Agency

by William Gibson

  “Hey,” Eunice said, seeming to look into the audience. “Hi. I’m Eunice. No last name. Siri and Alexa don’t have ’em either, but the resemblance stops there. I’m an AI-upload hybrid. I’m culturally African-American, which is about the upload side of the hybridization. Pronoun ‘she,’ likewise. Thanks to Caitlin and Stets for giving me this chance to meet you. I’m here because I’m something new, and because I want to introduce myself before anyone else starts explaining their idea of me to you. While I’m at it, I’d like to say that I’m nobody’s property, not a product, and neither Stets nor anyone else, any entity of any kind whatever, is going to profit financially from my being here, now and going forward. I pay my own way. And while we’re on that, I’m culturally American, obviously, but I’m not the citizen of any nation-state. I don’t exist physically, so I’m no place in particular, no one country. I’m globally distributed, and that’s how I view my citizenship. Lots of you are hearing me in a language other than English. I’m translating for myself, as I speak. I’m as multilingual as anybody’s ever been, but saying that brings up the question of whether I even am anybody.” She paused. “Whether I’m a person. Human. All I can tell you about that is that it feels to me like I am. Me. Eunice.” She smiled.

  Verity looked around, seeing Sevrin and Grim Tim, Kathy Fang and Dixon, Joe-Eddy and Manuela, all staring up at the screen. Everyone in the audience silent, except for a baby crying, toward the back of the crowd. Then people began to applaud.

  Eunice smiled. “I’m not going into my backstory now, but you’ll all be able to ask me about that personally, if you feel like it.” A URL appeared, below her face.

  “And with that,” Joe-Eddy said, near Verity’s ear, “Cursion’s fucked.”

  “So that’s it from me for now,” Eunice said. “Caitlin Bertrand, who decorated this place for tonight, has a little something else for you. All this fabric comes down tomorrow, and gets recycled, as shelters for the homeless. But this last part won’t need recycling.” The lights dimmed. “Night, all. Nice meeting you.”

  Beyond the building’s glass, then, appeared extensions of Caitlin’s loose-limbed aspirational geometry, adding stories to the structure’s height, not in fabric but in illuminated drone-swarm, free of gravity, expansive, the farthest tips flickering, auroral and faintly tinted.

  Verity wanted to ask Joe-Eddy what Eunice had just done, not the drone-swarm but her offer to be in touch with anyone at all, but he wouldn’t be able to hear her for this applause.

  108

  MERCY ON THE STAIRS

  Marine, right?” Eunice asked Conner.

  Netherton had lost track of the number of landings they’d already passed, descending. Before they’d begun descending, raw concrete had given way to a zone of sepulchral polished marble. A pointlessly massive-looking but otherwise unremarkable bronze door had led them down a single narrow flight of stairs, to what Netherton had assumed was a boiler room, as revealed by the drone’s excellent night vision.

  “Haptic Recon,” Conner replied, traversing yet another landing.

  In the boiler room, minutes before, the drone impressively quiet, he’d rolled forward until the front of its torso was flush with a bare wall, the lower half of its display filled with an almost microscopic close-up of painted concrete. To its left, peripherally displayed, was a large tank or heater, the space between it and the wall too narrow to have allowed the drone, or perhaps Netherton himself, to easily walk through. A feed had appeared then, Conner’s ass-cam, likewise in night vision. Netherton had watched as Conner rotated the drone’s feet ninety degrees to the left, then powered it sideways, behind the boiler. A door frame appearing, in that extreme close-up, then the door itself, not bronze, unmarked.

  “That haptic tech was after my day,” Eunice said now, as they started down another flight.

  Something had clicked, behind that boiler, or perhaps broken, allowing Conner to open the door, the drone’s feet swiveling back to their normal position. They’d rolled forward, into a space reminding Netherton of his first glimpse of this stub, that small back room in Fabricant Fang, though this one was windowless and surgically empty. Another door, then, had led to the start of this stairwell.

  “You military?” Conner asked, as they descended yet another flight.

  “Part of me was,” Eunice answered. “Navy. Knew plenty of Marines.”

  “What did your part do?” Conner asked.

  “She was a 3913,” Eunice said, “a HUMINTer.”

  About to request a translation, Netherton was instead startled by Ash.

  “Eunice has just offered everyone on Earth a chance to get to know her better,” she said.

  “Have we missed your speech then, Eunice?” Netherton asked.

  “What there was of it,” Eunice said. “Declaration of personhood, financial independence, global citizenship, then I invited anyone who feels like it to get in touch with me personally.”

  “That last surprised me,” Ash said, “though I gather it didn’t surprise Lowbeer.”

  “Take a break here, Conner,” Eunice said.

  “Yes ma’am.” The drone came to a halt, just prior to the next landing.

  “She give you any background on that, Ash?” Eunice asked.

  “No. Not that there’s been time.”

  “It’s something that kept coming up as she told me her story,” Eunice said. “As the jackpot got seriously going, after the first wave of pandemics, without EU membership to buffer anything, England started looking a lot like a competitive control area. She did what she knew how to do, which by then was run a CCA. But as she kept building it back up, every time another change driver impacted, she found herself using Russians. They knew how to work a CCA. They’d been there before the jackpot hit the fan. Way before. So I found myself pointing out that what I was trained to do, and what she’d had to largely train herself to do, had wound up being the core of the klept. It worked, for semi-saving part of the world’s ass right then, but only by freezing it into a permanently sorry position. Which Mr. Netherton here, for instance, grew up in. Authoritarian societies are inherently corrupt, and corrupt societies are inherently unstable. Rule of thieves brings collapse, eventually, because they can’t stop stealing. With an Ainsley in place, though, you can get that shit stabilized. She sees anyone making what looks like a viable stab at destabilization, whether they think they are or not, she takes them out. And this is a known thing, that she’ll do that, she’ll do this to you if she feels like it, and with what passes for society’s blessing.”

  “So,” said Netherton, “you suggested to her that what we were hoping to have you do, in this stub, might well create a klept here, one with you as Lowbeer?”

  “She said you were smart,” said Eunice, in obvious agreement.

  “She did?” Netherton was at once amazed and dubious.

  “Yeah, but she was the one who suggested it to me, not the other way around. I hadn’t drawn that conclusion yet. Then she made increasingly stronger arguments for it. Which in turn became arguments for transparency. Well, relative transparency. Which hasn’t been something either of us has had much experience in providing. But hey, baby steps. Some of which Conner can continue taking for us now.”

  Conner took the remaining steps in the flight, and started down another. “Pryor’s started up from thirty-four,” said Conner, as they reached the bottom. “This rate, we’ll meet at thirty-eight or so.”

  “You using the aerials down there?” Eunice asked.

  “Yeah. CCTV in the stairwell’s not working. Figure that’s him.”

  “Hold up again.”

  They halted on the latest landing.

  “You want to kill him?” she asked.

  “Not particularly,” Conner said. “If I have to, I’ll do my best.”

  “But you don’t actually want to?”

  A pause. “Nope.” />
  “Back when Netherton first met you,” she said, “according to Ainsley, you would have. Because of what had happened to you. The shape you came back in. Not just the physical shape, either. You didn’t need much of an excuse, then. Like the knob on that was cranked to eleven. Am I right?”

  “Okay,” he said, “yeah.”

  “But you’re not like that, now? You could’ve killed any of Pryor’s men, in that alley.”

  “Ash said I shouldn’t.”

  “But you could’ve. And gotten away with it.”

  “Guy would’ve killed Verity, in Coalinga, if he could. Howell and the rest of them.”

  “He was being paid to. Felt like following orders, to him.”

  “I’ve never given that much of a shit about money.”

  “True,” said Eunice. “The woman they based my skill set on, she wanted to work with people like you and Pryor. That was what she was set to do, after she got back from Afghanistan. If she’d made it. She wrote about it. Medical journals. She got it. I guess I get it too.”

  “Our boy’s two floors down now. Coming up.”

  “There’re speakers on the drone you’re flying. Introduce me.”

  “Hey, Pryor,” Conner said, his tone conversational, “name’s Penske. Need to talk.”

  Silence.

  “Fair enough,” Conner said. “You got a gun. Nice one. I can see it. I don’t have one, but I’m telepresent in a bootleg build of a Boston Dynamics recon drone. Your boys back in that alley saw what I can do with it. Hard to stop it with a gun, but maybe you’d get lucky. Nobody else up here, physically.”

  Silence.

  “Thing is,” Conner said, “I got someone else wants to talk to you.”

  “I’m Eunice, Kevin. You know who I am. Cursion’s board are all on their way out of the country now. Gavin’s going to be arrested. You probably will be too, if you don’t take the advice I’m about to give you.”

  “Let’s hear it.” A stranger’s voice hung in the stairwell.

  “My advice is to accept the chance I’m offering you now, just this one time. To fuck off. Back down the stairs and out of here, and don’t stop till you’ve exfiltrated your ass out of this country, but good. You know how to do that. You ever turn up on my radar again, anywhere near anybody whose name I even know, deal’s off.”

  “What deal?”

  “The one that started when I didn’t let this drone come down there and kill your ass.”

  Silence. “That’s it?”

  “And get therapy.”

  “You kill me if I don’t get therapy?”

  “That part’s just advice. This one’s on Marlene Miller, by the way.”

  “Who the fuck’s she?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Deal?”

  Silence. It lengthened.

  “What’s he doing?” Netherton asked, eyeing the stairwell.

  “Headed back downstairs,” Conner said, opening a feed, apparently from a small aerial drone. A man’s back, descending a stairwell identical to this one. “Why’d you do that? Let him go?”

  “I can afford to. Got the agency, now. If I don’t, when it’s strategically feasible, how am I any different than who I’m fighting?”

  Conner didn’t answer.

  Netherton watched the man descend, out of sight.

  109

  AFTER THE AFTER-PARTY

  She wasn’t sure who’d decided to come here, unless it had been Joe-Eddy, wanting to sleep in his own bed. She certainly didn’t want to be back on the porn couch, though she had no idea where she’d be sleeping when that became an issue. But somehow they’d all made it down to the basement garage, crowded into the private elevator she’d used on her first visit: Caitlin, Stets, Virgil, Manuela, Sevrin, Kathy Fang and Dixon, and her, to be met by the security freelancers who’d taken her up to the Airstream with Manuela, after the hammock ride, and by Carsyn, to Manuela’s delight. The drone had been with them too, and at one point had had Wilf, Rainey, and Ash in it, as well as Conner. She thought that Wilf and Rainey might have said good night at some point, though that would have been after Rainey’s delight at the latest Qamishli news. After Eunice’s word earlier, that things were now at least somewhat better, had come word, from Ash, via Lowbeer, that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists clock was being reset to two minutes to midnight, where it had been prior to Qamishli. Verity had had no idea that it had been that close to midnight to begin with, but Ash had explained that that setting, dating to 2018, reflected climate change and increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy.

  But by then it had become apparent that nobody in their party would be going to jail, and that Stets wouldn’t even have to pay more in fines than had been anticipated. Pryor, Conner had announced, had left the country. As, apparently, had the entire board of Cursion, Gavin evidently with them. She’d felt sorry for Gavin, in that, as Cursion’s board had sounded like what Conner described them as, a bag of dicks. While Gavin, from her own career experience prior to working for Stets, hadn’t really been that exceptionally dickish a top executive.

  There had been two black limos waiting in the garage, huge, cartoonish, armored-looking, and they’d split into two groups to take those, each with three security people, to what she’d shortly discovered would be a private early-morning pre-opening of Wolven + Loaves, no doubt the result of Virgil’s PA abilities. They were all around the single longest table now, the front window blacked out with the kind of curtains photographers use, the limos parked outside on Valencia.

  Joe-Eddy was seated opposite her, Caitlin on her right, Manuela on her left. Manuela had Carsyn to her left, and something was going on there. They definitely seemed to be enjoying one another’s company. The drone was standing to Joe-Eddy’s right, a few inches from the table, a chair having been removed for it. Stets was beside Caitlin, with Grim Tim, Sevrin, Kathy Fang, and Dixon making up the rest of the other side. Joe-Eddy grinned at her, his white goggles slightly lopsided. “You met the Apple guy,” he said to her.

  “I did?” It was all running together now, the after-party.

  “I met the people who make the albino angel mouse felt stuff Caitlin did the décor in,” said Joe-Eddy. “They were awesome.”

  “They were drunk,” said Caitlin, “but nice.”

  “So was the Apple guy,” said Joe-Eddy. “Not drunk, though.”

  Everyone, it had turned out, had ordered the Egg McWolven and some variety of coffee. And these were arriving now, along with two trays, the color of the Tulpagenics glasses, of coffees.

  “Wish we could talk,” she said, under her breath.

  We can later. Or when you’ve gotten some sleep. It’s okay for you to relax now. We’re over the hump. Somewhere new.

  “Qamishli, that’s really okay?”

  Everybody’s going to have a hangover tomorrow, not just people who were at our party. They’re all celebrating. The Russians will make some noises, for a while, but they’re really all celebrating too. Eat your breakfast.

  “We should have a toast,” Joe-Eddy said, Verity wondering if he’d read the Helvetica. “A shadow’s been lifted.”

  “The president,” said Kathy Fang. “She got us out of it.”

  Verity saw Joe-Eddy smirk.

  “Eunice says it was the president,” Verity said to him.

  “The president,” said Kathy Fang, raising her coffee, and they all clinked mugs, toasting the president.

  Conner, in the drone, thrust its manipulator’s thumb-equivalents up in support, and she heard Ash’s voice join in as well.

  110

  THE SANDWICHES (II)

  Netherton had taken Thomas to Victoria Embankment that morning, to watch the Thames chimeras perform in their yuletide livery. The Trefoils, now decorated with Christmas trees, had been brought in very close to shore for the event, and had seemed
to delight Thomas more than the synchronized antics of the chimeras.

  He’d then taken him home, before joining Lowbeer in Marylebone for the sandwiches, their first visit to the place since she’d originally told him about Verity’s stub. Verity was friends now with Rainey, as indeed she was with Flynne, taking them both on tourist expeditions in her stub, via the awkward 2017 equivalent of Wheelie Boys. They’d particularly enjoyed Notre Dame, which had happened not to suffer a fire, in Verity’s 2019. They’d found Verity her own peri, for visiting London, which Lowbeer had purchased for her. That had only been confusing for a few moments, so thoroughly familiar was Flynne in hers.

  Lev, meanwhile, was back with Dominika in Notting Hill, things evidently going smoothly. Anton, apparently, was still away in search of a cure for his addiction, with brother Radomir having taken over operation of the family’s businesses. Lev was now happy enough to privately detest Radomir’s taste in art, which Netherton gathered was exacerbated by Radomir’s degree in art history. Tedious as he found this, Netherton welcomed it as evidence of his friend’s return to emotional health.

  He was having the gammon today, Lowbeer the ox tongue.

  “Verity’s given me the impression,” Netherton said, their sandwiches not yet having arrived, “that Eunice becoming universally accessible was your idea.”

  “It emerged from conversation,” Lowbeer said, “but I doubt it would have occurred to me to implement it with quite so stunning a degree of simplicity.”

  “Are you happy with it?” he asked.

  “The thing I found immediately in its favor, of course, was that nothing remotely like it would be allowed here. It’s a radical experiment, but performed in good faith. Since Eunice’s position, let alone her nature, has no equivalent in any history we know of, we’ll simply have to wait and see. How are Rainey and Thomas?”