Sycamore (Near-Future Dystopia) (7 page)

“Welcome to Sycamore.”

4

Kurt handed everything over to Sycamore immediately after the contest. Amos asked him to stay at home until further notice while they worked on manufacturing a chip small enough and powerful enough to utilise his operating system from within a consumer’s hand. Kurt was forbidden from talking to the press or commenting online.

He enjoyed a quiet week knowing that his ideas were being put into practice and received a call from his old acquaintance Terrance Minion after nine days. The chip was ready, Minion claimed, and Amos wanted Kurt to be the first person to receive it.

The weather outside of Kurt’s window was unseasonably filthy but he didn’t care; the days of struggling through the rain belonged to the past. Kurt didn’t know at what length a car became a limousine and the luxury black vehicle Amos sent to bring him to Sycamore’s headquarters tested the boundary. His twenty-minute journey to the Quartermile was refreshingly comfortable. Within a few weeks the world would be enjoying Kurt’s creation and he was already enjoying the fruits of his labour.

Amos stood in the lobby of Sycamore’s imposing HQ. The building had been erected in the months before the UltraLenses launched. It rose only 33 storeys — less than any other within the city’s exclusive Quartermile development — but its architectural design set it well and truly apart. The lower section was straight and narrow but the middle floors protruded bulbously from the centre. The upper section then tapered back in to a peak, creating the rudimentary outline of a leaf. Never having had reason to visit, Kurt had only seen photos of the building from a distance. He was surprised to be even more impressed up close. It didn’t look cheap.

Kurt walked through the glass doors and Amos greeted him. “Mr Jacobs! Welcome to Sycamore, for real this time.”

“Thanks,” said Kurt. “Minion said I’m going to be the first to take the chip. I’m ready.”

“Of course. It’s waiting for you upstairs, fully loaded with the operating system and, once injected, fully operational as a trackpad. We’re calling it The Seed, though. Chip sounds a bit too… robotic. And, you know, Sycamore Seed. Our marketing materials can tell consumers to sow the seed of progress. Who could say no to that?”

Kurt nodded. It
was
progress, and Amos seemed committed to it. “So I’m going to be the first to be
seeded
,” he considered. “That does sound better than chipped.”

Amos led Kurt into the elevator and pressed 22.

“What’s on 22?”

“It’s my floor. Office, meeting room and lounge. It’s just before the widest point.”

“So what’s above you?”

“Nothing for you to see. Anyway, did you read much online after the contest? Your performance was so magnificent that some people thought it was a set-up! As if I could have set up a performance like yours, sweeping its way across my stage like a hurricane of fresh air. You did very well keeping quiet when everyone was talking about you.”

“I just turned my phone off and didn’t look,” said Kurt. He had quite enjoyed being switched-off.

The elevator stopped gently and Amos stepped out, directing Kurt towards the meeting room. The expansive floor was largely empty. Amos’s office was on the east side and his meeting room on the west. The rest of the floor appeared to constitute his lounge, with leather sofas strewn here and there. “Seems like a waste of space,” Kurt commented as they walked.

“It does,” Amos conceded, “but it’s not. Anyway, there are four men waiting for us. One is a doctor who will inject your Seed and then leave. The others are our top men. We’re going to have a team meeting to discuss our plans for the launch and beyond. It’s important that you conduct yourself professionally.”

“Who are we meeting, the head coders?”

Amos tried not to laugh. “No, only the important people: Heads of Marketing, Data Collection and Communications. You already know Terrance — he heads up DC — and you’ll probably recognise Gary and Communications Colin from the contest. These men make Sycamore tick.”

“What do their departments do?”

“Very briefly, then. Communications is as it sounds — they’ve been porting the SycaPhone’s revolutionary messaging system and do a lot on the social network side of things. DC gather and analyse user data with a view to leveraging. Marketing sell the Sycamore brand but don’t deal with incoming ads. That’s all DC.”

“DC sounds important.”

“It is. Most of our operations go through Terrance. He’s brilliant. There’s a lot of you in him.”

Kurt looked disgusted. Minion had been two years ahead of him at university and was not a man he enjoyed being compared with. “I don’t like him,” he said. “Just so we’re clear on that going in. He’s a snake.”

“I don’t particularly like Terrance either,” said Amos, “but we don’t have to. He’s the best in the world at what he does and that’s what counts. Civility is all I ask, Mr Jacobs. We’re a team.”

“I can be civil. By the way, does that Kate Pinewood girl work in this building?”

“Not anymore.” Amos opened the door to the meeting room and they walked in.

It was a small room dominated by a wooden table. Three of its seats were taken by the department heads. Minion was alone at one side and there was a space at each end for Kurt and Amos. The doctor stood in the corner clasping a black briefcase. He opened it after a signal from Amos and produced a short needle.

“The Seed is in
that
?” said Kurt.

“Yes,” the doctor replied. “You’re not scared of needles, are you?”

Minion answered. “That’s Kurtonite you’re talking to, doc. He’s not afraid of anything.”

“No. I don’t mind needles,” said Kurt, ignoring Minion’s attempt to annoy him. “I just can’t believe it’s so small.”

The doctor took Kurt’s left hand and asked him to relax. “Please squeeze your wrist tightly with your right hand. Good. Now keep squeezing and extend your fingers.”

Kurt did as the doctor said. His left hand shook under the opposing stresses. The needle reached his palm.

“Look into my eyes,” said the doctor.

“No. I want to see.”

The doctor held the syringe at a slight angle and pressed down on the top. A sharp intake of breath signalled Kurt Jacobs becoming the first man to be seeded. He released his wrist and stared at his palm.

Time seemed to stop as everyone in the room waited for him to do or say something. Amos eventually broke the silence. “So? How does it feel?”

“You know when you get an itch under your shoulder blade and you just have to wait until it goes away? It felt like that, except inside my hand and it stopped straight away.”

“And now?” asked the doctor.

“Now it sort of feels like really intense pins and needles. That’ll stop too, though... right?”

Amos and the doctor looked at each other and collectively shrugged. “You’re the guinea pig,” said Amos.

“It’s fading. Definitely fading.”

Amos breathed a sigh of relief. “Good, now we can take care of the sound. There’s a tiny speaker for each of your ears. We’re calling them in-earphones and giving them away free with The Seed. They sit far enough inside that nobody else can hear your audio. They record sound, too, so this completes the system with no need for a headset.”

“You’re not injecting anything in my ears. No way.”

“Oh, come on. It’s just a little prick! Don’t be such a fairy,” said Amos.

“I always knew it,” Minion grinned. “He has that look about him.”

Kurt scowled at Minion then turned to the doctor. “Just do it quick, yeah?”

The doctor explained to Kurt that he wasn’t injecting anything — “it’s more like sticking them on” — and proceeded with the painless process. Kurt was surprised when the doctor said it was over and put everything back into his briefcase.

“You can go now,” Amos told the doctor. “Thank you. And remember: not a word.”

~

The door closed and Kurt sat down, still looking at his hand and now also wondering what was inside his ears.

“And now the more important question,” said Amos. “Does it work?”

“How would I know?”

“You can play with the sound later… for now I mean the OS. Double fivetap to bring it up.”

Kurt tapped his palm with all five fingers of his right hand twice in quick succession. His mouth fell open in amazement. “It works.” The operating system’s dashboard appeared in the centre of Kurt’s vision at its default 50% transparency. “Are the gestures how I wrote them?”

“Everything is how you wrote it,” Amos confirmed. “Even the shortcut gestures to answer calls and access messaging without bringing up the OS. It’s got the works.”

“How did you get this done in nine days?”

“We have a strong and talented workforce. Sycamore was already the fastest-growing tech corporation in the universe before you came along, Mr Jacobs. We know what we’re doing.”

Kurt was impressed. He pinched his thumb and index finger inwards on his palm to reduce the size of his dashboard. A three-fingered downward swipe increased the transparency until it faded out and his vision returned to normal. He looked at Amos with no effort to contain his delight. “You son of a bitch. You actually did it.”

“We did. Obviously the available apps are limited at the moment, though. Feel free to explore.”

Kurt swiped three fingers upwards and the dashboard returned. It was a standard tiled interface, designed for simplicity. There was room for sixteen tiles on the first page but only half were occupied: Settings, SycaStore, SycaNews, Forest, Video-call, Voice-call, Messaging and Relive. “Is the SycaStore live?” he asked Amos.

“Not until launch.”

“Fair enough. So what are Forest and Relive? And where’s the web browser?”

“Forest is our new social network. Relive is the app from which consumers can, well, relive their previous experiences by accessing their UltraLens recordings from Icarus. It’ll go live with the SycaStore. And there is no browser. We have no plans to support web browsing.”

Kurt looked blankly at Amos, as though awaiting a punchline. None came.

“Why would we?” Amos continued. “The most visited website in the world is a search engine! That shows that people browse to find things; we want them to know where everything is. Most consumers only use the internet to access their social networks, e-mail each other, buy things, and read news. There are apps for that.”

“But you can’t just... not have the internet.” Kurt’s tone was inflected. He still wasn’t sure if Amos was serious.

“Why? The internet is a mess — so lawless and decentralised. We can’t control the ads on third-party websites, so why would companies pay our premium rates if they could reach our consumers through the backdoor? You’re the one who told me about attachment to method standing in the way of progress. The best method for meeting 99% of the needs of 99% of our consumers is to have their favourite services and content sources accessible through neat, self-contained apps.”

“Someone will make an internet app, then,” said Kurt.

“They can if they want, but we won’t let it in the store. Seriously, what do people use the internet for that they’ll miss out on? Other than piracy there’s nothing. By launch there will be apps for their online shopping, their auction sites, their user-generated encyclopaedias, their message boards, their tube sites, their specialist news sources, their adult needs, everything. What else is the internet for?”

“People use the internet to post unpopular opinions that nowhere else will host. The internet is the only democratising force we have.”

“Come on, Mr Jacobs, they can still tweet. And anyway, if those opinions were any good they wouldn’t be so unpopular. That’s how democracy works: what’s popular is right.”

“You can stop calling me Mr Jacobs now. And no, it’s really not. Democracy is about being able to say what you want and the internet lets people do that.”

“Today’s kids aren’t interested in stuff like that, though, and their generation has grown up without file systems and with apps for everything. It’s what they know. You didn’t insist on an old-fashioned file system so why are you so set on a browser? The internet is like a giant supermarket but people keep buying the same things, so most of the space is wasted. Our system is a vending machine, with neat little tiles that everyone can understand. Push a button and there you are: easy! Progress, in a nutshell. Why would a man of science be upset by progress?”

“I’m not upset. I’m just annoyed that you’re handicapping The Seed by eliminating user choice. It’s so short-sighted. Trying to sell people a Seed with no browser would be like trying to sell them a car they can’t steer.”

“That would be better,” said Amos, his eyes lighting up. “Everyone would buy that car! It’s a good analogy, actually. People have to steer to get where they want just as people have to browse to find what they want. Having an app that takes you right there is like being able to tell the car where to go and sit back until it arrives.”

“What if the car doesn’t know how to get to the place you want to go, though? Or what if it decides you shouldn’t go there?”

Amos shrugged. “Go somewhere else.”

Kurt held his gaze. “I want my Seed to have a browser.”

“It’s my Seed,” said Amos. “I’ll do what I want with it.”

“No, it’s
my
Seed.”

Amos rolled his eyes at Kurt, breaking then quickly resuming their intense eye-contact. “The Seed belongs to you in the same way that your shoes belong to the Filipino orphan who stitched them together. This is serious business, Kurt. Not everything is about you.”

“I can see that. It’s all about control.”

“I’m not going to sit here and lie to you.” Amos leaned back in his chair. “None of this is about control; it’s all about money. Sycamore is a corporation and as such exists to turn a profit. In some instances, yes, control is a necessary intermediary on the road to profit. Full control of advertising placements and the data which informs those placements is crucial for maximum profitability.”

“So everything you’ve ever said about progress is a lie, it’s all just about money? I thought you were different.”