Agency

35 Fabricant Fang

Out onto the new span now, Treasure Island behind them, past those few remaining pylons of the old bridge, preserved out of concern for something’s habitat, she couldn’t remember what, and then the cold glare of what Joe-Eddy deemed the world’s shittiest LED billboards. To loop back, toward East Bay waterfront and the penetrative reek of the EBMUD plant, unseen at first but soon a dingy miniature Tomorrowland in the middle distance, fairy realm of off-white domes and sewage piping.

In Oakland, now, headed to where the drones had been printed, she assumed. Where Sevrin had manipulated lowball cryptocurrencies to pay for them. Where currently she knew no one at all.

Nimitz, she remembered, passing a sign, was the older, familial name for this highway along the waterfront. Recalling the names of neighborhoods here she’d heard of but never seen, walled magically away behind shared embankment: Ghost Town, Dogtown, Cypress Village, Lower Bottoms.

Turning left then, away from the Posey Tube, into vaguely familiar nonresidential streets. Slowing, after a few more turns, to park. Cutting the ignition.

She’d once had an interview near here, but couldn’t remember what for. Releasing the barista’s waist, she got stiffly off the bike, legs unsteady. She removed the helmet, emerging into silence, lack of vibration. She pulled down the filtration mask.

Lowering a centerstand, he pulled the bike back, front wheel slightly leaving the pavement. She looked up at the four-story gray building, industrial, not new, and then around, at the empty street behind her, a wholesale fruit business opposite, its name in Chinese and English. He dismounted, removed his helmet, then his mask, and walked toward the building.

She followed him, helmet under her arm.

The entrance was unmarked. Beyond unwashed glass doors, a drab foyer, a rectangle of gray cardboard taped to its rear wall. FABRICANT FANG 3RD FLOOR, in green marker.

The elevator, enameled a dull gray, reminded her of card catalogs in old public libraries. He pushed the button for the third floor. The door shuddered shut. She half expected thumbnails to appear, then remembered.

The elevator stopped, door clanking open.

“Welcome to Fabricant Fang,” said the man who’d brought the drones to Wolven + Loaves, and taken away the Franklins. “I’m Dixon.” Bearded, ball-capped, in a black t-shirt and brown workpants, orange plastic sonic-protection muffs hugging his neck.

“I’m Verity,” she said, stepping out. Behind her, the door made an impatient sound. She turned, saw the barista preventing it from closing, his helmet slung on its strap from his wrist. With his other hand he passed the Faraday pouch to the bearded man and took Verity’s helmet. He gestured impatiently with it, indicating the down jacket. She zipped out of it and draped it over her helmet, which he withdrew, into the elevator, then released the door, which jolted shut. Sound of his descent.

“Come meet Kathy,” the bearded man said.

Along a hallway, walls the dingy beige of the foyer below. He opened one of a pair of brown-painted steel doors, into bright light and a low tumult of small sounds. “Don’t worry about your ears,” he said, touching an orange plastic muff. “I just wear these because I get tired of it.”

Stepping past him into a factory loft, shadow-free fluorescent light and this quiet cacophony of rustling, clicking, buzzing. Machines, busy rows of them. The walls were white-painted concrete block. To her left, steel-framed windows with old-fashioned privacy glass, horizontally ridged. A smell like scorched polyester. She recognized some of the machinery from tours Stets had been given: deposition printers, injection molders…

“Kathy Fang.” A woman, offering her hand.

Verity took it. “Verity Jane.”

“Expecting you.” Handshake firm.

“How?”

“We received a text.” Chinese-American, late thirties in a gray sweatshirt and mom jeans that probably weren’t ironic.

“She texted you?”

“Never uses the same number twice. But she’d told us recently that we’d hear, if she had to go away.”

“What did it say?”

“That she was going away. That you were on your way, from the city.”

“Why am I here?”

“She bought something from us. We’ve been modifying it to her specifications. It’s for you.”

Remembering her phone, Verity looked back at the man who’d introduced himself as Dixon. “He has my phone,” she said to the woman, “and everything Tulpagenics issued me. I want my phone.”

“Sorry. Needs to stay pouched,” the woman said.

“Eunice tell you that?”

“In the same text, but we’d insist anyway.”

“The drones were made here?”

“They seriously slowed us down, on a run of mandibles.”

“Mandibles?”

“Between those drones and finishing your boy, we put a kink in the costuming pipeline for a semi-big second sequel.”

“Boy?”

“We’d gotten hold of plans ourselves, had fabbed most of it. Then Eunice contacted us, offering plans for the rest, plus her own modifications, in exchange for exclusive option to buy. The plans for the modifications alone would have been worth it to us. We did the job. This morning she phoned, told us she was picking up the option, and to expect you. Payment’s been delivered. Here you are.”

“Is she dead?”

“I don’t know. She said we could trust you, as well as anyone she sends to help you. If I knew more, I’d tell you. We build things here. Meet specs. Keep our mouths shut. Film and television production are secretive industries.” She gestured down an aisle bisecting the rows of repetitively restless machinery, the length of the long room, to another pair of brown doors. “Come and see him,” she said, starting down the aisle, without looking to see whether Verity followed.