Sycamore (Near-Future Dystopia) (21 page)

“Easy. I just hung back until someone else was about to walk in and then they held it for me. That’s always how people get into places they aren’t supposed to. No one ever asks who you are before holding a door for you. Pro-tip.”

Stacy walked towards the master bedroom, testing whether Kurt would stop her after what had happened last time. He didn’t, so they sat through there.

“Hot tub?” she suggested, smiling as she said it.

Kurt thought about it. “Tempting, but you don’t have any other clothes.”

“Who wears their clothes in a hot tub?”

Stacy had a point and Kurt wanted to say yes, or, more accurately, to say nothing and
show
her yes. But a moment featuring Stacy without clothes would be one of those moments when Kurt’s heart-rate sped up — one of those moments when The Seed liked to take snapshots for future advertising. A sample of such snapshots were randomly monitored at HQ and there was always a chance that one of Kurt’s would come under the microscope. The idea of Minion and the rest of his DC creeps seeing Stacy like that ruled out taking a dip.

“I wish it was that simple,” he said. “But I wouldn’t want anyone seeing you like that through my Lenses.”

Stacy undid her top button. “So take them out.”

“You don’t get it: I can’t!” Kurt clasped his hands together at the back of his neck and breathed deeply. “I’m responsible for a lot here. If there was an emergency and I didn’t get the message, who knows what could happen.”

She did the button back up. “That’s how they want you to think. They want you to live in fear so you’re always online, hooked up to their grid. And you’ve fallen for it. You of all people.”

“I’m sorry but I can’t take them out.”

“Don’t apologise like you would have been doing me a favour.”

The last thing Kurt wanted was another unhappy ending to a visit from Stacy so he suggested they do something else. “I didn’t mean anything like that. Listen, what do you say we get out of here and go out properly? We could go to a nice restaurant for my birthday. You can order whatever you want, too; it’s all free for Mr Sycamore.”

She laughed at his self-deprecation and agreed without speaking. They walked to the car and Kurt sped off towards the Quartermile. “Why are we going this way?” Stacy asked as they neared Sycamore’s leaf-shaped headquarters.

“Don’t worry, we’re not going to HQ. It’s just that the good restaurants are where people have money. The place we’re going is around the corner but I don’t want to leave the car right outside because people would know I’m there.”

“So?”

“I don’t want us to get mobbed.” Kurt stepped out to open Stacy’s door and immediately saw some of RealU’s dubious fashions on the other side of the road.

Stacy noticed him shaking his head. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I don’t know how it looks to you, but from behind these Lenses everyone is wearing one of the same few outfits. RealU is ridiculously popular already. And now Sycamore have started selling advice to men about what clothes and chat-up lines would be best for a particular girl. Then there’s this whole new transport duty thing...”

“I heard about that,” said Stacy, cutting Kurt off before he wasted any time explaining. “Whatever they dress it up as, it’s a movement tax. It must be the crudest abuse of power in this country’s history.”

“That’s what I said to Amos. Movement tax were my exact words.” They crossed the road.

“And what did he say?”

“That no one was forcing us to move. I told him that this is the worst thing yet, even worse than the tracking. Definitely worse than RealU and all the other stupid stuff. I’m starting to see the distinction between the applications that are just annoying and the ones that are actually dangerous. Our attention should be aimed upwards to Amos, not down to the worker ants blinded by technology and bribed by simplicity.”

“Exactly,” said Stacy. “The masses get distracted from dangerous things by shiny things, then we get distracted from the dangerous things by being annoyed that the masses have been distracted by the shiny things. We need to forget about the annoying things and worry about the dangerous things.”

It sounded clumsy but Kurt couldn’t have put it any better. “RealU is kind of both, though,” he said. “Like today I went to see my niece. She’s ten, and she’s spending money on RealU. It’s like she wants to be what the ads tell her she should be. Surely
that’s 
dangerous?”

Stacy nodded as if she understood. “Little girls are like that. Trust me, I used to be one. She’s just trying to grow up. But that doesn't mean that the two of you have to grow apart. Maybe you just have to grow up a little bit with her?”

“It’s not that simple. Children don’t really seem to grow anymore, they just get bigger. Our society is like a grinder that sucks children in one end and throws consumers out the other.”

Stacy didn’t know what to say in reply so they walked quietly around the corner towards the restaurant Kurt had picked out. The silence ended as someone shouted from along the street. “It’s him, it’s him!”

A herd of humanity made its way towards Kurt and Stacy. He tried to usher her into the safety of the exclusive restaurant before the crowd could block their path but the door was too far away. “This might get weird,” he said. “Apparently I’m a huge celebrity now.”

Stacy didn’t say anything and seconds later they were mobbed by dozens of attractive girls and a handful of well-dressed boys. Everyone looked like a movie star; UnBlemish made people glow while it cleared up their skin. They were all saying “Hey, Kurt!” as if they knew him and most were wishing him a happy birthday. A rudimentary queue formed organically, trapping Kurt and Stacy as his fans took turns to stand beside him while their friends took snapshots for their Forest profiles. The world had gone insane and Kurt was at its centre.

The final straw came when a girl ran up and kissed him on the lips. It was too much. “Jesus Christ!” he shouted. “Can none of you see that I’m with someone?”

A police officer on patrol across the street heard the commotion and walked over. “Are these people bothering you, Mr Jacobs?”

“As a matter of fact they are,” said Kurt. “But I don’t want to make a scene. Just make sure there are no crowds milling about when we’re inside the restaurant.”

“Of course, sir.”

Stacy was amazed at the tone Kurt took with the police officer and even more so by the deference that was returned. The humble officer held off the beautiful crowd so that Kurt and Stacy could enter the restaurant. She held and squeezed his hand, proud of him for turning his nose up to the adoring masses and flattered that he had told them he was with her.

Kurt looked at Stacy and suddenly noticed things about her that he had never seen before. The RealU-enhanced girls in the crowd made him appreciate each of Stacy’s out-of-place hairs, the randomness of her light freckles, her two chipped nails.

She was beautiful — without question — but she was also real and flawed and vulnerable. No... not but. Stacy was so beautiful to Kurt precisely
because
she was real. In an age of attainable perfection, there was something enchanting about her lack of it.

They walked into the restaurant’s doorway. Kurt opened the door and Stacy kissed him on the cheek before walking through. His heart sped up. It might have been the wind, but he was sure he heard a smooth whisper in his ear as he stepped in behind her.

“Lexington.”

11

The restaurant brimmed with society types pleased to have Kurt in their company; however new his money may have been, his power was real.

A young waiter led Kurt and Stacy past several queuing businessmen and over to a corner booth. “How is this, Mr Jacobs?”

Kurt looked at Stacy. She nodded. “It should be fine,” he said.

“Excellent.” The waiter helped them into their chairs, Kurt first. “And what would we like to drink this evening?”

“Lexington Blue,” said Kurt after a second’s thought. “Actually, make that a Junior Blue. I’m driving.”

“Of course, sir. And for the lady?”

“Red wine, please. Real stuff.” The waiter smiled and hurried away. Stacy faced Kurt. “Why do you drink that garbage?”

He looked in her unreadable eyes and then inside himself for an answer. There was none. “I don’t know,” he eventually admitted.

“Is it because they advertise it so hard?”

“Probably,” he said, realising now that even an acute awareness of how advertising worked didn’t protect him from its effects. “Lexington are the most aggressive advertisers out there. The day after we met, there was a billboard with a shot of you in the rain from my Lenses and underneath the picture it said “
I only do dudes who do Lexington
.” That’s the level they’re on. The Seed knows when your heart rate is elevated and who you were looking at when it went up. Corporations like Lexington purchase and use that information to link positive feelings with their products.”

Stacy was unsurprised to learn of Lexington’s advertising tactics but pounced on something Kurt said. “Why would your heart rate go up when you were looking at me?” she asked, leaning slightly forward.

The waiter’s impossibly quick return saved Kurt the trouble of an answer. Under orders to ignore his other diners’ needs to attend to the restaurant’s superstar guest, the waiter placed their drinks on the table and tried to stop himself from smiling like a fool at the fact that he was serving
the
Kurt Jacobs. “I’ll give you a few minutes,” he said.

“Okay. But when you come back, can I have a taller glass?”

“Of course, sir.”

The waiter left again and Kurt noticed the odd look on Stacy’s face as she watched him walk away. “What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing. I just thought this was meant to be a posh place.”

“It is.”

“Then why is everyone in shabby clothes and why is the waiter wearing jeans?”

Kurt gasped slowly and quietly as he understood what Stacy was seeing. He looked at their fellow diners in awestruck appreciation of just how effective the technology behind RealU was. “As far as any of these people know, the rest of them are in expensive suits and elegant dresses.”

She laughed at how ridiculous it all sounded. “There’s no way RealU can be that good.”

“Trust me. You know that girl outside who ran up and kissed me? What did she look like?”

“Uh, I didn’t really see. She looked pretty heavy, though.”

“She looked like a supermodel through my Lenses. The whole crowd did. It’s weird not knowing how people actually look.”

“You should see the people in here. Seriously.”

Kurt was intrigued. “What about her over there? She seems too attractive to be real.” He nodded towards a young woman sitting opposite a man he recognised from some mindless movie. “What does
she
really look like?”

“I don’t want to sound like a bitch,” Stacy qualified, “but have you ever seen Shallow Hal?”

Kurt chortled loudly enough to draw the entire restaurant’s attention. Only then did Stacy notice how quiet it was. Couples and business partners were looking across tables at each other and writing into their hands. She knew about Glancing — The Seed’s eye-contact dependent method of efficient communication — but hadn’t really seen it in action. The surrealism reached its peak when a waiter approached a couple and silently took their order.

“Why are the waiters taking orders by Glances?”

“It must be easier,” Kurt shrugged. “They don’t have to write the order down because the customer is writing it for them. I think our waiter didn’t want to disrespect me, though. That’s why he was speaking. It does seem stupid to Glance when someone is right in front of you but I see it everywhere. Do you know what I’ve always
really
hated? People who text while they drive. I bet drivers Glance with their passengers. It’s like they think the mundanity of their own life is important enough to justify putting other people’s in danger. I mean, really, what are they even saying?”

“I don’t know about Glance but I know what the texters are saying,” said Stacy. “They’re saying
“I'm on the way home, darling, where I'll sit next to you in front of the viewing wall while I text someone else.”
”

“Probably.” Kurt let out the half-laugh of a man reacting to something that was funny and sad at the same time.

Stacy then paid keen attention as a doting young woman sent a rushed Glance to her partner and smiled while awaiting his reply. “What about everyone else, though? Why don’t they just talk to each other?” she asked, disbelieving of what was happening. Something about it seemed so detached. There was eye contact, at least, but Stacy hated the thought that the person she was talking to might be simultaneously checking sports results or reading messages from someone else.

Kurt looked around the silent room, still wondering what the rest of the diners looked like beneath their veils. He couldn’t explain the lack of conversation, either. “I honestly don’t know.”

The starstruck waiter returned with Kurt’s glass and stopped beside the table. “Are we ready to order, sir?”

“You didn’t give us any menus,” said Stacy.

The waiter looked equally confused. “Your menu is on the table, ma’am,” he replied, still too excited by Kurt’s presence to notice that there was no social information beside Stacy’s head.

She laughed awkwardly. “No, it’s really not.”

“The menus are
on
the table,” Kurt explained. He turned to the waiter. “She’s not wearing any Lenses.”

“No Lenses?!” The waiter dropped Kurt’s tall glass. It smashed on the tastefully tiled floor. The noise captured the attention of the restaurant’s other patrons once more and they quickly realised what was going on. They looked at Stacy through judgemental eyes and whispered under their collective breath, stale with caviar and overpriced gin. There was a Sycamore virgin in their midst.

When Kurt pulled his eyes away from the broken glass to talk to Stacy his vision was blocked by a pop-up: “
Extreme emotions detected. Apply Reader?* *Applying Reader will incur a $120 charge.
”