Sycamore (Near-Future Dystopia)

by Craig A. Falconer

  SYCAMORE

  By Craig A. Falconer

  Sycamore

  © 2013 Craig A. Falconer

  This edition published February 2015

  All rights reserved by the author.

  The characters and events herein are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Reader's note: Sycamore was written, produced and edited in Scotland. As such, some spellings will differ from those found in the United States. Examples of British English include using colour rather than color, organise rather than organize, and centre rather then center.

  At the author's request, this work has been made available free of all DRM.

  For Anya.

  I

  1

  The chip sits underneath the trackpad and the trackpad is...

  Kurt’s mental rehearsal was interrupted by a downpour so well-timed that it could only have been sent to test him. He was just five minutes into his journey and there was a long way to go; Randy’s house was twenty minutes away and there would be a similar walk to the auditorium from there.

  If the rain kept up he would need an umbrella. But even then, he realised, the stupidly uncomfortable loafers he had to wear for the contest would be soaked by the water on the ground. Walking wouldn’t do. He would have to get a bus.

  He squinted at the bus stop a few hundred feet away. A message appeared in his vision, hovering in the air above the stop. “Service 37: 4 minutes.” He hurried along to the shelter and reached into his pocket for his wallet.

  No way. Surely it wasn’t still in the jeans he wore every other day, when there was no Draconian dress code to cause this kind of problem? He patted his suit jacket and felt something, remembering then that he had put the wallet in there earlier so he wouldn’t forget it. He pulled the wallet out so excitedly that it fell to the ground and splashed in the shallow end of a rapidly-forming puddle.

  He picked it up and dried the back with his sleeve. It was an old wallet — too old — but he liked it. He liked the “K.J.” emblazoned on the front and he liked the scratch on the back. The popper was tight but he liked that, too.

  Kurt liked the wallet less on discovering that its change pouch was empty but for a few pennies and even less on finding no notes in its fold. He rushed to take everything out in case any coins were hiding in the sparsely-populated card compartment. They weren’t. He might as well have left the damn thing in his jeans.

  That soggy wallet with its used Starbucks gift-card, three pennies and a handful of lint was all Kurt had to show for his 23 years of life, the last four of which had involved nothing but long days of intensive study and longer nights of obsessive coding. It all led to tonight. Having just graduated into the weakest jobs market in history, Kurt’s career prospects didn’t look good. Wet, broke and increasingly desperate, he quite simply had to win.

  But before winning the contest he had to get there. Dry. Randy hadn’t been able to drive since the accident and Kurt couldn’t afford to keep a vehicle, so his only options were bus or foot. Now that the money problem had cropped up he would need to return home first either way. The best case scenario was that there would be a few dollars lying around and he could get a bus from his front door. Worst case, he could pick up an umbrella and a change of shoes for the walk. It would be so much easier if the rain just passed, though, so he decided to have a proper look at what the sky said.

  He stepped out from the bus stop and looked straight up into the rain to find out. A second later the unhelpful words appeared, bold and black against the grey clouds: “Now: Rain.”

  Kurt’s face was getting soaked but he had to stay where he was to find out whether he would need to run home in the hope of finding a bus fare or could wait the rain out. He kept his eyes in the sky until the message changed. “Later (+ 10 min): Clear skies ahead.” Excellent news, but ten minutes wasn’t enough. He focused on the words for a few seconds longer, just to be safe. “Later (+20 min): Clear skies ahead.”

  It didn’t matter that his UltraLenses then warned that the rain would resume in half an hour; Kurt would get bus money from Randy and waltz into the auditorium drier than a Martian summer.

  Many wearers believed that their UltraLenses were capable of interpreting visible atmospheric conditions to predict forthcoming weather patterns. Kurt knew better. He knew that the Lenses were simply broadcasting their location to the server which then returned the appropriate forecast for them to overlay in the sky. Reality was augmented, no magic involved.

  Despite their technological inferiority to many of the other recently released augmented reality glasses — some of which could interpret cloud coverage — Sycamore’s UltraLenses dominated the congested AR market. Sycamore’s founder Isaiah Amos had bet on consumer society maintaining its preference for form over function and his wisdom had been rewarded to the tune of 73% market share. His image-conscious target consumers were loathe to walk around with unfashionable glasses covering their eyes, even if those glasses had physical buttons for zoom control and photography that were infinitely more convenient than syncing the UltraLenses with a smartphone to control their function through an app.

  Early marketing campaigns successfully established the Lenses as the affluent’s AR device of choice and associated bulky glasses with dated science fiction. No one wanted to look like a vision of the future from the 1980s. Unobtrusive contact lenses were the real future of AR and that future was Sycamore’s to lose.

  Some raised privacy concerns over being filmed without their consent, or even their knowledge, but Sycamore insisted that the UltraLenses were designed to enhance rather than record reality. Others cried inequality, worrying that a two-tier system would emerge with those unable to afford the optical upgrade left at an unfair disadvantage. Amos pointed out that the Lenses were corrective as well as improving and insisted that Sycamore’s intention was to elevate everyone. He opted to tactfully ignore the religious types’ complaints over the ethics of interfering with the human body. God had made it perfect enough, they told him. The very idea of “perfect enough” disgusted Amos almost as much as it did Kurt. “Perfect enough” was an affront to progress.

  Kurt concerned himself with neither moral nor stylistic issues; to him, everything was subjective bar progress itself. He queued up for the UltraLenses because he saw unlimited potential in their future use but quickly grew frustrated at the lack of practical applications. The message in the sky on launch night, the first anyone had seen, promised much. “Welcome to Sycamore,” it read, “… enjoy the view.”

  But now, barely three years since the first AR glasses had been released and eight months since the UltraLenses launched to unprecedented fanfare, few used them as anything more than a convenient TV-substitute. The novelty of having status updates and text messages pop-up in their vision quickly wore off when consumers realised that they still had to use another device to reply.

  With no killer app to capture the public’s imagination, the entire AR movement was in danger of joining PalmPilots and Minidiscs as a quaint relic of technology past. Most of the industry’s major players viewed AR as little more than an interesting experiment — a side-project to their primary business of smartphones and tablets. Failure would be palatable.

  For Amos and Sycamore, however, failure would be fatal. The UltraLenses were Sycamore’s all-or-nothing attempt to claim the market and the young company had no other products to fall back on. Success depended on advertising revenues which in turn depended on consumers wearing the Lenses at all times so that their habits could be tracked and appropriate ads delivered at opportune moments. But with no reason to keep their Lenses in, the average user now wore t
hem for only four or five viewing hours per day. The business model was faltering.

  These limited-use and limited-interface problems were common to all AR devices but the rival glasses at least boasted touch-sensitive frames and semi-functional voice control for people with Californian accents. Sycamore’s decision to launch a product with no physical or vocal interface whatsoever made the company an easy target for frustrated consumers and told-you-so industry pundits. Persistent rumours of a purpose-built SycaPhone suggested that even the famously stubborn Amos regretted his decision. Kurt was just about the only person who still believed in the conceptual value of the UltraLenses and he knew how close their potential was to being fulfilled.

  The contest on which his future depended was ostensibly going to reward the creator of the most innovative UltraLens-compatible service or device with a job for life at Sycamore. The tree of life needed a new family member, as Amos had framed it. But Kurt had it on impeccable underground authority that the event was a guerrilla marketing exercise to create buzz for the SycaPhone — that the final contestant would be an intern pitching an idea already destined to win. Defiantly, he believed that his idea was still too good to ignore. It would be heard by a lot of important people in the auditorium and an awful lot more watching at home. And once an idea like this was out, even Amos wouldn’t be able to keep it down. It was better than the SycaPhone and no one would be able to convince the audience otherwise.

  Even before learning of the SycaPhone shenanigans, Kurt approached the contest from a unique viewpoint. He didn’t think that another device was what the UltraLenses needed. He didn’t think about what the Lenses needed at all. Rather, Kurt saw a one-shot opportunity to integrate the Lenses into the seamless human-computer system he had been designing for years. Sycamore held all sorts of patents that prohibited anyone else from producing AR contact lenses; Amos was running the only game in town and tonight was Kurt’s only chance to get in on it.

  The SycaPhone deceit only made him more determined to win and he utilised the time spent sheltering under the bus stop to that end, rehearsing his pitch to ensure it made the maximum possible impression. The shower passed quickly, as the Lenses had promised, and he was back on his way within a few minutes. He ran over the key lines as he walked.

  The day of the handheld device has passed. All we need is a display, a processor and a control interface. The UltraLenses are capable of both full-immersion and composite imaging, so we already have the best possible display. All we need now is a processor and an interface.

  The processor need only be a microchip, and a multitouch trackpad is the best interface we have. The display is in your eyes and the rest doesn’t have to be any further away. You don’t have to carry anything around. There’s nothing in your pocket.

  Kurt would pause there to let the tension build. The audience would already be sold on the benefits of his Recorded Reality concept and the next sentence would either clinch victory or ensure defeat.

  The chip sits underneath the trackpad and the trackpad is...

  What the hell?

  A repulsive odour confronted Kurt as he turned the corner into Randy’s street. He had never been interrupted by a smell before but nor had he ever met one so strong. It was coming from the other side of the road, where he could see a puddle of blood behind a parked car. There was movement.

  He didn’t want to look but at the same time he wanted nothing more. Curiosity got the better of him and he peeked around the vehicle. The remains of a ginger cat, evidently squashed while sleeping, lay flattened at the edge of the road. Two black birds were on the scene. One looked up at Kurt with blood on its beak and cawed into the air as if boastful to be extracting a twisted measure of inter-species revenge. The other met his gaze for barely a second before resuming its feast. Kurt’s eyes were stuck on the birds long enough for the words “common raven” to appear above each of their heads. He didn’t know what to make of the spectacle and turned away when the vocal raven rejoined its partner in pecking flesh from the cat’s crushed bones.

  He tried to physically shake the image from his head while he walked up the path to Randy’s front door but found it returning as soon as Randy answered his knock.

  ~

  “Have you seen the dead cat?”

  Randy nodded. “Sick, right?”

  “There were two ravens eating it. One looked up at me when I walked past, like he was trying to send me some kind of message. Then he just kept going. Since when do birds eat cats?”

  “I dunno,” said Randy, hobbling backwards to let Kurt through the door. “Since the cat was dead and the birds were hungry, I guess. What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you had to get ready for your thing.”

  “I did, but now I am. Are the kids around?”

  “Sabrina!” Randy called. “You’ve got a visitor.”

  Randy was almost a decade older than Kurt and it showed. Both sported stubble but Kurt’s looked like it was supposed to be there — like it went with his meticulously messy hair. Kurt’s shirt and tie somewhat outshone Randy’s creased t-shirt and jeans, and that the latter was hunched over two crutches further added to the distinction. The fraternal resemblance was there, but you had to look for it.

  All smiles and innocence, Sabrina look like neither of them as she skipped her way down the stairs.

  “Uncle Kurt!” she yelled and ran into his arms. “Guess what? Only 31 days until our birthday.”

  “No way, another birthday? I’m looking at 24. How old are you going to be this time? Eight?”

  “Ten,” she snarled, playfully angry at the familiar tease. Kurt was joking, but Sabrina did look nearer seven than nine.

  He feigned a wince. “Double figures? Tough break. It’s all downhill from there, kid. Trust me.”

  “But downhill is good. It’s easier than going up.” Sabrina stuck her tongue out at Kurt.

  He turned to Randy. “How did something that came from you get so smart?”

  “She got Lisa’s brains.”

  “Yeah,” said Sabrina, nodding in agreement, “and JJ got Dad’s. His looks, too.”

  Kurt laughed. “Where is your brother, anyway?”

  “He’s tuned out in his room,” Randy answered. “The usual. There’s no point going in — he won’t see or hear you.”

  “Oh well. I’ll nip up to see him before I go, just to let him know I was here.”

  Randy hobbled through to the sofa, leaving Kurt and Sabrina in the hallway.

  “Are you going to another funeral?” she asked as he took off his loafers and suit jacket.

  “This is a different suit. It’s for my contest, remember?”

  “Oh yeah. Dad said not to get my hopes up ’cause you won’t win.”

  “Then it’s just as well your dad doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Kurt winked and Sabrina giggled. He led her into the kitchen and opened a cupboard. “I don’t have time to make a real dinner this week but we could do some soup if you want?”

  She did, and keenly collected the ingredients as Kurt read them out from his phone. He selected the recipe and sent it to his Lenses. The ingredients lay on the worktop and numbers appeared above them in the order they would be needed.

  “Carrot first,” he said.

  Sabrina handed it to him. Kurt looked at the carrot until dotted lines appeared then chopped it at the instructed intervals. Sabrina tipped the sliced carrot into the blender.

  Kurt looked back down at his ingredients. The cilantro was marked “2” but he had to wait almost three seconds for the Lenses to tell him to wash it. How anyone else could find such lag acceptable was a mystery.

  Sabrina stood on a chair to rinse the cilantro under the tap. After a few similar procedures she grew bored of following second-hand instructions. “Uncle Kurt, when can I get my own UltraLenses?”

  “You’re too young for things like that,” he answered without looking up.

  “But Janey Fisher has a pair and she’s only a month older than me!”


  Kurt pressed blend and looked into Sabrina’s eyes. “That’s because I don’t care about protecting Janey Fisher. These things aren’t for kids, okay? You’ll be old enough for long enough. Now be a good girl and tell your dad his soup is nearly ready.”

  Kurt’s idea of making soup was piling ingredients into Randy’s industrial-strength blender and leaving it on until the motor made the liquid hot. “The beauty of a good recipe is its simplicity,” his father always used to say. Kurt took simplicity to its limit and his dubious masterpiece was ready to serve inside four minutes.

  He set the bowls down on the hardwood table and fetched three glasses from the matching cupboard. He appreciated the size of the room when it took him several seconds to walk back with them. It was a far cry from his own dingy kitchenette.

  It may not have been in the best neighbourhood but Randy’s whole house was much nicer than Kurt’s. Randy had been high up at the Lexington brewery before the crash, a position which had enabled he and Lisa to secure a mortgage when the banks were turning almost everyone away. Kurt and Randy’s parents had nothing to leave them after the crash, but the payout from Lisa’s life insurance meant that Randy could afford to keep the family home despite his incapacitation. How long he would be unable to work and how long the money would sustain the family was unclear. Kurt wanted to win the contest for them as much as himself.

  Sabrina returned with Randy just as Kurt was pouring the soup into their bowls, straight from the blending jug.

  “Always a classy service when your Uncle Kurt’s around, huh?”

  Everyone laughed. Kurt was glad of the normality having been able to think of nothing but the contest all week. Randy quickly brought him back to reality.

  “So how are you feeling about tonight? Have you got the pitch ironed out?”

  Kurt coughed as he forced down a mouthful of soup, too hot from the overly-effective blender. “More or less, yeah. I know what I’m selling and I know how to sell it, I just don’t know if it’s the right way to sell it to them.”