Sycamore 2

by Craig A. Falconer

  This was much like the situation with the mall and the drones; if anyone was looking, they were already in trouble.

  Mary was happy with Kurt’s explanation. He told her exactly which options to select and hammered home how absolutely essential it was that she didn’t talk to him or look at him while wearing her Lenses. Even turning around for a second could be catastrophic, and asking for help was as off-limits as any other speech.

  Mary queried again whether this was worth the risk, as her understanding had been that she would never be in the vicinity of any members of the group while wearing her Lenses. Although removing her Lenses would halt the video, Kurt explained that Mary didn’t have to keep looking at the door once the video was locked to it, meaning that she could close her eyes if it made her feel better. All she had to do was not turn around, he reiterated. The video was only four minutes long, so Mary was confident she could do that.

  After battling with the still unfamiliar menu for a minute or so, Mary managed to get the footage to lock on the inside of the truck’s door. She blew it up to 50 or 60 inches then closed her eyes. Instructed by her Seed, Sycamore’s servers did all the work of overlaying the visual data onto that particular surface for anyone who looked at it. It worked in the same way as an ad placement on a billboard.

  Kurt held the Two-Way out and looked through it at the door. Using the Two-Way as an intermediary came at a high cost in terms of image quality, but it was more than good enough. Kurt watched as the video began with a shaky tour of Mary’s guest house. He wondered why she had started it here, too soon, until a notification popped up in her vista.

  “Incoming Transvista request from: Julian Jacobs. 14. Single. [Prior contact: No. / Popularity: Top 1%. / Base compatibility: 92%.]”

  Kurt had never seen a base score in the 90s; Mary must have knocked the ball out of the park with her questionnaire answers and SycaStore purchases.

  Julian’s popularity came as no surprise given that his last name was Jacobs and he was only one branch away from Kurt’s Forest profile. Popular profiles benefitted from automatic filtering, which rejected calls and messages from unknown users with a base score of anything lower than 70. That had been Kurt’s minimum target for Mary: 70.

  92 was incredible.

  It was so good, in fact, that it had prompted Julian to initiate contact with Mary, something that Kurt hadn’t even allowed himself to hope for. Kurt had often been recommended potential friends and partners by his account, but their base scores rarely touched 80. There was little wonder that Julian made the call.

  When Mary clicked accept, her vista was replaced by Julian’s and his by hers. For the remainder of their four-minute chat, each would be seeing through the other’s eyes. This was both a strength and weakness of outward-facing cameras: a strength in that it allowed others to see what you were seeing, but a weakness in that it prevented them from seeing you.

  Like everyone else, Mary and Julian got around this by each looking into a mirror. Kurt’s view of Julian’s bedroom now changed to a view of Julian looking at himself in a mirror on his wall.

  The content of the chat was rather pedestrian. After a bit of a lull, Julian commented on their exceptionally high base compatibility score and asked Mary how long she had been into Zantrophonica, one of the bands Kurt had told her to say she liked. Quite brilliantly, Mary gave a convincing reply which name-checked their first three albums and longed for the good old days before the original drummer quit. She had done her research.

  Julian replied with tales of all the gigs he had been to — which Kurt knew for a fact he hadn’t — but was soon interrupted by Randy calling from downstairs. Julian said that he would have to return to his normal vision for a second, but this didn’t have any effect on what Mary saw. Julian ran downstairs to see what Randy wanted, and Randy came into view.

  “I’m in a chat,” Julian said.

  “Hello, Mary Glover,” Randy said, reading it from the “ACTIVE CHAT” notice above Julian’s head. “Mary Glover who just turned 18 and is single…” he continued, raising his eyebrows at Julian as if to suggest that he might be aiming a bit high.

  Kurt was amused by Randy’s reaction but doubted it would be similar in four years should he ever catch 14-year-old Sabrina chatting with an 18-year-old boy. Or, of course, had he known that Mary was actually 23.

  “Why were you calling me?” Julian asked Randy.

  “It’s time to leave for Sabrina’s dance show,” Randy said. “Don’t tell me you forgot?”

  This was odd for Kurt, looking into Randy’s eyes while Randy talked to Julian. It felt like a family version of Star’s Eye View.

  Julian had forgotten, but he pretended like he hadn’t and ran upstairs to get changed. He told Mary on his way that he had to go but would talk to her again soon. He met Sabrina at the top of the stairs.

  “Mary?” she said. “Ohhhhh… JJ’s got a girlfriend, JJ’s got a girlfriend.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Don’t worry,” Sabrina said, looking straight into Julian’s Lenses with a mischievous grin on her face. She whispered: “I won’t tell her that you still wet the bed.”

  Kurt desperately wanted to shout “pause it” so that he could see Sabrina for a little bit longer, but he had to make do with the few seconds she spent looking right into his eyes. Admittedly there were a few degrees of separation — Sabrina to Julian to Mary to door to Two-Way to Kurt — but it was still the best view of Sabrina that Kurt had had for a long time. She wasn’t wearing any RealU makeup or accessories, either, which pleased him to no end. This was the first time since her 10th birthday, when she had graduated from her Sapling account to a full SycaStore account, that Kurt had seen Sabrina looking her own age. There was none of the PrettyPanda eye shadow, none of the NeverFade lipstick, and none of the KissaBliss anything. She looked like the real Sabrina; his Sabrina.

  Julian mumbled his apologies for his weird family and said that he would talk to Mary again tomorrow. Real-life Mary then removed her UltraLenses, put them safely in her pocket, and turned back to face Kurt.

  “I think it went pretty well,” she said.

  In that moment, with Mary smiling with delight to have succeeded in the first stage of her plan to get one over on Sycamore, it was impossible for Kurt not to think of Stacy smiling the same I-can’t-believe-it-actually-worked smile after leaving Sycamore HQ with the incriminating Orwall footage.

  He shook the thought away. “You were amazing,” he said. “And with JJ initiating the contact… it was better than we could have hoped. So it’s today that he’s going to call you again, yeah?”

  The truck stopped moving.

  “It’s just me,” Val shouted before opening the door, sparing Kurt and Mary some unnecessary panic. Kurt still moved as far back as he could, though.

  Kurt’s semi-restricted view of the world outside told him that they were back where they picked Mary up; rather than waste time driving to somewhere secluded, Val had simply circled.

  “Did it go well?” she asked.

  Mary answered. “I was just showing Kurt—”

  “She was just showing me how hard it is to get used to the palm-based gestures,” Kurt said. “And she told me everything that Julian said. He contacted her, which is ideal.”

  “Yeah,” Mary said. “So do you think that next time I should maybe drop in a little hint?”

  “About what?” Kurt asked.

  “You.”

  Kurt shook his head. “No hints. Don’t mention me at all. If JJ does, just say you’re sorry about what happened. The only time I want you to mention me is when you’re telling them to take their Seeds out and run.”

  “But what if there was another way? What if I could get them to meet me somewhere without telling them why, then get them to take their Lenses out for some made up reason and then tell them what’s really going on? Then they could take their Seeds out and go somewhere safe until everything is finished, and Sycamore wouldn’t even know it was anything to do
with you.”

  Kurt was quiet. He looked at Val, who seemed to be waiting to see what he thought of the idea, and then back to Mary. “No,” he said after a few seconds. “I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but we’re not doing anything fancy. Once we get into the system, which is only three more days, we’ll know when we’re going to strike and you’ll give JJ the message an hour before we do. Val will meet you here again at the same time in four days. That’s when we’ll know the exact date and time that we’ll be doing it.”

  Mary nodded and got out of the truck.

  “You’re doing great,” Kurt said.

  Val closed the door.

  The truck didn’t move for almost two minutes. Kurt pressed his ear against the side and heard Val’s voice, heavily muffled, occasionally interspersed with a word or two from Mary. Kurt inevitably wondered what they were talking about but appreciated that Val hadn’t really gotten much of the lowdown in the minute or so she had spoken to them with the door open.

  The next time the truck stopped was at La Plethora’s giant silver archway, where Val had to get out to deactivate the alarm. Before doing that she let Kurt out of the dingy back of the truck and into the front. “Thanks,” he said.

  Kurt climbed into the front and watched as Val walked over to the hidden device, looked at it, then got back into the car and drove.

  “Why didn’t you put the code in?” he asked.

  “The batteries are dead.”

  “So you can’t deactivate it?” Kurt said, worried that the alarm would go off in the mall.

  Val shook her head. “That’s the sensor. So until I change the batteries, there’s nothing to deactivate.”

  Kurt wasn’t sure if this was better or worse. “Do you have more batteries?” he asked.

  “We ordered some last week,” Val said, “when I saw that the old ones were running low. The new ones should be at the mail locker next time I go, which will probably be tomorrow. I checked two days ago after I took Mary to Tasmart, but obviously I couldn’t go all the way out to Barnford Park today. Not with the truck. Not with you.”

  Kurt looked at the time on his phone. “Do you think Ernesto or Michael will be up yet?” he asked.

  Val shrugged. “We should probably hope not.”

  ~

  Kurt and Val re-entered La Plethora through the main entrance and stuck to the left of the main walkway. At the Coffee Curve they veered left onto the northwest path, passing the cinema and the store where Kurt had pranked Ty with the mountain lion.

  This route was chosen to minimise the chance of being seen by anyone who might have been in the food court. As Kurt sneaked back inside Tasmart Home, successfully unseen, Val walked over to wait for breakfast. After a few seconds Kurt realised that no one was around and headed to join Val. He had almost reached her table when Ernesto emerged from the workstation.

  “Morning,” Kurt said.

  Ernesto ignored Kurt and looked at Val. “Did you take Kurt to see Mary?”

  “I went to see Mary,” Val said, not quite lying.

  “Val,” Ernesto said, “you were with me and Michael when we set up the outdoor cameras. You know I can see what goes on on the other side of that fire exit. So I’ll ask again: did you take Kurt to see Mary?”

  “I talked her into it,” Kurt said.

  “I appreciate that,” Ernesto said, “but this isn’t about you.” He turned back to Val. “You have one job. It’s not an easy job, but it’s a simple job. You go outside when I need you to. You do not take others outside when they want you to. Are we clear on that?”

  Val didn’t offer any kind of reply, verbal or otherwise.

  “Good,” Ernesto said, taking it as a yes. “Kurt, come with me.”

  Kurt followed Ernesto into the workstation.

  Ernesto entered his password. “People can’t just come and go,” he said as he typed it. “Especially not you. You must know that?”

  “It went well, though,” Kurt said. “Their base compatibility score was so high that Julian contacted her. Now she can reach him whenever we need her to and it will just show up as a regular conversation between friends.”

  “Good, good,” Ernesto said, nodding absently. He opened a browser window. “Now watch this.”

  Kurt watched as the video began to play. It was a sit-down interview segment from a popular British current affairs show. Kurt vaguely recognised the interviewer but didn’t know his name. His guest, on the other hand, was immediately familiar: Adeline Lemarchand.

  They sat somewhere in France, in a grand room, flanked by high bookcases filled with old leather-bound volumes. The interviewer asked his first question in English, which got Kurt’s hopes up, but Lemarchand responded in subtitled French. The presence of subtitles at least meant that they didn’t need to bother Joyce for a translation.

  The interviewer asked exactly what Kurt would have asked in his shoes: what was Lemarchand getting at with the suggestion that Sycamore was more closely involved with Kurt’s death than anyone realised?

  She responded in the straightforward way Kurt had come to expect. The subtitles read: “Four unexplained deaths within a matter of days, and I am the crazy one for asking for an explanation? The creator of the microchip and three people known to him, all dead. Since the first death, Sycamore and its political allies have already announced compulsory microchipping. This is what they wanted all along. But I’m the crazy one?”

  “Are you suggesting that the Sycamore corporation was — and to be clear, such views in no way reflect those of the station — that Sycamore was in some way involved in these deaths? Responsible, even?”

  “I am suggesting this, yes.”

  “Slander is a serious crime, Ms Lemarchand.”

  Unflinchingly, she replied in perfect English: “As is murder.”

  The interviewer ended it there. It had been a choppy interview, shortened either to fit within the show’s time constraints or for dramatic effect. Either way, the fact that Lemarchand’s views were now being heard on mainstream British TV was a huge development.

  “Lemarchand is the number two trend in the UK right now,” Ernesto said.

  “What’s number one?”

  “Sycamore.”

  Almost all of the reaction focused on how crazy Lemarchand was and how quickly Sycamore were going to sue her for making such claims. But the conversation had begun, and that was what mattered.

  As the day progressed, Kurt and Ernesto brought everyone else in the mall into the discussion over how they could make use of this development. Ernesto even spoke with Michael about it over dinner, though Michael had nothing to contribute.

  Lisa asked Kurt when he thought he would get a chance to fix the Star’s Eye View set-up for her UltraLenses like he had promised. He told her it would be tomorrow, again, since he was too busy thinking about Lemarchand to think about anything else.

  After a while, Minter suggested forgetting about Lemarchand. No one loudly disagreed. Ty put it best when he said that if the group ever wanted to put something explosive online for the world at large, they had Kurt and a webcam sitting right there.

  Kurt had one strong idea, but it depended on Minter getting into the Emergency Control Interface at his next attempt, which was now around 60 hours away. If that went well, Kurt had a plan to bring Adeline Lemarchand closer into the fold than any of the others were imagining.

  One thing at a time, he told himself. One thing at a time.

  20

  Val was gone when Kurt woke up the next day. At first he wondered why she had gone out for the second day in a row, but then he remembered that she had mentioned going to collect the alarm batteries.

  Kurt went to the workstation to check if there were any new videos featuring Adeline Lemarchand. Lisa was on the main internet computer and Anthony was using the one connected via the cable.

  “How come you’re not standing guard outside?” Kurt asked him.

  Anthony shrugged. “I don’t think Ernesto minds anymore.”
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  “What about your dad?”

  “I don’t think Ernesto listens to him anymore.”

  Kurt looked at what they were both doing. Anthony was reading a SycaNews article about fuel prices and Lisa was watching This Week On Sycamore, the blooper reel presented by Kate Pinewood. Kurt crouched beside Lisa. “Can I check something quickly?” he asked.

  Lisa rolled her seat to the side. “Sure.”

  After clicking through a few links, Kurt accepted that there were no new videos. He pulled Lisa’s seat back in front of the computer.

  “Can you do my Star’s Eye View thing?” she asked. “You know the thing that’ll let me watch it through my Lenses? Because I know you have to record it for a while first, and I really can’t wait.”

  Kurt loaded Star’s Eye View and asked Lisa whose vista she wanted him to record.

  “Are you really going to make me say it?”

  “It’s not Trixilicious?” Kurt said, with only slightly exaggerated derision. “Surely…”

  “It might be.”

  Kurt groaned.

  “I just want to see why so many people are watching her,” Lisa said, laughing defensively. “Well, not exactly watching her. Seeing through her eyes, you know?”

  Kurt did know, only too well, from the few mind-numbing minutes he had spent watching Trixilicious’s toenails dry. But it was what Lisa wanted, so he set the computer to record the stream for three hours.

  Kurt and Lisa both went out into the food court for something to eat. It wasn’t the same without Mary. Anthony and Ernesto, somewhat surprisingly, had picked up most of the slack and now took turns preparing meals. Kurt preferred Ernesto’s meals only because they consisted of the easy-to-cook vacuum-packed meat-free meals from Stacy’s freezer, which were a lot better than he had expected.