The Peripheral

by William Gibson

  “Nope,” said Macon. He and Edward both had a crinkly duffel shoulder-strapped now. Edward held two of the cartons, Macon only one, but larger. They didn’t look heavy at all. “It’s the trailer, right?”

  “Burton’s down there,” Carlos said, and gestured for Flynne to go ahead.

  It reminded her of that night he’d gone up to Davisville. Same light, sun almost gone, moon unrisen.

  The lights were on in the trailer. As she got closer, she could see Burton by the closed door, smoking a pipe. Its bowl glowed red, showing her the upper half of his face. She smelled tobacco.

  “If you were smoking in there, I’ll fucking kill you.”

  He grinned, around the bowl. It was one of those cheap white clay pipes, from Holland, the ones the long stem broke off of the first few days you had it, until it was stumpy, like a cartoon sailor’s pipe. He took it out of his mouth. “I didn’t. And I’m not starting.”

  “You just did. Now start quitting.”

  He stood on one leg, the other across his thigh, and knocked the pipe against the sole of his boot, loosening a little eye of hot red homegrown. It fell on the trail. He put his foot down and ground it out.

  “Give us a minute to get set up,” Macon said. Edward put his cartons down, opened the door, and went in. Macon passed him up his own carton, then Edward’s two, then stepped up himself, his hand guarding his duffel from the doorframe. He pulled the door shut behind him.

  “Nobody told me I should be fasting,” she said.

  “Came together quicker than we thought,” Burton said.

  “You know what the meeting’s about?”

  “Want you to meet the human relations guy you talked to, and Ash, the tech liaison.”

  “In a game?”

  “Somewhere.”

  “Corbell Pickett.” She saw him frown, in the dark. “We need to have a talk.”

  “Who’s been talking?”

  “Janice.”

  “Had to pay him. Conner.”

  “They know it was him?”

  “Nobody does, now.”

  “They fucking do. They’re just being paid to pretend they don’t.”

  “Close enough.”

  “Tommy know?”

  “Tommy,” he said, “has to work pretty hard to not know a lot of things.”

  “That’s what Janice said.”

  “Didn’t make it that way, did I?”

  “You part of it, now?”

  “Not how I look at it.”

  “How do you look at it?”

  The door opened. “Ready for Snow White,” Macon announced. He held up something for her to see. She thought it looked like a drone’s fuselage, the single-rotor kind, but bigger. Except someone had bent it into an oval, to fit her head, with the forward bulge of the fuselage over the center of her forehead. It didn’t look like any crown she’d ever seen, but it was made of something that glittered, white as the snowman in a plastic Christmas globe.

  40.

  BULLSHIT ARTIST

  After showering, Netherton put on gray trousers, a black pullover free of any turtle’s neck, and a black jacket, chosen from the clothing Ash had provided.

  It was the peripheral’s turn to shower. He could hear the pumps, and wondered what percentage of that was the same water he’d just used. The vehicle’s water management regime had been designed for desert exploration. Ash had warned him not to swallow any, in the shower. At least two pumps were running, whenever the shower was in use, one sucking every fallen drop away for recycling.

  The sound of the shower stopped. After several minutes Ash emerged, followed by the peripheral, which looked, after showering, radiant, as though freshly created. Ash herself was still in her sincerity suit, but the peripheral wore the black shirt and jeans that Ash had based on the clothing Flynne had worn when he’d first spoken with her.

  “Did you cut its hair?” he asked.

  “We borrowed Dominika’s hairdresser. Showed him the files of your conversation. He was impressed, actually.”

  “It doesn’t look like her. Well, the hair, a bit. Has this been done before? Someone from a stub using a peripheral?”

  “The more I think of it, the more it seems a natural, but no, not that I know of. But continua enthusiasts are generally secretive, while peripherals of this grade tend to be very private possessions. Owners don’t often advertise the fact.”

  “How will we do this, then, with Flynne?” The peripheral was looking at him. Or wasn’t, but seemed to be. He frowned. It looked away. He resisted an urge to apologize.

  “We’ll have her on a bunk,” Ash said, “in the rear cabin. There can be initial balance issues, nausea. I’ll greet her when she arrives, help her orient. Then I’ll bring her out to meet you. You can be at the desk, the way she’s seen you before. Continuity of experience.”

  “No. I want to see her. Arrive.”

  “Why?”

  “I feel a certain responsibility,” he said.

  “You’re our bullshit artist. Stick with that.”

  “I don’t expect you to like me—”

  “If I didn’t at all, you’d know it.”

  “Have you heard from Lowbeer yet?”

  “No,” she said.

  Lowbeer’s sigil appeared, pulsing softly, gilt and ivory.

  41.

  ZERO

  Everything in the trailer that Macon and Edward hadn’t brought in with them was squared away, at right angles. They’d unpacked their blue duffels and the cartons. Edward, seated in the Chinese chair, was cabling things to Burton’s display. One of the cables ran to the white controller, centered on the drum-taut army blanket on Burton’s bed. “Nothing’s wireless?” she asked.

  “These aren’t just cables. They’re about a third of the device. Give me your phone.”

  She handed him her phone, which he passed to Edward.

  “Password?”

  “Easy Ice,” she said, “lowercase, no space.”

  “That’s such a shit password, it’s not even a password.”

  “I’m a just normal fucking person, Macon.”

  “Normal fucking people never do whatever it is you’re about to.” He smiled.

  “Ready,” said Edward, who’d already cabled her phone, rolling the chair back from the table.

  “Can we get the lights down?” asked Macon. “You’ll have your eyes closed, but this is still too bright. Otherwise, there’s an eyeshade for you.”

  She went to the display, waved through it, turning the LEDs down to teen-boy sex pit. “Okay?”

  “Perfect,” said Macon.

  “How’s this going to work?” she asked him.

  “You lay on the bunk here, head at a comfortable angle, wearing this.” Indicating the controller. “Close your eyes. We’ll be here for you if you need us.”

  “For what?”

  He indicated a yellow plastic bucket with Hefty Mart stickers still on it. “Nausea’s a possibility. Inner ear thing. Phantom inner ear, she said, but I think that was shorthand for our benefit. You fast?”

  “By accident,” she said. “I’m starving.”

  “Use the toilet now,” said Macon. “Then we go.”

  “I go.”

  “I know. Pisses me off.”

  “Jealous of the crown?”

  “Curious. As I’ve ever been.”

  “Whatever it is, I’ll tell you.”

  “Not while it’s happening, you won’t. This thing works, you’ll be in an induced version of sleep paralysis.”

  “Like how we don’t hurt ourselves when we’re dreaming we do things?” She’d seen an episode of Ciencia Loca about that, plus lucid dreaming and being hagridden.

  “That’s it. Go use the ladies’ now. It’s time.”

  When she came out of the trailer, she saw Burton and Carlos standing there, about fifteen feet away. She gave them the finger, went into the toilet, where there was no light at all, peed, hoped she didn’t get the cedar sawdust on the seat in the da
rk, came back out, used sanitizer, and stepped up into the trailer, ignoring Burton and Carlos. Closed the door behind her.

  Macon and Edward were looking at her. “Take off your shoes,” said Macon.

  She sat down on the bed, Macon carefully moving the controller aside for her. She got a closer look at it as she took her sneakers off. It looked tight as all of Macon’s top-end printing, tight as her phone, except for the sugarplum fairy stuff he’d fabbed it from. Edward was positioning Burton’s pillow. “Have any more pillows?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Bunch it in half. You have their log-in?”

  “We do.” Macon produced a little plastic tube, showed her the Pharma Jon logo. “This’ll be cool.”

  “That’s what they all say,” she said.

  Macon put saline paste on his fingertip.

  “Don’t get any in my eyes.”

  He spread a line of chill wetness across her forehead, like some weird and possibly unwelcome blessing. Then he picked up the controller. “Pull your hair back.” She did, and he settled it on her head. “Fit?”

  “I guess. It’s heavy. In front.”

  “Our hunch is that the real deal weighs about as much as a pair of throwaway sunglasses, but this is the best we can do, short notice, on our printers. Pinch anywhere?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. So it’s heavy, right? I’m going to hold on to it while you lay back, slow, and Edward’ll position the pillow. Okay? Now.”

  She lay back, straightened her legs.

  “Because of the cable,” Macon said, “you need to keep your hands away from your head, your face, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re running off our own batteries here, just in case.”

  “Of what?”

  “More doctor’s orders.”

  She looked from him to Edward, just moving her eyes, then back to him. “So?”

  He reached down, took her right wrist in his hand, squeezed it. “We’re here. Anything looks too funny, we get you out. We built in some very basic monitors, on our own. Vital signs.” He released her wrist.

  “Thanks. What do I do?”

  “Close your eyes. Count down from fifteen. About ten, should be a wobble.”

  “Wobble?”

  “What she called it. Keep your eyes closed, keep counting down to zero. Then open ’em. We see you open ’em, it hasn’t worked.”

  “Okay,” she said, “but not until I say go.” Holding her head still, she looked up and to the right: the window, in the wall beside her. Up: the ceiling, tubes of lights glowing in polymer. Toward her feet: Burton’s display, Edward. To her left: Macon, the closed door behind him. “Go,” she said, closing her eyes. “Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve. Eleven. Ten.”

  Pop.

  That color like Burton’s haptics scar, but she could taste it inside her teeth. “Nine. Eight. Seven. Six.” It hadn’t worked. Nothing had happened. “Five. Four. Three.” She should tell them. “Two. One. Zero.” She opened her eyes. A flat ceiling sprang away, polished, six feet higher than the one in the trailer, as the room reversed, was backward, was other, weight of the crown gone, her stomach upside down. A woman’s eyes, close, weirdly blurred.

  She didn’t remember sitting up but then she saw her own hands and they weren’t. Hers.

  “If you need this,” the woman said, holding out a steel canister. “There’s nothing in you but some water.” Flynne leaned over, saw a face not hers reflected in the round, mirror-polished bottom. Froze. “Fuck.” The lips there forming the word as she spoke it. “What the fuck is this?” She came up off the bed fast. Not a bed. A padded ledge. She was taller. “Something’s wrong,” she heard herself say, but the voice wasn’t hers. “Colors—”

  “You’re accessing input from an anthropomorphic drone,” the woman said. “A telepresence avatar. You needn’t consciously control it. Don’t try. We’re recalibrating it now. Macon’s device isn’t perfect, but it works.”

  “You know Macon?”

  “Virtually,” said the woman. “I’m Ash.”

  “Your eyes—”

  “Contact lenses.”

  “Too many colors—” She meant her own vision.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said. “We’d missed that. Your peripheral is a tetrachromat.”

  “A what?”

  “It has a wider range of color vision than you do. But we’ve found the settings for that and are including them in the recalibration. Touch your face.”

  “Macon told me not to.”

  “This is different.”

  Flynne raised her hand, touched her face, not thinking. “Shit—”

  “Good. The recalibration is taking effect.”

  Again, with both hands. Like touching herself through something that wasn’t quite there.

  She looked up. The ceiling was pale polished wood, shiny, inset with round flat little metal light fixtures, glowing softly. Tiny room, higher than it was wide. Narrower than the Airstream. The walls were that same wood. A man stood at the far end, by a skinny open door. Dark shirt and jacket. “Hello, Flynne,” he said.

  “Human resources,” she said, recognizing him.

  “You don’t look like you’re going to need this,” the woman called Ash said, putting the canister down on the cushioned ledge Flynne had awakened on. Awakened? Arrived? “Would you mind speaking to Macon now?”

  “How?”

  “By phone. He’s concerned. I’ve reassured him, but it would help if he could speak with you.”

  “You have a phone?”

  “Yes,” said the woman, “but so do you.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter. Watch.”

  Flynne saw a small circle appear. Like a badge in Badger. It was white, with a gif of a line drawing of an antelope or something, running. She moved her eyes. The circle with the gif moved with them. “What’s that?”

  “My phone. You have one too. I have Macon. Now I open a feed—”

  A second circle expanded, to the right of the gif and larger. She saw Macon, seated in front of Burton’s display. “Flynne?” he asked. “That you?”

  “Macon! This is crazy!”

  “What did you do, here, just before we did the thing?” He looked serious.

  “Had a pee?”

  He grinned. “Wow . . .” He shook his head, grinned. “This is mission control shit!”

  “He can see what I’m seeing,” said Ash.

  “You okay?” Macon asked.

  “Guess so.”

  “You’re okay here,” he said.

  “We’ll get her back to you, Macon,” Ash said, “but we need to speak with her now.”

  “Send somebody up to the house to get me a sandwich,” she said to Macon, “I’ll be starving.”

  Macon grinned, nodded, shrank to nothing, was gone.

  “We could move to my office,” said the man.

  “Not yet,” said Ash. She touched the pale wall and a section slid aside, out of sight.

  A toilet, sink, shower, all steel. A mirror. Flynne moved toward it. “Holy shit,” she said, staring. “Who is she?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “This is a . . . machine?” She touched . . . someone. Stomach. Breasts. She looked in the mirror. The French girl in Operation Northwind? No. “That’s got to be somebody,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Ash, “though we don’t know who. How do you feel now?”

  Flynne touched the steel basin. Someone else’s hand. Her hand. “I can feel that.”

  “Nausea?”

  “No.”

  “Vertigo?”

  “No. Why is she wearing a shirt like mine, but silk or something? Has my name on it.”

  “We wanted you to feel at home.”

  “Where is this? Colombia?” She heard how little she thought this last might be true.

  “That’s my department, so to speak,” said the human resources man, behind her. Netherton, she remembered. Wilf
Netherton. “Come out to my office. It’s a bit roomier. I’ll try to answer your questions.”

  She turned and saw him standing there, eyes wider than she remembered. Like someone seeing a ghost.

  “Yes,” said Ash, putting her hand on Flynne’s shoulder, “let’s.”

  Her hand, thought Flynne, but whose shoulder?

  She let Ash guide her.

  42.

  BODY LANGUAGE

  Flynne completely altered the peripheral’s body language, Netherton realized, as Ash directed her toward him. Inhabited, its face became not hers but somehow her.

  He found himself backing down the corridor, barely shoulder-wide, away from that smallest of the Gobiwagen’s cabins. Unwilling to lose sight of her, out of something that felt at least partially like terror, he couldn’t turn his back.

  Ash, earlier, had explained that peripherals, when under AI control, looked human because their faces, programmed to constantly register changing micro-expressions, were never truly still. In the absence of that, she’d said, they became uniquely disturbing objects. Flynne was now providing the peripheral with her own micro-expressions, a very different effect. “It’s fine,” he heard himself say, though whether to himself or to her he didn’t know. This was all much stranger than he’d anticipated, like some unthinkable birth or advent.

  He backed into the scent of Ash’s flowers. Ash had had Ossian remove Lev’s grandfather’s displays, and the luggage as well, deeming them unnecessary, not conducive to “flow” in the space, so the flowers were at the end of the desk nearest two compact armchairs she’d raised from hidden wells in the floor. They’d reminded him of the seats in Lowbeer’s car, but slicker, unworn.

  “They’re for you,” Ash said, indicating the flowers. “We can’t offer you anything to eat, or drink.”

  “I’m fucking starving,” Flynne said, accent her own but the voice not as he recalled it. She looked at Ash. “I’m not? I—”

  “Autonomic bleed-over,” Ash said. “That’s your own body’s hunger. Your peripheral doesn’t experience it. It doesn’t eat, has no digestive tract. Can you smell them, the flowers?”