Agency

51 Construals

Tell me what to do,” Verity said to Ash.

The drone stood facing her. The conductive gel Virgil had spread across her forehead felt cool. She worried about getting it in her eyes.

“The unit in London,” Ash said, from the drone’s speaker, “is exponentially more sophisticated than this one.”

Several cars honked simultaneously on Geary. Verity wondered if Ash could hear them. “How can I operate that, if Wilf can barely walk in this one?”

“Interface transparency,” Ash said. “You needn’t learn to control it. If anything, you’ll need to learn not to try to.”

“Where is it, there?”

“Wilf and Rainey’s flat, Fitzrovia. It’s only just arrived.”

“What happens here, when I’m there?”

“Nothing. You’ll be neurologically elsewhere.”

“Why’s the one in London so next-level?”

“You’re about to find out,” said Ash, “if you’ll close your eyes.”

Verity did.

“There’s something you might watch for,” Ash said, “as we activate the controller. I assume you’re experiencing entoptics now. A normal phosphene display, that is. Possibly construals.”

“Possibly what?”

“Construals. The left brain attempting to impose recognizable attributes on randomness. Faces in clouds, for example. The peripheral’s entoptics differ from yours, as would anyone’s. Knowing that, you may be able to visually distinguish the threshold of neurological transition as entoptic difference, the arrival of a different phosphene display. But please keep your eyes closed until Wilf asks you to open them. Probably no more than ten seconds.”

“Why?”

“Transitioning with your eyes open, or opening them immediately after transitioning, induces nausea. When you do open them, try to move slowly at first. There may be dysmorphia as well, but it’s relatively transient.”

“Dysmorphia?” Eyes still closed, wondering if she were beginning to experience construals.

“The specific symptoms mimic postural hypotension,” Rainey said. “Dizziness on standing, possibility of fainting.”

“Are these alpha builds? The drone, the controller, whatever Wilf has in London?”

“No,” Ash said. “Ready?”

“Do it,” Verity said, as horns sounded again on Geary.

A diagonal edge of differently textured blood-dark swept smoothly past, behind her lids, right to left, horns simultaneously lost to the silence of a different room.

“Keep them closed,” said Wilf, startlingly near.

“Okay,” she said, simultaneously realizing that this wasn’t her voice.

“It’s like borrowing another body,” Rainey said, from another direction. “You’re accessing its full sensorium.”

“Open them now,” Wilf said.

She did, into the brighter, warmer light of a smaller room, its walls a pale but decidedly non-lilac gray, reminding her of the frames of the Tulpagenics glasses.

“Hello,” said a dark-haired man she took to be roughly her age, in a silly-looking silvery headpiece. He was peering at her, as if over glasses he wasn’t wearing. Having, she guessed from his position, just gotten up from beside her, from the couch on which she now sat, which was smaller than the one in the suite at the Clift, and brown.

“Wilf?” Which came out sounding, in this voice, like an interrogative yip.

“Yes,” he said, smiling unconvincingly, “and this is Rainey.”

A woman, familiar from the clip he’d shown her in the van, stepped from behind the couch. “Not everyone has the dysmorphia,” the woman said, “and for some reason they seem to exaggerate the likelihood of nausea. I’ve never had either. But I’ve heard they both tend to be most noticeable when you first stand up.”

Which Verity did then, her head instantly swimming. She quickly sat, hands that weren’t her own gripping someone else’s gray-trousered knees.

“Thereby proving me wrong,” Rainey said. “I’d offer you water, but she mentioned to me that she was hydrated.”

Verity spread the fingers of the hands. The nails, better cared for than her own had ever been, were cut short, rounded, polished. “Who did?”

“Your peripheral,” Wilf said. “It runs on Hermès AI, when it’s without a user.”

“Whose AI?” Verity looked up at him.

“The manufacturer’s,” said Ash, her unexpected voice causing Verity to glance around the room, then into what she could see of a small adjacent kitchen, equally bright. A feed appeared.

“You’re Ash?” Verity asked the woman in the feed, the wall behind her as white as her face, alive with animated drawings of what might be gazelles. Her eyes were large and gray.

“I am.”

“How am I getting this feed?”

“By phone,” Wilf said. “The peri has one built in.”

“Perry?” Verity asked.

“Peripheral,” said Wilf. “A quasibiological telepresence avatar.”

Verity looked around the room. Gray walls, pale wood floor, Scandinavian-looking furniture. “Trying this again,” she said, and got to her feet, slowly this time, feeling only slight dizziness.

“Hello, Verity,” Rainey said, stepping forward and taking her hand.

“I can feel your hand,” Verity said, surprised.

“This is new for me too,” Rainey said, releasing Verity’s hand, “but not in the same way. This peri’s only used by a friend of ours, ordinarily, who doesn’t live in London either. It isn’t modeled after her, but since I’ve mainly gotten to know her here, and this is the way we most frequently visit, I keep feeling like you’re her.”

“Where’s Thomas?” Verity asked.

“In the nursery, with the nanny.”

“I’ll be available if you need me,” Ash said. The feed closed.

Verity looked at Rainey. “How new is this technology?”

“Not very. I’m not sure, exactly.”

“Stets would have known about it, and told me. Unless this is a prototype from the past year.”

“Actually,” said Rainey, “you’re right.”

“I am?”

“How familiar are you with London?”

“Half a dozen times? Last was just before some people here wanted to vote you out of the EU.”

“I’d thought we might take Thomas for a stroll,” Rainey said, “to help you acclimatize to the peri, and get a look at London. But it seems we have Wilf’s boss parked in our mews. Wants us to join her. She can explain the unexpected nature of technology. I can fill in as needed, try to help. Wilf can be part of that from here, while he minds Thomas. Ash as well.” She was looking at the man in the matte silver headpiece, causing Verity to wonder if he were wearing it to amuse their child. “Are there mirrors in her car?” Rainey asked him.

“Not if it’s still in Winston’s waistcoat mode,” he said.

Rainey pulled on a dark jacket. “There are mirrors in the lift, all three walls, waist up,” she said to Verity. “Look at the floor, or you might trigger the dysmorphia, if that isn’t another fable about peris. Save mirrors for when we’re back up here.”

And out the door then, Verity exchanging a look with the man who was Wilf, before following Rainey, the back of whose head she asked, “Where did you say this is?”

“Fitzrovia.”

“Don’t know it.”

“Adjacent to Bloomsbury,” Rainey said. An elevator door opened. “Remember, eyes on the floor,” stepping back to allow Verity in, then getting in behind her before the door closed. “No mirrors in the lobby.”

During the brief descent, Verity focused on the black-and-white toes of the peripheral’s shoes.

The door opened.

The lobby was small, roughly the size of Fabricant Fang’s foyer, though any resemblance ended there. “How long have you lived here?” Verity asked, feeling the need to say something.

“Since I was a month pregnant. Wilf lived in hotels, when we first knew one another as colleagues, and on into our getting together.”

“Your job’s in Canada?”

“Toronto. I moved here to be with Wilf. My firm wants a peripheral of me there, to interact with clients, but I’d quit before I’d do that.” She raised her hand, which caused the blue-painted, glass-paned entrance door to open, admitting cold, damp air.

“Of you?”

“One that looks and sounds like me. I won’t have it, though. As a parent.”

“Why?”

“Fear of it surviving me, after an accident or something.” She turned up her jacket’s collar. “The effect on Thomas. Terrible for children. Not as though it hasn’t happened, unfortunately, so the risk’s not hypothetical.”

With no idea of how to respond, Verity looked down again, discovering her borrowed body’s jacket was something martial-artsy, in a thin dark fabric.

“Don’t worry,” Rainey said, seeing Verity notice the jacket, “it’s already heating up.” They stepped out together. “If I were gone, and there was something that looked exactly the way Thomas recalled me, but didn’t age—”

“Didn’t age?”

“They do, of course,” Rainey said, “but much more slowly.”

Rainey’s white-painted building, Verity saw, looking around, sealed the end of an alley, one that narrowed, oddly, toward what she took to be a brightly lit major artery. “What street’s that?”

“Tottenham Court Road,” said Rainey, her back to it.

“You said ‘full sensorium’?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t smell it.”

“Smell what?”

“London. I don’t hear it, either. No traffic. And nothing’s passed by, on the street, since we stepped out.” Beyond Rainey, a third of the way to what she’d said was Tottenham Court Road, a vehicle pixelated into apparent existence, looking something like the wingless fuselage of a vintage aircraft. “What’s that?”

“Her car.”

“Whose?”

“Lowbeer’s.”

“A hologram of it?”

“No,” said Rainey, “you saw it decloak.”

The term reminded Verity of Stets being pitched digital camouflage schemes. Rainey started toward it, so Verity followed, catching up. And still nothing passed by, out on Tottenham Court Road, not even a pedestrian. The air was fresher than the Mission’s, but colder. The peripheral’s jacket, though, did seem to have warmed up.

Now a door was opening, in the windowless side of the black car, van, whatever it was. A figure emerged, featureless against light within. Slender, broad-shouldered, in an elegantly mannish tailored suit. “Welcome to London,” said the woman, who Verity now saw was older, her face pink in the light from the car’s interior. Her white hair was quite short, except for a steeply upswept bouffant forelock. “How’s arrival treating you?”

“I’m told it could be worse,” Verity said. She looked back to Rainey’s building, seeing Wilf outlined in their third-floor living room window.

“Come in, please,” the woman said, indicating the car. “I’m Detective Inspector Ainsley Lowbeer, by the way, Metropolitan Police.”

“Police?” Verity asked.

“After a fashion.” Moving aside to allow Rainey to step up, into the vehicle. “Please.” Verity followed Rainey, finding a single folding step extended for the purpose. “Any seat at the table,” from behind them, “thank you.”

The concave interior walls were a glossy beige. No wheel, no driver’s seat, no evident controls, or, for that matter, windows or windshield. The table, oval dark wood the size of a large platter, level with the floor, was centered, surrounded by four small green leather armchairs that seemed to have partially sunken into the floor, in a carpeted nest. A serious-looking arrangement, oddly cozy yet somehow military.

As they seated themselves, the door closed.

“Welcome.” The white-haired woman, who had unusually blue eyes, was seated opposite Verity. “Please accept my apologies for having been largely responsible for the stressful week you’ve been having.”

“Responsible?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“How?”

“Ash and I were instrumental in Cursion having Tulpagenics hire you. Do you mind heights, particularly?”

“Heights?”

“I’d like to take us up now.”

“Up?” As something seemed to press down, however silently, on the roof of the vehicle, reminding her of the delivery of her Muji bag to Kathy Fang’s rooftop nap-cube, but silent, and lacking this sense of substantial yet very precise contact.