Sycamore (Near-Future Dystopia) (26 page)

“You mean the freedom to be a slave and the right to pick which of the two parties the next Sycamore-serving president will come from? And stop pretending you can go through with CrimePrev. The law doesn’t permit the detention of innocent people.”

“Read it again, Kurt. 9/11 changed everything.”

“Not that. What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty?”

“It’s been replaced by something better. People used to be innocent until we gave them a chance to become guilty, but society is finally recognising its duty to stop them. We're protecting innocence. Once the public demand universality there will be no more saboteurs, agitators and rabble rousers in any of our cities. When someone is suspected of something, our CrimePrev agents will look back and see how they’ve been acting. You saw Blind Luck, didn’t you? We can jump back to any point in time to see what a user was doing.”

Kurt inhaled deeply. “I need you to be honest with me,” he said. “Can that really be done?”

“Of course! You know that everyone with Relive can go to any moment, and you know that the data isn’t stored locally. It’s on our servers.”

“I know that in my head but it’s still unbelievable. The servers must be huge. Where are they? I want to see them. I need to see how the system works and what we’re actually doing here. Seriously — I’m at a point where I don’t know how much longer I can keep smiling and pretending I don’t hate everything.”

“The servers aren’t here,” said Amos.

“Where are they?”

“Somewhere else.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re lying. You don’t even have everyone’s historic video data. Relive data is stored locally. CrimePrev is just a money grab and an opportunity to scare people into submission. That amount of video, at that sort of quality… you just couldn’t. That’s why there’s no proof. There must be some trickery going on.”

“Proof? Fine. Come through here.” Amos led Kurt into the meeting room and then through another door into a small closet-like office. There was a desk and a computer and nothing else. “Now pick a number, pick a date, pick a time. The computer will be able to show us what the selected user was up to. Pick one of the first 20 million so we can go a few weeks back.”

“A desktop? Did you ride in here on a horse-drawn carriage?”

“Very good, Kurt. There’s a reason this kind of work is done on mini desktops: if the lookouts were using their Seeds to stream other people’s vistas there would be nothing to stop them doing it at home. This way they can only do it at work, when we’re watching. Obviously we could watch their vistas when they’re at home but then we’d need watchers watching the watchers, and more watchers watching the watcher-watchers and, well, you see the predicament. So we have a few dozen computers that let them access streams and recordings up in The Treehouse. That’s where DC is based. I can access everything using my Seed but no one else can be trusted with that kind of power.”

“So why can you be trusted with it?”

“Maybe I can’t,” Amos shrugged, “but someone has to be. Anyway, we’re getting sidetracked. Give me the time, date and user.”

“Before that, I know you’re using CrimePrev tech to scan people’s voices for keywords so you can deliver ads. What I want to know is if you can do that then why do you need anyone in DC spying on people?”

“Hmm. Well, surveillance is an art. Computers can’t do it all. The keyword-scanning of text and voice comms is crude, like a hammer. Minion’s staff are more like watchmakers, delicately working away. Have you picked your time, date and user yet?”

“Noon on the 16
^th
. User number 20,000,001.”

Amos rolled his eyes at Kurt’s obtuseness. “Whatever. Okay, so we have a Miss Janey Fisher, age 10. We’ll jump back to the date and time… bingo. Here it comes.” Amos threw the video onto the wall and Kurt was reminded why he knew the name Janey Fisher.

She was in Sabrina’s class, and at noon on the 16
^th
Sabrina’s class was in the school changing rooms. Sabrina was standing directly opposite Janey so Kurt could see her clearly. Her hair was soaking wet from either the swimming pool or the shower but she looked to be wearing an advertising t-shirt from RealU.

“She didn’t turn ten until the schools were out,” said Kurt. “How is she wearing an ad?”

“Who?”

“My niece Sabrina, right there.”

“She must be wearing that shirt now,” said Amos. “That’s how it works. Don’t you think it’s funny that consumers used to pay to wear branded clothing and now we’re paying them? Sometimes I wonder if we give them too much. Anyway, let’s see what the raw feed was bringing in.” Amos clicked a button.

Kurt kept his eyes on the video. Sabrina’s RealU t-shirt disappeared, leaving only a towel. “Change it back,” he said.

“You picked the feed.”

“I said change it back.”

“Come on, hotshot, there’s no need—

Kurt spun around and grabbed Amos by the collar in a single movement. He pushed him against the office wall and held a forearm against his throat. “Change it back.”

Amos’s bulging eyes and reddening cheeks didn’t convince Kurt to relent but the involuntary whimper that escaped his windpipe did. Amos immediately killed the video.

“Now delete the recording.”

“Pointless.” Amos raised his hands in front of his face and neck in anticipation of further violence. “There were about ten other girls in the room who could see her. It’s in their feeds, too. And even if we deleted them all... what about next time?”

“Why should there be a next time? Why don’t you put blockers in changing rooms like the ones you have here? Is Sycamore’s privacy more important than everyone else’s? Is your security really more important than children’s safety? What if footage like this got into the wrong hands?”

“That’s the whole point! Sycamore’s security is everyone’s security; by investing our security budget in blockers here, we prevent anyone else from accessing sensitive footage anywhere.”

Kurt considered Amos’s words and his own. “What if it’s already in the wrong hands?”

“What are you suggesting? That I’m some kind of…”

Kurt cut him off. “Maybe not
you
, but the odds aren’t exactly huge that one of your lookouts is a creep.”

“The Treehouse is designed in such a way that our lookouts are visually monitored at all times. As a further precautionary measure, a log of their insights is kept and periodically reviewed by senior staff who report directly to me. If we even
suspected 
anyone of the kind of perversion you suggest, they would be out. And they would be prosecuted.”

“I want to see it. Take me to The Treehouse.”

“Sorry, hotshot. No one gets into The Treehouse apart from the lookouts. That’s how we keep it secure. I can however take you to the Forest floors, if you so wish? Communications Colin and his team are doing all kinds of amazing work up there.”

“No thanks,” said Kurt. “I have better ways to waste my time.”

~

Kurt drove away from the Quartermile and parked at a familiar street corner were he removed his UltraLenses for the second time in nine months. He opened the Gallardo’s glove compartment and took out the only thing in it: a small piece of paper.

He read it, and he walked.

There were no markings on the house Kurt thought was Stacy’s so he double-checked the door numbers of the others nearby to make sure he had the right place. He knocked on the door and felt everything at once as he waited for someone to answer — excited, foolish, scared, alive. She appeared and relief took over.

“Kurt!”

He presented his left hand, palm-up, showing her the Lenses.

She looked down at them then back into his naked eyes. “Does this mean…?”

“Yes,” he said, swallowing away the doubt. “I’m in.”

III

14

Stacy fetched some drinks from her kitchen and Kurt looked around. He had expected her to live somewhere like his old place, somewhere studenty. He was right.

It was a lot tidier than the old apartment but everything was bare and minimalist. Stacy’s wasn’t the kind of bourgeois minimalism that people in Longhampton paid interior designers thousands of dollars to bring to their mansions, though. This was organic minimalism — the kind that manifested itself when people spent all of what little money they had on silly things like food and rent.

She came through with a tray and sat across from Kurt. In the absence of a sofa, they sat on wooden chairs at a small dining-table. “So,” she said. “What happened?”

“I don’t know, it wasn’t one single thing. It’s been the longest 48 hours of my life since I sent you away in that taxi.”

“Well, what happened today? Start there.”

Kurt inhaled deeply, audibly, and set out on trying to explain his eventual change of heart. “I went to see my niece Sabrina but she was busy earning money on these stupid survey and focus group apps. Her brother Julian told me that she’s saving up for a new nose. She’s ten. Both of them were wearing ad t-shirts. It’s, like, what’s even happening here? Then I went to HQ and asked for proof about the vista recording because I started to think that it must have been a lie. It’s not. Amos gave me a demonstration and the one that came up was of all these little girls getting changed after swimming at school. Sabrina was there and Amos was smiling. He’s watching everything everyone does, everywhere, and no one seems to care.”

Kurt was venting, and forcefully. Stacy’s charcoal eyes encouraged him to continue.

“Before that, last night, I saw a guy getting arrested for not being able to pay his movement tax. I took him to the hospital to see his new baby but he’s going to jail. His account has been terminated so he’s a non-person. It was our waiter. His name’s Rocco. Sycamore wouldn’t extend him credit to pay the movement tax because he’d lost his job which makes him too high-risk. I made them fire him for embarrassing you.”

“Kurt...”

He shook his head; he wasn’t finished. “BeThere. Do you know about BeThere? And CrimePrev? CrimePrev! Locking people up for things they haven’t done... it’s just a convenient way to get rid of people who could cause trouble for the establishment. It’s like Patriot Act II: Extended Edition. I would rather die than live in a world like this. When Amos wouldn’t switch off the stream with Sabrina in it, I grabbed him by the throat and made him. It’s changing me. I didn’t think I had it in me to be violent.”

“Everyone does,” said Stacy, trying to reassure him. “It’s there when we need it. Remember when I slapped that pig when the four of them were roughing me up?”

“You mean when you were protesting against mistreatment of pigs?” They both laughed and then Kurt stopped. “I didn’t want to save you that day,” he said. “My mouth shouted out by itself.”

She looked at him like she was waiting for a punchline that would never come. Eventually she realised it wasn’t a joke and her face changed. “Why wouldn’t you help someone who was in trouble?” she asked, anger fighting disappointment for control of her tone.

“I wanted to see the police officers beat you.”

Stacy couldn’t reply.

“But only because my Lenses were recording everything. I would have shared the footage and it would have enraged people. I don’t know what the ultimate end was but it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Suddenly her eyebrows perked up and her spine quickly followed. “Can you get footage from HQ? If you could get evidence of them watching people — watching kids — you could post it on your Forest and your millions of friends would see it.”

“I can’t get anything. There are blockers. But if you had a decent camera...”

“Me? How could I get near the place?”

“Not just near. In.” Kurt paused deliberately to see how Stacy reacted. She didn’t, so he continued. “Long story short… after we were mobbed outside that restaurant it was all over the gossip news and everyone was wondering who you were. Amos asked and I said you were an Italian journalist who was doing a favourable piece on Sycamore. The Italian part was to explain why you’re not seeded and don’t have UltraLenses. Anyway, your new name is Monica Valentino and he asked me to invite you in for a look around.”

“Tomorrow,” she said, and that was all.

Just like that, it was happening. Kurt couldn’t have stopped it now even had he wanted to. History was in motion and he was finally on the right side, side-by-side with Stacy, working against Sycamore. “I’ll have to set it up with Amos,” he said.

“Hurry up then.”

Kurt thought for a second. “I can’t put the Lenses in here. He would know where I am.”

“If anyone wants to know, your chip will tell them. As long as they don’t know that this is my house it’s fine. Go into the closet and message him.”

Stacy was right and she seemed to be in some kind of pre-war trance so Kurt did as she said without comment. He walked into her closet and popped his Lenses back in. He quickly typed a message to Amos and checked it with her before pressing send. “Here’s what I have,” he said, shouting through the door. “Tell me how this sounds: The journalist emailed me. She’s staying an extra day and has some more questions. I mentioned visiting HQ and she was overjoyed. What time will I bring her? Need to know ASAP.”

“Perfect,” she yelled.

Kurt sent the message. Amos replied as quickly as ever: “You don’t have to be here when she comes, hotshot.”

Seeing the word hotshot written down annoyed Kurt. He had always liked the nickname when Randy used it but Amos had ruined it. The pleasure of ruining everything Amos had worked for would make up for it, though, so Kurt made an effort to reply cooly.

“It will be easier if I go,” he typed. “She doesn’t know the city. So what time?” Too many seconds passed and he began to worry that he had been overly insistent.

And then the welcome reply: “Fine. Come in for 10.”

“We’ll see you then.” Kurt immediately removed his Lenses again, by now getting quite used to doing so, and stepped out of the closet. He and Stacy had a lot to talk about but all they did was sit.