Agency

86 Empty Chair

On his way home now, Netherton remembered the breakfast he hadn’t had. An egg sandwich seemed a good idea. He turned off into Chenies Street, where he knew a smaller, less compulsively authentic shop than the one Lowbeer favored. The morning having grown colder, he dialed his jacket up and walked there.

Taking a seat at the otherwise unoccupied counter, he ordered a fried egg sandwich on white toast and a glass of 2 percent milk. As the counter bot left with his order, Ash’s sigil pulsed. “Yes?” he answered.

“What are you doing?” she asked, having, he assumed, no way of seeing him.

“Sitting down for a belated but well-deserved breakfast. I’ve had nothing but coffee since getting up.”

“Consider yourself fortunate,” said Ash. “I’ve not slept at all.”

As the bot brought his sandwich and glass of milk, prepared with an inhuman speed that would have spoiled the experience for Lowbeer, he imagined Ash drawing herself a cup of scalding tea from her crusty samovar. “What’s kept you up, then?”

“Eunice’s network. Lowbeer now sees herself in it. Its skills are those she had to acquire during the worst decades of the jackpot.”

“Go on,” he said, biting into his sandwich.

“We don’t yet understand the so-called branch plants. The ones that hadn’t managed to return, to merge with her, before she was taken down. Of her, but not her. They communicate with each other, and with individuals they’ve elected to work with, ourselves included. It feels as if that constitutes an entity. As if there were a long table, Lowbeer says, its either side packed with strangers, and at the head, an empty chair. But it’s a very actively empty chair, one whose intent we can only infer by the actions of those around the table.”

Netherton rolled his eyes, swallowed some sandwich, drank milk. “Like Mechanical Turk?” he asked, recalling Virgil having mentioned a service of his day, monetizing live human intelligence. He took another bite, discovering that Ash’s long-windedness was causing his sandwich to cool. He chewed more rapidly.

“When you’ve finished your breakfast,” she said, “check in with Verity.”

“Where’s the drone?” he asked, around his mouthful of sandwich.

“Clipped to the back of a motorbike, on a Californian highway.”

“And Verity?”

“She’s with it.”

“It’s driving?”

“No,” said Ash. “Don’t talk with your mouth full. It’s disgusting.”