William Gibson

Quotes

1. “As the jackpot got seriously going, after the first wave of pandemics, without EU membership to buffer anything, England started looking a lot like a competitive control area,” Eunice said. “[Lowbeer] did what she knew how to do, which by then was run a CCA. But as she kept building it back up, every time another change driver impacted, she found herself using Russians. They knew how to work a CCA. They’d been there before the jackpot hit the fan. Way before…"

   “So,” said Netherton, “you suggested to her that what we were hoping to have you do, in this stub, might well create a klept here, one with you as Lowbeer?”

   “She said you were smart,” said Eunice, in obvious agreement.

   “She did?” Netherton was at once amazed and dubious.

2. 

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

3. 

   “They think they’re the only real continuum, the one original, not a stub,” Connor said. “They discovered the so-called server first, whatever anomaly allows all this. But they didn’t invent it, just found it. Anybody knows what it really is, or where, they’re not telling.”

   “Nobody knows what it is?” said Virgil.

   “Nobody has the least fucking idea, or where the hardware is. Lot of people think China, but China’s just naturally where you’d guess something like that would be…They opted to mostly go their own way, in the jackpot…Just rolled up the carpet and closed the door for a couple decades.”

4. 

   “Rose Garden in ten,” Conner said, “got it.”

   “Say what?” Virgil asked.

   “My day job,” Conner said. “President’s taking questions from the press in half an hour, likes me to check if the translation from future-ese to folk wisdom’s solid. You need me, I’ll be right on it.”

   “Break a leg,” said Virgil.

   Verity, her mouth full of croissant and raspberry jam, said nothing.

5. 

   The City, Netherton had heard Lowbeer say, explaining the klept to Flynne, had long been, and well prior to the jackpot, a unique species of semi-autonomous crypto-state, the single least democratic element of elected British government. It was this singular status, according to Lowbeer, that had allowed it to ride out the eventual collapse of democracy. That, and its core expertise in laundering money, had brought it into a mutually beneficial synergy with the émigré oligarch community, dominated by Russians, who had themselves first been attracted to London by the City’s meta-criminal financial arcana, plus the lavish culture of personal amenities for those requiring same. With this in mind, he picked up the bowl of coffee and regarded Lev over its rim.

6. 

   “My mother’s story,” Netherton said, “held that everything would invariably collapse, if the klept were left to their own resources.”

   “Their tedious ambition and contempt for rule of law would bring everything down, around their ears and ours,” Lowbeer said. “They managed to do that with the previous world order, after all, though then it was effectively their goal. They welcomed the jackpot, the chaos it brought.”

7. 

   “When we nudged Cursion into experimenting with Eunice,” Ash said, “we understood that we’d be destabilizing them…By now, destabilization has tipped over into dysfunction.”

   “They were functional enough to mount an attack,” Wilf said.

   “They’re not strategists,” said Ash, “though they assume they are. A fully functional, strategically sound opponent would be a greater threat, but without posing the sort of unpredictable danger they currently do.”

8. 

   "You’ll be contacting Verity Jane instead,” Lowbeer said.

   “Who?”

   “…you’ll help enlist her as our agent there. She’s not at all the person I’d choose for the job, but there it is. I’m repeatedly placed in the position of choosing which innocent to sacrifice, to whatever current idea of the greater good. I’m weary of that. You’ve no idea how weary.”

9. 

   “How do you keep this all sorted?”

   “My ass is legion,” said Eunice.

10. 

    “You’re used to telepresence, then,” Lev said.

    “We call it getting a haircut,” Flynne said, giving him a look as she got to her feet, “back in frontier days.”

11. 

    “How far back did Vespasian go,” Netherton asked, “to initiate this stub?”

    “Mid-2015.”

    “When is it, there, now?”

    “2017,” she said, “fall.”

    “Much changed?”

    “The outcome of the previous year’s American presidential election. Brexit referendum as well….”

    “But why would Vespasian, of all people, have desired positive change?”

    “He was a sadist,” said Lowbeer, “and terribly clever at it…when he failed to return to fine-tune and amplify course, as he always did, things went their own way.”

    “How is it there, given that?”

    “Grim. They’re being driven into the same blades we were, but at a less acute angle.”

12. 

    Conner was in the garden, on hands and knees, snarling at Gordon and Tyenna. They were facing him, side by side, as if ready to spring, their musculature looking even less canine than usual, their stiff tails in particular. Carnivorous kangaroos, in wolf outfits with Cubist stripes.

    “What’s he doing out there?” Netherton asked.

    “I don’t know,” said Lev, “but they love it.”

    Now the two creatures lunged at Conner simultaneously. He fell between them, flailing, wrestling with them. They were making a high-pitched, repetitious coughing sound.