Sycamore (Near-Future Dystopia) (6 page)

“I don’t have a TV. I can watch it on the Lenses through my phone but I’ll need to hang up first.”

“For god’s sake, just get back down here. You’re in the final three!”

“What?”

“Amos sent a taxi, it should be there. Everyone is waiting for you. We assumed you would be watching but your brother just called the station to say he’s been trying to reach you and you keep ignoring his calls.”

“Is this a joke? I’m not even dressed.”

“Then get dressed and get in that taxi! Amos wouldn’t be asking you back after that petulant stunt unless he was seriously interested in this chip of yours.”

“What do
you
think about it?”

Professor Walker chose his words carefully. “I think you should be dressed and in the taxi by now.”

“Fine,” said Kurt. “Tell Amos I’ll be there when I’m there and that it’s his friends’ fault I left in the first place.”

“Just get down here and grow up on the way, will you? I’ll see you soon.”

Kurt’s relaxed attitude to laundry meant that the only clothes that were ready were those he had never worn. The suit and loafers from earlier were soaked through, and his normal shoes and the jeans he thought the wallet might have been in were still outside waiting to be hosed down after yesterday’s forgotten meeting with a steaming pile of brown goodness. Only three items lay in Kurt’s wardrobe but he was thankful that they would at least make some kind of outfit.

There was a black t-shirt Sabrina had given him on Father’s Day, old jean-shorts Randy had been going to throw out, and a pair of yellow espadrilles that he had no recollection of ever obtaining. Kurt threw it all on — a makeshift ensemble if ever there was one — and on passing his mirror on the way to the door he noticed that the t-shirt was emblazoned with the slogan “TAYLOR SWIFT OR DIE!” He could only laugh.

“You’re Kurt Jacobs?” asked the taxi driver as his erratically-dressed passenger climbed in the back door.

Kurt nodded. “But if you don’t mind, I need some time to think.”

“Not at all. I’ve been listening to the Talent Search on the radio, you know. It was good to hear someone speak like they meant what they were saying for once, and then to tell those pissy judges where to shove it when they weren’t listening.”

“Thanks, man,” said Kurt. The driver smiled and pressed a button to roll up the partition. Kurt browsed on his phone to see how the contest was being reported. #Kurtonite was trending worldwide for the first time in three years and the mood seemed supportive of his exit. An unnamed group had already discovered and leaked the SycaPhone press release following Kurt’s reveal and he was being praised for raising the issue. It always warmed his heart when the internet came together to get something done. He put his phone away and realised he had almost arrived.

The taxi pulled up in front of the auditorium and Kurt explained to the driver that he would get someone to come out and pay. He didn’t know what to expect on the other side of the entrance; he would just have to see what happened and run with it.

Kurt re-entered the auditorium and walked back down the aisle through the audience. A murmurous hush accompanied his journey to the stage as everyone waited for him to say something. When he reached the steps he pointed to the door. “Someone’s going to have to go outside and pay for that taxi.”

“It’s taken care of,” Amos assured him from his new seated position onstage. “Up you come.”

Kurt joined Amos on the stage and looked at the other two finalists. The man who had pitched the home security system was standing next to another, one who’s pitch Kurt couldn’t quite recall. There was no girl — no Kate. “So is this guy doing the SycaPhone now?” he asked Amos.

“I don’t know what you think you knew, Mr Jacobs, but it was never our plan to announce a smartphone this evening, or at all. You’re going to look like a fool if you keep going on about it.”

“Are we really doing this? You know I know.”

“Even if that were true,
how
would you know?”

“How did I intercept the UltraLenses’ transfer protocol? It’s not my fault that none of your systems are protected in any serious way.” The silence was real now. So quiet were the crowd, Kurt couldn’t help but wonder how they managed it.

Amos looked annoyed for a second before forcing a laugh. He studied Kurt’s outfit and pointed to it. “Speaking of looking like a fool…. yellow sandals, tough-guy jean-shorts and a Taylor Swift t-shirt? Wow. What happened to the bad-ass who left us all hanging?”

“First of all, they’re espadrilles. And look, the fact that you called me back here after what I said shows how much you need me. I was only in such a rush to get dressed because you were so desperate to see me again. Millions of people are watching. It’s not like you can steal my chip and pretend it was your idea, so don’t try and turn this around by putting me down. I’m in charge here.”

Amos fought to suppress his admiration for Kurt’s tenacity. “You certainly are a feisty one, Mr Jacobs. All I meant was that you don’t really look like a computer guy.”

“And what do computer guys look like?”

“Well, your fellow finalists.” Amos tilted his head to the two other men. One was tall and thin, the other... not so much. Both stood awkwardly.

“Computer people don’t have a typical look,” said Kurt. “Those are just stereotypes. But I don’t think of myself as a computer guy, anyway. I’m more of a...” his sentence trailed off.

“It’s okay,” said Amos. “You can say it. Hacker isn’t the dirty word it used to be, and we know who you are now, anyway. The internet has been abuzz since your exit and some viewers linked the name Kurt Jacobs with the moniker of your youth. Kurtonite, if I’m not mistaken?”

Kurt moved his eyes along the front row and saw that Sycamore’s army of suits were studying him closely. Terrance Minion was smiling. “You’re not mistaken,” he eventually replied, “but I haven’t been involved in any of that for years.”

“And yet your reputation still precedes you. Your antics caused an awful lot of headaches for an awful lot of people.”

“I helped a lot of people, too,” Kurt said, somewhat defensively. “Real people. If corporations didn’t plan for obsolescence by selling us ‘premium’ products made of years-old tech that ship with pathetically-closed operating systems then maybe there wouldn’t be a need for the community’s antics. But you don’t think like that, do you? You just push for more laws to restrict how people can use the things they pay for. Justice isn’t supposed to be a weapon of the powerful. You can’t steamroll over a user base and then complain when it throws a few jailbroken stones back at you.”

“We don’t do that,” said Amos.

“I didn’t mean ‘you’ as in Sycamore, I meant the industry. Apart from the whole lying about the SycaPhone thing, you’ve actually been alright.”

“Why thank you. It’s good to know the community is on our side.”

“I can only speak for myself,” Kurt qualified.

“Of course. And I have to say: this ADHD, want-it-now, hacker mentality... it’s the best thing your generation has to offer the world. Most of your peers sit at home moaning about how much everything ‘sucks’ and how the world ‘just doesn’t understand’ them, but people like you take that as a challenge to change things. You buy a phone and it’s locked; challenge accepted! Because it isn’t enough to take things apart and see how they work, you have to put them back together better than they were. You get frustrated when people don’t understand you, too, but on a tangible, specific level. If someone asks a question and you answer it, you’re annoyed when they ask again — as we all just learned — because you can’t accept that other people aren’t as quick as you are. You can’t help but wonder why everyone and everything isn’t better than it is. ”

“To be honest I can’t help but wonder why you’ve been wasting so much time and money developing the SycaPhone when it’s such a slight improvement on what we already have.”

“The SycaPhone is a revolutionary device,” Amos insisted, too affronted to realise that he was admitting to having rigged the contest. “You haven’t even seen it. How can you dismiss it?”

“Because I’ve seen the spec, and it’s garbage.”

Professor Walker’s head fell into his hands. Randy, Sabrina and Julian sat huddled in front of Sabrina’s TV, begging Kurt to take his words back, begging him not to throw it all away again.

Amos looked at the arrogant child before him through newly-narrowed eyes. “What do you mean garbage? The SycaPhone is transparent! It has a multitouch screen on each side, and they’re the sharpest screens ever made!”

“You know exactly what I mean.” Kurt returned Amos’s gaze unflinchingly. He wasn’t pitching anymore, just having a tense one-on-one conversation that the world happened to be watching. “A slightly lighter phone with a slightly sharper screen and a slightly longer battery life? That’s the best you can do? Really?”

“Lighter, sharper, longer... it’s all progress.”

“At a geological pace! When your two options are crawling forward and sprinting away, crawling isn’t progress. And, as always, the biggest obstacle to progress is attachment to method. You’re coming at this as if the only place for the necessary components is inside a handheld device. Why? Because you’ve been trained to attack problems with existing solutions. My eyes are only on the desired outcome, which right now is creating something that makes the most of the UltraLenses. That something will enable them to record our experiences and act as a display for a holistic system. A chip does that better than a phone — fact — so don’t even try and tell me otherwise. I really did see two birds eating a cat today, and If I had a chip in my hand I could show you.”

“Since when do birds eat cats?” asked Amos.

“Since the cat was dead and the birds were hungry.”

Amos studied Kurt’s blank face. “So... what? Are you the birds? Am I the cat?”

“It’s not a metaphor. I actually saw it. The blood was flowing into the sewers and… anyway, the point is that I should be able to rewind the footage and swipe it over to you. I would pay to be able to do that.”

“Hmm. I understand what you’re saying,” Amos sighed, appearing almost submissive, “but you have to take a step back and see this from my perspective. The SycaPhone represents a huge commitment for Sycamore. We can’t just write it off.”

“No,
you
have to take a step back and appreciate how big this could be. It’s not just about recording our experiences. This is about digital currency, personal security, next-gen social networking and genuinely targeted advertising. Sometimes ideas are too big to take in at once… it’s like trying to explain the internet. This will be bigger than the internet.”

Amos scoffed at the notion. “Come on, now.”

Kurt felt confident that he would win the job for life at Sycamore — why else would he have been called back after what he said? — but he wanted to make sure that his work would involve developing and releasing the chip. These were the crucial moments.

“Really,” he said, slicing the air with a two-handed gesture that even Sabrina would have been proud of. “Abandoning the SycaPhone means you’ve wasted
x
number of hours and however much money, but money comes and goes and the clock always comes back around. This chip is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity — if you ignore it you miss out on everything. Within a year there will be a chip in every American’s left hand. You have to ask yourself whether Sycamore wants a monopoly on the biggest thing ever.”

“You make good points, Mr Jacobs, but—

Something the professor said came to Kurt’s mind and he decided it was time to strike. He had to hook Amos and he had to do it now. “Look, the SycaPhone might be a big idea and you might have been pursuing it for a long time, but now there’s a bigger idea in your sights and you owe it to yourself to go after it. I guess what I’m trying to say is: when you catch sight of a marlin, to hell with the catfish.”

Amos nodded a decision and announced that he had two more questions for each of the finalists, after which he would crown the victor.

He started on the right, with a tall bespectacled contestant whose pitch had come early in the night. This first finalist answered his questions fairly predictably: he wanted to win because working at Sycamore was his dream, and he deserved to win because his idea — the impossibly ambitious and seemingly pointless plan to make the Lenses function underwater — would make Amos a lot of money.

Kevin Chang
, Kurt remembered;
that was it
. Kevin’s trifling innovation and cardboard delivery were emblematic of the general quality of contestant he was up against.

Second came the shorter and fatter of the stereotypical computer guys. His age was hard to determine, perhaps 35, and he still looked tremendously uncomfortable to be standing in a tuxedo while addressing a television audience of millions. “I want to win so I have a platform to further, and, uh, further my projects and goals. I deserve to win because my home security system is stronger than the hacker’s and he showed disrespect to all of us when he stormed out. He shouldn’t win.”

Amos took delight in the personal attack on Kurt — it would go down well with the viewers, accustomed to such drama as they were. He moved along the line giddily. “And now we come to the legendary Kurtonite. So, Mr Jacobs, why do you want to win?”

Amos hoped that Kurt would ignore the question and instead react to the previous jibe, but no; his head was in the game and he answered without hesitation. “Because I promised my niece that I would. This is for her. And her brother. Maybe even their dad, too. They’re the reason I came back.”

“How nice,” Amos lied. “And now tell the world why you deserve to win.”

Kurt turned away from the crowd, dropped his microphone and looked Amos square in the eye. Although Amos was ex-military, above all else he was a marketing man; Kurt knew that a solid tagline would seal it. He held his breath for a long count of three and spoke quietly. “The tree of life... in the palm of your hand.“

Amos grinned and offered Kurt his hand in victory. The audience hailed the symbolic gesture as Amos whispered the three words that would change the world forever.