Agency (Eunice's drones)

Brief description

Eunice gathers information from her set of miniature, military grade drones as well as from webcams, traffic drones, street cams and other cameras she accesses. She shows Verity feeds from these various sources in the AR glasses that Eunice uses as her interface to Verity. She uses facial recognition on everyone she sees to identify them and analyse the overall situation. 

One of Eunice's first actions is to order her set of four drones. This reminds me so strongly of Murderbot, who feels more comfortable seeing the world through drones than through their built-in "eyes", or Sidra, who is likewise much happier seeing the world through the distributed eyes of multiple bots or drones. Unlike Murderbot and Sidra, Eunice has no body, so the drones and the many other cameras she accesses are her only sources of visual information. The dizzying skill with which Eunice manages her multiple visual input sources sets her clearly apart from the merely human Verity, although the story is focalised through Verity, and so we only experience Eunice's drones and cameras when she shows them to Verity. It seems that Eunice sees what Verity sees through the AR glasses (because Verity sees facial recognition squares superimposed on peoples' faces when wearing the glasses) but Eunice also sees many other feeds that she only shows Verity at times.

Pull Quotes

Verity went to the window, turned its paint-crusted latch, and heaved it up. In the feed, the drone’s POV reversed, showing her the doorway into the kitchen. Fast-forward blur, then her own back, in Joe-Eddy’s orange plaid shirt-jacket, which she instantly decided never to wear again, and then it was past her, with just the faintest gnat-zip, and rising, as quickly, straight up. Clearing the flat roof’s low parapet. She’d never seen the roof here before, not that anything seemed to be up there. The drone confirmed this, quickly reconnoitering. It hovered over something. A rain-flattened clutter of gray bone, a small beaked skull, a hint of fossil wings.

Gibson, William. Agency (The Jackpot Trilogy) (p. 44). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

“Check this,” Eunice said, opening a feed straight up, evidently from the microdrone on the roof.

Verity, remembering the view from the top of the park, Eunice tagging drones above the Financial District, thought she saw one now, above them. “Drone?”

“National Enquirer,” Eunice said. “Here’s their feed.”

A white rectangle, in SoMa traffic. The top of this truck, Verity guessed. “Nobody’s thought you might be you yet, but one of the hardhats flagged you as possible scandal material, going in. And they know Caitlin’s been in New York.”

“Hate ’em,” Verity said. Eunice replaced the Enquirer’s feed of the truck’s roof with their drone again, barely visible against cloud. Then the feed closed, leaving her in blurry green undarkness. “That guy, the Moldovan . . .”

Gibson, William. Agency (The Jackpot Trilogy) (pp. 72-73). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Work that the situation appears in

Title Publication Type Year Creator
Agency Narrative, Novel William Gibson
Who does what?
Machine P.O.V
Not machine P.O.V.

Authored by

UUID
7d09acb9-65e4-467d-b993-ef5a564d3f6b