The Peripheral (Jackpot #1)

by William Gibson

Ash took something from her reticule, a triangular lozenge of plastic, pale green, translucent, frosted like driftglass. Like all of her things, it looked slightly grubby. She slapped its softness against the inside of his right wrist.

The Medici

“That’s never entirely easy,” said Lev. “You know about the server?”

“The great mystery, yes. Assumed to be Chinese, and as with so many aspects of China today, quite beyond us. You use it to communicate with the past, or rather a past, since in our actual past, you didn’t.

“Far less than the sort of paradox we’re accustomed to culturally, in discussing imaginary transtemporal affairs,” said Lev. “It’s actually quite simple. The act of connection produces a fork in causality, t...

“Or,” he said, “anybody around here drive a trike?”

“A trike?”

“We’re getting some tire tracks out of particulate collection. Looks like three wheels, but it’s just borderline so far, too faint.”

Co nor?

“We can’t find patents that match up,” said Edward, “let alone products, so we’re not going to be counterfeiting. Looks like the thing we’re printing is for doing something that something a lot more evolved could do a lot better.”

This item exists 70 years in the future. So to build it "now", there need to be work-arounds.

“Miss Rainey,” said Lowbeer, “I am Inspector Ainsley Lowbeer, of the Metropolitan Police. You do understand that you are present here, legally, under the Android Avatar Act?”

So a "peripheral" is an "Android Avatar."

“Indeed,” said Lowbeer. “The use of explosives is unusual, and we prefer to keep it so. Too much like asymmetric warfare.” “Terrorism,” said the rental. “We prefer not to use that term,” said Lowbeer, studying her candle flame with something that looked to Netherton to be regret, “if only because terror should remain the sole prerogative of the state.”

Hmmm...

Ash was waiting, when Lowbeer’s car’s door slid open. She reached in, took his wrist, pressed her Medici’s softness against it with her other hand, and drew him out, his feet with difficulty finding Notting Hill pavement. “Bed rest,” advised Lowbeer, briskly, as the door closed, “moderate sedation.” “Goodbye,” Netherton said, “goodbye forever.”

Ummm... We're70 years in the future. Wouldn't someone have worked up a way to prevent people becoming alcoholics or cured of them of the disorder by then?

“Lowbeer knows the history of her world, and the secret history of ours. The history that produced Lowbeer’s world includes the assassination of the president.”

“Gonzales? You shitting me?”

“She never finished her se...

“She gets elected...

“Exactly. And in Lowbeer’s view, Gonzales’s assassination was pivotal, a tipping point...

“Kind of sense the world makes,” her mother said, drawing the candlewick up under her chin, “there’s death and taxes and foreign wars. There’s men like Corbell Pickett doing evil shit for a dollar, only real money anybody local and civilian makes here now, and there’s decent-enough people having to work for their own little bit of that. Whatever you and Burton are doing, you aren’t going to be changing any of that. Just more of the same. I’ve been here all my life. So have you. Your father was born where Porter meets Main, when they still had a hospital. I’m not going anywhere. Particularly not anywhere Leon tells me I’m going to like.”

Just like today!

“Tell ’em you’re not going anywhere. They’ll need to get you more help around the place. Friends of Burton’s.” “Playing soldier?” “They were all in the service, before.”

“Think they’d’ve got their fill of it,” her mother said.

That's all they know how to do!

“Ready?” Tacoma asked, killing the engine. Flynne hadn’t been ready for any of it, she thought, not since that night she went to the trailer to sub for him. It wasn’t stuff you could be ready for. Like life, maybe, that way.