Sycamore (Near-Future Dystopia) (30 page)

“They were selling the idea of living on Venus because there was nothing left to exploit and sell on earth,” she continued. “Now Sycamore are selling people virtual clothes and virtual environments to wear them in. That’s how ad people think: there’s nothing left to sell so they make new worlds, new insecurities, new needs.”

“Amos actually said that himself — that they were in the business of creating new needs.”

“It’s just how his kind of people think,” said Stacy. “This book is from the 1950s and Pohl and Kornbluth were already talking about how invasive and pervasive they thought advertising would get. This was before most people even had screens at home, remember, never mind inside their eyes. Imagine what these guys would have had to say about modern TV.”

“Probably that you wouldn’t put up with it if you walked into your house and a salesman was standing in the corner shouting at your children, flashing bright lights in their eyes and telling them to buy things. But when the salesman is a TV, no one cares. No one even notices!”

“Exactly. And as for all the stuff they
did
predict, you can just imagine people at the time saying they were crazy.”

“Brave New World Revisited was like that, too,” said Kurt. “There was a whole section on advertising, about how jingles would be used to link happy feelings with products. Huxley isn’t on the SycaStore either, though. They seem to exclude subversive books. Usually they’ll sell whatever can bring a profit — like the faux rebellious RealU outfits — but I suppose when we’re dealing with ideas it’s different. Control of information is everything. Books don’t have to be burned these days, or even banned, just excluded from the marketplace everyone uses.”

“What do you think is worse,” Stacy began, “the way they restrict information or the way they collect it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, everyone used to say that the internet never forgets, but at least before Sycamore came along people had a semblance of control over what they shared. Your words could only be held against you if you said them in public — people could be fired for badmouthing their employers on social networks but not if they did it in their own house. Now
everything
is recorded, monitored and sold. That’s the collecting side. But at the same time Sycamore can ban books and present whatever they want as fact through the SycaNews. I think both are as bad as each other.”

“Me, too,” said Kurt, but it was too early for him to think so deeply. “Anyway, I better check if anyone texted me overnight.” He walked into the closet and put his Lenses in. There was a message: Amos wanted him at HQ to talk about something.

“Well?” Stacy asked when he returned, guessing from his face that the news wasn’t good.

“I have to go in. He says this is the most important thing ever. I better hurry. Can I take the book?”

“Sure. But are you really going out looking like that?”

Kurt looked down at his slept-in clothes and shrugged. “I’ll RealU something in the car. You stay right here, yeah?”

Stacy nodded and kissed him goodbye.

~

Kurt and his fancy fake suit entered the lobby to be greeted by a security guard from the desk. “Mr Amos is in a meeting,” the man said in a noteworthily gruff voice. “He wants you to wait on his floor.”

“Okay,” said Kurt. He stepped into and quickly out of the elevator and sat on a sofa near the window, in the best light to read while he waited.

He had forgotten how it felt to have something in his hands while he read. He had forgotten that irreplicable feel of plastic against his fingers, and the way the words faded into each other when he pressed the button to turn the page. There was pleasure in the physical. Feeling. Depth.

25 pages later Amos emerged from the elevator, announcing his arrival before Kurt saw him. “Why the hell are you reading an actual book?” he asked.

Kurt looked at Amos then back down to the e-reader. “This isn’t an actual book”.

“You know what I mean. What are you doing with that old thing when the world has the SycaStore and you have infinite credit?”

“Some books aren't available through the SycaStore.”

“So why not just read the ones that are?“ asked Amos, genuinely confused. “There’s everything you could want: detective stories, romance, spy thrillers. And anyway, why the hell are you reading at all? With your infinite credit you could be playing any and every game in the world.”

Kurt got up from the sofa. “Cut to the chase. Why am I here?”

“For a heads up; we’re announcing something tonight. If we waited until tomorrow it might take attention away from your award. We’re going to have a little celebration rally tonight, actually, so I’ll take the opportunity to remind everyone to tune in to see you tomorrow. I want you to arrive with Monica — I don’t know why, but the world loves a good romance angle.”

Kurt was pleased that the name slip seemed to have caused no harm. “What are you celebrating that deserves a rally?” he asked.

“Well, this is the last announcement I see us having to make. It’s that big.”

“Compulsory seeding?”

Amos looked at the ceiling and took a few seconds to choose his words. “Basically,” he said, sitting down and inviting Kurt to follow.

“I just stood up. And what does basically mean?”

“It’s digitisation, hotshot. From January 1
^st
a Sycamore balance will be the only legal tender in these United States. We’ve done it: it’s the end of physical money.”

Quietly smug, Kurt knew that the house of cards would have fallen long before then. His grand reveal would bring forth a full-on rainstorm to send Amos’s crazed ideas back into the recesses of his mind. He said nothing against the move but wondered aloud why it was so far away. “Why wait nearly six months?”

“Fair warning and all that. But I’m glad you seem accepting of the situation and I’m sure in time you’ll appreciate that fully-digital currency really is better for everyone.”

Kurt decided he should play angry. “If by everyone you mean you! A 1% charge on every transaction even when people have no choice but to pay with The Seed? It’s the holy grail: an infinite source of profit. And, really, why
should
anyone care that you can see everything that they’re buying?”

“I can see that you’re wearing your smart-ass face but your words are true, Kurt. What exactly are people buying that’s so important to keep private? Weapons? Drugs? Pornography? Only people with something to hide have secrets. Like I always say, good things are done in the daylight. This was a natural step for us. The government have wanted to eliminate cash for a long time.”

“See, that’s what I still don’t get,” said Kurt. “Because in capitalism money is what keeps people down.”

“You can think that if you want, and I suppose in a way you’re right. But within a monetary system it’s cash that gives people power. We can’t have that.”

Full control over the nation’s money supply was all that mattered, as Kurt knew today and as Mayer Rothschild had known in 1838, but this was something new — Amos and Sycamore would have full control over every individual’s access to their own money.

It was beyond frightening but the end was near so Kurt was past caring. Past caring but still curious, he wondered something else; something more basic. “Why is it that you and your type are so driven by money? I mean, why spend your days collecting money when you’re killing everything that used to be good in the world?”

“Good? What does that even mean? Good is nothing, hotshot. But success… well, success I can count!”

“You’ve set it up so that we can leech profit from every human need and action, and for what? So we can sit in comfortable chairs looking out at a hollow world? So we can buy fake clothes in the same matrix we’ve trapped everyone else in? None of you people think, you just do whatever brings more profit. Everything is broken but you just keep going. The streets are dirty so you paint over the dirt. Cooperatives and family-run stores are being run out of business so you cover up the storefronts. People in this very city are living in third-world conditions so you airbrush it all away. Your whole world is like RealU writ large — fetishise superficiality and to hell with everything else.”

Amos shrugged. He didn’t see the problem.

“But what happens when the roads start cracking and rats come for the waste piling up on the street? Sure, you can cover them up, but that won’t stop the buses from crashing and the rats from biting. Problems need solutions, not diversions.”

“Now
that’s
good,” said Amos. “Solutions, not diversions. Clever. You used to say clever things like that all the time.”

“I used to be angry about things. Now I don’t care. You’re building a system that can’t sustain itself. Sycamore is pregnant with its own demise.”

“No it’s not. And if it was, why aren’t you trying to save it? You’re a part of this. Your Seed is the
biggest
part!”

“You know this isn’t what I wanted. All this power and profit, it’s not for me.”

“You act like you were trying to do something good, Kurt, but you were always in it for the money and the glory. You didn’t hesitate to take the infinite credit, did you?”

“I only took your money because I needed it. Real people need money. That’s how the world works, thanks to people like you.”

“And what about the glory? You could have submitted The Seed anonymously.”

“It was a contest! I
had
to pitch it.”

“Listen, hotshot: Salk gave the polio vaccine away for free, no ego involved. You entered a contest and stormed off the stage when it looked like you wouldn't win. So don’t keep thinking that you’re kidding anyone with this selflessness schtick.”

Kurt walked over to the window, too angry to think of a reply.

“I like how that southside wall goes in the late-morning light,” said Amos. “If you stand close and look out dead straight you can see your reflection.”

Kurt shuffled his feet meekly.

“See?”

He nodded.

“There you are, hotshot.”

Kurt held his own gaze as he felt an arm around his shoulder.

“Face to face,” Amos whispered, “with the man who sold the world.”

16

Amos’s comment about selling the world really got to Kurt and he felt an immediate need to regain his perspective. Going somewhere high that wasn’t HQ would help him see the bigger picture, he hoped, and the perfect place was only a few minutes away.

He had felt it all before and said most of it but Kurt’s feelings of disillusionment were stronger now than ever. From the top of the Jobs Monument he zoomed in on the crowds of consumers sauntering along the street below, pointing and gasping at things that weren't there, their open eyes looking at one another without seeing. It was like a herd of wildebeest, mindlessly moving. But what was their watering hole? A Tasmart? A massage chair at home waiting to be fallen into for the evening’s viewing to commence?

And it couldn't be properly described as a herd — each moving independently and oblivious to the others as they were — so what was it? Not a sea of humanity, he thought, for there was beauty in the sea. There was hope and there was zest and there was life in the sea. The people looked like germs to Kurt, like Sycamore had projectile vomited onto the street after consuming one too many consumers. He didn't like himself for the thought.

He liked himself still less for his part in turning the city’s populace into Sycamore-sucking zombies. Leeches at the company's teat. Lapdogs in their game. It was a virus. He didn't like any of it. The monument was a poor choice.

“Closing time, kid,” came a voice from the steps.

“Already?“

“Yup,” said the male attendant. “Two hours a day. What are you doing up here, anyway?”

“I wanted to see the view.”

The attendant looked puzzled. "That so? We don’t get many folks coming up here these days. You do know that you can see this same view from your living room or anyplace else, right?"

“I know. I invented The Seed.”

“You’re
that
Kurt Jacobs?”

Kurt nodded.

“Well I never! You must be pretty damn proud of yourself," the man beamed, well-meaning in his simplicity.

Kurt walked towards the 214 steps and took a final look down at the infected masses. "Something like that," he said.

“Something like that? You crack me up, kid. All those folks walking through the world with your Seed in their hands... what do you think when you see them?”

“What do I think when I see them?” Kurt echoed the question. He didn’t have to look down again, but he thought for a few seconds before settling on an answer. “That there’s more to life than being alive.”

~

“How did it go?” Stacy asked before Kurt was fully through the door.

“He wants you to come tomorrow. He wants us to arrive together — to “play the romance angle” — so he’s laying on the big black car I used to be driven around in. I’ll have to wear my Lenses so I think you should stay at home tonight and meet me at HQ in the morning. Will you be able to get there?”

Stacy nodded. “But what did he want you in for today, just to tell you that?”

“No. He wanted to tell me about the big rally tonight.”

“What’s it for?”

“Currency digitisation.”

“Oh god.”

“Oh god
what
?” said Kurt. “We’re taking everything out at once, remember? None of this matters. Sycamore will be dead tomorrow so digitisation won’t even happen. Let them have their little party.”

“I know that in my head,” she said, “it’s just... if this doesn’t work... things are going to be so bad. I thought it would be like boiling a frog, with things getting gradually worse and worse. But it’s only been — what? — three weeks since The Seed launched, and here we are. Currency digitisation is the last thing before The Seed is compulsory! None of this has been gradual. It’s more like Amos put everyone in a microwave with the promise that once inside we’d find heaven through technological convenience. Then beep beep boom. Before we know it everything is blown to pieces.”