Agency

25 Branch Plants of Me

Why do you text sometimes, not others?” Verity asked, back in the living room.

“Text when you’re on the phone, with somebody, or there’s ambient noise. And sometimes for an extra layer of security.”

Verity, remembering her pulling Department of Motor Vehicles bar codes down, into passing traffic, crossed to the window, to stand beside the Ikea stool, its soldering-iron scars still hidden beneath the telenovela book. Pedestrians were passing, on the sidewalk opposite. She wondered if any were from Tulpagenics, or Cursion, or Followrs. And now a cab was pulling over, directly below the window.

She took a step forward, looked down. To see Joe-Eddy unmistakably emerging, from the cab’s rear door, multiply slung with shoulder-strapped bags. He looked up, through ridiculous white-framed goggles. A thumbnail of what he saw appeared: her face, in the window, looking down at him. “Joe-Eddy—”

“By way of another branch plant,” Eunice said. “I only knew a little before you did.”

“Branch plant?”

“How I think of ’em. Gavin’s laminae.”

He was headed for the street door now. She could see it, in the feed from his white goggles.

She’d started down the stairs before she was even aware of it, knowing he couldn’t get past the bolt. His feed blinked out before she reached the door.

She undid the deadlock, then the bolt, opened it. Looked into his eyes, behind the goggles.

“Here,” he said, “get this—” A black backpack, over one shoulder, was slipping down his arm. She snagged it, almost dropping it. “Thanks,” he said, stepping in. She closed the door behind him, turned the deadlock, slid the bolt. “You got cooler glasses,” he said, looking at her. “These, it had this fifteen-year-old DJ in Frankfurt build out of a Korean AR headset.”

Get him upstairs.

“What the fuck was that?” Joe-Eddy asked.

“A text. Why didn’t you call me?”

“It texts me too, but only on my phone,” he said. “I didn’t know this was about you until we were on the runway in SFO. Retainer has a clause about not telling anyone where it sends me. I had my phone out to let you know, when I’d gotten to FRA and learned where I was going, but it reminded me.”

“She hired you?”

“‘She’?” Joe-Eddy looked at her. “Mine’s not gendered, that I know of.”

“She’s gendered, trust me. You were dealing with kind of a subprogram of hers.”

“Okay, she. Paid off my Frankfurt contract, did some kind of meta-deal on top of that, like now they’ll make me an IT manager if I ever do them the favor of coming back.”

“Get used to it,” Verity said, hoisting the backpack over one shoulder. She started up. “Told you what she is yet?” She heard him stop, on the stairs behind her. Turned to look back.

Standing there, draped in his luggage, wearing loose black jeans and a belly-hiding black hoodie, he peered at her narrowly. “Not even close.”

“I’m supposed to be alpha-testing her.”

“As what?”

“A cross-platform avatar. They’d customize them. But I still keep thinking it’s all some asshole’s YouTube comedy channel.”

“Instead of rogue AI,” he said, making an expression she’d seen as a client struggled to describe the bad thing that had happened to their company’s system. “So I leave you here with my fucking cat,” he said, “and you get involved in this?”

“You don’t have a fucking cat.”

“I know.”

She turned and started up the stairs.

In the living room, beside the Fuckoids photo, she unslung the backpack, lowered it to the floor. “I hope this isn’t money.”

“Books,” he said, “and cheese.” The goggles’ round white frames looked like half-inch lengths of PVC pipe. He put his other bags on the leather armchair, the one she avoided because its springs were shot.

Hi, Joe-Eddy. I’m Eunice. You’ve been dealing with a subsidiary of mine, now incorporated.

Her avatar appeared in a thumbnail. It seemed to have gotten sterner, and somehow more specific unto itself. The fade now rose to a cliff-sided plateau supporting the uneven canopy of a miniature jungle of curls.

Verity was in the shower here, when you were being recruited in Frankfurt, but I didn’t know. I don’t know what they’ve done until they turn up and I incorporate them.

“Who tells them where to start?” Verity asked, assuming that Eunice had addressed her that way because Joe-Eddy was reading this too.

They’re just sort of issued. Out of me but not by me, feels like. They look at available input, then go where they see they can be of most use. In Joe-Eddy’s case, that was securing his services and bringing him here.

“Shouldn’t you tell him what’s going on,” Verity asked, “like the screw cams?”

Branch plant showed him the feeds, in the cab from SFO. He already knew about Cursion.

“You did?” Looking at him.

“Only by reputation. Creepy but dull? That Banality of Evil kind of thing?”

He headed for the kitchen. She followed, watching him open the fridge, study the contents, select a carton of her orange juice, and drink from it, deeply. “Turkey and Syria weirding you out?”

“When I can remember to let it,” Verity said. “Shit here’s been pretty distracting.”

“Folks in Frankfurt made me feel like the Cold War never really went away. Somebody shoots down a couple of Russian jets, wham, it’s Cold War Atlantis, risen from the depths.” He put the carton back in the fridge, closed the door, yawned uncontrollably. “Couldn’t sleep on the plane. No Wi-Fi. Watched a Transformers movie and wondered if the world’s about to end.”

“I know the feeling,” Verity said.

“Sleep,” he said, possibly to himself. Like he could do it right there, on his feet, but he headed for the bedroom instead.