The Peripheral

7

They were prepping for a party, behind the frosted glass. She knew because it was clear now, like that trick Burton taught her with two pairs of sunglasses.

The bugs were right on it, so she was right on them, doing what she could to vary the angle of attack. She’d found a pull-down for hotdogging, so she could make the copter behave in ways they were less ready for. She’d almost gotten one that way, dropping on it. Proximity had triggered image-capture, bug in extreme close, but that was gone right away, no way of calling it up. Looked like something Shaylene might print at Forever Fab. A toy, or a really ugly piece of jewelry.

She was supposed to chase bugs, not catch them. They’d have a record of everything she did anyway. So she’d just shoo bugs, but while she did that, she was getting more than a glimpse of what was going on inside.

The couple who’d been up against the window weren’t there. Nobody human was. Robots, little low beige things that moved almost too fast to see, were vacuuming the floor, while three almost identical robot girls were arranging food on a long table. Classic anime robot babes, white china faces almost featureless. They’d built three big flower arrangements and now they were transferring food from carts to trays on the table. When the carts came in, rolling themselves to the table, the blur of beige parted just enough to let them through. Flowed around them like mechanical water, perfectly tight right-angle turns.

She was enjoying this a lot more than Burton would have. She wanted to see the party.

There were shows where you watched people prep for weddings, funerals, the end of the world. She’d never liked any of them. But they hadn’t had robot girls, or super-fast Roombas. She’d seen videos of factory robots assembling things, almost that fast, but nothing the kids had Shaylene print out for them ever moved that way.

She dropped toward two bugs, hovered, scoping one of the robot girls without changing focus. This one was wearing a quilted vest with lots of pockets, little shiny tools sticking up in them. She was using something like a dental pick to individually arrange things, too small to see, on top of sushi. Round black eyes in the china face, wider apart than human eyes, but they hadn’t been there before.

She bent her phone a little more, to give her fingers a rest. Scattering the bugs.

The whirling beige on the floor vanished, like a light turned off, all except for one poor thing, looking like a starfish, that had to hump itself out of sight on what seemed to be wheels in the tips of its five points. Broken, she guessed.

A woman entered the room. Brunette, beautiful. Not boy-game hot. Realer. Like Flynne’s favorite AI character in Operation Northwind, the French girl, heroine of the Resistance. Simple dress, like a long t-shirt, a dark gray that went to black where her body touched it, reminding Flynne of the shadows on the window. It migrated down, of its own accord, off her left shoulder entirely, as she walked the length of the table.

Robot girls stopped what they were doing, raised their heads, all eyeless now, shallow sockets smooth as their cheekbones. The woman walked around the end of the table. Cam bugs surged.

Heard her fingers on her phone, whipping the copter side to side, up, down, back. “Fuck off,” she told them.

The woman stood at the window, looking out, left shoulder bare. Then the dress climbed smoothly back, covering her shoulder, neckline rising in a V, then rounding.

“Fuck off!” Lunging at the bugs.

Window polarized again, or whatever that was. “Fuck you,” she said to the bugs, though it probably wasn’t their fault.

Ran a quick perimeter check, in case another window might have opened and she’d miss something. Nothing. Not a single bug, either.

Back around, the bugs were already bobbing, waiting. She flew through them, making them vanish.

Tongued the cud of jerky away from her cheek and chewed. Scratched her nose.

Smelled hand sanitizer.

Went after the bugs.