“And where does this door lead?”
“It’s a revolving door,” said Amos, “and it leads you back to the White House.”
The audio ceased. Back in the present, Amos still looked smug. “It was plain sailing from there,” he said.
“Did the president not pick up on that little currency digitisation bombshell you slipped in?” asked Kurt. His hands rested on the table. He felt impotent sitting in a largely empty meeting room discussing decisions that had already been made.
“He heard it and he liked it. After the part you heard we talked about currency for a few minutes. Its nature, its current state, you know? Digitisation is happening organically but the government seem as keen as we are to speed it along. I don’t know how much you thought about what you were doing with The Seed, but the government has been dreaming of something like this for years. A chip was always the long-term goal because it makes the herds so easy to manage. Washington didn’t think it could actually be done, though; they didn’t know where to start. Those clowns probably would have jumped in with compulsory chipping and had violent resistance on their hands. We knew better, of course. We know that fear only gets you so far because hope is always there getting in the way. So we did what we had to do: we made people want it. Now everyone is getting what they want.”
“What did he want from you? Really, I mean.”
“The government wants what we’re giving them, Kurt. They didn’t want us to know that, naturally, so they asked for favourable news coverage and such like.”
“And did you promise it?”
Amos ignored the question. “He also said that they could only fund CrimePrev if we made Seed-based tracking compulsory. It’s out of my hands but I’m sure the public will understand that. Oh, and they’re going to offer subsidised seeding for people on welfare.”
“I don’t even know what to say about that last part. But no, people won’t understand if you take away their right not to be tracked after barely a week. All the people who didn’t opt-in will be furious. You are going to tell them, right?”
“We have to — the concept of a grid for tracking potential criminals only works when people know it’s universal. But almost everyone opted-in, anyway. The percentage is somewhere in the high 90s.”
“That’s not the point. How can the president think this is a good idea? Morality aside, people will hate this. I don’t see how he can run for a second term on the back of this kind of partnership. His legacy will be a police state to end all others.”
Amos drummed his fingers on the meeting table. “It’s really not that complicated. Imagine for a second that you were the president. If you wanted to be elected again, would it really be wise to stand in the way of a system that promises to eliminate violent crime?”
“If he’s really trying to eliminate violent crime why not start with something tangible like proper gun control?”
“Are you crazy?! Listen, hotshot: you can control money, the media and the food supply, but don’t even talk about controlling their guns. We’re dealing with the kind of people who look at a school shooting and say it’s a false-flag conducted to stir up anti-gun sentiment. So we let the idiots have their guns and it makes them feel safe. They see guns as their protection against tyranny. You know, as if the state’s security forces work face-to-face. “Good luck takin’ ma guns, city boi,” they say. But, well, good luck with your rifle when we send round the drones!” Amos chuckled to himself.
“Anything else I should know?”
“This is why I don’t like telling you things,” Amos sighed, referencing the contempt on Kurt’s face. “You don’t understand how the real world works.”
“I understand more than you think. This just isn’t what I wanted. I wanted progress, not this.”
“It’s change. The only certainty we ever have is that change is inevitable.”
“Exactly, but progress isn’t. It has to be affected, nurtured, protected. All you’re doing is chasing power and paper.”
“The paper will be gone soon,” said Amos.
“Whatever. I’m going to head over to the new house with some of my stuff. There’s nothing else, then?”
Amos followed Kurt into the elevator without speaking. Kurt watched Amos’s eyes lose focus as they explored his chat logs. He found what he was looking for seconds before they stepped out onto the ground floor. “Here it is. I don’t know how fast word travels and you know how I don’t like to mention our competitors, but those Californian hipsters we’re going to crush with the dumping stunt are planning to announce a chip of their own at their gay little conference thing next week.”
“What? Another chip? But I thought we had patents for AR contact lenses? What use would their chip be without lenses?” The threat of a rival to The Seed knocked Kurt’s other concerns to the back of his mind in the way that only an external enemy could.
Amos was heartened by his evident concern. “I thought that, too, hotshot, but apparently we were wrong. We’re only protected for certain applications of AR lenses — the ones we had before The Seed. Recording live input, enabling direct chat… those concepts didn’t exist before you came along so none of my men had thought to patent them.”
“So what’s happening, did the president offer some sort of protection against the other chip as a sweetener?”
Amos smiled. They had reached the front door and the valet was going for Kurt’s car. “See: you’re better at this than you thought. I’ll give you the exact quote.” Amos swiped an extract from the call to Kurt.
Again, the president’s recorded voice filled Kurt’s ears. “Don’t worry, Mr Amos,” it said. “We’ll tell the media that Sycamore has invested heavily in our country and hence your intellectual property rights must be protected. Your monopoly on sub-dermal consumer technology will last as long as my establishment.”
That was it.
“They’re on our side all the way,” Amos beamed.
An assurance of protection against the rival chip had been what Kurt thought he wanted only seconds earlier, but actually hearing it rustled up discomfort. “I know that this benefits us right now, but is it a precedent we want? The government supporting anti-competitive action is a slippery slope.”
“Anti-competitive?” Amos couldn’t stop himself from snickering. “I thought you didn’t like competition? What happened to all your commie nonsense about inefficiency and inequality?”
“The system we have is bad enough,” said Kurt, unashamed of his position, “but if you take away the competition and leave everything else then we’re looking at corporate fascism. Is that what you want?”
Amos wrinkled his nose in indifference. “I don’t care what you call it, hotshot. An easy win is an easy win.”
~
Kurt’s Gallardo had a built-in navigation system but it couldn’t compete with the one on his Seed. Sycamore’s app was called TakeMeThere (TMT) and its title kept up the not-at-all-annoying habit of capitalising words with no spaces in between.
A long green arrow appeared on the road telling Kurt where to drive. The Distance and Time fields updated an unnecessary number of times per second. Unlike the dangerous pop-ups, though, TMT’s interface didn’t interfere with his view of the road. TMT also worked on foot and, not at all creepily, offered consumers the option of selecting “Person or Place” from its initial menu.
Longhampton lay at the opposite end of the city from Kurt’s apartment — social mobility was lifting him from the plebeian doldrums and dropping him somewhere at the edge of the city’s southwestern limits. It wasn’t that he wanted to live with the upper crust, that was just where the good houses happened to be.
Kurt had been driving south from the Quartermile for what seemed like no time when TMT told him there were 60 seconds until arrival. A huge black gate came into view. He sighed. He was going to be one of those gate people.
The gate opened as he approached and he continued to the end of the cul-de-sac. Kurt couldn’t see himself lik
ing any of his new neighbours so was pleased that there were such big gaps between the houses. His Seed unlocked the front door without any drama and the inside of the house lived up to the pictures he had seen. It was huge.
Whoever had designed the house clearly had Kurt’s kind of taste: marble floors, high ceilings, a master bedroom with a waterbed in the corner and a hot tub in the middle, a kitchen that made Randy’s look like a closet, and closets that made the old apartment look like a sick joke.
Kurt decided not to bother collecting any more of his things for now and dumped the few boxes he had in one of the rooms upstairs. He returned to his new bedroom and sat in a fancy seat by the window.
Crystal glass of Lexington Blue in his hand and songs about the good life in his ear, Kurt kept his eyes fixed on the white viewing-wall, unable to bring himself to admire a beautiful rainbow over the world his Seed was ruining. CrimePrev and Forest and everything else ran through his mind until he dozed off to somewhere more peaceful.
The next thing Kurt knew, the time in the corner of his Lenses was blinking 16:35 and it was time to get ready to meet Stacy. He opened the curtains and looked out over a meadow he never knew existed so close to the city. The sky was clearer than it had any right to be. Kurt was refreshed and it was a good day to be alive.
He went outside to his car and a man in a driveway across the street called over to him. “Nice one, neighbour!” yelled the man. He was pointing to the sky.
Kurt followed his finger and saw the gargantuan ad. Virtual clouds formed a giant face — not unlike the two-tone revolutionary who adorned innumerable college dorms. The face floated above Sycamore’s latest slogan. The face was Kurt’s. The words weren’t.
“Change is inevitable. Progress is Sycamore.”
Kurt shook his head and climbed into the shining Gallardo determined not to let Amos and his games ruin the evening. The radio provided little respite as a no-mark host debated the tracking changes with none other than Isaiah Amos himself. What Amos was doing on the old-fashioned radio Kurt didn’t know, but the whole thing sounded like a shill-job.
The host complained that compulsory tracking would ruin games of hide and seek, as if that was an issue to rival the emergence of a publicly-funded human grid. Amos appeared concessionary in promising that consumers who didn’t opt-in to location sharing would remain invisible to others, and that only Sycamore and the police would ever have access to their exact location.
“And what if I don’t want anyone to know where I am?” the host asked.
Amos cleared his throat in preparation for a sharp reply. “Then I would ask why you’re hiding.” Applause rang through the speakers. From whom, Kurt was unsure. He turned off the radio and drove in silence.
No one else seemed to be driving into the city so Kurt arrived at Stacy’s corner in no more than six or seven minutes. He was early. The dumpster was open again, this time with two table-legs sticking out. The message in the sky and the propaganda on the radio had nudged him towards annoyance and he hoped that some uplifting music would bring him back to his best before Stacy showed up. Assuming she did, of course.
Would she, though? He hadn’t really thought about it, but did she ever say that she would? All he could remember her saying was something about not being able to refuse a night in a mansion with him, which now sounded like a joke. Kurt suddenly felt ridiculous. This wasn’t the first time he had misread a girl’s signals but it was surely the worst. He had been looking forward to seeing Stacy again since the moment they parted, and to make matters worse she lived a 1990s lifestyle that left him with no way of contacting her.
Five o’clock arrived and still she didn’t show. Ten past came and went. If Kurt had wanted to be anywhere else, he would have left. He closed his eyes again and hoped for sleep. Sudden knocking on his window startled him upright and the sight of the knocker sent him smiling with delight.
She opened her own door and stepped in. “Hey. How long have you been waiting?”
“Maybe like two minutes,” he lied. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming.”
“You really thought I would miss seeing the mansion you bought with your sell-out money?”
Kurt laughed defensively. “I know you’re joking but I need to not think about that tonight. All day, all month, all I’ve done is talk about Sycamore and The Seed. I talk to the press about how great everything is and I talk to Amos about how bad everything is and I talk to myself about how I wish I had never gone back to that stupid contest. Now that I’m with someone I actually like, I don’t want to talk about any of it.”
Stacy smiled, glad to hear it. “Let’s drive.”
They did, and minutes later they were rolling through the black gate and into the granite driveway. Kurt swiped his Seed on the door and invited Stacy to lead the way in.
“This is a big house,” she said. And it was — intimidatingly so. She didn’t know what else to say.
Neither did Kurt. “Yeah. I haven’t moved my stuff in yet, though. I haven’t even been in some of the rooms.”
He looked worried about something and Stacy couldn’t help but pick up on it. “Is there something on your mind?” she asked.
“I said I wouldn’t talk about it. Do you want to help me explore?”
Stacy pulled him down onto his long sofa. “I don’t want to do anything until you’re alright and you’re not going to be alright until you clear your mind. So what’s up?”
“They’re making the tracking compulsory,” he sighed. “Just like that. Just like you said. And the money. Amos talked to the president about currency digitisation and they both want it.”
“I don’t know why I’m surprised.” Stacy sat back and blinked too many times. “Everything always happens in an instant: wars are waged, towers fall, economies collapse. But this just seems too sudden. Why are they doing the tracking now?”
“I don’t know how much has been announced,” Kurt replied carefully.
Stacy clasped her hands around his and held his gaze. “You can trust me.”
With eyes like hers, he couldn’t not. “Okay. The government is funding a new department at Sycamore to analyse incoming video streams for potential criminal activity. They’re calling it CrimePrev. It’s basically PreCrime but instead of three idiot savants locked in a basement we’re going to have a roomful of idiot geniuses poring over vistas at Sycamore HQ.”
“Do you think they’ll have a big wall full of everyone’s vistas and they’ll be sitting there in big recliners, smoking cigars while they spy on you?”
Kurt appreciated Stacy’s use of humour to process the situation and laughed with her at the image. “There won’t be a wall, but I wouldn’t put the rest past them. I just know that Minion is going to get his paws all over this, and he doesn’t play well with privacy.”
“He’s the guy who was in the news last year about getting kicked out of university, right?”
“Yeah. Professor Walker put his neck on the line to get him back in then he ended up dropping out to work for Sycamore. I don’t know for sure what he actually did but I have an idea. I knew him for a few years and the whole time he was trying to blackmail people, and not over childish stuff. He was always sneaking into places he had no right to be. I can’t exactly preach on that front but he’s not like me — he didn’t do it for good, or even just for the chaos. He’s not like Amos, either. At least with Amos you know it’s about money. Minion is all about the power.”
“I don’t know much about him. What’s he like?”
Kurt didn’t like the tone of Stacy’s question and couldn’t hide that fact. “Why do I feel like you’re working right now?” he asked. “Are you recording this? Are you going to try and publish what I’m telling you? Because if you did, we would both be finished.”
“No,” she said. “I promise. I want to see Sycamore die but I’m not insane. I’m just interested. This is serious stuff. We’re talking about military surveillance disguised as consumer electronics. The concep
t might not be new but the scale is.”
“This isn’t military. People said the same kind of things about old social networks — that they were designed as phishing operations for federal intelligence agencies. But in the real world it’s the other way round. Things get successful then the agencies want in.”
“Well, that’s usually how the story goes, but this time it’s different. How much do you know about Amos?”
Kurt shrugged. “Enough. I know he used to be in the military if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Tip of the iceberg,” said Stacy. “His work was in managing communications and tracking enemy movements. That’s when he took an interest in the multi-focus HUD lenses the army were developing. He formed a company called Unifield and started working on what became the UltraLenses. The funding came from serious people. Top-level people. The kind of people who buy legislation. Anyway, Unifield was deemed too unfriendly-sounding so Sycamore was born. It’s the same company, built on oil money and arms. How did you think he was able to afford that ridiculous tower before launching a single product?”
Kurt stopped to think about that for the first time. “So Amos is a pawn?”
“I wouldn’t call him a pawn. More like the queen. I reckon you’re the king — a figurehead with no real power. The queen is dangerous, but at the end of the day she’s still just a player in someone else’s game. Amos’s backers contrived an American Dream fairytale about a man and his idea coming from nothing. I don’t think people bought it but then you came along and it sort of came true. Even if someone else had invented the chip, someone like you was exactly what they needed.”
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