Agency

20 Baker-Miller Pink

Good to see you, Wilf,” Janice said, from her black mesh workstation chair, his phone’s feed provided by her device’s camera. She couldn’t see him, though he could show her what he was seeing, should he want to. “Rainey and the kid doing well?”

He’d forgotten about her having painted their living room Baker-Miller pink, an institutional shade once thought to reduce aggression in prisoners. Homeland Security had given the county drunk tank three more gallons than necessary, so she’d bartered a box of her preserves for them, at a community event. DHS had originally provided the shade because the drunk tank often housed particularly disoriented individuals, the county’s primary industry having until recently been the illicit manufacture of synthetic psychoactives. In spite of the claims made for it, Netherton himself had found it an unsettling hue, and did now. “Quite well, thanks. And you and Madison?”

“We’re good. What can I do for you?”

“I’ve a favor to ask,” he said, “though I assume it would actually be from Madison.”

“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.