Sycamore (Near-Future Dystopia)

by Craig A. Falconer

  “The Seed is in that?” said Kurt.

  “Yes,” the doctor replied. “You’re not scared of needles, are you?”

  Minion answered. “That’s Kurtonite you’re talking to, doc. He’s not afraid of anything.”

  “No. I don’t mind needles,” said Kurt, ignoring Minion’s attempt to annoy him. “I just can’t believe it’s so small.”

  The doctor took Kurt’s left hand and asked him to relax. “Please squeeze your wrist tightly with your right hand. Good. Now keep squeezing and extend your fingers.”

  Kurt did as the doctor said. His left hand shook under the opposing stresses. The needle reached his palm.

  “Look into my eyes,” said the doctor.

  “No. I want to see.”

  The doctor held the syringe at a slight angle and pressed down on the top. A sharp intake of breath signalled Kurt Jacobs becoming the first man to be seeded. He released his wrist and stared at his palm.

  Time seemed to stop as everyone in the room waited for him to do or say something. Amos eventually broke the silence. “So? How does it feel?”

  “You know when you get an itch under your shoulder blade and you just have to wait until it goes away? It felt like that, except inside my hand and it stopped straight away.”

  “And now?” asked the doctor.

  “Now it sort of feels like really intense pins and needles. That’ll stop too, though... right?”

  Amos and the doctor looked at each other and collectively shrugged. “You’re the guinea pig,” said Amos.

  “It’s fading. Definitely fading.”

  Amos breathed a sigh of relief. “Good, now we can take care of the sound. There’s a tiny speaker for each of your ears. We’re calling them in-earphones and giving them away free with The Seed. They sit far enough inside that nobody else can hear your audio. They record sound, too, so this completes the system with no need for a headset.”

  “You’re not injecting anything in my ears. No way.”

  “Oh, come on. It’s just a little prick! Don’t be such a fairy,” said Amos.

  “I always knew it,” Minion grinned. “He has that look about him.”

  Kurt scowled at Minion then turned to the doctor. “Just do it quick, yeah?”

  The doctor explained to Kurt that he wasn’t injecting anything — “it’s more like sticking them on” — and proceeded with the painless process. Kurt was surprised when the doctor said it was over and put everything back into his briefcase.

  “You can go now,” Amos told the doctor. “Thank you. And remember: not a word.”

  ~

  The door closed and Kurt sat down, still looking at his hand and now also wondering what was inside his ears.

  “And now the more important question,” said Amos. “Does it work?”

  “How would I know?”

  “You can play with the sound later… for now I mean the OS. Double fivetap to bring it up.”

  Kurt tapped his palm with all five fingers of his right hand twice in quick succession. His mouth fell open in amazement. “It works.” The operating system’s dashboard appeared in the centre of Kurt’s vision at its default 50% transparency. “Are the gestures how I wrote them?”

  “Everything is how you wrote it,” Amos confirmed. “Even the shortcut gestures to answer calls and access messaging without bringing up the OS. It’s got the works.”

  “How did you get this done in nine days?”

  “We have a strong and talented workforce. Sycamore was already the fastest-growing tech corporation in the universe before you came along, Mr Jacobs. We know what we’re doing.”

  Kurt was impressed. He pinched his thumb and index finger inwards on his palm to reduce the size of his dashboard. A three-fingered downward swipe increased the transparency until it faded out and his vision returned to normal. He looked at Amos with no effort to contain his delight. “You son of a bitch. You actually did it.”

  “We did. Obviously the available apps are limited at the moment, though. Feel free to explore.”

  Kurt swiped three fingers upwards and the dashboard returned. It was a standard tiled interface, designed for simplicity. There was room for sixteen tiles on the first page but only half were occupied: Settings, SycaStore, SycaNews, Forest, Video-call, Voice-call, Messaging and Relive. “Is the SycaStore live?” he asked Amos.

  “Not until launch.”

  “Fair enough. So what are Forest and Relive? And where’s the web browser?”

  “Forest is our new social network. Relive is the app from which consumers can, well, relive their previous experiences by accessing their UltraLens recordings from Icarus. It’ll go live with the SycaStore. And there is no browser. We have no plans to support web browsing.”

  Kurt looked blankly at Amos, as though awaiting a punchline. None came.

  “Why would we?” Amos continued. “The most visited website in the world is a search engine! That shows that people browse to find things; we want them to know where everything is. Most consumers only use the internet to access their social networks, e-mail each other, buy things, and read news. There are apps for that.”

  “But you can’t just... not have the internet.” Kurt’s tone was inflected. He still wasn’t sure if Amos was serious.

  “Why? The internet is a mess — so lawless and decentralised. We can’t control the ads on third-party websites, so why would companies pay our premium rates if they could reach our consumers through the back door? You’re the one who told me about attachment to method standing in the way of progress. The best method for meeting 99% of the needs of 99% of our consumers is to have their favourite services and content sources accessible through neat, self-contained apps.”

  “Someone will make an internet app, then,” said Kurt.

  “They can if they want, but we won’t let it in the store. Seriously, what do people use the internet for that they’ll miss out on? Other than piracy there’s nothing. By launch there will be apps for their online shopping, their auction sites, their user-generated encyclopaedias, their message boards, their tube sites, their specialist news sources, their adult needs, everything. What else is the internet for?”

  “People use the internet to post unpopular opinions that nowhere else will host. The internet is the only democratising force we have.”

  “Come on, Mr Jacobs, they can still tweet. And anyway, if those opinions were any good they wouldn’t be so unpopular. That’s how democracy works: what’s popular is right.”

  “You can stop calling me Mr Jacobs now. And no, it’s really not. Democracy is about being able to say what you want and the internet lets people do that.”

  “Today’s kids aren’t interested in stuff like that, though, and their generation has grown up without file systems and with apps for everything. It’s what they know. You didn’t insist on an old-fashioned file system so why are you so set on a browser? The internet is like a giant supermarket but people keep buying the same things, so most of the space is wasted. Our system is a vending machine, with neat little tiles that everyone can understand. Push a button and there you are: easy! Progress, in a nutshell. Why would a man of science be upset by progress?”

  “I’m not upset. I’m just annoyed that you’re handicapping The Seed by eliminating user choice. It’s so short-sighted. Trying to sell people a Seed with no browser would be like trying to sell them a car they can’t steer.”

  “That would be better,” said Amos, his eyes lighting up. “Everyone would buy that car! It’s a good analogy, actually. People have to steer to get where they want just as people have to browse to find what they want. Having an app that takes you right there is like being able to tell the car where to go and sit back until it arrives.”

  “What if the car doesn’t know how to get to the place you want to go, though? Or what if it decides you shouldn’t go there?”

  Amos shrugged. “Go somewhere else.”

  Kurt held his gaze. “I want my Seed to have a browser.”

>   “It’s my Seed,” said Amos. “I’ll do what I want with it.”

  “No, it’s my Seed.”

  Amos rolled his eyes at Kurt, breaking then quickly resuming their intense eye-contact. “The Seed belongs to you in the same way that your shoes belong to the Filipino orphan who stitched them together. This is serious business, Kurt. Not everything is about you.”

  “I can see that. It’s all about control.”

  “I’m not going to sit here and lie to you.” Amos leaned back in his chair. “None of this is about control; it’s all about money. Sycamore is a corporation and as such exists to turn a profit. In some instances, yes, control is a necessary intermediary on the road to profit. Full control of advertising placements and the data which informs those placements is crucial for maximum profitability.”

  “So everything you’ve ever said about progress is a lie, it’s all just about money? I thought you were different.”

  “Come on, friends,” Minion interjected in a grating voice. “This should be a happy time. We’re arguing about how to make sure we succeed; different methods, same intention. Let’s talk business. Kurtonite just has to start realising that he can’t always be right.”

  “My name’s Kurt.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Okay,” said Amos, pouring water from a bottle into the mug in front of him. “Business. Kurt, tell everyone your ideas on advertising placements. The rest of us already know what one another thinks.”

  “Why are you drinking cold water from a mug?” asked Kurt, distracted.

  “Let’s just say you’re not the only one who doesn’t like glass. Anyway, placements?”

  “My feelings on advertising placements? Well, first of all, we need an outright ban on sticky pop-ups. You know, the relative ones that move with your eyes until you click them away. I heard that mistimed pop-ups have caused car crashes when people couldn’t see the road.”

  “Fabrications,” said Amos. “Tall tales of corporate espionage. And anyway, that could never happen if cars drove themselves. See how it all comes around?”

  “Pop-ups aren’t a big part of our plan,” said Minion, an expert on such matters. “See, right now most placements are static — ads in the sky or at the side of the road. Basically floating billboards. But a clickable interface changes everything. Think of posters advertising a gig, for example. We place the ad on a busy shopping street and any user focusing on it can click through to purchase tickets. It’s just like on a website: you see the ads and click the ones you want.”

  Kurt considered the concept. “So it’s like a normal public ad but with a link attached? At least it’s less obtrusive than targeting people in their homes like I thought you might.”

  “Well,” Minion sighed, “that’s the strength and weakness of public ads: they’re public. Everyone sees them, whether they’re part of the target audience or not. Premiums and Super Premiums are the next step. As well as location and basic demographic data, Seed integration will give us info on buying habits, viewing habits, actual behavioural habits… everything. We’ll know who consumers talk to and what they say, what they want for Christmas and what their partner wants for their anniversary.”

  “Private data like that is precious,” said Kurt.

  Minion grinned, exposing a gleaming set of fittingly sharp teeth. “And precious things are valuable. At Data Collection we take that information and offer it to suitable third-parties who will pay whatever we ask. A Premium placement might be for a concert featuring whoever you’ve just been listening to, but Super Premiums are the real story. Say a man has a fight with his wife. Her Forest or voice comms might reveal that she really wants a holiday in France for their anniversary but that she doesn’t think he would do something so romantic. A Super Premium ad would see a Sycamore worker show the man her comment and offer a competitive selection of French holidays. The man wins his wife over, the advertiser gets what they want, and they pay us astoundingly well for the honour.”

  Kurt looked across the table to Amos. He didn’t know what Forest was but hated the sound of the Super Premiums. “This is a joke, right? We’re not really going to be reading people’s messages and watching the world through their eyes just so we can make money from opportunistic advertisers... are we?”

  Amos signalled to Minion that he would handle the probing question. “We are. But only us. I’m happy to sell data and info but I insist on keeping communications analysis and vista monitoring in-house. Advertisers have no right to intrude on consumers’ privacy like that.”

  “And we do?”

  “As per the terms of the EULA, yes — quite explicitly. But we’ll only exercise that right in certain situations. When consumers are in the vicinity of a physical store, for example. Knowing where people look can inform effective store-layout so it’s valuable data. Other than that and the kind of thing Terrance was talking about, DC will analyse a cross-section of consumers’ TV habits to see which areas of the screen they focus on and when; again, producers want that data and are willing to pay for it. But the key point is that only we will ever see the live streams. No one else gets access. Ever.”

  Kurt’s displeasure was distracted. “What about law enforcement, like I said last week? Surely we could make an exception to catch murderers and rapists.”

  “We have something in mind to ensure that we can assist the security agencies without entrusting them with consumers’ streams. The police and so on will have access to the tracking grid, of course, but no more than anyone else.”

  “What do you mean anyone else?”

  Communications Colin cleared his throat before answering Kurt’s query. “A core function of our new social network, Forest, is automatic tracking and mapping of every consumer’s precise location via The Seed.”

  “Wait. What? You can’t share people’s location without their consent. And why track The Seed’s location in the first place? The UltraLenses are already tracked.”

  “Exactly,” said Amos, trying to allay Kurt’s tiresome privacy concerns. “The UltraLenses are tracked anyway, like you just said, so what difference does it make if The Seed is, too?”

  “It makes every difference!” Kurt slammed his fist down into the table harder than intended. “People can take the Lenses out and throw them away. What happens when there’s a chip in your hand that you can’t switch off? Do you not hear how evil that sounds?”

  “There’s no such thing as evil,” Amos said absently.

  “Tracking everyone’s location via a chip under their skin and sharing it without their consent must be as close as it gets. If you launch with that, the press will eat us alive and everything will be for nothing.”

  Amos felt that Kurt was being disrespectful in raising his voice in the meeting room, but his love of money overpowered his love of respect and commanded him to consider the point. He looked around the table and tried to gauge the feelings of his men without asking for them. Minion’s face rarely reflected anything and Communications Colin utterly lacked the capacity to stand up for his opinions, so Amos concentrated his gaze on the hitherto silent Head of Marketing.

  “Gary, what do you say?”

  Red-tie Gary from Marketing, no friend of Kurt’s at the contest, was candid in his response. “I think the kid’s right about this one, sir. Compulsory location-sharing is the one thing that our research suggests people aren’t likely to stand for. Even having it activated by default will garner a lot of negative attention for our launch. It has to be opt-in.”

  “Fine,” Amos conceded, “we’ll ask them to opt-in. Everyone will, though. I’ll ask nicely.”

  “Good,” said Kurt. “What’s the idea with the new social network anyway? Why Forest?”

  Communications Colin answered again. He liked talking about his brainchild. “With Forest we’re aiming to connect everyone and to represent those connections visually. Each user will have their own publicly-visible tree. The tree will grow branches as the consumer connects with others a
nd its branches will grow twigs to represent indirect relationships. Imagine I’m Forest friends with Terrance. If someone looked at my tree, they would see a branch containing his info which could be clicked through to his tree. At the end of that branch would be twigs representing all of his friends who weren’t also mine. Twigs will grow from twigs until the world is connected as one. Before long, any one consumer’s tree will contain a link to everyone else’s.”

  “So a tree is a profile?”

  “No, it’s a visual representation of your relationships. A good social graph, if you will. Profiles will be accessible as normal but the tree is a more immediate image. My branch to Terrance will grow thicker the more we communicate, and my tree will grow taller the more people talk about and communicate with me. Think of your tree as a vivid depiction of your social relevance — how much you mean to the rest of the world.”

  Kurt hated social graphs and the reductionist metrics behind them more than any other aspect of social networking. “So what happened, anyway?” he said. “Did you wake up one morning, look out of your window and think that what the world really needed was more social networks?”

  “No, less. We need less social networks. Ideally just this one. Consumers will have their wall, their friends, their status updates, their microblogging, their photos and their videos all in one place.”

  “And you really expect people to make new profiles and abandon the ones they’ve been using for nearly a decade?” Kurt knew that they wouldn’t, whatever Colin thought. “People have built their lives around this stuff. Walls, timelines, friends... none of you seem to understand; kids these days live on their profiles. They are their profiles.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Colin. “Forest profiles are automatically generated on seeding. As such, Kurt Jacobs is officially the first member of Forest. Congratulations. And as for existing social networks... they won’t be supported by The Seed, and Terrance’s scraping algorithm will collate consumers’ external data and import it into Forest. Once everything is in one place — our place — the rest takes care of itself. The transition will be seamless and it will change everything. Imagine looking into someone’s eyes and having your Seed look up everything on that person and present it to your Lenses instantaneously. You’re looking at this person and everything is written in the air beside them: age, interests, friends, dating history, popularity, political and religious views… everything. It’s far more detailed than the Lenses’ previous ‘name / age / status / occupation’ display, and it all appears faster than you can blink. Literally.” Colin was smiling ear-to-ear. Forest excited him.