Cayce’s first footage had been waiting for her as she emerged from the flooded all-genders toilet at a NoLiTa gallery party, that previous November. Wondering what she could do to sterilize the soles of her shoes, and reminding herself never to touch them again, she’d noticed two people huddled on either side of a third, a turtlenecked man with a portable DVD player, held before him in the way that crèche figures of the Three Kings hold their gifts.
And passing these three she’d seen a face there, on the screen of his ciborium. She’d stopped without thinking and done that stupid duck dance, trying to better align retina to pixel.
“What is that?” she’d asked. A sideways look from a girl with hooded eyes, a sharp and avian nose, round steel labret stud gleaming from beneath her lower lip. “Footage,” this one had said, and for Cayce it had started there.
Published in 2003, William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition has been called his best novel since the original cyberpunk trilogy. Does it live up to its reputation?