Sycamore 2

by Craig A. Falconer

  Seeing Sabrina’s reluctant expression and her face all made-up with RealU’s nonsense as Amos leaned in close angered Kurt more than words could ever describe.

  Kurt could see Ernesto’s head shaking in the corner of his eye. He felt Mary’s hand rest supportively on his shoulder. Even Minter, normally so detached, turned to Kurt with a look of palpable disgust on his face. “He’ll get what’s coming, man,” he said. “He’ll get it.”

  With the greetings complete, the minister began the service. It was standard stuff, recounting Kurt’s childhood and achievements. Randy had no opportunity to speak, but Kurt didn’t think he would have wanted to, anyway.

  The commentators talked over most of the service, reading out messages from viewers and promoting everything from Lexington Cola to the latest Sycaplex blockbusters. They quietened down only when the minister finished speaking and gave way to Amos.

  Amos delivered a well-rehearsed speech about the need to unite in opposition to violent extremism. Fury River could be heard chanting their slogans in the distance, which was exactly what he wanted.

  Nothing in Amos’s speech made reference to Kurt’s killer. He stood next to Sabrina throughout the service, as his threat had suggested, but nothing happened. Kurt didn’t allow himself to feel relief just yet, but the dread was certainly lifting.

  Amos thanked everyone for coming out and walked with his bodyguards back towards his car. Randy and the kids followed just behind him. Randy looked at Sabrina as they walked, and her lips were moving.

  “Volume on Randy,” Kurt said.

  Minter clicked as quickly as he could but didn’t get there before Sabrina had finished speaking and Randy had finished replying. Through Randy’s vista and in-earphones they could now make out individual shouts from the Fury River mob. Some of the heckling was very general — “scum!” — and some quite basic — “he’s in Hell where he belongs!” — but other shouts were beneath contempt.

  “Don’t listen to them,” Randy said to Sabrina.

  A loud voice rose over the others: “You’re next, you little bitch.”

  Randy stopped walking. He looked straight at the tall bald man who had shouted it.

  “You heard me,” the man said.

  Randy walked towards him. A police officer stepped in Randy’s way, holding her hands out chest-high like she was telling a dog to stay back.

  The man walked to the very front of the group. He was right in the centre of Randy’s vista, which Minter had now maximised to fill the whole screen. “Your brother was a queer and your wife was a whore,” he said, quietly, almost gently, taunting Randy from behind the safety of the railing.

  Randy looked at the officer. “Are you not going to do anything about this?”

  “Sir,” she said, holding her hands out again as though Randy was the aggressor, “we have strict instructions to stay on this side of the barrier.”

  “Instructions from who?” Randy asked, as if the question didn’t answer itself. “You’re the goddamn police!”

  Kurt heard Sabrina’s voice, a weak imitation of its usual self, asking Randy to take her to the car.

  Randy agreed. “Thanks for nothing,” he said to the police officer. He turned his eyes towards the detestable protestor just in time to see him spitting in their direction. It landed on Randy’s shirt.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to step back, sir,” the officer said to Randy. “Please.”

  Randy shook his head in disgust and wiped down his shirt. And then, from outside of Randy’s vision, Julian burst into view as he leapt over the metal railing and began throwing wild punches at Randy’s harasser. All of the other protestors stepped back, suddenly less brave now that a 14-year-old boy had breached their safety barrier.

  “Julian!” Randy shouted. “Enough!”

  But the red mist had a hold of Julian and he kept at it. He knocked the man to the ground after two or three solid connections and climbed on top of him to dish out some more. Three police officers flattened the temporary barrier and waded in to restrain Julian before he could do any serious damage.

  The police roughhoused Julian and carried him over the fallen railing as he fought to free himself. Baton-wielding officers appeared from the other three sides of the protest group and formed a new barrier.

  “Woah woah woah woah woah!” Amos yelled at the police as he hurried back from his car. He clicked his fingers and pointed to the ground. They released Julian. “Focus on the real criminals,” he said, pointing at the pantomime villains that were Fury River.

  “Go to the main feed,” Kurt said. Minter did.

  Amos walked over to Julian. “Are you okay?” he asked, touching Julian’s shoulder as though he actually cared.

  “Get away from me,” Julian snapped. He pushed Amos hard in the chest with two hands. Amos stumbled. It looked for all the world like Julian was about to say something else, but he managed to keep it in. Kurt could not have been more glad.

  Amos composed himself, loathe to look weak when confronted by an angry child but keen to appear compassionate towards a grieving nephew. “It’s been a difficult day,” he said. “And I am truly sorry for your loss.” He got in his car and left.

  The male commentator’s voice returned. “Wow,” he said. “Talk about an eventful end to an emotional service.”

  The SycaNews cut to ads.

  ~

  Everyone in the food court rose to their feet as soon as Kurt emerged from the workstation.

  Ty was quickest. “What happened?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Kurt said, allowing relief to course through him at last. He sat down and told them all about the service. The fact that his main source of annoyance was the commentary team showed that it had gone just about as well as it could have.

  “But Julian was an absolute badass,” Minter said. “He started throwing punches at some asshole from The Fury.”

  Kurt tried to play down that particular moment but Ty was keen to hear more about it. Kurt told him he could watch the whole thing back if he wanted to. Ty was eager, as were the others. Even Harry and Joyce went into the workstation for the first time.

  The two groups had now swapped places: Kurt, Mary, Minter and Ernesto sat in the food court while everyone else watched a recorded stream of Kurt’s funeral.

  “What are we going to do now?” Mary asked. “Does anything that happened today change anything?”

  Ernesto fielded this question, more patient towards Mary now that he knew Kurt valued her presence. “We’re pretty much stuck for the next seven days,” he said, before explaining what had happened during Minter’s ill-fated attempt to access the Emergency Control Interface. He didn’t exhibit any signs of animosity towards Minter and was careful not to attach blame.

  “So we can’t do anything for a week?”

  “We can’t put anything in the sky for a week,” Minter said, making what he thought was an important distinction.

  Mary turned to Kurt. “That’s too long. They might figure out the letter or find another hole in your story.”

  These were familiar concerns that Kurt had already wrestled with and Minter had already eased. “They won’t find a hole,” he said calmly. “There is no hole.”

  “Maybe not, but what if Amos makes another threat and he’s more serious next time? I’m not saying he will, but you might still need a way to contact your family before next week.”

  “There’s no use needing things you can’t have,” Ernesto said, “and there’s no use worrying about things you might need.” This had been one of his mother’s favourite sayings.

  Kurt looked at Mary. “Do you have a better idea?” he asked, his tone not brusque but hopeful.

  “I’ve been thinking about something since yesterday,” she said.

  Everyone encouraged her to share it.

  “What if we had someone on the outside who was seeded? Someone who was with us, but not in here with us.”

  “What do you mean?” Kurt asked.

&nb
sp; “Well, you said one of the main problems was being able to warn your family before you start doing anything. But if we had someone on the outside with a Seed, that person would be able to contact them at any moment.”

  Kurt didn’t get it. “But how could we be in contact with the person who was seeded? Sycamore would see us.”

  “Not if the person took their Lenses out. Val could drive out and meet them somewhere isolated to pass on information. Sure, they would be tracked, but no one would know they were with Val.”

  Kurt looked at Ernesto. Neither said anything.

  “But what’s the point?” Minter asked. “If we can do anything, we’ll be able to contact Kurt’s brother. That’s the easiest part. I’ll just fire him a message saying “take out your Seeds and get out of the city,” and that’ll be it.”

  Mary’s eyes were wide and her hands were much more animated than normal. “But Sycamore would see that,” she said. “Kurt, you said this. You said Sycamore probably wouldn’t be able to react quickly enough to get to them before they could run. I don’t know as much about Amos and Sycamore as you all do, but I don’t think we should be dealing in probablies.”

  “It’s just the same, though,” Minter said. “They would see a message from anyone else just the same.”

  “Yeah but Amos isn’t going to notice an ordinary message from another user as quickly as he would notice a special message from inside the secret control thing, is he? They would have loads of time to get away.”

  Minter didn’t have an immediate objection to that.

  “And,” Mary continued, “it’s not like the person would be contacting them out of the blue. Kurt could tell them what to say to Randy or Julian so they become friends. Then they could pass on a spoken warning during a long chat or something. There’s no way Sycamore would spot that quickly enough to react. It makes sense, right?” she said, looking at Kurt.

  “It doesn’t not make sense,” he said, turning to Minter to see what he thought. “Does it?”

  “I dunno,” Minter said. “I suppose it might be something to think about.” He followed the pattern and turned to Ernesto.

  “So to be clear about this,” Ernesto said, looking only at Mary, “your idea is that we should find someone who’s against Sycamore and isn’t seeded, and we should get them seeded so that they can help us?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And where would we find this person?”

  Mary held his gaze. “What about me?”

  17

  Kurt initially dismissed the idea of Mary being seeded as a non-starter. It was just too much of a risk, he said; for her. Ernesto was more concerned about everyone else.

  Minter, though, gave the idea some serious thought. He knew more than any of them about what went on behind the scenes during a seeding, and he eventually announced that he saw no reason why Mary couldn’t be seeded under a fake name, which would of course be necessary to protect both her and her family from any potential problems.

  Mary didn’t have a passport, a driver’s license, or any of the other things Minter asked about. And she hadn’t needed to undergo any biometric scans while at college, either, which was particularly useful.

  Minter explained that facial recognition was rarely used during seeding given that most consumers had photo ID with them. But since Mary couldn’t bring any photo ID, her face would be scanned. He insisted, though, that the system used during seeding only referenced images officially submitted to government agencies; none of the billions of tagged photos his algorithm had semi-legally scraped from “private” social media albums were used for this particular purpose.

  “But what if she does get caught?” Ernesto asked, amazed by the speed with which the discussion had progressed from Mary’s left-field suggestion to Minter’s detailed questioning.

  “Val could wait in the parking lot with my computer,” Kurt said, quickly coming around to the idea. “Mary could be wearing Stacy’s camera and sending the video to Val. If anything went massively wrong, Val could go in and get her. You say Val is totally unknown to Sycamore, right? So is Mary. Nothing could link them to us. They could just flee in the car, drive around for a while, then come back.”

  “Right,” Minter said. “But I’m telling you all it won’t come to that, because it won’t. Seeding isn’t a big deal. The seeding department at Tasmart is like the retentions department at an insurance company. Everyone is working to strict targets and they’re all working on commission. The seeders want you to get seeded. They need you to get seeded. Practically everyone already is, so every new sale counts.”

  Mary was nodding excitedly. “See? It’ll be fine. When can I go?”

  “I didn’t say this is happening,” Ernesto said.

  No one said anything.

  “But I’ll think about it.”

  Kurt knew then, beyond any doubt, that Ernesto would sanction Mary’s seeding. There was something in his expression that betrayed his agreement that this was a good idea; that this was their best idea.

  Ernesto had previously been insistently opposed to the idea of Mary leaving the mall, but these circumstances were different. Mary was no longer trying to escape; she was trying to help.

  Before walking away to gather his thoughts, Ernesto stood up and looked at Mary. “I underestimated you,” he said. It was the closest thing to praise that Ernesto would ever give anyone, so Mary smiled in return.

  ~

  “Seriously?” Lisa said. “You’re getting seeded?”

  “Is it even safe?” Ty asked.

  The two of them had felt protective of Mary since she first arrived in the mall. Not only did her quiet voice and shy mannerisms create an aura of vulnerability, she had also been the only member of the group to arrive alone. Everyone else had come in some kind of pair: Anthony and Michael, father and son; Ernesto and Val, whatever their backstory was; Ty and Lisa, together; Harry and Joyce, married; Kurt and Minter, accidental allies. Mary was very much the odd one out.

  “Minter says it’s totally safe,” Mary said.

  “So where are you going to go?” Lisa asked. “You won’t be able to come back here, will you? And you can’t go home if you’re pretending to be someone else.”

  “We were thinking that she’ll probably stay in a guest house somewhere residential,” Kurt said. He, Mary and Minter had been brainstorming for the fifteen minutes it took everyone else to watch the end of Kurt’s funeral, and this was their best idea so far. “Somewhere that Mary can say is her home address and somewhere that still accepts cash so Sycamore won’t see that she’s paying to live there.”

  Lisa and Ty looked at each other uneasily. “When?” Ty asked.

  “Val was out this morning so her next mail run should be the day after tomorrow,” Minter said. Mary was glad to hear it would be so soon.

  Mary wanted to prepare lunch as normal, since cooking was her favourite form of stress relief within the mall, so she asked if they could go back to talking about her potential seeding later in the day. Kurt and Minter said this was fine and that they had some things to do online, anyway.

  Lisa and Ty opted to stay at their table in the food court and play Four In A Row until one of them conceded that the other was better, though Lisa knew full well that she was too good and Ty was too stubborn for this to ever happen.

  In the workstation, Minter went to work on a fake birth certificate for Mary. The range of his illicit abilities really was something to behold. Kurt asked some questions about Mary’s seeding while Minter worked and he had a good answer to each of them. Kurt felt good about the whole thing.

  Minter produced a birth certificate under the name of Mary Glover rather than the legally correct Mary Miller. He said it made sense to stick with Mary since it was such a common name, and that doing so nullified what would otherwise have been a potentially fatal risk that someone might recognise her and say “Hi, Mary” while she was being seeded under a different name.

  Kurt looked at the year Minter had entere
d in the date of birth section and worked out how old it made Mary Glover. “17?” he said.

  “She’ll be 18 tomorrow,” Minter said. “That’s an important part of the story.”

  “But she’s 23.”

  “Yeah, but she doesn’t look it. And Julian is 14, right? There are blocks against adults initiating contact with kids they aren’t related to. 18 counts as an adult, but it’s within five years of Julian, so she’ll get through.”

  This was the first Kurt had heard of the age-gap restriction, which sounded unusually well-intentioned for a Sycamore policy.

  “So what is the story, anyway?” he asked.

  Minter gave Kurt a rundown of the barebones backstory he had concocted. Mary Glover was born into a religious family in which modern technology, such as smartphones and UltraLenses, was strictly forbidden. But on her 18th birthday, Miss Glover gained access to the money her parents had been saving throughout her childhood. Free from their draconian restrictions and with a pile of cash burning a hole in her pocket, she walked to the nearest Tasmart and joined the modern world.

  “Decent,” Kurt said. “But what about her address? How does a guest house fit with that story?”

  “Her father told her he won’t let her in his house with a Seed,” Minter said. “So she’s going to stay in a guest house run by her friend until she earns enough money to rent her own place.”

  “It’s getting a bit convoluted,” Kurt said.

  “She’s not going to use it all, man. This is like a character sketch. The author doesn’t always need it all, but it’s there just in case. No one is going to ask her anything beyond her name, address, and date of birth. Honestly, it’s not a big thing. Have you never seen people getting seeded in Tasmart? It’s quicker than getting your hair cut. It’s quicker than brushing your teeth!”