Sycamore (Near-Future Dystopia)

by Craig A. Falconer

  “And it gets better,” Minion chimed in. “Down in DC our systems will aggregate and compare that person’s data with yours to formulate a compatibility metric for a premium app called Aura. A good romantic match will be surrounded by a white aura — almost a halo — and a potentially excellent friend will be blue. Imagine walking into a bar and knowing straight away who’s worth your time. It’s the stuff of dreams! You only approach girls who are right for you, and you instantly know what they’re interested in. There’s no more, “so, what kind of music are you into?”... you just look her in the eye and say “have you seen how high our musical compatibility is?” It’s going to be huge.”

  Kurt didn’t particularly like the reductionist sound of Forest but nor did he expect the public to be as ready to move on as his new colleagues postulated, despite the impressive-sounding scraping algorithm. “People will just use their computers and phones to access their old profiles like they do now,” he said.

  “Wrong,” said Amos. “Once consumers see and feel The Seed in action they won’t go back to those old devices. You said it yourself: devices will become obsolete.”

  “Not straight away.”

  “Yes they will,” said Minion, certainly. “The phone networks will be gone in a few months and the internet as you know it will be dead within weeks. Watch and see.” The turnaround in Minion’s position was remarkable. It was evident that he knew something Kurt didn’t.

  “The Seed isn’t even out yet and you’re acting like we’ve taken over the world,” he said.

  “Like Terrance said, give us a few weeks.” Amos smiled and shuffled some papers on the table. “I think I’ve kept all of you late enough for a Sunday afternoon. Tomorrow Kurt and I will be hosting a Meet The Press event to ensure favourable exposure in the week leading up to our big launch, which as you know is scheduled for next Monday.”

  It was the first Kurt had heard of either the press event or the imminent launch. Eight days seemed awfully soon given the amount of convincing that would be necessary to win consumers round to The Seed. The smartphone market was crowded, with a handful of giant players who endlessly sued each other on pathetically flimsy grounds for alleged patent infringements. Sycamore’s arrival as a genuine contender for their collective throne, however, saw the industry unite as one against a common enemy. In the week since the contest, collaborative attack-ads had already been run to discredit the concept of a consumer biochip. The ads had been everywhere and Amos had done nothing to respond. How could he win the public over in such a short space of time?

  A hidden clock chimed. The meeting was over and Kurt’s presence no longer required. He used his hand to zoom in on Amos and saw his eyebrows twitching slightly. Kurt wasn’t sure if it was excitement or impatience. He zoomed back out. “I’ve got one more question,” he said.

  “It’s five o’clock,” said Minion. “Go back to your ghetto.”

  “Terrance, please! Ask away,” said Amos, smiling at Kurt.

  “Well, if you really want to have a huge launch next week, and if you’re as confident as you say you are that The Seed will open up massive revenue opportunities, why don’t you do what I suggested at the contest and offer seeding for free?”

  Minion laughed heartily.

  “Shut up,” said Kurt.

  “Ignore Terrance; I’ve been thinking about free seeding since you first mentioned it and it’s a sounder idea than he thinks. But our world has two laws that trump all others, Kurt: freedom is everything and price is value.”

  Kurt didn’t follow. “How does that relate to this?”

  “If we made The Seed compulsory, the people would resist it. If we made it free, the people would ignore it.” Amos paused to make sure Kurt was listening.

  “And?”

  “And when we charge $500, they’ll take the day off work to queue around the block.”

  5

  A familiar black car arrived for Kurt at eight o’clock on Monday morning. Amos greeted him in the back seat with a smile and a question: “So, how is it?”

  “Amazing,” Kurt replied. “The zooming and everything is just how I wanted it. I’m getting the hang of using the trackpad to navigate the OS, too. Most of the time my index finger moves the cursor and my middle finger does the clicking. I know my design was for multitouch but I didn’t honestly think a virtual trackpad could do it.”

  “There’s very little The Seed can’t do, Kurt. Once the SycaStore and Relive are up and running you’ll start to see just what we’ve done here.”

  “Speaking of the SycaStore, can I get my old music onto The Seed or will I have to buy it all again?”

  “That’s a tough one. You see, onboard storage really isn’t necessary because everything will be accessible through Icarus at lightning speed. On top of that, local storage wasn’t really possible. Music files have to be of extremely high quality given the nature of the in-earphones, and general storage requirements increase so quickly that it would have been suicide; we can’t have consumers needing re-seeded every two years. Personally speaking, though, you don’t need to worry about having to pay for content. I’ve loaded you up with infinite credit.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course really. As for what’s about to happen at this press thing, other than anything about privacy and currency you can field whichever of the questions you want. Are you ready?”

  “Always,” said Kurt, and he enjoyed the rest of the journey wordlessly. It was a sunny day and a horde of reporters were camped at the entrance to Sycamore’s HQ, where Amos had arranged for the informal press conference to take place.

  The first order of business was Amos’s public seeding. A link between his Lenses and a TV screen on the street let the crowd see his operating system appear for the first time exactly as it would when they were seeded a week later. The doctor from the day before instructed Amos to squeeze his wrist and extend his fingers. The needle pierced his palm as he smiled at the crowd. “Totally painless!”

  He continued commentating while the doctor implanted his in-earphones then asked for the crowd’s undivided attention before double five-tapping his palm to bring up the operating system. The reporters oohed and aahed at a live demonstration that lived up to its hype.

  Amos clicked Video-call and scribbled “Kurt Jacobs” into his palm. There were more efficient ways to type — most would use the standard virtual keyboard which accurately dealt with rapid input based on the relative positions of the keys — but Amos wanted to show off the handwriting recognition. There was only one Kurt Jacobs registered with Sycamore and a ringtone suddenly filled his ears. Only he could hear it.

  Kurt walked out of sight as instructed and Amos clicked a button that said Transvista. A window on the TV relayed everything that Kurt could see, showing the reporters that Amos was seeing through Kurt’s eyes in real-world quality. “He could be anywhere in the world,” Amos said, “and I would be seeing it.”

  This was the most impressive feature of The Seed so far: one user’s live vista could be shared with another. Everything Kurt’s Lenses were taking in was streamed to the server and delivered back to Amos in realtime. The image on the TV — that of two windows, side-by-side — evoked webcam chats familiar to most of the crowd. The key difference was that rather than pointing at the users, the cameras in the UltraLenses were pointing out into the world. Participants in Transvista chats didn’t see each other; they saw what the other was looking at.

  Amos ended the call and Kurt returned to the front of the crowd. They looked at each other for the first time since Amos’s seeding. Kurt’s information appeared on the screen as Amos could see it. Everything either had ever posted on their social network accounts had been imported and collated by Minion’s esoteric profile-scraping algorithm. There were a dozen rows of data floating beside each of their heads, representing everything from basic social data to their interpersonal compatibility. Their base score was 58% with the caveat that their complementary skill sets and temperaments might
create a formidable professional partnership.

  “The metrics never lie,” Amos smiled at that part. Kurt didn’t know exactly what Minion did with the raw data from other services, or even how he accessed it, but they had crossed paths during their university careers’ two-year intersection and Kurt knew how good Minion was at what he did. As detestable as Minion was, Kurt was glad to be on his side rather than in his sights.

  Next, Amos asked Kurt to demonstrate the Glance function. Kurt looked Amos in the eye while writing something in his palm. With Glancing there was no need to select a recipient; the UltraLenses and Seed took all but the most fleeting eye-contact as an intention to communicate. Kurt’s message arrived realtime in Amos’s vista, letter-by-letter. “This is amazing,” it read. The crowd watching the giant screen agreed. Amos hoped that two consumers Glancing across a room would look like they were communicating telepathically. Everyone would want a piece of that.

  Amos had explained to Kurt that this public event was an exercise in winning over the media, after which they would assume the job of selling The Seed for him. With the visual demonstrations seemingly complete, Amos invited questions. He was quickly heartened that the practical and ethical issues surrounding the launch seemed to have so utterly distracted everyone from the SycaPhone fiasco.

  He and Kurt took their places in two director’s chairs by the front door of Sycamore’s grand HQ. The crowd’s number had swelled in the excitement of the hour and everyone jostled for a view of the men behind The Seed — the effortlessly authoritative Amos and his bushy-browed heir apparent, handsome in a square-jawed, old-Hollywood kind of way. Wearing the new suit Amos had provided for the occasion, Kurt looked and felt sharper than the doctor’s seeding needle.

  The first non-technical question regarded The Seed’s lack of bundled software and led Amos to defend the clean-slate approach. He described the SycaStore as “democracy in action” and claimed that, with app development easier than ever, there would soon be an avalanche of content. Consumers were better off picking and mixing than paying for software they might not want, he reasoned.

  “Okay,” said the questioner, a young man in a TVBytes vest. “But I have a question for Mr Jacobs.”

  Kurt signalled for him to fire away.

  “At the Talent Search you decried our dependence on too many devices. A human and a smartphone was too much, apparently. Yet now we have a human, a biochip, two ear implants and a pair of UltraLenses.”

  “It’s not a chip,” said Kurt, “it’s a Seed. And these aren’t devices. They’re improvements.”

  “A soundbite won’t swing me,” the man replied, “and it won’t impress anyone else either. We all know that this isn’t about improvement. It’s about turning human beings into cybernetic advertising-receptacles.”

  “And we’re guilty of tossing around soundbites?” Amos laughed. “Listen, unavoidable public advertising is not a new thing. Look at all the bus stops, telephone boxes and highway billboards plastered with underwear models for evidence of that. Only the medium is changing, and with that comes great advantage. The ads will now be targeted; we sell women the underwear and we sell men the model.”

  Most of the assembled journalists chuckled. Amos decided to changed the subject and deliver some information on his plans for Seed-based payments.

  “Thanks to our ongoing partnership with Tasmart — the nation’s biggest retailer — Sycamore is able to offer consumers a range of benefits. All Tasmart stores will be fitted with new Seed-only aisles which will massively expedite the queuing process. Special weekly offers will also be available exclusively to customers paying via their Seed. And, saving the best for last, all in-store transactions paid for via The Seed will enjoy an unconditional 20% discount. That’s right: 20% off everything from groceries and clothes to electronics and home supplies. The average American family spends $5,000 a year on groceries. The Seed will save you $1,000 within twelve months, paying for itself twice over.” Amos smirked at the TVBytes reporter who had hassled Kurt. “Even you have to be impressed by that.”

  The crowd were well and truly onside, applauding Amos’s announcement of the Tasmart tie-in. The man, however, remained unimpressed. “Clap, clap, clap,” he said, “like so many mindless sea lions. Anyone who takes this chip is setting themselves up to be controlled by a corporation who will have all of their data and is driven by nothing but profit. What if Sycamore turns off your chip and you can’t get into your house? What if Sycamore freezes your balance? Given the existence of such a risk, why would anyone embrace digital currency when it could be switched off?”

  Amos looked at Kurt and wrote into his hand to chat directly. Glances appeared in the recipient’s vista as they were scribbled but not in the sender’s, so Amos’s message — “remind me not to invite this guy next time” — didn’t appear on the giant screen.

  It read like a joke but Amos looked concerned. “I’ll take this one,” said Kurt. Defensive of his Seed and his new quasi-friend, he faced the irritating reporter. “What if you lost your house keys? What if someone hacked into your e-mail and stole your data? What if your bank’s ATM was broken and the branch was closed? What if the banks ran out of money again? All these risks! Now, given the existence of such risks, why use banks or computers?” Kurt paused to hear the crowd agree. “You need to keep your money, your keys and your data safe; we understand that. Nowhere could they be safer than inside your own hand.”

  A message notification popped up in Kurt’s vista delivering a text from Amos: “Nailed it.” Kurt turned to him and winked, but his triumph was cut short by an egg landing on the ground inches from his left foot. Everyone looked up to one of the small sycamore trees lining the path and saw a bearded man sitting between its branches.

  “They’re climbing trees to see you,” Amos beamed. “You’re the new Jesus.”

  A voice roared down from the tree. “No! Kurt Jacobs is the antichrist... a false idol! Ignore his promises and reject his mark!”

  Two security guards approached the tree. Amos, amused, called them back.

  “Revelation! Chapter 13! Verses 16 and 17!” The man climbed down as he spoke. “He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast.”

  “The Seed goes in your left hand,” said Kurt. An egg crashed into the left side of his face.

  Amos clicked his fingers for security. “You can take him now.” He turned back to the crowd as the madman was escorted away. “God squad... what can you do?”

  Someone in the crowd handed Kurt a towel to wipe his face and the rest stood in a stunned silence. A middle-aged woman broke it. “No one can condone that,” she began, “but maybe he had a point? This is foretold. And God’s word does implore us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices and tell us that they are temples of the Holy Spirit. How does that square with having computer chips implanted into our hands?”

  “It’s not a chip,” Kurt snapped, frustrated at having to endlessly clarify the point and chagrined by the literal egg on his face. “It’s a Seed, okay? A Seed. And it’s for everyone, no matter what fairytales they believe in.”

  Amos took over from Kurt to address the non-believer. “How do those sentiments square with your earrings, ma’am? Did Jesus put those holes in your ears?” The crowd tittered, but he wasn’t finished. “You’re not one of those ones who would reject a blood transfusion, are you?”

  “No, but I hardly see what that has to do with anyth—”

  “It has everything to do with everything!” Amos insisted forcefully. “Medical implants and transfusions extend life; our Seed enhances it. And trust me, touching your palm to bring up the dashboard for the first time is a religious experience. There are going to be objections, we know that, both from protectionist industries and from the Christian right. We won’t let them win. The dinosaurs are desperate to hang on but our meteor’s
path is final. For now I’m not prepared to put Mr Jacobs in any more danger from hardline fundamentalists so this event is over. The meteor arrives next Monday, 9am, Liberty Street. Be there.”

  Amos stepped down from his director’s chair and entered Sycamore HQ, taking Kurt with him. The press conference was over as abruptly as that.

  “That was a disaster,” said Kurt.

  Amos slapped him on the shoulder as they waited for the elevator. “On the contrary, hotshot, it couldn’t have gone any better.”

  “What did you just call me?”

  “Hotshot,” said Amos. “Terrance says people used to call you that. You don’t like it?”

  Kurt relaxed. “It’s not that, I just thought you’d been spying on me. Only my brother calls me hotshot.”

  “We’ll never spy on our own, Kurt. Anyway, as I was saying, that was dynamite. Not only did they go wild for the Tasmart tie-in and not only did you handle yourself impeccably, you were physically attacked by a crazy person! We’re the victim and we’re going to milk that for all it’s worth.”

  “Why are Tasmart even doing this? How much did you have to pay them to get that level of discount. I mean, 20%…?”

  “Not a penny. Combining customer bases is in our mutual interest. A lot of the people who’ll queue up for The Seed are young and tech-savvy, you see, and that’s a lucrative demographic that Tasmart wants more of. It stands to reason that our consumers are going to shop somewhere where they can get 20% off. On the other side of the fence, Tasmart already does well with older, family types — the ones we would have most trouble selling The Seed to. But if those family types shop at Tasmart and The Seed will save them 20%, they’re going to take it. Everyone wins.”