Sycamore 2

by Craig A. Falconer

  “He might have.”

  “Kurt, I didn’t know Michael put those things on the computer. I want you to know that.”

  Kurt laughed. He couldn’t even pretend to believe this.

  “I swear,” Ernesto insisted. “Look, even if you don’t trust me, you know I’m not an idiot. Do you really think I wouldn’t expect the two of you to find something like that straight away?”

  “You were in there with Michael when he did it!” Kurt said. “I saw you in there. I spoke to you in there.”

  Ernesto was shaking his head. “I was there when he downloaded the patch, sure, but I wasn’t there all day. You saw me at dinner, right?”

  The part about dinner was true, but Kurt couldn’t believe the rest. Even had he wanted to, he couldn’t.

  Kurt left the phones on the table and went to get his laptop. Ernesto was gone when he returned. Kurt took his computer and the phones into the workstation and began working on them one by one.

  The opening-up process was trivial. Kurt already had the application on his computer from before so all he had to do was connect a phone via the USB cable and click a single button. It took around sixty seconds for the application to remove every restriction and allow him to sideload a myriad of user-created apps.

  Kurt repeated the process for ten phones, which was more than he needed. There were twenty altogether so he thought he might as well do half.

  When the phones were ready, Kurt decided to look online to see if there were any new apps. The Systelonik XK6 had a thriving homebrew community, and Kurt hadn’t browsed any of the repositories for the better part of six months.

  The first site he went to was a software forum run by Trikk_Stikk, the hacker who had developed the application to open-up the XK6 in the first place. The forum was divided into sub-categories, as usual, so Kurt scrolled down towards “XK6 Apps”. His eyes could hardly believe what he saw next.

  A new sub-forum had been created since Kurt’s last visit: “XK6 Apps for UltraLenses”.

  Kurt clicked the link and saw eighteen threads, each dedicated to one app. Above them there was a sticky thread titled “XK6-UltraLenses FAQ”. He went there first. The FAQ, written by Trikk_Stikk himself, made explicitly clear that anyone looking to use these apps would need to have an opened-up XK6 and a pair of genuine Sycamore UltraLenses which had been fully deactivated using Trikk_Stikk’s software.

  The FAQ also said that Trikk_Stikk would no longer be participating in what he called “the tech improvement community” due to too many competing time pressures in his life. He said he had handed control of the forum over to someone else and would no longer sign in to any of his other old accounts, either, meaning that any messages sent to him would not be read. This meant that Kurt wouldn’t be able to ask for his assistance as he had previously thought he might, but if Trikk_Stikk’s hack really had enabled other developers to create UltraLens-compatible apps for the XK6 then that in itself was more assistance than Kurt could ever have hoped for.

  Kurt still wondered how people were managing to hack their UltraLenses without a diagnostic sphere like the one Michael had pilfered from Sycamore which had eventually found its way into his hands. Then he saw an ad at the side of the page for an “UltraLenses USB Interface Kit” which looked like a cheap version of the sphere and retailed for $39.99 plus shipping. He couldn’t help but smile.

  Once their Lenses were hacked, using software developed by Trikk_Stikk and “based on the Kurtonite method” that Kurt had partially explained on stage at the Talent Search, users had to pair their Lenses with their XK6. From then on, they could use their phone to control their Lenses and use their Lenses to view content from their phone.

  This essentially turned the XK6 into a handheld Seed without the nightmarish privacy issues. It was exactly what Kurt wanted, and he could have kissed Trikk_Stikk for delivering it.

  Kurt downloaded each of the apps without paying too much attention to what they were. A few of their names caught his attention; mainly Lie Detector, but also Radar, Decorate XL, and DVR.

  Kurt took his UltraLenses and his own XK6 out of his pocket, where he kept them for safekeeping. He connected his phone to the computer and transferred all of the new apps. While they were copying over, he put his Lenses in.

  Before using any of the apps, Kurt had to pair his Lenses to the phone. This was even easier than he had expected. All he had to was press the “PAIR” button on his phone then look at the QR-like barcode which appeared on the screen. Pairing like this made sure that only his phone could control his Lenses and that only his Lenses could access content on his phone. It was an elegant solution. More than elegant; to Kurt, it was positively beautiful.

  Some of the new app tiles on Kurt’s phone were covered with a red X. He clicked one to see what the problem was. “INTERNET CONNECTION REQ’D,” the error message said. This was to be expected and Kurt wasn’t too disappointed because none of the apps he had been immediately drawn to were affected. He deleted the ones that were then launched Lie Detector.

  Text appeared in Kurt’s vision, the first overlay he had seen since taking out his Seed. It told him that no faces were within view. Kurt walked to find Minter.

  “Hey,” he said when he found him.

  “Hey, man.”

  “Tell me a lie,” Kurt said. He held his phone in his pocket. “Be as convincing as you can.”

  Minter jumped to his feet like a child who had just heard an ice-cream van. “No way,” he said. “Seriously? How?”

  Kurt tapped his nose three times with his finger.

  Minter was smiling like an idiot. “Ask me a question, then.”

  “Okay.” Kurt held the button on the side of his phone. “Do you think Amos thinks we’re dead?”

  “Definitely,” Minter said.

  A dozen or so lines and annotations appeared on and around Minter’s face. Some pointed to the creases in the corners of his mouth and some were circles around parts of his eyebrows. This facial analysis wasn’t in the same league as that provided by Sycamore’s expensive first-party equivalent, but it was still extremely impressive.

  Kurt released the button. The final result appeared in the centre of his vision:

  Verdict: Truth [98].

  “Now say something that isn’t true,” Kurt said. He took the phone out of his pocket since Minter knew what was going on, anyway, and pressed the button again.

  Minter thought for a second. “Okay: Hello, Kurt. I’ve always liked you.”

  Kurt tried not to laugh as the annotations appeared on Minter’s grinning face. He released the button.

  Verdict: Inconclusive/Jest [39].

  “Be serious this time,” Kurt said. “How old are you?”

  “19,” Minter said.

  Verdict: Lie [04].

  Kurt correctly deduced that the numerical value indicated how likely it was that the target was telling the truth.

  “Does it work?” Minter asked.

  The look on Kurt’s face answered for him.

  “Ask me if I meant to get the password wrong.”

  “No,” Kurt said. His smile faded. “I don’t have to.”

  “Just ask.”

  “No.”

  “At least press the button, then,” Minter insisted. “Are you pressing it?”

  Kurt reluctantly held it down and nodded.

  “I didn’t mean to get the password wrong,” Minter said.

  Verdict: Truth [99].

  “Well?”

  “I believed you, anyway,” Kurt said.

  Minter looked satisfied. “So can you set up one of the other phones for me?”

  “Yeah,” Kurt replied. “But we won’t use this on each other without asking, okay?”

  Minter nodded.

  “And you’ll never use it on Ty, Lisa, Mary, Harry or Joyce. Deal?”

  “Of course, man.”

  “Or Anthony,” Kurt added. “Or Val.”

  “Val? Fine. What about the other two?”

&nbs
p; Kurt grinned. “Don’t get caught.”

  ~

  Kurt returned to the computer, which he had left on. The first thing he did was load all of the UltraLens-compatible apps onto the phone that would be Minter’s. He went into the phone’s settings and changed its name to Minter. Kurt then connected Minter’s new XK6 to the mall’s local wifi connection using the password “OPENMALL” and moved on to the next phone.

  He named this one Mary and loaded a variety of free games and popular apps from another website. Kurt then remembered the family photos Mary had been looking at in the morning. He scanned through the browser’s history and was able to find the album since Mary hadn’t been using stealth mode. He downloaded the pictures and put them on her phone.

  Kurt put the same games and apps onto all of the phones, too, along with the cheerfully named Chifi app which would allow everyone to chat via text, voice or video over the mall’s wifi network. The benefit of an app like Chifi over the dozens of others like it was that it was built for local networks and so didn’t need any kind of external connection. Essentially, it turned the XK6 into a high-tech walkie-talkie.

  Deciding in the end that pettiness wouldn’t solve anything, Kurt set up a phone for each of Val, Ernesto and Michael. He gave them the same XK6 apps as everyone else. These apps were useful, but it wasn’t like Ernesto and Michael would have access to anything as powerful as Lie Detector or the other apps which required UltraLenses.

  Everyone was gathered for dinner when Kurt emerged from the workstation with the box of phones. They were lined up in alphabetical order to ensure he gave the right phone to the right person. Before handing them out, he walked over to Ernesto’s table.

  “Can I talk to you for a second?” Kurt asked. He stood with both hands in his pockets so that holding his phone in one of them wouldn’t look weird.

  Ernesto stood up. “Of course.” They walked out of everyone else’s earshot.

  “I need you to tell me, face to face, that you didn’t know anything about the keylogger or the webcam.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “You didn’t know what?” Kurt asked. He pressed the button.

  “I didn’t know that Michael put a keylogger on the computer or did the thing with the webcam, okay? Why keep asking if you’re not going to believe me?”

  Kurt watched patiently as the annotations appeared on Ernesto’s face. He released the button and waited for the result.

  Verdict: Truth [93].

  “I believe you,” Kurt said. He held his hand out to shake Ernesto’s. “I believe you.”

  Ernesto shook Kurt’s hand. “I’ve made it clear to Michael that I don’t want anything like this to happen again,” he said. Michael was sitting only slightly out of earshot, watching on uneasily.

  Kurt nodded in understanding and joined everyone else. Mary offered to fetch him a plate but he insisted that he wasn’t hungry. He waited until everyone was finished eating and then handed out the phones, explaining the basic functions as he did.

  Ernesto thanked him, as did Val, but Michael had to be encouraged by Ernesto. Harry and Joyce took the phones gratefully but didn’t think they would have much use for them. Kurt showed Harry that there was a Crossword app, guessing it might interest him, but he didn’t know what Joyce would like.

  Everyone else was delighted to hear about the video chat and the games. “Four In A Row!” Lisa squealed as she browsed the Games folder. “I am the master at Four In A Row. Ask Ty.”

  “She beat me once,” he said.

  Kurt took an extra few seconds with Mary, showing her how to find the photos he had loaded. Her eyes welled up when she saw the first picture, and when she noticed that it said “1 of 41” she stood up to hug Kurt then pecked him on the cheek. “This is so nice,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “We should all go to our bit,” Lisa said, meaning the display bedroom she shared with Ty. Mary and Anthony were keen, and Kurt dragged Minter along.

  Ty and Lisa’s bedroom was much bigger than Kurt’s, such was the benefit of arriving in the mall early. It was really more of a suite. Their bed was a king, like his, but they also had two couches, a pair of real wooden drawer units, and an impressively large wardrobe.

  It seemed ludicrous to Kurt that expensive furniture like this — shipped in for promotional photo shoots — had been left behind when the construction project collapsed. On reflection, though, he knew that the cost of any number of fancy wardrobes would have been infinitesimal in the context of La Plethora. He thought back to what the narrator had said in the documentary about the mall, that La Plethora had been “built and abandoned by men too rich to care.”

  Ty and Lisa jumped onto their bed. Kurt took a seat on one of the couches, between Mary and Anthony, and Minter sat down on the other.

  Lisa immediately challenged Ty to a game of Four In A Row. Minter, having slyly put in his UltraLenses on the way over, paired them to his phone and began exploring the variety of apps that Kurt had provided.

  Mary started flicking through her pictures, telling Kurt and Anthony the stories behind each one. She explained that she was the youngest of five, with three much older brothers and an older sister. Her parents still lived in the house where she grew up, which was the scene of many of the pictures. Mary lived there, too, having recently moved back in after graduating from college. Her mother and her father, the pastor, looked like the kind of warm-hearted people it took to raise someone like Mary.

  “Eat that!” Lisa shouted, pumping her fist. Ty fell back onto the bed with his head in his hands.

  “Best two out of three,” he said.

  Lisa turned up her nose. “It’s not even a challenge. I want to play someone else. Minter?”

  He looked over, surprised to have been addressed. “I’m just, uh, fixing something.”

  “Anthony?” Lisa said. She didn’t pronounce the H, so it sounded like Ant-inny.

  He agreed to play.

  Mary had reached the end of her photo album so Kurt showed her how to use Chifi in case she ever needed to. She had less experience with smartphones than the rest of the group, so this one-on-one assistance was very helpful.

  As he was showing her, Kurt’s phone vibrated in his pocket.

  Everyone looked over.

  He took it out and looked at the screen. It told him that he had an incoming Chifi video call from Ernesto. Kurt pressed accept. Ernesto appeared on the screen. He was in the workstation.

  “There’s something you need to see,” Ernesto said.

  “What is it?” Kurt asked.

  “It’s on the computer.”

  “Turn the phone around and show me.”

  Ernesto’s face was a picture of concern. “I don’t want to do this on the phone. Come over.”

  “But it’s dark,” Kurt said.

  “Hurry up,” Ernesto replied. “And bring Minter.” He ended the call.

  “Sounds like somebody’s in trouble,” Ty said.

  Kurt looked at Minter. “You think we should go?”

  Minter answered by standing up.

  “We’ll be back in a minute,” Kurt said to everyone, but mainly Mary.

  As soon as they were outside, Minter began to speculate. “Maybe there’s another camera hidden in there,” he said. “Maybe they know about the timelock.”

  “Nah,” Kurt said, partly in an effort to convince himself. “It could be that Ernesto found out that Michael put something else on the computer. I lie-detectored him before dinner and it was 93 per cent sure that he didn’t know Michael was installing the keylogger or doing the thing with the webcam.”

  “Really?” Minter said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hmm. Maybe it is about Michael, then.”

  They reached the workstation to find Ernesto standing at the open door. He didn’t say anything, just tilted his head towards the computer. Both Kurt and Minter immediately wished that it had been something to do with Michael.

  A video was paused on the screen. T
wo people were in the shot. Kurt and Minter stared only at one:

  Amos.

  He was standing in front of Sycamore HQ’s grand entrance, surrounded by a small crowd held back by temporary metal railings. A SycaNews interviewer stood beside him with a leaf-shaped microphone, so Kurt knew that whatever Amos was about to say wouldn’t be a candid spur-of-the-moment response. It would be calculated, like everything else he uttered in public.

  Ernesto played the video. The interviewer spoke first. “Mr Amos, sir,” she began. “Do you have any message for Kurt’s killer?”

  Kurt looked at Minter to gauge whether he had any idea what was going on, but Minter’s eyes were fixed on the screen in a clear indication that he himself didn’t know what was coming next.

  Amos replied: “To the man who knows what happened to Kurt Jacobs in his home that night; to the man who left Kurt’s Seed for us to find on a piece of paper, covered in his blood; to the man who wrote that monstrous letter… to that man I say this: What made you think that you were smart enough to get away from us?”

  Kurt’s stomach knotted. He felt his cheeks puff and his throat jump, as if his body was getting ready to vomit.

  “What makes you think that anyone can get away from us? Do you think you’re some kind of hotshot?”

  Kurt’s knees weakened. He crouched down, semi-voluntarily, and put his hands in front of his face so he could barely see through the gaps in his fingers.

  Amos went on: “Tomorrow, while you’re hiding wherever it is that you’re hiding, I’ll be standing side by side with Kurt’s mourning family. His brother, his nephew, and, of course,” Amos said, noticeably moving his gaze away from the interviewer and straight into the centre of the camera, “his niece… little Sabrina.”

  “I’m going to kill him,” Kurt said. He stood up straight.

  “Shut up,” Minter whispered, not moving his eyes from the screen. “It’s not finished.”

  The interviewer came back into the shot. “Strong words there from Mr Isaiah Amos, exclusively on SycaNews Live.”

  “One final word, if I may,” Amos smiled.

  “Of course, sir. Please.”