Agency

107 Prom Night

When do they announce it?” Manuela asked, beside Verity. She was wearing, she’d told Verity in delighted disbelief, a Dior dress, from that fall’s ready-to-wear, courtesy of Caitlin’s stylist. She certainly looked as if she was at the party she believed she was attending. They were twenty feet from the foot of a modestly proportioned stage of scaffolding and plywood, its base wrapped with whatever Caitlin had used to sculpt her giddily aspirational sails, like her buildings but more so, not having to support themselves or anything else.

Joe-Eddy, overhearing, gave Verity a look and a smile. He was wearing one of the dusty black suits from his closet. She was surprised it fit him as well as it did, having assumed they all dated from his Fuckoids days. The addition of Eunice’s modified Korean AR goggles somehow resulted in a carnival look, as though he should also be wearing beads. “Looks like we’re kicking off,” he said, as Stets took the stage to a wave of applause, loose black trousers concealing the leg brace, though his limp was evident. Reaching center stage, he absently adjusted his bedhead, prompting lesser but still notable applause. He looked out at the audience and smiled. “If you’re here,” he said “it’s because either Caitlin or I know you well enough to want you to personally witness something we believe will be truly historic.”

“Whoa,” said Manuela. “Over the top?”

“Given this city, and the things most of us do,” Stets continued, “you’ll have heard that before, ambitious people announcing something innovative, something they believe will drive change, but something they generally haven’t accomplished yet. This isn’t that.”

“Being pregnant’s innovative?” Manuela side-eyeing Verity.

“This isn’t a pitch,” Stets said. “I’m here to introduce a change driver, but one that already exists. Her name’s Eunice.”

“How can it be a gender reveal already?” Manuela frowning slightly.

“I don’t think she’s pregnant,” said Verity, as Kathy Fang and Dixon arrived, making their way through the crowd with Grim Tim and Sevrin in tow.

“Then this is weird,” said Manuela.

“It is,” Verity agreed, as Kathy Fang, reaching her, gave her a hug.

“Eunice,” said Stets, “may be unlike anyone you’ve met, but she’s also a lot like anyone you’ve met. Here she is.”

Manuela was staring up at the stage. “This the one you all keep mentioning?”

Behind Stets, white fabric fell from a theater screen, revealing the face of Eunice’s avatar, perhaps slightly younger-looking tonight than Verity remembered it.

“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.