Agency

55 Micro-Expressions

What about my mother?” Verity asked Lowbeer. “I’d need to tell her, if I was disappearing. Not that she’d be the only one I wouldn’t want worried over whether or not I was dead.”

“Either one of Eunice’s branch plants finds you soon,” Lowbeer said, “or you may be attempting to contact your mother in a post-nuclear scenario. In the meantime, it’s still a matter of keeping you out of Cursion’s hands.”

“You think her network can stop Qamishli going nuclear?” Verity looked back at the silhouettes of the towers.

“With the agency we assume they’ll be able to provide, we may be able to help facilitate something. Without them, there’s nothing we can do.”

“Conner’s here,” Wilf broke in, “piloting the drone, in the hotel in San Francisco.”

A feed opened, she assumed on the peripheral’s built-in phone: she herself in the black helmet, seated on the couch, eyes open but unmoving. If her body were neurologically cut out, she assumed, or whatever they called it, would its face not produce micro-expressions? Someone had pitched Stets a program that provided those, for micro-animating CG faces, supposedly to reduce the uncanny valley factor, though she hadn’t felt any difference when looking at them herself. “Does it let me blink?” she asked, suddenly worried about her own eyes, in San Francisco.

“Blink, breathe, all that autonomic shit’s taken care of,” said a startlingly American voice, male, deep.

“How about micro-expressions?” she asked.

“Fuck if I know,” said the voice, amicably enough.

“This is Conner, Verity,” said Wilf. “He’s my copilot.”

“In your living room, in London?” Verity asked.

“Washington,” Wilf said. “District of Columbia.”

“In a different stub, he means,” said the voice called Conner.

“Don’t confuse her,” said Wilf, “she’s new to this.”

“What year’d you say this drone’s in, Wilf?” Conner asked.

“Didn’t Lowbeer brief you?”

“Just said it was too early for real AI.”

“2017,” said Verity.

“Explains the vintage cars,” Conner said. “Had it figured for a cosplay zone—”

The feed vanished.

“Sorry to interrupt,” said Lowbeer, “but we need to finish our conversation.”

“Who’s the new guy in the drone?” Verity asked.

“Conner is a friend of Flynne’s,” Lowbeer said, “the woman whose peripheral we’ve loaned you. They’re from the same stub, the same small town. His military experience included using telepresence platforms in combat. He’s very adroit with them.”

“Wilf’s not.”

“Hence Conner. It’s a self-mobile communications hub for us as well, essential given the demands of your stub, but with Conner piloting, it affords you protection.”

“From Cursion?”

“From anyone, really. With Conner, we’ve been able to leave it largely unweaponized, aside from a few toys he wanted, but by jettisoning those you could get it aboard commercial flights, though not as carry-on. As soon as he gets its grippers on a firearm, though, he can make more of a mess than we can successfully tidy. He understands that, though there are limits to his restraint.”

“If that’s bullshit,” Verity said, “you’ve really gone to some trouble.”

“Eunice wouldn’t have expected you to react to any of this with unthinking acceptance.”

“She told me to trust whoever the barista took me to. He took me to meet Kathy Fang and the guy who delivered the drones Eunice ordered. I met Wilf. I met Rainey and Ash. Then Sevrin brought me to the Clift. I already knew Virgil. I know Stets. Now I’ve met Caitlin. Now you. So say I count you, all of you, as who the barista took me to.”

“Yes?”

“Then you can’t just keep introducing me to people I should trust. Where’s the cutoff?”

“That’s up to you.”

“Why was she called Eunice?” The peripheral’s eyes stung. “Can this thing cry?”

“Of course,” said Lowbeer, reaching into her suit jacket and producing a white handkerchief, which she handed to Verity. “The acronym for the project that produced her stood for Untethered Noetic Irregular Support System. U-N-I-S-S.”

Verity looked at Rainey. “So what do I get, for behaving as though I trust you?”

“Your world gets a better chance of avoiding nuclear war,” Rainey said, “not that I have any idea how.”

“Is that true?” Verity asked Lowbeer.

“Yes.”

“Then I guess I’m disappeared.” She looked out at the dark masses of the towers, receding in straight lines. “That’s still not saying I believe this is real.”

“You don’t need to,” Rainey said. “Next time you’re here, I’ll show you more. You won’t have to believe that either.”

Lowbeer’s car began to descend, then, though much more slowly than it had risen.