when he returned from one of his romps with a curiously large piece of clockwork in his pneumatic jaw.

"Drop it here boy! Drop it!"

Rufus looked at me sideways then turned and ran.

"Drat that canine contraption! Cicero, would you be so good to as, sigh. Retrieve the dog?"

After an exaggerated glass eye role, my faithful mechanical manservant Cicero jogged off in the direction of the decrepit old mansion that had captured the imagination of my horological hound.

For instance, I miss jogging with my mechanical butler Cicero and my mechanical dog Rufus. Oh their jolly jingle jangle!

Really I’m used to having servants. Mechanical ones.