Much to Kurt’s annoyance, no one woke him up after two hours. As it went, no one woke him up until the truck stopped at 7:45.
Ernesto insisted that he hadn’t fallen asleep while on watch duty, but Kurt had his doubts. Either way, they were in the city. The view from the camera as seen on Kurt’s computer showed him that Val had parked only 250 metres from Sycamore HQ.
Kurt, Minter, and Ernesto — quite probably the three people Amos least wanted to see — were all sitting in the back of a truck within shouting distance of his high castle.
The camera couldn’t be controlled from the computer, but Kurt could see that railings were already in place to contain the huge crowds expected to come out to see the ten most popular SycaStars in all of Star’s Eye View.
With little over two hours until the takedown, Kurt hadn’t made any firm plans with Adeline Lemarchand about streaming his vista. The last contact they’d had was Kurt telling her to create an account on the video chat client he planned to use, and that had been around a day and a half ago. Kurt was glad he had signed in to his throwaway email account the previous afternoon, or else it would have self-destructed, taking any unread messages with it.
Kurt had one new email from Lemarchand, from under an hour ago: “It is now 7am ET. Is this happening? I have 30 minutes with Cordier at 10am. Not earlier and not later than that.”
Before replying, Kurt reconnected his UltraLenses to his computer. This was very straightforward since the same computer had been used to hack the same Lenses, meaning that only a single click was required. He could now share his vista with the computer while controlling it with his phone.
With this done, he replied to Lemarchand: “It’s happening. We can test it now. Accept the chat request ASAP.”
Kurt quickly opened his video chat client and sent her a chat invite. This chat was between Ernesto’s computer and Lemarchand’s computer. Kurt’s Lenses sent his vista to Ernesto’s computer, which then shared the vista as if it was regular webcam footage. Lemarchand accepted the invite almost immediately, clearly ready and waiting. Her webcam was covered but Kurt didn’t care. He told everyone to be quiet.
“Can you see my hand?” he asked. He knew that his audio quality wouldn’t be perfect since he had ripped out one of his in-earphones in a moment of rage, but he thought it should still be more than clear enough.
“Yes, I can see and hear you perfectly,” Lemarchand replied, confirming that it was.
Kurt held three fingers in front of his face. “How many fingers?”
“Three,” she said. Her accent was surprisingly slight. “Who are you?”
“That’s not important right now. Accept my next invite at 9:55 and we can do this.” Kurt ended the chat, pleased that Lemarchand had no idea who he was. Had she known, she might have revealed it to drum up interest in her forthcoming TV appearance. And if word had reached Amos that Kurt was not only alive but preparing to stream something on live TV, he would almost certainly have declined to attend the event.
Outside, the streets were filling up as the start of the SycaStars United launch event drew nearer. A few limousines had already arrived. Kurt saw Damian Dangerman stepping out of one, but there was no sign yet of Trixilicious.
Kurt sat at the far end of the truck with Mary, Randy, and the kids for a while. He was wholly confident that the public’s outrage at the footage they were going to see would protect him from any immediate retaliation from Amos or his security staff, but Randy found it difficult to share his confidence. Randy didn’t voice this in front of Julian and Sabrina for obvious reasons, but he had mentioned it to Kurt more than once.
Kurt understood what concerned Randy — Amos — and he understood why this concern bothered him so much — he was Kurt’s big brother. It was easy to forget, but Randy was a full decade older than Kurt. In fact, the age gap between Kurt and Randy was a few months greater than the age gap between Kurt and Julian. Kurt knew how he felt watching Julian face to face with Amos at the funeral, and he imagined Randy would feel something similar but amplified when Kurt confronted Amos just across the street from the truck they were sitting in.
Mary told Kurt to “believe in the plan,” which actually helped to settle his nerves. Like the plan he and Minter rushed together when they had to fake their own deaths, this plan for the takedown was the best they could come up with. And if this plan worked half as well as the last one, the next big funeral would be Sycamore’s.
At 9:55, with the crowd now crammed uncomfortably tightly against the barriers at both sides of the street, Kurt sent a video chat invite to Adeline Lemarchand.
“Can you see me?” Kurt asked, waving his hand in front of his eyes.
“Yes,” Lemarchand replied.
“When I go outside, I won’t be able to hear you,” Kurt said. The only way around this would have been for Kurt to send the computer’s audio to his single in-earphone, but that would have blocked out too much real-world noise, which was important for his safety. He figured that Lemarchand would be speaking in French with the show’s host, anyway.
Kurt put the Two-Way in his pocket and made sure that he had the compact mirror he borrowed from Lisa just before leaving La Plethora. He then raised his hood and waited for Val to open the truck’s back door. As soon as she did, Kurt stepped out. Ernesto left the truck, too, but he found an anonymous space at the back of the crowd while Kurt took to the vantage point he had carefully chosen. It was obscured from the crowd’s view but allowed him to see the entrance to HQ perfectly.
Kurt looked around at the crowd outside HQ and then up at the imposing tower. He took the Two-Way from his pocket and looked through it to the augmented world.
“Welcome to Sycamore,” he said. “Enjoy the view.”
29
The time on Kurt’s phone was synced precisely with Sycamore’s official time. He watched from his protected viewpoint as Damian Dangerman and some other SycaStars appeared from inside Sycamore HQ at 9:58. Trixilicious followed alone at 9:59, walking out to rapturous applause, before Amos strutted through the doors at precisely 10am.
Amos introduced himself and the SycaStars. He boasted that SycaStars United would be the debut of first-person reality TV and was destined to become the most watched show in the history of television. Despite Amos’s repeated use of the word television, SycaStars United was only ever going to be shown through the Star’s Eye View app.
He said that this special celebratory launch event would begin with a Q&A session and end with a meet and greet. The meet and greet had not previously been announced, so the crowd screamed with excitement.
At 10:04, Kurt spoke quietly and directly to Lemarchand: “In one minute, everyone here will see clear evidence of Isaiah Amos’s wrongdoings. Watch their reactions. Your viewers will then see clear evidence of Sycamore’s flagrant privacy violations.”
Kurt didn’t need to look at his phone to know when the time hit 10:05. Everyone in the crowd and each of the SycaStars received their targeted evidence at the same time. Damian Dangerman and his viewers got Amos’s anti young male rant; the other SycaStars and their viewers got the Idiot Video; and everyone else got The Orwall.
He looked at the crowd for a while, capturing their reactions. People started to boo and hurl abuse at Amos. Amos couldn’t see any billboards from his position outside HQ and Minter had made sure that no footage was sent to his account, so he had no idea what was going on.
Minter had also set the Orwall footage to appear on a large billboard to the left of HQ, so Kurt pointed the Two-Way in its direction and watched as the footage played. He brought the Two-Way close to his eyes to maximise the quality.
“This footage is a reflection of Sycamore’s voyeuristic corporate culture,” Kurt said for the benefit of Lemarchand and her audience. “Unedited vistas of men, women, and children are indiscriminately scanned, monitored, and ogled by Sycamore staff.”
By the time Kurt looked back to the crowd, they had already become much rowdier. The last thing Ku
rt wanted was for Amos to go inside now, before the real show had even begun. He regretted leaving five minutes between the first two stages of the plan; three would have been enough, perhaps even two.
Amos tapped and gestured furiously into his hand as he tried to find out what was happening, unaware that his account had just been terminated by Minter. This was the one thing that Minter hadn’t been able to schedule, and it necessitated him accessing the ECI from the truck and pressing the button at just the right time.
When Amos realised that nothing was working, he began to speak. “Friends, if any unusual placements have appeared in your vistas—”
“Boooooooo!” the people yelled.
“If any unusual—”
“Boooooooo!”
Amos tried to laugh it off. He turned to Trixilicious, keen to start the Q&A to deflect some heat until he figured out what was going on.
“Why did you call my fans oxygen thieves?” she asked him, taking the Q&A in a direction he didn’t much like.
“Yeah!” her fans shouted. “Boooooo!”
“This is just the warm-up,” Kurt whispered to Lemarchand.
He looked at his phone. 10:09. Any second now.
“S… Y… C… A… MORE MORE MORE!”
The SycaLotto jingle played on Kurt’s Two-Way. It also played in the ears of every Seeded consumer on the street. They all looked to the sky. Amos appeared grateful for the timely reprieve.
His face changed when the video appeared.
Right there in the sky on a giant virtual screen was Ty’s video collage of Stacy’s murder, Kurt’s reaction, and, most importantly, Amos’s confession. Since this placement was universal, Amos could see it, too. He looked up at the sky in horror.
As the gravity of what everyone was seeing and hearing began to sink in, hostility turned to venom. Many of those who had hurled abuse were now hurling rocks from Sycamore HQ’s small garden, as well as shoes and water bottles and whatever else they could get their hands on.
“Murderer!”
“You’re an animal!”
“Boooooo!”
Amos was surrounded by the crowd on three sides, as Kurt had expected, and Kurt had a direct line to sprint across the street, jump the barrier, and block his only route to the safety of HQ’s lobby.
Before Kurt left his own safe position, he had one more message for Lemarchand and her viewers.
“Isaiah Amos killed Stacy Palamino,” Kurt said. He lowered his hood and looked straight into Lisa’s compact mirror. “But Kurt Jacobs isn’t dead.”
~
Kurt dashed across the street like a greyhound released from its trap and cleared the barrier with an easy leap. The crowd gasped, almost as one, as Kurt positioned himself between Amos and the entrance. The relatively few police officers in attendance, none of whom had expected any trouble, stood as stunned as the crowd itself.
Minter quickly clicked over to Trixilicious’s vista, keen to keep an eye on how Kurt appeared to the seeded masses in case someone at Sycamore managed to get around his access blocks to make Kurt invisible. Fortunately, the only augmentation Minter saw was the standard red X above Kurt’s head, the same kind that Trixilicious could see hovering above a tiny number of other people in the crowd.
Back outside, Amos stared at Kurt. The crowd stared at Kurt. The whole country stared at Kurt. And the rest of the world, through Kurt’s Lenses and via Adeline Lemarchand, stared at Amos.
“No,” Amos said.
“I’m streaming this around the world,” Kurt said. “So be careful how you react.”
“Come on, hotshot,” Amos pleaded, his voice a pathetic, broken imitation of itself. “We can put this right. We can go back to how it was. Everything can go back to how it was.”
Over Amos’s shoulder, Kurt could see two speechless security guards inside the entrance to HQ: Mike Poole and Henry Gardiner. Kurt waved at them mockingly in recognition of their unwitting roles in the takedown, which only confused them further. Both walked away, deserting Amos now that the truth was out.
“Nothing goes back to anything,” Kurt said. “We go nowhere. There is no we. You go to prison and I go home. That’s what we do.”
Amos shook his head. His face morphed in an instant from the shell of a man who met Kurt’s arrival to something resembling the real Amos; an unrepentant, unashamed, unapologetic despot. “I gave you everything,” he said. “Everything! And what do I get? You never appreciated me.” Amos held his arms out wide to include the whole crowd in his rant. “All of you! You make me sick. I gave you all everything, and what do I get?”
A small, well-aimed rock cracked into the side of Amos’s head. He stumbled.
“That’s what you get!” someone shouted from the front row.
“Yeah! Murderer!”
“Animal!”
“Boooooo!”
A young man from the crowd then jumped over the barrier and ran towards HQ. He smashed a tall pane of glass with his foot. But more importantly, he encouraged others to do the same. Within seconds there were dozens of people smashing their way into HQ, and within minutes there were hundreds smashing their way around the ground floor.
Sycamore staff began pouring out of the front door as quickly as the ransackers fought their way in. Kurt had sympathy for the innocent just-doing-their-job staff members who were verbally abused by a handful of the crowd, but everything was relative. By and large, the mob were as well behaved as a mob could be; all but the most accurate rock-thrower only damaged property, and only Sycamore’s at that.
Kurt had no idea what would happen next. Ernesto was nowhere to be seen, and Amos was still standing dumbly in front of HQ.
No one had physically attacked Amos, which was something of a surprise. The vast majority of the crowd were content to shout and boo, while a minority — irresponsibly encouraged by none other than Damian Dangerman — were clearly focused on getting inside HQ and causing as much structural damage as they could.
What Kurt knew for sure was that Amos’s game was over, no matter what happened in the next few minutes and hours. The public on the street had reacted to the confession exactly as Kurt hoped they would, and the carnage afterwards was directly Amos’s fault for riling the crowd with his “you make me sick” speech. Kurt hadn’t intended this destructive outpouring of rage from a section of the crowd, but it certainly added to the spectacle.
And aside from the seeded masses, Kurt’s Lenses had brought the truth to a global audience.
Kurt decided to leave before he got caught up in a larger stampede than the one already forming around him. “Ernesto,” he shouted, hoping he would show himself.
“Tell me you’re not with that cretin,” Amos said. “Is he the one who’s been filling your head with all of this? Was he with Michael? Was it him and Michael?”
“Filling my head with what?” Kurt said. “These aren’t rumours, you lunatic. You killed Stacy. You told me you killed Stacy. You told me that before I even knew Ernesto existed.”
“Stacy had to be dealt with. You know that, hotshot.”
Watching Amos swing from mood to mood in the blink of an eye was almost disorienting for Kurt. One second Amos was combative and nonsensical then the next he was calm and ingratiating, as though accepting of his fate.
“Why did you kill Professor Walker?” Kurt asked. He knew the answer — because Kurt had told him too much — but he wanted a live confession that would eliminate any possible suggestion of fake or modified footage.
“He died because of you.”
“But you killed him?” Kurt sought to confirm.
“Because of you.”
“So you killed him.”
“Well, if you want to split hairs,” Amos said, “I had him killed.”
Something huge crashed to the ground around 15 metres from Kurt. People screamed. It was one of Amos’s sofas, thrown down from his 22nd storey office. More glass smashed from above and fell in icepick-like shards. Kurt and everyone else ran towards the road
, away from the building.
“Ernesto,” he called. “Ernesto!”
“Over here,” Ernesto shouted. He was to Kurt’s left, slightly nearer to the road.
Kurt turned to see more and more debris flying from all sides and all floors of Sycamore’s leaf-shaped HQ. There were screens from The Orwall, desks, computer chairs, lamps, and even a full-sized ceramic toilet.
Amos didn’t move from his position at the front of the building. He stood there, defeated rather than defiant, helplessly rooted to the spot as the ultimate symbol of his empire quite literally crumbled to the ground.
“You’re going to get killed,” Kurt shouted, not wanting Amos to get off so lightly.
Amos shrugged.
“Forget him,” Ernesto called. “Come on.”
Kurt Jacobs looked at Isaiah Amos one final time. “You lose,” Kurt said, and Amos’s game was over.
30
Val was ready and waiting to close the door on the back of the truck the second that Kurt and Ernesto jumped in.
Kurt exhaled the biggest breath of his life and wrapped his arms around Julian and Sabrina.
“We did it,” Minter said. “We actually did it, man! Everyone got the right placement at the right time and everything.”
“Good job, hotshot,” Randy said with a grin.
Kurt hugged Mary after the kids and then moved back over to the computers to see how the news was going down. The entire SycaNews service was “temporarily” suspended. Minter clicked back to Rene Cordier’s show, which was replaying the confession video as Lemarchand and Cordier discussed the implications. Lemarchand beamed a vindicated smile.
They were speaking French, obviously, but this station provided the option of adequate English subtitles even during live broadcasts. Lemarchand smiled and insisted that she never for a moment thought her mystery source was Kurt Jacobs. She then said, more seriously, that Kurt had taken a huge risk to expose the truth and should be commended for that rather than condemned for creating “the wretched Seed” in the first place.
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