After his wife, Edie, dies, Harold lives alone in his longtime home, supported by his Smart Home system and the sentient appliances managed by it. Edie was once a piano teacher, though she spent her dying days in bed, listening to Harold read classic books to her. However, not too long after Edie's death, the AI grid that runs society begins to start pushing Harold out of his family home, and the sentient appliances work together to hatch a plan to keep Harold from being forced into an assisted living home.
Told from the point of view of Scout, the sentient Roomba, this book is a meditation on the decline of humanity as we increasingly rely on technology, as well as a pointed look at how we treat the elderly. And somehow, it's also some weird mashup of The Brave Little Toaster and all of the humans-turned-furniture in Beauty and the Beast. It's a lovely little story though, and well worth some rumination.
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