Sycamore (Near-Future Dystopia) (31 page)

Kurt ignored most of what Stacy said after he heard four unacceptable words near the beginning. “If this doesn’t work?“ he repeated. “If it doesn’t work? You need to understand going in that if this doesn’t work neither of us will see tomorrow night. This isn’t a game.”

“I don’t care. I’m all in. You?”

“Obviously. I have to be; this can’t work without me. Even if Amos let you speak, no one would listen to an Italian journalist. But the public know me. Amos has built a personality cult around me that would make Stalin blush. People trust me.”

“Don’t you think he’ll try to distance you from Sycamore and say you’re making up lies because you’re angry about something? Or worse, what if they take measures to shut you up when you start speaking?”

“It doesn’t matter what they say to the public or what they do to me,” Kurt insisted. “Once the whistle is blown they can't erase its sound. Anyway, I’ll have to take you home pretty soon if I’m going to that rally.”

“Are you?”

“I think so. Will you be fine until the morning?”

Stacy smiled. “I was fine the morning before I met you, hotshot.”

“Is that so?” said Kurt, trying not to laugh. “Get in the car then, Monica.”

He still found it difficult to drive without Lenses. On arrival at Stacy’s he popped them back in — unable to shake the message-checking habit — but kept his eyes inside his jacket so no one in DC could see his vista. “I’ve got a text from Amos,” he said.

“What does it say.”

Kurt read the message out loud for Stacy. “Come along tonight. We’re blowing up a bank.”

“Tell me how it looks,” she said.

“I will. But I don’t want him to know I’m going. It would be too awkward.”

Stacy opened her door and stepped out. Kurt typed a lie into his hand: “I’m busy tonight. I’ll see the highlights on TV.”

“What are you doing that’s more important than this?” came Amos’s rapid reply.

“Washing my hair.”

Kurt removed his Lenses once more and followed Stacy to her front door. He accepted her invitation inside then almost tripped over her as she stopped at her sideboard.

“What’s this doing here?” she asked.

Kurt looked in her hand. It was Amos’s mug.

“When did you leave this here? And why did you have it?”

Kurt was more than annoyed. The mug was a message: Amos had been here and he wanted Kurt to know. He couldn’t worry Stacy, though — what would it achieve? — and the message was for him, not her. “I must have left it here by mistake,” he said. “It was in my bag and I must have taken it out.”

“Why did you have a Sycamore mug in the first place?”

“My niece saw one in my house and asked if I could get her one like it. There’s been so much on my mind that I must have left it here yesterday morning by mistake.”

“I thought your family had never been in your house?” Stacy’s tone wasn’t as accusing as her words, she just genuinely didn’t understand the mug’s presence. Kurt’s mumbling repetition was doing little to help.

He gulped. Having to continue the lie gave him time to dwell on the mug, and he arrived at the conclusion that Amos was definitely threatening Stacy by proxy. “I meant my old place,” he said. “Sabrina saw it there. But anyway, the more I think about it, I think you should stay away tomorrow. It’s a needless risk. You’ve done so much already, you don’t have to do this.”

“Of course I do! This is about making a stand. It takes five times more energy to stand up than lie down, but who wants to spend their life on the ground? It might not be easy but making sacrifices to fight the good fight never is; that’s why they’re sacrifices. I have to be the change I want to see and I have to walk my talk. If I don’t then why am I here?”

Kurt gazed awestruck into her impassioned eyes. “Okay,” he decided. “You can come.”

She leaned over to kiss him, and in the softest of lips Kurt felt strength on a level deeper than thought allowed him to process. Stacy’s determination was stronger than conviction. Her courage, her determination and her selflessness knew no bounds.

There was no one he would rather ride with into battle.

~

Kurt wanted to talk to someone before he watched the rally, someone he hadn’t talked to in far too long. He rang the comically old-fashioned buzzer at the revolving doors and waited for an answer, hoping beyond hope that it would come.

“Yes?”

“Kurt Jacobs for Professor Walker,” he said in his best voice. The doors began to move.

Kurt ran up the Computer Science building’s stairs and along the corridor. He walked into the professor’s office without speaking and rolled his eyes in slow circles. The professor didn’t get it so Kurt rubbed his eyes with both hands. Slowly realising that Kurt wanted him to take his UltraLenses out, Professor Walker rolled his own eyes 360° and raised his eyebrows a few times as if to ask if that was indeed what he meant. Kurt rubbed his eyes again and coughed. The professor took out his Lenses.

“What is this, Jacobs? Are you in trouble.”

Kurt’s naked eyes darted around the room to double-check there was no surveillance equipment. Satisfied, he shook his head and stood against the door. “Not yet.”

“Spill it.”

“Even Relive is being wasted,” Kurt said, as though he had introduced his annoyance and the professor had any idea what was going on. “It was meant to relive wonderful memories. Family gatherings, first kisses, you know? But no one does anything anymore. People have nothing to relive from their own lives; they’re all too busy pissing them away on Happy Pigs and whatever movies Sycamore wants them to watch. Everyone is too busy watching other people live
their
lives to do anything with their own.”

“Imagine how the guy who invented the internet must have felt, Jacobs. There he is, spending his life on this incredible means of communication in the hope that doctors could cooperate internationally, that knowledge would be democratised. And what did he get? 70% of web traffic was sex-related with most of the other 30% taken up by people telling each other what they had for lunch.”

“The internet was good to start with,” said Kurt, “but then it got all commercial and mainstream. By the end it was filled with the same kind of people who trample each other to death in queues for cheap jeans on Black Friday. Still, though, just think of all the knowledge that’s no longer accessible. The real internet was our Library of Alexandria. Amos burned it down but no one noticed; everyone had already moved on to the shinier library next door. The worst thing is, I did the exact same. I moved on without looking back. The Seed has everything I need.”

“Right. And you’re someone who used to care… most people never did. I’d like to think it will be different in Europe, but who knows? The medium is the message. You can’t go online to defend the internet when it’s switched off so as soon as Sycamore move in it will be difficult for Europeans to protest. Or maybe they’re just like us and only care about having efficient ways to buy things and see what their friends are doing? I don’t know. The bottom line is that people here are happy with what they have now. You can’t beat yourself up for giving it to them. Things are always hijacked, wasted and misused — that doesn't mean they're not good things. The devil can quote scripture to serve his purposes.”

“This is nothing to do with the devil,” Kurt snapped, fed up of hearing about him. “There’s no good and no evil, just money and power and abused technology. I’m never giving the world anything again.”

Professor Walker lifted a box from the folding chair in the far corner of his office and moved the chair next to his own. “Sit down, Jacobs.”

Kurt obediently followed the instruction.

“Now tell me… if you give a man a potato, what will he do?”

"I don't know." Kurt was too caught out by the randomness of the question to do anything but answer immediately.

"Of course you don't; it depends on the man. One man might plant it and hope to harvest more. One man might boil it. Another less patient man might try to eat it raw. But there's always that one man who'll put a stick in the side and cover it with nails to make a weapon. There's always that one bad egg ready to lead the rest of the flock astray."

Professor Walker had always mixed metaphors like a madman. Kurt had never minded.

"And then there's the fruitcake,” he continued. “No one can predict what the hell he's going to do with it. He might dress the potato up like a tiny child, throw it onto a train line and kill himself crawling to its rescue. You can never tell how people will use it. That’s the point."

Kurt sat back in his chair. "What am I supposed to take from that?"

"That's just it: nothing. Everyone today is always looking for what they can take, but I know you're better then that. You're a giver, you always have been. You came up with a brilliant little chip that the most privileged and expensive minds in the country had never dreamed of. You gave it to the world. Whatever you give them, some people will waste it and others will turn it to their own nefarious ends. That doesn't mean you should stop trying. Not a jot. You want something to take away?"

Kurt nodded like the child who had first walked into Professor Walker’s classroom almost five years earlier.

"Fine. The moral isn’t “
don’t try.”
It’s never “
don’t try.”
So keep handing out potatoes. Always try. You’re a smart kid; you know what to do.”

“About that…”

“Yes?”

“I’m planning something big for the recognition ceremony. I can trust you, right?”

“With your life, Jacobs. You know that.”

“Okay. I snuck a journalist into HQ and we filmed everything they’re doing. I’m going to play the footage in the auditorium when everyone is watching me.” It sounded so much riskier when he said it out loud.

“That’s a very permanent thing to do,” said the professor. “I expect the consequences will be equally final.”

“That’s what worries me. We lied about her identity — the journalist — and she’s unseeded. But I was in her house earlier on and Amos had been there. He wanted me to know, but he didn’t tell me. He thinks this is a game.”

“Does your friend know about his visit?”

“No. I didn’t tell her.” Kurt paused to consider that. “But she wouldn’t care, anyway. Sometimes I think she’s too strong for her own good.”

“You still have to tell her.”

“She wouldn’t want me to do anything that could compromise our plan. Anyway, if Amos wanted to hurt her then the mug would have been a bomb. She’ll be standing by my side when I kill Sycamore and the world will be a better place.”

“Maybe so, but do you really have the right to make that decision?”

“I’m the only one with the power to do anything before it’s too late.”

“But people have
chosen
to use the services, Jacobs. Just like I didn't use facebook when so many others did. We always have a choice.”

“This is 100% different,” said Kurt. “People
have to
use Sycamore’s services.”

“Everyone else said they
had to
use the old portals, too. They had to network for their jobs and they had to stay in touch with old friends. You know, the old friends it was crucial to stay in contact with but too inconvenient to visit, call, text or email. They had to be a part of it when it was the only place where their friends hung out. I don’t have many old friends so I didn't have to do any of those things. Likewise, people who don’t want what Sycamore offer don’t have to take The Seed.”

Kurt wasn’t sure if Professor Walker was serious; he thought so but hoped not. “You make it sound like Sycamore is just a social network. If we were only dealing with Forest then you’d be making sense but that’s just one component... maybe the most used, but not the most invasive. They’re watching everyone, all the time. The whole thing is just surveillance dressed up as convenience. Wait until you see The Orwall, then you’ll understand. This isn't just another corporation collecting and selling our data so the government can track us. This is a corporation aiming to partner with every government — one that collects our information and instantly determines our access to essential services. And they’re announcing currency digitisation tonight! In this world people can’t live without using money.”

“People will adjust. Your unseeded journalist friend must be managing to get by as things are, no?”

Kurt was infuriated by Professor Walker’s dissociation from the problems. “Whose side are you on here?” he shouted.

“There don’t have to be sides.”

“Well there are, and we all have to pick one. Anyway, what do you mean she must be managing? She can’t buy food from most stores — soon to be
any
stores — and she can’t even ride the bus without a Seed. You know nothing about her. You know nothing about anything in the real world. Every morning you come into this office and sit around worrying about nothing.”

“As opposed to you who drives his Lamborghini through a Longhampton gate every night?”

“I get mobbed when I go outside! You don’t know anything about me, either. I’m risking everything because I hate it all. Stacy is risking her life because she hates it, too. Living without a Seed is almost impossible but for her it’s better than living with one. She actually cares about the world and she’s going to be by my side when we blow the lid off this thing.”

“Before you do anything stupid, Jacobs…. are you sure that this Stacy can be trusted?”

“What?”

“Stacy. Are you sure you can trust her?”

“What kind of a question is that?”

“I’m only looking out for you.”

“Of course I can trust her! I met her at a protest against that tower for making pigs. She’s unseeded. She doesn’t even have Lenses.”

“Come on now. They would hardly send someone who—

“Wait a minute,” said Kurt, rising to his feet. “How do I know I can trust you?”

The professor’s hands urged him to calm down. “This is what they want, Jacobs, people turning against each other.”

“You started it! Trying to put that seed of doubt into my mind. Well it won’t work. I trust her and I love her.”