The setting for The Blue Lily is a timeless world where ’40s Chandler-esque gum shoes meet sentient robots. The main character, Rusty Spade, is a robot private dick straight out of The Big Sleep. In his world, robots, called Numbers, do all the grunt work. They are the service sector, the low class citizens. As they have become moreĀ intelligent and self-aware, tensions have grown between them and their human makers. The robots have created an underground that is seeding rebellion among its metallic ranks.