Sycamore (Near-Future Dystopia)

by Craig A. Falconer

  “Great. One thing, though... if you don’t want to be in a bad mood or end up arguing again, you probably shouldn’t check the SycaNews before you get here. It’s one of those things that might look bad written down. See you soon.” Amos ended the call.

  Kurt knew that Amos wanted him to look, probably because whatever the story was would be more palatable after being masterfully spun by Sycamore’s CR monkeys.

  He got into his car and clicked into the SycaNews, where the main headline of “Travel Made Safe” led into a 90-second video report. A wise old reporter was on location outside Sycamore’s flagship Liberty Street branch. The man spoke of the recent wave of robberies and assaults on the bus network that had led to the requirement for passengers to wear Lenses. As an additional security measure, passengers would now be required to pay via their Seeds. This was to ensure there was no cash on the buses to attract criminals. Kurt almost followed the logic.

  The next part of the report challenged his limits. Apparently there had also been a huge rise in fuel syphoning as a result of recent price hikes, and apparently this had the effect of further increasing said prices. The only solution was to pass a law mandating that all fuel sales be paid for via The Seed. This would stop syphoning, somehow.

  It would be costly to fit all self-service fuel pumps with scanners to accept Seed-based payment so The Seed’s sophisticated tracking abilities would be used to levy a small travel duty based on each mile travelled. This travel duty would fund the future pump upgrades and was set to come into effect at midnight. The reporter ended with a smile and a cheery lie: “Commentators and consumer groups have praised Sycamore’s selfless commitment to public security.”

  Kurt’s mood soured. He shouldn’t have looked.

  ~

  Kurt drove straight to Sycamore HQ from Randy’s and passed a group of fashionable young women as he pulled into the Quartermile. They weren’t in the gaudy wares of the masses but instead sported figure-hugging summer dresses, almost to the knee. The dresses were identical in all but colour (lemon, lime, peach, mocha) so Kurt safely assumed that they were from RealU.

  Seeing Sycamore’s faux clothing on such fine specimens made him realise just how good the technology behind the madness was — the edges of the fabric were perfect even as the girls walked — and that he had to assume the dresses were from RealU said everything. Hang-ups over morality and inanity aside, it was the most impressive thing he had ever seen.

  It seemed that Kurt’s Prendicco Finale was in turn the most impressive thing that the girls had ever seen, turning their heads as it did. They looked and pointed in awe as he parked it, then hurried over when he stepped out.

  “OMG, it’s him!”

  The four girls giddily surrounded Mr Sycamore and offered high-pitched birthday greetings in unison. One of the blondes caught his eye. Kurt didn’t make use of the Aura app Minion had described two long weeks ago and he had Forest’s auto-display set to minimum so that looking at someone only brought up the same basic information as it had pre-Seed. This told him all he needed to know about the blonde. She was 18, it said. Mindy. Single. Student. No Lenses were required to discern that she was hotter than the sun.

  Kurt smiled reflexively at how easy it would be to abuse his position but thought better of it. He thanked Mindy and the others for their good wishes then entered the building.

  He walked to the elevator anticipating a “you can’t have her...” pop-up but received something altogether more intriguing. A highly suggestive picture of real-Mindy, presumably from her Forest profile, appeared above a new message: “Now you can have her…”

  Kurt clicked “Interested?” to see what it was all about. It didn’t take a great deal of arrogance to know that he could have had her anyway, such was the level of obsession with fame amongst girls her age, but he was curious about what Sycamore had to say on the matter.

  To his surprise the link took him into RealU, into the new Suggestions section he had ignored in the car. A thumbnail of Mindy’s profile-pic appeared next to a series of links to recommended clothing products and grooming services. Kurt clicked Dress2Impress out of curiosity and watched in mild horror as his preview avatar morphed into something that looked like rejected concept art for a late-90s boyband. He cancelled the changes and clicked on the info button to see what was going on.

  The information screen assured him that these recommendations were valid, founded as they were in Mindy’s passing comments to friends about what other men were wearing, on where her eyes had lingered when watching content from the SycaStore, and on what she looked at “while being personal with herself.” The last one troubled Kurt most, especially when he reflected that it was no more than the recently-terminated ISPs had known about every man in the world.

  Back in RealU, another info box suggested how Kurt should display his facial hair to win Mindy’s heart. He didn’t click the Things2Say button — not because he didn’t want to foot the $40 bill (his unlimited spending privileges remained), but because he didn’t want to think about how Sycamore knew what she wanted to hear. This must have been the wingman feature Amos had hinted at and Kurt didn’t like wondering where its data came from.

  Then he thought about the $40. It never occurred to him that Mindy’s enchanting beauty might itself have been a product of RealU; he was too busy wondering what kind of guy wouldn’t pay to learn how to woo a girl like her. He liked to think that he was above doing so but couldn’t honestly tell himself that he wouldn’t have read everything on Kate or Stacy had it been available at the time.

  Kids growing up with Forest and The Seed would have no fun, he thought, because knowing everything superficial about everyone instantly would discourage them from getting to know anyone properly. Going against his prior conviction concerning the inherent merit of relentless and remorseless progress, Kurt was thankful for having grown up in a slightly more simple time. He much preferred mystery to history and getting to know people through spoken words over an impersonal digital interface. His parents and theirs would have no doubt said similar things in their 20s but people of their age couldn’t appreciate how completely everything had been changed by the digitisation of adolescence.

  When Kurt was at school his classmates had kept in touch largely via text, of course, but now and again they spoke out loud. They hung around in their groups and each group listened to its music and wore its clothes and there wasn’t much crossover between them. In short, everyone knew a few people well.

  If a boy liked a girl he found a way of getting her number then sent her an awkward text. She might reply, in which case he would have to slowly and subtly escalate the conversation. Now, just seven years later, there was no need for such childish nonsense. Everyone was online and everyone shared everything. The half-naked picture of Mindy it would have once taken months of careful texting to acquire was now there for the world to see as she competed for its attention against an endless array of instantly-available women.

  Friendship was a contest of accumulation and life was a show.

  Kurt felt no real responsibility for most of this because the other social networks had started it. If anything, he was quietly encouraged that Forest and The Seed and these demented new RealU features were highlighting how foolish everyone had been to give away so much of themselves. Maybe it would make people realise? He could always hope.

  ~

  Amos saw Kurt’s face as he emerged from the elevator and he knew. “I told you not to look, hotshot.”

  “Shut up. A movement tax? Really?”

  “It’s a travel duty, not a movement tax.”

  Kurt looked at Amos in a manner suggesting he wasn’t for playing any lexical games. “This is the worst thing you’ve ever done. You can’t charge people to move... it’s obscene. Then there’s the point that no one without a Seed can use a bus, or drive, or fly now that airports are using the scanners. How are unseeded people supposed to get around? They can only use their feet.”

  “And taxis
,” Amos corrected him. “Private taxi drivers aren’t the most cooperative bunch, you know? It’ll take us a few weeks to work around that. Anyway, the obvious answer to those people’s problem is to stop being so stubborn and get seeded.”

  “I hate this,” said Kurt. “You need to know that — I don’t support this. I oppose this. It’s the ultimate money grab and the whole syphoning thing is a lie to justify the tax. I can see right through it: you and your cosy little government friends are going to take a cut from price-fixing fuel and then rake in some more from the movement tax, not forgetting road tax and the VAT on compulsory motor insurance we already have to deal with. And I know you’re going to say there’s no way to tell who’s in a car so the travel duty will have to be applied indiscriminately. You’ll dress it up nicely so people don’t get angry tomorrow morning when they realise it covers walking and cycling, too. You’re literally charging people to move. This is worse than compulsory tracking. What if someone can’t afford to pay?”

  “I’m not forcing anyone to travel.” Amos looked to the floor and sighed deeply. “God, you make it all sound so…”

  “I’m making it sound like what it is,” Kurt interrupted. “A movement tax. What’s next, water tax?”

  “No need,” Amos smiled. “Who the hell wants to drink water? Water is for toilets. Drink Lexington.”

  “Seriously then... what is the next step, an oxygen tax?”

  Amos rubbed his left eyebrow in that annoying way he had of indicating he was about to say something he considered clever. “We already have a carbon tax, hotshot. It would be a bit much to charge them for breathing in and out.”

  Kurt looked at him quietly.

  “You look at me is if you hate me,” said Amos. “Do you?”

  “I don’t hate anyone. But if I was you, I would hate myself.”

  Amos smiled again. “I don’t want to fight with you, Kurt. Especially not on your birthday. This won’t be as bad as you think. Stores and employers will be able to validate journeys in the same way they validate parking tickets. If there is a genuine reason behind a journey, the consumer won’t have to pay any duty. It will only dissuade frivolous outings. See, it’s green! And the duty won’t be a flat rate — certain roads and routes will be cheaper than others.”

  The movement tax sounded worse to Kurt the more Amos tried to sugarcoat it. “Differential pricing and journey validation? So it’s basically an attempt to encourage people to only go to pre-approved places? Places that your capitalist mindset thinks they have a reason to be? This is exactly like the browser thing. You only want people to go places where you can make money from them. This is all just money. Everything is wrong and everything is money.” Kurt walked to the window and tried to compose himself. “Look, I told you I was going to stay away and I did. Why do you need me to be here?”

  Amos moved beside Kurt and put an arm around his shoulder like a good friend. “I don’t. I want you to be here. Your gift, remember? It’s over there.” He tilted his head towards one of his sofas.

  They both walked over. The gift was a ten-inch plant pot containing a sapling. “I get the sycamore,” said Kurt, “but why is it in a golden pot?”

  “There’s a difference between gold and golden, hotshot.” Amos pinged the side of the pot with his finger and winked as he handed it over. “Enjoy your day.”

  ~

  Kurt put his gold-potted sycamore in one of the upstairs bedrooms he never used; out of sight, out of mind. From there he heard his doorbell. It was a wonderful sound — the sound of a human on his doorstep, touching something — and infinitely preferable to the ringtones and notifications that endlessly filled his in-earphones. He hurried down to see who could be calling. The gate kept canvassers out and no one could get through without either themselves or their vehicle being ID’d by the cameras, so the options were limited.

  He opened the door and a smile filled his face. “Stacy Palamino.”

  “I heard it was your birthday,” she said. She held out a white envelope.

  “It is,” said Kurt, taking it.

  “Happy birthday then.”

  “Thanks. Really. It means more than you know that you came.”

  “Well, we didn’t exactly part on the best of terms but it wasn’t anyone’s fault. What have you been doing since I saw you?”

  Kurt told the truth. “Basically nothing. Amos asked me to stay away until he called me back, which was today. I’ve been sitting in my house watching TV and trying not to think about anything. What about you?”

  “I’ve been sitting in my house waiting for you to turn up at my door with your Lenses in your hand.”

  Kurt looked carefully at Stacy. She was always so difficult to read. “You know that can’t happen.”

  “I know. It’s just that I still don’t really understand why. Anyway, can I come in? Or are you having a party?”

  “I was going to, but none of my other 40 million friends showed up.” He invited her in with his arms. “How did you get here, anyway?”

  “Taxi. It’s expensive, but they take cash.”

  “I would give you the fare but I don’t really handle money anymore. You get too used to it. I’m starting to think this is normal. How did you get past the gate?”

  “Easy. I just hung back until someone else was about to walk in and then they held it for me. That’s always how people get into places they aren’t supposed to. No one ever asks who you are before holding a door for you. Pro-tip.”

  Stacy walked towards the master bedroom, testing whether Kurt would stop her after what had happened last time. He didn’t, so they sat through there.

  “Hot tub?” she suggested, smiling as she said it.

  Kurt thought about it. “Tempting, but you don’t have any other clothes.”

  “Who wears their clothes in a hot tub?”

  Stacy had a point and Kurt wanted to say yes, or, more accurately, to say nothing and show her yes. But a moment featuring Stacy without clothes would be one of those moments when Kurt’s heart rate sped up — one of those moments when The Seed liked to take snapshots for future advertising. A sample of such snapshots were randomly monitored at HQ and there was always a chance that one of Kurt’s would come under the microscope. The idea of Minion and the rest of his DC creeps seeing Stacy like that ruled out taking a dip.

  “I wish it was that simple,” he said. “But I wouldn’t want anyone seeing you like that through my Lenses.”

  Stacy undid her top button. “So take them out.”

  “You don’t get it: I can’t!” Kurt clasped his hands together at the back of his neck and breathed deeply. “I’m responsible for a lot here. If there was an emergency and I didn’t get the message, who knows what could happen.”

  She did the button back up. “That’s how they want you to think. They want you to live in fear so you’re always online, hooked up to their grid. And you’ve fallen for it. You of all people.”

  “I’m sorry but I can’t take them out.”

  “Don’t apologise like you would have been doing me a favour.”

  The last thing Kurt wanted was another unhappy ending to a visit from Stacy so he suggested they do something else. “I didn’t mean anything like that. Listen, what do you say we get out of here and go out properly? We could go to a nice restaurant for my birthday. You can order whatever you want, too; it’s all free for Mr Sycamore.”

  She laughed at his self-deprecation and agreed without speaking. They walked to the car and Kurt sped off towards the Quartermile. “Why are we going this way?” Stacy asked as they neared Sycamore’s leaf-shaped headquarters.

  “Don’t worry, we’re not going to HQ. It’s just that the good restaurants are where people have money. The place we’re going is around the corner but I don’t want to leave the car right outside because people would know I’m there.”

  “So?”

  “I don’t want us to get mobbed.” Kurt stepped out to open Stacy’s door and immediately saw some of RealU’s
dubious fashions on the other side of the road.

  Stacy noticed him shaking his head. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I don’t know how it looks to you, but from behind these Lenses everyone is wearing one of the same few outfits. RealU is ridiculously popular already. And now Sycamore have started selling advice to men about what clothes and chat-up lines would be best for a particular girl. Then there’s this whole new transport duty thing...”

  “I heard about that,” said Stacy, cutting Kurt off before he wasted any time explaining. “Whatever they dress it up as, it’s a movement tax. It must be the crudest abuse of power in this country’s history.”

  “That’s what I said to Amos. Movement tax were my exact words.” They crossed the road.

  “And what did he say?”

  “That no one was forcing us to move. I told him that this is the worst thing yet, even worse than the tracking. Definitely worse than RealU and all the other stupid stuff. I’m starting to see the distinction between the applications that are just annoying and the ones that are actually dangerous. Our attention should be aimed upwards at Amos, not down at the worker ants blinded by technology and bribed by simplicity.”

  “Exactly,” said Stacy. “The masses get distracted from dangerous things by shiny things, then we get distracted from the dangerous things by being annoyed that the masses have been distracted by the shiny things. We need to forget about the annoying things and worry about the dangerous things.”

  It sounded clumsy but Kurt couldn’t have put it any better. “RealU is kind of both, though,” he said. “Like today I went to see my niece. She’s ten, and she’s spending money on RealU. It’s like she wants to be what the ads tell her she should be. Surely that’s dangerous?”

  Stacy nodded as if she understood. “Little girls are like that. Trust me, I used to be one. She’s just trying to grow up. But that doesn’t mean that the two of you have to grow apart. Maybe you just have to grow up a little bit with her?”