Уильям Гибсон - Agency

“Yes?”

“I remember him doing document searches for a site he was involved with, for fans of the game Sukhoi Flankers.” He’d looked up the name before calling. “I’ve something I’d like him to search for me, though it isn’t aeronautical. Is he still active, on that site?”

“Wish he wasn’t,” Janice said. “Massive time sink. Has Ainsley signed off on this? Otherwise, I’ll need to clear it with Flynne.”

“She’s specifically requested I look into it.”

“What is it you’re looking for?”

“Here’s a text file. These are possibly relevant terms. American.”

He watched as she read them. “Next Generation Project?”

“Projection,” he corrected.

“Got a contextual ballpark?”

“Artificial intelligence, counterinsurgency software, United States military, twenty-teens, highly classified.”

“Why not just ask her younger self, here? Knowing about classified American projects was his bread and butter, before you folks came knocking.”

“She has, but without result. That, I hope, may be because he searched government archives. Having seen what Madison turned up on those Russian jets, in the way of enthusiast-based but extremely high-quality product…”

Janice narrowed her eyes at her screen. “Navy?”

“I don’t know,” Netherton said. “I’ve no idea what any of that actually means.”

“I’ll get him on it,” she said. “Meantime, though, you should come visit. That half-assed peri of you they had built gave me the uncanny valleys, no offense, but I miss you getting underfoot in the Wheelie. So does Flynne, I imagine. Come see us. Got our own Wheelie, now I think of it. Our nephew’s kid uses it to visit, from Clanton.”

“You don’t quite have the technology,” he said, “to really build a peripheral. A Wheelie would be fine. What’s it been like, here?”

“Having Leon in the White House seriously pushes a lot of different envelopes. Job keeps him mostly in Washington, but down here we get Secret Service, plus your pro-Leon media, your anti-Leon media, your lobbyists, then your Leon impersonators, who’re a breed unto themselves, thank you.”

“How’s Flynne feeling, about her cousin’s presidency?”

“Gave her the uncanny valleys, at first. She concentrates on Tommy and the kid now, much as things’ll let her. But she’s grateful she dodged the job herself. Felicia wanted her to run.” Felicia Gonzalez, president of the United States when this stub had been initiated, had been saved from an assassination plot by Lowbeer’s intervention. “I think Flynne might’ve given in, too, but then she realized Felicia assumed you guys would hack Badger and the voting machines, same old same old, so she put her foot down. But you know that, right?”

Badger, Netherton remembered, was the lone atavistic survivor, in this stub, of what had been called social media. “Only in broad outline.”

“She was ready to just take Tommy and the kid and drive off, if the election was going to be rigged. But then our Ainsley here, I mean her younger self in Washington, he suggested Leon. Promised Flynne they’d run as straight an election as possible. Sell Leon as this benign character, just sort of incidentally white and rural. Worked, too. Polling said lots of men would’ve hung back from electing another woman.” She frowned.

He made a note to mention this to Rainey. It might assuage her feeling that everything in the county was a conspiracy. Or perhaps not.

“How he sold Flynne on it,” Janice continued, “was to point out there’s lots of people happier with a dumbfuck in the White House. So there was Leon, not ambitious at all but enjoys some attention, sly in his own way, and he’d have Ainsley coaching him. And in real life he’s not even that much of a dickhead. The people who were the most trouble, under Gonzalez, aren’t unhappy enough, now, to be much trouble at all.” She shrugged. “Life in the county, life in these United States.” She reached off-camera for a Hefty Mart tumbler, sucked something orange through a fat compostable straw, and swallowed. “But let me get Madison on this, see what he can nerd up for you.”

“Thank you,” said Netherton.

As Verity opened 3.7’s door, the same barista, face jingling, pushed a drink toward her. His back was turned before she’d picked it up. As she did, she glanced around the café.

The sole other female customer was young, Latina, intent on her phone.

“That’s her,” Eunice said.

“Hasn’t noticed me.”

“She’s not cut out for this,” Eunice said, “game physics designer.”

Verity, spotting a vacant table, carried her drink to it. As the girl glanced up, seeing her, Verity saw her thumbs became differently busy on her phone.

“Gavin knows you’re here,” said Eunice, as Verity sat down.

Gavin, Eunice had explained in the car, now had five bugs in Joe-Eddy’s apartment. Two in the living room, one in the kitchen, one each in bedroom and bathroom. Wireless, they looked like slightly rusty Robertson-head screws, the kind with a square hole instead of a slot or cross. The hole sheltered a pinhole video camera, the actual unit being not a screw but an inch-long cylinder, its diameter slightly smaller than that of the apparent head. Decent professional quality, according to Eunice, the profession remaining unspecified. The batteries required changing, but infrequently, and the men who’d put them there now had their own keys to the apartment.

“They’ll be able to record us?”

“They think they will, but what they’ll be getting is scripted bullshit I’m having a postproduction house assemble. With my input, of course, multitasking.”

“Postproduction house?”

“Expensive, but I’m paying for it with their money. Not that they know it yet.”

Verity thought to check her cup, finding VERITASS in pink paint pen. She glanced at the barista, whose back was still turned.

“I had zero idea she was even president, till Sevrin turned on the radio,” Eunice said. “Not that I thought it was anybody else.”

“What do you think that means?”

“I’m entertaining an upload hypothesis.”

“A what?”

“Transfer of someone’s consciousness, or some equivalent of it, to a digital platform. Sometime before the campaign year, let alone the election.”

“Can they even do that?”

“Not that I know of, but Area 51, right? And say they could, even a little? Wouldn’t they go ahead and try it?”

“So say they do, what?”

“Somebody gets a big-ass idea, sometimes, pure blue-sky, but there’s no existing tech to implement it. So they try to ballpark it. Go really hard in a radical direction, but on some half-assed implementation of whatever’s handy, best they can. Sometimes it works. Other times, it might do something they never imagined.”

Verity was watching the barista briskly wiping down the chrome-and-copper cuirass of the espresso console. “You think that’s your story?”

“Could be. Gavin’s laminar agent, high-end but half-assed.”

Verity looked over at the Followrs girl, their eyes awkwardly meeting, then glancing away. “How long do we have to be here?”

“On the brink of nuclear war?”

“No,” said Verity, “here, in 3.7.”

“They’re almost done, at Joe-Eddy’s. Running a final check now.”

“It sucks, that there’s one in the bathroom.”

“I’ll make that one look like it’s had a nervous breakdown,” Eunice said. “Bad quality control in Shenzhen. And bingo, right now, they’re done, leaving the apartment. They have a car waiting. We can go back now. Our girl here gets to go home too. Bring your drink if you want it.” Verity got up, the girl pretending unsuccessfully to not see her do it.