Agency

41 Open-Plan Anxiety

Verity watched the gym-rat SpongeBob, unsteady on its feet, stepping out in front of her, into the white brilliance of Fabricant Fang, amid the jittery sound of machines.

“What are you fabbing?” it asked, stopping.

“Alien mandibular units,” Kathy Fang said. “My crew’s upstairs on their lunch break. We’ll go up to the roof. We have a place up there where you can talk. Through those doors.” Pointing.

“Thank you.” The drone started toward the far end of the room, along the aisle that broke the rows of machines. It was managing not to waddle now, on its short legs, though it looked as if it should. She remembered the gyroscopes. It reached the far end of the aisle and turned right, to face the doors into the hallway. Lacking visible eye-equivalents, or head motion, she thought, it had no way of suggesting either curiosity or attention. But Wilf, whoever he was, might be looking at her right now. Feeling a need to move, she started after it, stepping past Kathy and Dixon.

They followed it up the aisle, Verity noting that the mandibles, assuming these were those, were being printed from something with a certain amount of jiggle. “Why the roof?”

“Quiet-time cube. Friend of ours builds them.”

Dixon, who she saw had brought the charger with him, was holding a door open. She followed the drone out.

In the corridor, the elevator door clanked open. She and Kathy stepped in, the drone following, then Dixon, who pressed an unmarked button above four. “Are you concerned about the possibility of nuclear war?” Wilf asked, sounding, as the elevator rose, like a canvassing missionary.

The three of them looked down.

“Are you?” Verity asked, as the door grated open.

“On your behalf, certainly. My wife is as well. Has been since first learning of it.”

Verity, imagining Mrs. Drone in a flowered straw hat, unexpectedly inhaled what might have been a vagrant waft of EBMUD. Looking up, she realized they were outside.

“This way,” said Kathy Fang, leading them toward a gray cargo container, lightly rusted, the smallest standard size, a cube ten feet on a side. Various vents and ducts, unrusted, ran across the roof and down the side facing them. “Soundproofed, fully ventilated, temperature and humidity controlled, potable running water, chemical toilet stores waste on the outside.”

Dixon was tapping a keypad on the container’s side. Verity looked to where she thought the Bay would be, but any view was behind taller buildings. As she turned back, Dixon was opening a door, into mellow light.

The doorway, half the width of the cube, revealed Silicon Valley quasi-Japanoid décor. Light wood, tatami, a white paper screen, a low gray couch, a wooden table to match.

“You won’t be locked in,” said Dixon, “but pretend you are. We know when the door’s open, or if anyone sets foot on the roof. Either happens, I’ll be right up. There’s an iPad on the couch, open to a page of commands. Alert’s in red. Tap that, if you want out.”

“What is this?” Verity asked.

“They help reduce OPA,” Kathy Fang said. “This was one of the prototypes. We make some of the interior trim for them.”

“OPA?”

“Open-plan anxiety. That’s for your shoes, there.” Indicating a translucent tray Verity assumed was from Muji.

“What do you use it for?” Verity asked.

“Naps. Get in.”

The cube was resting on wooden pallets, a double layer of them. Verity stepped up and in.

“I haven’t tried taking a step up,” said Wilf.

They all looked at the drone.

“Sorry. Concerned I might topple over.”

“Turn around,” said Dixon, “and sit, in the doorway. Straighten out the legs, in front of you, right angle to the torso, and I’ll swing them in for you.”

Verity knelt and began to remove her shoes. Away, she hoped, from where it might sit.

It rotated in place with a series of baby steps, then sat. Having no ass, there was nothing much for it to seat, so she wondered if it was being held upright by the gyros. She got to her feet as Dixon swung its short but outstretched legs into the cube.

“Thank you,” the voice called Wilf said, and she reminded herself that however helpless the thing itself might seem, she had no way of knowing whether he, or it, really was.

“Ring when you’re done,” Kathy Fang said.

Dixon placed the charger on the floor and closed the door, causing the indirect lighting to go up a notch.

Not quite a cube, inside, she saw. A few feet of floor, out from the wall opposite the door, were behind sliding paper screens, now partially open, through which was visible a white curve of toilet. The rest was either tatami, wood, or paper, which she guessed would be over plastic and soundproofing, except for the ceiling, white but translucent, which emitted a gentle glow.

“Could you take it over and get me up?” the drone asked, crossly.

“Do what?” She stared at it.

Silence.

“Could I do what?” she repeated.

It rose, with unexpected agility.

“Whoa,” she said, stepping back.

“Sorry,” said a woman with an English accent, “Wilf forgot to mute when he spoke to me, so you heard him. I’m Ash. We’re working together, Wilf and I. Hadn’t time to introduce myself earlier. Didn’t want to complicate things.”

“You were listening,” Verity said.

“Sorry.”

“Who else is in there?”

“No one, at the moment,” the woman said. “We’ll let you know, should anyone join us.”

“You’re in public relations too?” Verity asked.

“What you’d call IT, actually.”

“Where are you?”

“London.”

“With Wilf?”

“In my studio, four-point-eight miles from his flat. We’re both working from home.”

“You know Eunice?”

“Not to speak to, but I’ve been involved with her, these past three months. I’m better acquainted with her than Wilf is. He’s new.”

“To what?” Verity asked.

“To things Eunice.”

“What was she?” Verity asked.

“The result of hybridization of two lines of military research. One toward uploading aspects of human consciousness, the other toward an expert system focused on a particular sort of warfare. Would you like to use the toilet?”

“I would,” Wilf said. “Excuse me.”

“I meant Verity,” the woman said, “but have a glass of water, while you’re up. You look dehydrated.”

“I thought you weren’t with him,” Verity said.

“I have feed from the cameras in his controller,” the woman, Ash, said, “which happened to be showing me his reflection in a mirror, near where he was seated.”

Verity stood, removed her jacket, hung it on an aluminum hook, crossed to the screens, entered, and slid them shut. The toilet, once she’d used it, flushed itself. She washed her hands at the tiny stainless sink in the opposite corner.

Stepping out, sliding the screens shut behind her, she saw the drone seated on the floor, at the low table, across from the couch.