Sycamore (Near-Future Dystopia) (11 page)

Kurt hadn’t, so Amos took him through a staff-only door and turned on an old-fashioned TV. It had six channels. The launch was on every one. Always a big story, suddenly The Seed was the only story.

Despite the rapidity of seeding, the queue continued to grow. By 10.30 it coiled around the city’s streets like a serpent, more hydra than snake. The aerial pictures were breathtaking but there was still no way of knowing how many people were outside. Kurt estimated that around 10,000 could be seeded before 6pm but there had to be double that on the street. Though Amos ensured him there was “a Seed for everyone,” time constraints meant that demand was going to outstrip supply for the day. As if The Seed needed a further publicity boost, it would appear scarce and difficult to obtain.

The protest; the queues; the limited launch; the brilliance of the concept… Kurt, Amos and Minion had danced for rain and brought forth a perfect storm.

The reporter for the station Amos and Kurt had tuned in to was walking the queue and interviewing its more interesting-looking members. There were babies in pushchairs and old men in wheelchairs, workers and lovers and hipsters and mothers. Everyone had their own reason for being there. The reporter moved towards the head of the queue, where people had obviously been waiting longest and hence would be most rabid in their anticipation. He settled at a teenage boy who looked a little like Julian.

“What are you most looking forward to with The Seed that’s brought you out so early this morning?” the reporter asked clumsily.

“Me? It’s just, like, the best thing ever! I can watch anything and talk to anyone without carrying a phone around, right? And the data is free… unlimited use. Right now I’m paying by the megabyte for going over my limit every month. I’ve already got UltraLenses and the thing about rewinding stuff I’ve already seen is awesome.”

“Have you ever queued like this before?”

“Yeah — UltraLenses. And, uh, I was at a couple of iPhone launches. But never for this long.”

“And what excited you more, new iPhone models or The Seed?”

“Dude, that’s like asking if I prefer, like, something amazing or something meh. Amazing every time, obviously. The iPhone queues had cooler people, though.”

Amos turned the volume down. “See, that’s the kind of kid we would have got no matter what: a trend-chasing little hipster. It’s everyone else that sets us apart. If the camera crew went to the back of the queue they’d get better stories from the folks who are just turning out. The Seed has become more than a product. It’s a cause to be defended.”

The teenage boy dumped his iPhone in the rapidly-filling SycaCycle box by the front door and took his voucher for 50% off the cost of seeding. Around a third of queuers were trading in their old smartphones for this generous $250 discount. Old was a misnomer, of course; most of the phones were less than two years old, the latest models in the planned-obsolescence production cycle that Sycamore was about to break.

“What are you going to do with all of the abandoned phones?” Kurt asked. “If you’re collecting them at every store when the launch expands there will be millions. Is it for recycling?”

Amos grinned. “I have a somewhat grander gesture in mind. You’ll see next week.”

More interviews followed as the reporter walked along Liberty Street. One elderly woman looked forward to feeling safe. “It’ll be like having a CCTV camera protecting me all the time,” she said. “No one will attack me when I have my Lenses in and my Seed is recording everything they see.”

The next interviewee was another young man. “The best thing about it?” he pondered. “No one will ever be able to lie to me again! I’ll be like “that’s not what you said” and they’ll be like “is so” and I’ll be like: rewind, evidence, boom. You know what I mean?”

Kurt and Amos, rainmakers extraordinaire, spent the next few hours watching interviews with queuers from all walks of life. Amos didn’t know what he liked best — front-of-the-liners salivating over promises of a technological sunrise or latecomers defiant in their stance against religious intimidation. In the end it didn’t matter where they stood; everyone who was anyone was champing at the bit to take their place in Sycamore’s brave new world.

II

6

Kurt woke late on Tuesday morning and it was afternoon by the time he rolled out of bed. Dealing with the 985,000 friend requests he had received on Forest took only as long as clicking Accept All, after which he spent almost an hour reading about the morning’s expanded launch.

11,000 people were seeded at Sycamore’s Liberty Street branch on day one and the first three hours of nationwide seeding had seen that number increase by a factor of over 700. The SycaNews featured a video interview with the lucky recipient of the millionth Seed as well as items concerning riot police being drafted in to deal with boisterous queues from sea to shining sea.

Reports suggested that internet and phone contracts were being cancelled en masse as consumers realised they could communicate by voice, text or video for free and instantly. There was no browser, of course, but no one seemed to be noticing. Consumers had been trained to view the internet as a collection of corporate launchpads and data aggregation centres; The Seed’s purely app-based interface was really nothing new.

A quote attributed to Amos predicted ten million Seeds to be sold by the end of the day and Kurt’s Forest profile told him that he was currently ranked 1 of 8,183,672 — the most popular man in the world. The number of seeded consumers was growing by hundreds and thousands per second and a lot of them wanted to be Kurt’s friend. Little wonder, then, that his tree had grown to epic proportions, towering over its nearest rivals who were mostly pop stars and athletes he didn’t recognise. Amos was only sixth on the list but Kurt was sure he wouldn’t mind given that his ambitious target was on track to being smashed.

The sound of a text notification interrupted Kurt’s news-viewing. It was Amos, requesting his presence on Wednesday morning but confirming that the present day was his to spend as he pleased. It looked like a perfect afternoon to be outside so Kurt decided to walk to see Randy and the kids; he had been holed up for long enough and the feeling of the sun on his back was well overdue.

He ate cold noodles from a pot in his sink and got dressed after a quick shower. All the time spent at home had given Kurt a chance to catch up on some laundry, at least, so there would be no repeat of the jean-shorts and espadrilles fiasco.

The first thing he noticed when he stepped outside was that there seemed to be more advertising... much more. A poster for a documentary about big cats lay in the middle of the pavement, for one thing, and when he walked past Tasmart Express a seductive voice whispered in his ear that they had an offer on noodles. It was too weird.

Only full-size Tasmart stores offered seeding and there was no Sycamore branch between Kurt’s apartment and Randy’s house so no queues filled the streets. Unsettled by the invasive advertising, he listened to music for the rest of his walk.

He arrived at the house and knocked on the front door. It took a while for anyone to answer. Kurt quickly wished he had let himself in to save Randy the not inconsiderable effort of hobbling to greet him.

Randy appeared with only one crutch and hugged Kurt with his free arm. “Hey, bro.”

“Hey,” said Kurt. “Good job on the leg. Are the kids around?”

“It’s Tuesday afternoon.”

“So?”

“So they’re at school.”

“Right.”

Randy closed the door behind Kurt and studied him with concerned eyes. “Jeez, how hard have you been working?”

“I’ve hardly been doing anything,” said Kurt. “You know I wasn’t allowed to go out, and even when I’ve been at events like yesterday’s launch and last week’s press conference I’ve only had to talk to a camera for a little bit. What day it is doesn’t really matter in my world. How’s your Seed, anyway?”

“You know how good it is, hotshot. It’s so damn good that I’m actually proud of my idiot brother for coming up with it! At the contest, when those suits were telling you it wouldn’t work… I believed them. I mean, you know, my hand is a trackpad. I’m basically a walking computer.”

Kurt smiled. “You’re welcome. Chess?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Kurt downloaded Chess from the SycaStore’s game section. Randy needed the game, too, so he paid the $9.99 asking price in a single click. Like everyone else, he had linked his bank account to his SycaStore account at his seeding. $9.99 seemed steep but such was life; Sycamore prohibited competition with its first-party offerings and Amos charged whatever he wanted.

The game itself was excellent, offering a range of visual options similar to those available for virtual TV-viewing. Kurt and Randy chose the table-top mode, which overlaid a beautiful marble-effect chessboard onto any surface. “I would pay $500 just for this,” said Randy, half serious. The brothers had always been big on chess — a trait from their father — and competed so carefully that barely twenty moves were made before the kids arrived home from school.

Sabrina sprinted over to Kurt and threw her arms around him. “Uncle Kurt! Everyone is talking about you at school since you were on TV so much.”

Kurt always took Sabrina’s delight in his presence for granted but was pleased to see that Julian looked happy to see him, too. “Hey kids,” he said.

Julian smiled truly. “That was some launch, right?”

“Tell me about it.”

“Was the Fury River set-up your idea?”

Kurt spent a few seconds deciding how to answer then led Julian into the kitchen and closed the door. “You’re one
hell
of a smart kid. But no, it was all Amos. How did you know Sycamore was behind it, though? No one in the media suspected a thing. Even the protestors thought it was their idea. Three people in the world know we planned it. Well, four if you do. What was the giveaway?”

“The man from Sycamore who was talking about it — I guess he’s the third guy? — he’s a terrible liar. Terrance Minion. He looked so familiar. Is he not the one who—

“He was,” Kurt interrupted, “but now he’s not. Anyway, you need to keep this quiet.”

“Of course. I wouldn’t do anything that could get you in trouble.”

“You’re a good kid. You know, I’ve not seen you since that night before the contest. There’s been a lot of empty hours since them. Enough for me to realise that I’m sorry for being so hard on you. I won’t pretend that you’ll understand this one day, but you might: all I want is for you to be better than me in every way.”

“I know. You were right, anyway. I guess everyone’s right now and again.” They both laughed. “Seriously, though: I’m sorry, too. I know how hard you must have been working to come up with The Seed. I guess those deferred rewards are piling up now?”

“I think we’re going to be alright, put it that way. Are you coming to the park with your sister and me?”

“I’ve got too much stuff for school. Before you go, though, I just want to say that I don’t blame my dad for anything. I know the accident wasn’t his fault.”

Kurt stood and patted Julian on the shoulder. “I know that, too, JJ. If only he did.”

Sabrina was ready quickly and skipped alongside Kurt on the short journey to the park. They passed a young mother pushing a baby. Talking into the air in an old-fashioned voice-call, her ears were sufficiently occupied to ensure that its cries went unheard. There were ads scattered here and there and Kurt was glad that Sabrina didn’t have to see them.

“What’s wrong with him?” she asked.

Kurt looked where she was pointing, towards a middle-aged man on a bench. He was sitting there with an empty dog-lead in one hand and a ripped shopping-bag in the other, staring dead-eyed into the distance and laughing like a crazy person. “Nothing. He’s just watching something.”

“He looks stupid.”

“He is,” said Kurt. “It’s not polite to go full-immersion in public. And it’s not safe, either. He can’t hear or see a thing. Some people misuse everything.”

“Even The Seed?”

“Especially The Seed, I’m afraid.”

“Why are you afraid? Is it not as good as you hoped? Will I not like it when I get one?”

Kurt sat down beside the absent man. “It’s really good,” he insisted, “and it’ll only get better when the number of ads goes down. You can’t buy anything in the store until you’re ten, though, and I think that includes a Relive subscription. That’s the best part — it saves everything you’ve ever seen and let’s you watch it back later.”

“I know.” Sabrina took a small skipping rope from her bag and started to jump over it. “Our principal told us about all the different things The Seed does. I just wasn’t sure if he was being honest. He said Sycamore calls you a Sapling until you turn ten, which is still thirteen days for me, but that we all have to get seeded on Friday at school. He said we need it for classes.”

“Why do you need it for classes?”

Sabrina continued to jump as she answered, sucking in deep and urgent breaths every few words. “Sycamore are giving us new smartboards and paying for a new games hall. The board will only work when you wear UltraLenses.”

“I get the Lenses, but why do you all need to be seeded? And why do it right before summer?”

“The principal says Sycamore are putting scanners at the front door to protect us from Columbine and Sandy Hook. The Seed will say who I am and that I’m allowed in. They’re doing it at JJ’s high school, too.”

“That’s $1,000. How do they expect your dad to pay for them?”

“They say no one has to pay straight away because we can get special credit and only have to pay later.”

“They always say that. $1000 today is $3000 in a few months.” Kurt sent a quick message to Amos asking if he would still be in his office in a few hours and received instant affirmation. “I’ll make sure you get them for free,” he told Sabrina.

The sudden seriousness of Kurt’s tone took her concentration from the skipping rope and she tripped onto the grass. Kurt helped her up. “How come you can do that?” she asked.