Agency

31 Why Would You Be Gone?

The Manzilian was gone when they got upstairs. Joe-Eddy saw him occasionally on what seemed to be business, not that Verity had ever had any idea what that might consist of.

He was seated at his workbench now, the living room smelling of the resin of vanished summers, as he said of de-soldering antique Heathkits. He did this, she knew, when he was working something out, the pointless labor a manual counterpoint, a benign form of distraction. So she walked past, saying nothing, and down the hallway, into the kitchen.

“I was thinking of scrubbing this,” she said to Eunice, looking down at the floor, “but you turned up.”

“Looks like it’s been a while.” Cursor on the floor.

“Last year, when I’d first split with Stets. Media was so thick around my place that I couldn’t stand it. Snuck over here. Nothing better to do, so I washed it. What was that Gavin said about another contract?”

“He was suggesting they upload themselves a taste of the app whisperer in every unit.”

“Uh-uh.”

“They can’t do that yet,” Eunice said, “not even close.”

“Then why did he say it?”

“Looking for a reaction. Hoping one of us would say something that might give them a better idea of how much we know about where I’m from.”

“He said they’d reverse engineer it. Out of you.”

“Not a chance.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s like having hunches. Like I’m all hunches, now, but they tend to be right. Just got one to ask you.”

“What?”

“Say you turn around one day and I’m gone. What do you do?”

“Gone how?”

“Just gone. Permanently, say. Then Gavin comes by. To collect the hardware, debrief you, like that. But I’m gone, right? You can’t call me. I won’t be back. What do you do?”

Verity looked over at the Pikachu-shaped filtration unit on the sink, its little smile. “What should I?”

“Whatever they say’s happened to me, act like you buy it. Meantime, you’re getting ready to get as far away from them as you can.”

Verity went to the sink, ran cold through the Pikachu, filled a glass. “I don’t know how to do that.”

“I know you don’t. That’s why I’ve got people you haven’t met yet. And money. Like they’ll build you your own private witness protection program.”

“Why would you be gone?”

“’Cause Cursion’s decided to take me down, on the basis of our coffee with Gavin.”

“Why?”

“They think my ass is trouble. They’re right.”

“I don’t see it. You’re something next-level. They found you somewhere. You weren’t coded in the back of a gaming start-up. So why their alpha build?”

“If they feel sufficiently endangered by their shit-hot prototype? Believe it. And if they’re in a position to see me as just one iteration, not the thing itself? First iteration goes sideways on you, you can erase it. But it’s still hypothetical, whether or not they can. Nobody knows till they try.”

Verity put the glass down. “I don’t like it.”

“Lighten up,” Eunice said.

“Lighten up?”

“Let’s check out the Mission. Like I told Gavin, the sun’s out.”

“But is the world still ending?”

“Not looking any better,” Eunice said.