Sycamore

by Craig A. Falconer

  The next interviewee was another young man. “The best thing about it?” he pondered. “No one will ever be able to lie to me again! I’ll be like “that’s not what you said” and they’ll be like “is so” and I’ll be like: rewind, evidence, boom. You know what I mean?”

  Kurt and Amos, rainmakers extraordinaire, spent the next few hours watching interviews with queuers from all walks of life. Amos didn’t know what he liked best — front-of-the-liners salivating over promises of a technological sunrise or latecomers defiant in their stance against religious intimidation. In the end it didn’t matter where they stood; everyone who was anyone was champing at the bit to take their place in Sycamore’s brave new world.

  II

  6

  Kurt woke late on Tuesday morning and it was afternoon by the time he rolled out of bed. Dealing with the 985,000 friend requests he had received on Forest took only as long as clicking Accept All, after which he spent almost an hour reading about the morning’s expanded launch.

  11,000 people were seeded at Sycamore’s Liberty Street branch on day one and the first three hours of nationwide seeding had seen that number increase by a factor of over 700. The SycaNews featured a video interview with the lucky recipient of the millionth Seed as well as items concerning riot police being drafted in to deal with boisterous queues from sea to shining sea.

  Reports suggested that internet and phone contracts were being cancelled en masse as consumers realised they could communicate by voice, text or video for free and instantly. There was no browser, of course, but no one seemed to be noticing. Consumers had been trained to view the internet as a collection of corporate launchpads and data aggregation centres; The Seed’s purely app-based interface was really nothing new.

  A quote attributed to Amos predicted ten million Seeds to be sold by the end of the day and Kurt’s Forest profile told him that he was currently ranked 1 of 8,183,672 — the most popular man in the world. The number of seeded consumers was growing by hundreds and thousands per second and a lot of them wanted to be Kurt’s friend. Little wonder, then, that his tree had grown to epic proportions, towering over its nearest rivals who were mostly pop stars and athletes he didn’t recognise. Amos was only sixth on the list but Kurt was sure he wouldn’t mind given that his ambitious target was on track to being smashed.

  The sound of a text notification interrupted Kurt’s news-viewing. It was Amos, requesting his presence on Wednesday morning but confirming that the present day was his to spend as he pleased. It looked like a perfect afternoon to be outside so Kurt decided to walk to see Randy and the kids; he had been holed up for long enough and the feeling of the sun on his back was well overdue.

  He ate cold noodles from a pot in his sink and got dressed after a quick shower. All the time spent at home had given Kurt a chance to catch up on some laundry, at least, so there would be no repeat of the jean-shorts and espadrilles fiasco.

  The first thing he noticed when he stepped outside was that there seemed to be more advertising... much more. A poster for a documentary about big cats lay in the middle of the pavement, for one thing, and when he walked past Tasmart Express a seductive voice whispered in his ear that they had an offer on noodles. It was too weird.

  Only full-size Tasmart stores offered seeding and there was no Sycamore branch between Kurt’s apartment and Randy’s house so no queues filled the streets. Unsettled by the invasive advertising, he listened to music for the rest of his walk.

  He arrived at the house and knocked on the front door. It took a while for anyone to answer. Kurt quickly wished he had let himself in to save Randy the not inconsiderable effort of hobbling to greet him.

  Randy appeared with only one crutch and hugged Kurt with his free arm. “Hey, bro.”

  “Hey,” said Kurt. “Good job on the leg. Are the kids around?”

  “It’s Tuesday afternoon.”

  “So?”

  “So they’re at school.”

  “Right.”

  Randy closed the door behind Kurt and studied him with concerned eyes. “Jeez, how hard have you been working?”

  “I’ve hardly been doing anything,” said Kurt. “You know I wasn’t allowed to go out, and even when I’ve been at events like yesterday’s launch and last week’s press conference I’ve only had to talk to a camera for a little bit. What day it is doesn’t really matter in my world. How’s your Seed, anyway?”

  “You know how good it is, hotshot. It’s so damn good that I’m actually proud of my idiot brother for coming up with it! At the contest, when those suits were telling you it wouldn’t work… I believed them. I mean, you know, my hand is a trackpad. I’m basically a walking computer.”

  Kurt smiled. “You’re welcome. Chess?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Kurt downloaded Chess from the SycaStore’s game section. Randy needed the game, too, so he paid the $9.99 asking price in a single click. Like everyone else, he had linked his bank account to his SycaStore account at his seeding. $9.99 seemed steep but such was life; Sycamore prohibited competition with its first-party offerings and Amos charged whatever he wanted.

  The game itself was excellent, offering a range of visual options similar to those available for virtual TV-viewing. Kurt and Randy chose the table-top mode, which overlaid a beautiful marble-effect chessboard onto any surface. “I would pay $500 just for this,” said Randy, half serious. The brothers had always been big on chess — a trait from their father — and competed so carefully that barely twenty moves were made before the kids arrived home from school.

  Sabrina sprinted over to Kurt and threw her arms around him. “Uncle Kurt! Everyone is talking about you at school since you were on TV so much.”

  Kurt always took Sabrina’s delight in his presence for granted but was pleased to see that Julian looked happy to see him, too. “Hey kids,” he said.

  Julian smiled truly. “That was some launch, right?”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Was the Fury River set-up your idea?”

  Kurt spent a few seconds deciding how to answer then led Julian into the kitchen and closed the door. “You’re one hell of a smart kid. But no, it was all Amos. How did you know Sycamore was behind it, though? No one in the media suspected a thing. Even the protestors thought it was their idea. Three people in the world know we planned it. Well, four if you do. What was the giveaway?”

  “The man from Sycamore who was talking about it — I guess he’s the third guy? — he’s a terrible liar. Terrance Minion. He looked so familiar. Is he not the one who—

  “He was,” Kurt interrupted, “but now he’s not. Anyway, you need to keep this quiet.”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t do anything that could get you in trouble.”

  “You’re a good kid. You know, I’ve not seen you since that night before the contest. There’s been a lot of empty hours since them. Enough for me to realise that I’m sorry for being so hard on you. I won’t pretend that you’ll understand this one day, but you might: all I want is for you to be better than me in every way.”

  “I know. You were right, anyway. I guess everyone’s right now and again.” They both laughed. “Seriously, though: I’m sorry, too. I know how hard you must have been working to come up with The Seed. I guess those deferred rewards are piling up now?”

  “I think we’re going to be alright, put it that way. Are you coming to the park with your sister and me?”

  “I’ve got too much stuff for school. Before you go, though, I just want to say that I don’t blame my dad for anything. I know the accident wasn’t his fault.”

  Kurt stood and patted Julian on the shoulder. “I know that, too, JJ. If only he did.”

  Sabrina was ready quickly and skipped alongside Kurt on the short journey to the park. They passed a young mother pushing a baby. Talking into the air in an old-fashioned voice-call, her ears were sufficiently occupied to ensure that its cries went unheard. There were ads scattered here and there and Kurt was
glad that Sabrina didn’t have to see them.

  “What’s wrong with him?” she asked.

  Kurt looked where she was pointing, towards a middle-aged man on a bench. He was sitting there with an empty dog-lead in one hand and a ripped shopping-bag in the other, staring dead-eyed into the distance and laughing like a crazy person. “Nothing. He’s just watching something.”

  “He looks stupid.”

  “He is,” said Kurt. “It’s not polite to go full-immersion in public. And it’s not safe, either. He can’t hear or see a thing. Some people misuse everything.”

  “Even The Seed?”

  “Especially The Seed, I’m afraid.”

  “Why are you afraid? Is it not as good as you hoped? Will I not like it when I get one?”

  Kurt sat down beside the absent man. “It’s really good,” he insisted, “and it’ll only get better when the number of ads goes down. You can’t buy anything in the store until you’re ten, though, and I think that includes a Relive subscription. That’s the best part — it saves everything you’ve ever seen and let’s you watch it back later.”

  “I know.” Sabrina took a small skipping rope from her bag and started to jump over it. “Our principal told us about all the different things The Seed does. I just wasn’t sure if he was being honest. He said Sycamore calls you a Sapling until you turn ten, which is still thirteen days for me, but that we all have to get seeded on Friday at school. He said we need it for classes.”

  “Why do you need it for classes?”

  Sabrina continued to jump as she answered, sucking in deep and urgent breaths every few words. “Sycamore are giving us new smartboards and paying for a new games hall. The board will only work when you wear UltraLenses.”

  “I get the Lenses, but why do you all need to be seeded? And why do it right before summer?”

  “The principal says Sycamore are putting scanners at the front door to protect us from Columbine and Sandy Hook. The Seed will say who I am and that I’m allowed in. They’re doing it at JJ’s high school, too.”

  “That’s $1,000. How do they expect your dad to pay for them?”

  “They say no one has to pay straight away because we can get special credit and only have to pay later.”

  “They always say that. $1000 today is $3000 in a few months.” Kurt sent a quick message to Amos asking if he would still be in his office in a few hours and received instant affirmation. “I’ll make sure you get them for free,” he told Sabrina.

  The sudden seriousness of Kurt’s tone took her concentration from the skipping rope and she tripped onto the grass. Kurt helped her up. “How come you can do that?” she asked.

  “Isaiah Amos owes me quite a lot of money.”

  Sabrina played for another hour until Kurt realised it was time to take her home for dinner. Exhausted from running and jumping, she didn’t protest.

  Randy was sitting on the small bench under his front window when Kurt and Sabrina arrived. She went straight to the kitchen for a cold drink. Kurt had to talk to Randy.

  “Sabrina just told me she has to get seeded for school, and so does Julian.”

  “Yeah, he said that when you were gone.”

  “I’ll make sure it’s free.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” said Randy. “I can pay.”

  “I’m not saying you can’t, but you shouldn’t have to. Amos has probably taken in $3 billion today. I’m not having you give him $1,000 more because he’s bribing schools to make their students get seeded. He still hasn’t paid me, you know. $3 billion and I haven’t seen a penny.”

  Randy stretched out his bad leg and adjusted his back. “Remember what you wrote on that Minter guy’s wall when he first went to work at Sycamore?”

  “This isn’t like that.”

  “You called him a rat and said you would rather die than sell out,” Randy reminded him. “What ever happened to that guy?”

  “Minter? He seems to be the second most important man at the company. And a poor liar.”

  “I meant the guy who said he would never sell out: Kurtonite.”

  Kurt’s gaze intensified and he pointed a finger in Randy’s face. “I didn’t sell out, alright? Sycamore was the only place my vision could ever be realised… they patented the whole idea of AR Lenses! I won a contest. That’s not selling out.”

  “I’m not knocking it, hotshot. We all have to eat.”

  “Which is why I need them to pay me. I can’t eat content from the SycaStore and the Seed-aisles at Tasmart won’t be set up for a few days. Apparently I’m the most popular man in the world, but apparently the most popular man in the world is expected to eat leftover noodles for breakfast and leftover leftovers for dinner. Amos has me driving around in limos and giving interviews in $2,000 suits until I’m dropped back home at an apartment that looks like the kind of place a cockroach would go to die.”

  “So tell him that.”

  “I will. I’m going to tell him I need a real salary. That way I can help everyone out.”

  “Look, Kurt, how many times are you going to make me say this? We don’t need your money.”

  “Come on,” said Kurt. He looked around at the chipped paint on the windowsills and the rusty gate at the end of the path. “It wouldn’t hurt.”

  Randy’s voice fell half an octave. “Yes it would.”

  “Whatever. I’m going to go before we fall out again.” Kurt popped his head in the door and shouted bye to the kids. “But you have to stop being so stubborn. When you have a family to take care of, rejecting help isn’t proud; it’s selfish. I’ll see you later.”

  Kurt walked to the rusty gate and opened it carefully.

  “Wait,” Randy called.

  “Yeah?”

  “Rook to bishop four. Checkmate.”

  Kurt laughed and threw Randy a middle finger before heading for the bus stop. He didn’t have to wait long but his two minutes on the street was long enough for a small crowd to congregate and fuss over “that Seed guy from the TV.”

  The first thing that struck Kurt on the bus was how many passengers were in full-immersion. How would they know when the bus reached their stop, he wondered, and what were they all watching? The first answer would remain a mystery until the bus terminated near the Quartermile and everyone realised they had stayed on too long, but Kurt’s Lenses could tell him what others were watching by looking directly into theirs.

  He looked at three people and they were all playing Happy Pigs, the game he had seen on the SycaStore’s front page but forgotten to check out. With some time to kill and nothing to read, he went for it. Its positioning as a killer app led Kurt to believed that Happy Pigs would be a game of quality, innovation, perhaps even ambition. Disappointed didn’t cover it.

  Clicking into Happy Pigs transported Kurt to a virtual farm where he was surrounded by oinks and grunts. The audio was delivered so convincingly by the in-earphones that he turned around to hear where it was coming from. Doing so made the camera turn, revealing a technically impressive 360° environment — a muddy field. Kurt looked down at his legs. He was a pig.

  On-screen instructions taught him how to roll around and control the first-person camera. There was no stated objective. If pressed, Kurt would have guessed that the objective was simply “be a pig.” He clicked out of the game and looked with newfound disdain at the people smiling like idiots as they played it. He didn’t like himself for the thought, but Kurt was annoyed at having to share air with them.

  To take his mind off Happy Pigs, he directed it back to his game of chess with Randy. He opened up Relive and watched the last few moves, disbelieving at how totally he had played into Randy’s hands. Randy was a good player so there was no shame in losing to him. But he was Kurt’s brother, so there was always regret.

  A news-sheet on an empty seat piqued Kurt’s interest next. Having replaced free newspapers on the city’s buses, news-sheets had been cutting-edge until roughly 33 hours earlier. The single sheet of paper had a QR barcode in
the centre which activated the news content. No device was required — this was one of few applications that made the most of the Lenses before The Seed came along. News-sheets had been good in their day, but after a few minutes of reading Kurt soon appreciated his Seed. How had he lived without the convenience of zooming and controlling the font size from the palm of his hand?

  The news-sheet included a notice about important changes to the bus service but Kurt didn’t bother reading it. A small piece of news he hadn’t seen in his SycaNews app revealed details on Sycamore’s handling of location services: tracking was opt-in, as Amos had promised, but apparently few were saying no. Kurt studied the option screen pictured in the article, which made clear that only those who agreed to be tracked would be able to track others. It was dirty and it had Amos written all over it, but the worst part was that Kurt knew it would continue to work. Privacy was funny like that; people would readily give up their own for a chance to infringe everyone else’s.

  Kurt looked out of the window and his concerns evaporated at the sight of an impossibly enchanting girl hurrying along the street. When the bus slowed in traffic he got a closer look and saw that it was Kate Pinewood, the girl from backstage at the contest. She hadn’t been particularly friendly but there was just something about her.

  Kate had been about to pitch the SycaPhone when Kurt nuked her world. He still felt bad that she had lost her job because of his outburst. She wore sunglasses which prevented his Lenses from seeing through to hers, assuming she was wearing them, but it was definitely Kate. Her thick red hair was unusual enough but the placement of those two freckles on her nose couldn’t occur twice in a billion universes, let alone a single city.

  Despite the fact that Kate almost certainly wouldn’t be glad to hear from him, Kurt ached to talk to her. He searched on Forest but found nothing; either Kate Pinewood was a fake name assigned by Sycamore or Kate Pinewood hadn’t been seeded. Neither was good news.