Sycamore (Near-Future Dystopia) (27 page)

~

Morning announced itself with a beeping alarm. It was 7:30, so they had around two hours to plan and prepare for the ruse. Neither Kurt nor Stacy really knew how they had ended up in her bed but it was what it was and the only way was forward.

“Are we still doing this?” said Kurt.

Stacy was disappointed he had to ask. “Do you still want to kill the cat?”

He smiled and got up. Stacy went into a drawer and pulled out a tiny spy-camera. Kurt was impressed by its size and confident it would go undetected unless Amos actively looked for it, which he wouldn’t if Kurt’s plan worked. “Do you have a bigger camera?” he asked.

“Why would we want a bigger one?”

“When we get to the door he’ll ask if you have any recording equipment. If you surrender a camera he won’t suspect anything. What kind of journalist wouldn’t have one? Saying you don’t will be suspicious.”

Stacy knew he was right. “I’ve got a normal camera.”

“Good. Bring it. And bring your laptop in the car so we can go over the footage at mine later. It’s safer there.” Kurt walked into the bathroom and saw himself in the mirror. He looked rough, like he had slept in his clothes. He had. “Or I could take it now. I’m going to have to drive home and get changed.”

“No way, you have to tell me what to say.”

“I won’t be long. If I turn up looking like this Amos will work out we’ve been together. He might be ignorant but he’s not an idiot.”

It would take Kurt the better part of an hour to walk to his car, drive to Longhampton, make himself presentable, drive back to the corner and walk back to Stacy’s. They didn’t have a spare hour and Stacy wouldn’t budge on that. “You’re not going home,” she said. “If we don’t plan this it won’t work.”

“And if he knows we’re ‘involved’ it won’t work either. I have to look like business.”

Stacy finished attaching the spy camera to her eyebrow and turned to Kurt in a rush of illumination. “I’ve got it!”

“What?”

“RealU.”

“What?”

“Use RealU. Just pick some business clothes and do the face thing. You said it’s impossible to tell what someone is wearing underneath, right?”

Kurt rubbed his eyes with open palms and thought for a few seconds. “No way,” he decided. “Just no. I’d rather not go. Seriously, I can’t use RealU.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“What’s the difference?”

“You can’t win a war if you won’t pick up a gun — that’s the difference. You can’t fight against CrimePrev and the movement tax and everything else if you won’t put your pride to one side and be an avatar for a couple of hours.”

Kurt shook his head. “It’s the one thing I said I wouldn’t do. Using RealU goes against everything I believe.”

“Does it? I thought you believed that the world Sycamore is making isn’t worth living in. I thought you believed that it had to change. You’re the only person in the world who can do anything. Are you really too proud to try? It goes against what you believe... so what? Stop being such a child. Sometimes people have to do things they don’t like. Welcome to life.”

“If I do this—

“Never mind you,” Stacy interrupted. “What about people like me? I can hardly do anything without a Seed and you know it’ll be compulsory soon unless we stop it. What happens to me then? Prison? And what about Sabrina and her nose and everything you said last night? What makes what you believe so much more important than what everyone else experiences?”

Kurt said nothing.

“You’ll always look the same to me, anyway,” Stacy said, and that sealed it.

“Fine. I’ll do it in the car. How’s your Italian accent?”

“Accent?” she smiled. “Mi chiamo Monica.”

~

Before they walked to the car it was decided that Monica was a journalism graduate from Turin and that investigating the incredible success of Sycamore’s Seed was her first big assignment for TechItalia. Kurt insisted that Amos was ignorant enough to believe it all and that using a fake publication was better because it would be harder to disprove.

He told Stacy to follow his lead and say nothing unless spoken to, even then keeping it brief and noncommittal. Kurt would do the bulk of the talking and ask the questions unless there was something Stacy really felt that Amos should be recorded saying. Amos might use Reader if he suspected foul play, Kurt warned, and Reader didn’t make mistakes. She said she understood, but that Kurt should worry about himself, too, and make sure he didn’t lose his temper like he had at the contest. Angry people make mistakes, she said, and he listened.

A $3,000 virtual suit attached itself to Kurt after he put his Lenses in when the car reached HQ. UnBlemish fixed his still-tired face and they were ready to go. Amos was waiting in the lobby and walked towards them with a huge smile. “Hotshot, what a suit! Is that real?”

“As real as yours,” Kurt replied.

Amos turned his attention to Stacy. “And this must be Monica. Welcome to our world! I hear you’ve been talking to Kurt. Trying to find the man behind the myth, I bet. It’s a shame you can’t take a Seed and see just how much good he’s done.”

Stacy felt like she should respond. “Yes, The Seed is not allowed on my continent.”

"Yet," said Amos, “but don’t worry: it’s coming. The EU’s nannying doesn’t help anyone. Most member states are supportive, I gather. And your government is certainly with us, along with the ever-industrious Germans and of course our British friends. Tell me, do you Eyeties hate the French as much as we do?”

Stacy laughed awkwardly and Kurt shot Amos a disapproving look.

“Anyway... you don’t have a camera, do you?”

“Of course I do,” said Stacy. “For recording your work.”

“Ah, that’s a tough one. I would love the world to see it, but the security guys don’t see it like that. Normally no one gets in. Even Kurt hasn’t seen anything above my floor—

“What’s up there, anyway?” he interrupted.

“The Treehouse. You wouldn’t like it.” Amos turned back to Stacy. “But yes, I’m afraid you’ll have to leave the camera here in the lobby. Feel free to write down anything and everything you like, though. Your report is for a written publication, isn’t it?”

“TechItalia,” she nodded.

“Hmmm. Where are they based?” Amos was asking Stacy but looking at Kurt.

“Turin,” she said.

Amos nodded slowly. “Good. If you’re still here on Saturday you can cover Kurt’s recognition ceremony.”

“I will try to change my flight.”

“Wait,” said Kurt. “What recognition ceremony is this?”

“You’re getting an award, hotshot. For your services to Sycamore. Now, let’s go.”

Stacy handed her diversion camera to a man behind the lobby’s security desk. There was a scanner on the desk marked “Travel Duty Validation” which workers could use to eliminate the tax incurred on their commute. Amos and Kurt waited for her in the elevator. She joined them and Amos held down the buttons G and 23 at the same time.

“Where are we going?” asked Kurt.

“Downstairs.”

“There’s a downstairs?”

“Indeed. The Studio is in the basement.” Amos turned to Stacy. “I’m going to show you where Sycamore’s landscapers do their magic.”

The elevator arrived in the basement and Kurt was awestruck by its size — huge didn’t come close. The Studio must have stretched under at least some of the other buildings in the Quartermile, such was its expansive size. Near-blinding white light shone down on the landscapers from high above their heads.

Amos began explaining to Stacy how a BeThere environment was created and Kurt decided to walk between the rows of focused landscapers. He stopped at one workstation and watched for a few minutes as a fresh-faced young girl put the finishing touches on a dilapidated building she had been tasked with sprucing up. After a while she sensed someone behind her and looked around.

“Oh my god, Mr Jacobs!” Her voice was loud; everyone looked. “I didn’t know you were there. Normally I work harder than this,” she said.

Amos caught wind of the commotion and ordered everyone back to work.

“Relax,” Kurt whispered to the girl. “I was just watching. How old are you?”

“17.”

“And you like doing this?”

“It’s the best job in the world,” she said. “I’m really making a difference.”

Kurt walked back to Stacy and Amos less alive than he had left them. “How many are there?” he asked, pointing to the workers.

Amos shrugged. “I honestly don’t know the exact figure. Two or three thousand.”

It sounded impossible but Kurt turned back and saw that there could well have been 20 rows of 100 workstations. What he really struggled with was the fact that all of these people had been working away under his feet without him having the slightest idea. The logistics of getting them all in and out via the only elevator he could see boggled Kurt’s mind, but their work impressed him even more.

To make everything in the world scaleable and manipulatable was no mean feat and one that he couldn’t begin to get his head around. Lamenting how much better the landscapers’ obvious talents could have been utilised elsewhere, he turned away from the rows of desks that seemed to stretch forever into the distance and shook his head at the wall.

An infinite number of artistic Shakespeares doing the bidding of one megalomaniacal monkey,
he thought.
How did we get here?

“Seen enough, hotshot?”

Kurt answered by walking into the elevator.

Amos smiled at Stacy. “Forest it is, then.”

~

The elevator stopped on the 20
^th
floor and Amos introduced its function while holding the button to keep the doors closed. “The other Forest floors house a lot of staff,” he said, “but there’s really not much to see. They all just sit at desks running numbers. This floor is where the real Communications-related work is done.”

Amos released the button and the doors parted to reveal an open-plan floor the same size as his own, empty but for a single desk. On the wall above the vacant desk was a huge slogan: FREEDOM IS CONNECTION. Kurt didn’t know if Stacy would be able to see it or if it was one of those expensive decorative placements that people could display within their homes.

But it was the desk itself and what its isolation suggested that really caught Kurt’s attention. “Colin has his own floor?” he said. “
Colin
Colin?”

“He does important work, hotshot. I can’t have him distracted.”

“Who is this Colin?” asked Stacy.

“Head of Communications. He’s one of my very best men. Third, probably, if we count Kurt. So, what do you want to know?”

About Forest, nothing. It was the least controversial piece of Sycamore’s puzzle because most consumers already had a general understanding of how it worked and all willingly contributed their data. Stacy had to seem interested, though, so she posed a general question. “How has Forest changed communication?”

“Good question!” Amos looked to Kurt and nodded. He liked Monica already; Kurt had done well to bring her. “Forest has eclipsed the old big two of social media by offering an unmatched combination of networking and microblogging from the convenience of our consumers’ hands. The typical consumer is more connected than ever with his 1,419 SycaFriends and, on average, only three degrees of separation from anyone else in the country. Needless to say these numbers are improving all the time. Fourteen hundred today is fourteen
thousand
next year.”

Stacy turned to Kurt to see if she should say anything. Kurt was too busy being annoyed to notice. “First of all,” he said to Amos, “those aren’t friendships. And even if they were, how can connecting ever greater numbers of people in the shallowest manner imaginable be construed as improvement? What’s your target, zero degrees of separation?”

Amos’s eyes lit up. “Some day.”

“But that’s now! Everyone is already connected at such a spurious level — we all live in the same world and breathe the same air. Clicking “Accept as SycaFriend” doesn’t suddenly mean that two people really know each other. It’s just quantity, but quantity of what? 1,419 times zero is still zero.”

Amos put his hand on Stacy’s shoulder and addressed her directly. “Kurt has the highest tree in the whole of Forest,” he tried to explain. “Too many friends can be irritating, but I’m sure you can understand that most people don’t have this problem.”

She nodded safely.

The elevator’s doors slid open and Amos greeted a familiar face. “Communications Colin, come here!”

Stacy’s eyebrows asked Kurt why Amos called him Communications Colin. All Kurt could do was shrug.

“Colin, tell Monica about the S.M.E.A.”

“Ah, my Social Media Extraction Algorithm!” As usual, Colin was eager to talk about his work. “Well, it extrapolates a consumer’s mood and susceptibility index from their recent posts and likes. We know what they’re likely to buy and we know how and when we can most effectively sell it to them. Reactions to carefully targeted ads are stored and fed back into the formula for future use. That’s the beauty of Sycamore: our systems are self-improving.”

Amos smiled and hinted that Colin could get back to work.

Colin stood there with his eyes closed and suddenly shook himself back into awareness. “Ignore what I said. Don’t quote that,” he begged Stacy. “Extrapolate is not the right word… it implies a margin of error. Like Mr Jacobs said when he first pitched The Seed, computers don’t make mistakes. Our systems are incapable of error.”

“Indeed they are,” cawed Amos. “And since your still here, Colin, why don’t you tell her about the Social Relevance Values?”

Kurt had heard it all before but most of the ranking information was new to Stacy. Colin explained how a consumer’s Social Relevance Value was calculated through a combination of their number of friends and how many other consumers were searching for or talking about them. She pretended to care that consumers of higher social value were paid more for wearing clothing placements than others.

Amos took her hush for understanding and was keen to move on. “Do you have any more questions before we continue upstairs?” he asked.