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.
~
Morning announced itself with a beeping alarm. It was 7:30, so they had around two hours to plan and prepare for the ruse. Neither Kurt nor Stacy really knew how they had ended up in her bed but it was what it was and the only way was forward.
“Are we still doing this?” said Kurt.
Stacy was disappointed he had to ask. “Do you still want to kill the cat?”
He smiled and got up. Stacy went into a drawer and pulled out a tiny spy-camera. Kurt was impressed by its size and confident it would go undetected unless Amos actively looked for it, which he wouldn’t if Kurt’s plan worked. “Do you have a bigger camera?” he asked.
“Why would we want a bigger one?”
“When we get to the door he’ll ask if you have any recording equipment. If you surrender a camera he won’t suspect anything. What kind of journalist wouldn’t have one? Saying you don’t will be suspicious.”
Stacy knew he was right. “I’ve got a normal camera.”
“Good. Bring it. And bring your laptop in the car so we can go over the footage at mine later. It’s safer there.” Kurt walked into the bathroom and saw himself in the mirror. He looked rough, like he had slept in his clothes. He had. “Or I could take it now. I’m going to have to drive home and get changed.”
“No way, you have to tell me what to say.”
“I won’t be long. If I turn up looking like this Amos will work out we’ve been together. He might be ignorant but he’s not an idiot.”
It would take Kurt the better part of an hour to walk to his car, drive to Longhampton, make himself presentable, drive back to the corner and walk back to Stacy’s. They didn’t have a spare hour and Stacy wouldn’t budge on that. “You’re not going home,” she said. “If we don’t plan this it won’t work.”
“And if he knows we’re ‘involved’ it won’t work either. I have to look like business.”
Stacy finished attaching the spy camera to her eyebrow and turned to Kurt in a rush of illumination. “I’ve got it!”
“What?”
“RealU.”
“What?”
“Use RealU. Just pick some business clothes and do the face thing. You said it’s impossible to tell what someone is wearing underneath, right?”
Kurt rubbed his eyes with open palms and thought for a few seconds. “No way,” he decided. “Just no. I’d rather not go. Seriously, I can’t use RealU.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“What’s the difference?”
“You can’t win a war if you won’t pick up a gun — that’s the difference. You can’t fight against CrimePrev and the movement tax and everything else if you won’t put your pride to one side and be an avatar for a couple of hours.”
Kurt shook his head. “It’s the one thing I said I wouldn’t do. Using RealU goes against everything I believe.”
“Does it? I thought you believed that the world Sycamore is making isn’t worth living in. I thought you believed that it had to change. You’re the only person in the world who can do anything. Are you really too proud to try? It goes against what you believe... so what? Stop being such a child. Sometimes people have to do things they don’t like. Welcome to life.”
“If I do this—
“Never mind you,” Stacy interrupted. “What about people like me? I can hardly do anything without a Seed and you know it’ll be compulsory soon unless we stop it. What happens to me then? Prison? And what about Sabrina and her nose and everything you said last night? What makes what you believe so much more important than what everyone else experiences?”
Kurt said nothing.
“You’ll always look the same to me, anyway,” Stacy said, and that sealed it.
“Fine. I’ll do it in the car. How’s your Italian accent?”
“Accent?” she smiled. “Mi chiamo Monica.”
~
Before they walked to the car it was decided that Monica was a journalism graduate from Turin and that investigating the incredible success of Sycamore’s Seed was her first big assignment for TechItalia. Kurt insisted that Amos was ignorant enough to believe it all and that using a fake publication was better because it would be harder to disprove.
He told Stacy to follow his lead and say nothing unless spoken to, even then keeping it brief and noncommittal. Kurt would do the bulk of the talking and ask the questions unless there was something Stacy really felt that Amos should be recorded saying. Amos might use Reader if he suspected foul play, Kurt warned, and Reader didn’t make mistakes. She said she understood, but that Kurt should worry about himself, too, and make sure he didn’t lose his temper like he had at the contest. Angry people make mistakes, she said, and he listened.
A $3,000 virtual suit attached itself to Kurt after he put his Lenses in when the car reached HQ. UnBlemish fixed his still-tired face and they were ready to go. Amos was waiting in the lobby and walked towards them with a huge smile. “Hotshot, what a suit! Is that real?”
“As real as yours,” Kurt replied.
Amos turned his attention to Stacy. “And this must be Monica. Welcome to our world! I hear you’ve been talking to Kurt. Trying to find the man behind the myth, I bet. It’s a shame you can’t take a Seed and see just how much good he’s done.”
Stacy felt like she should respond. “Yes, The Seed is not allowed on my continent.”
"Yet," said Amos, “but don’t worry: it’s coming. The EU’s nannying doesn’t help anyone. Most member states are supportive, I gather. And your government is certainly with us, along with the ever-industrious Germans and of course our British friends. Tell me, do you Eyeties hate the French as much as we do?”
Stacy laughed awkwardly and Kurt shot Amos a disapproving look.
“Anyway... you don’t have a camera, do you?”
“Of course I do,” said Stacy. “For recording your work.”
“Ah, that’s a tough one. I would love the world to see it, but the security guys don’t see it like that. Normally no one gets in. Even Kurt hasn’t seen anything above my floor—
“What’s up there, anyway?” he interrupted.
“The Treehouse. You wouldn’t like it.” Amos turned back to Stacy. “But yes, I’m afraid you’ll have to leave the camera here in the lobby. Feel free to write down anything and everything you like, though. Your report is for a written publication, isn’t it?”
“TechItalia,” she nodded.
“Hmmm. Where are they based?” Amos was asking Stacy but looking at Kurt.
“Turin,” she said.
Amos nodded slowly. “Good. If you’re still here on Saturday you can cover Kurt’s recognition ceremony.”
“I will try to change my flight.”
“Wait,” said Kurt. “What recognition ceremony is this?”
“You’re getting an award, hotshot. For your services to Sycamore. Now, let’s go.”
Stacy handed her diversion camera to a man behind the lobby’s security desk. There was a scanner on the desk marked “Travel Duty Validation” which workers could use to eliminate the tax incurred on their commute. Amos and Kurt waited for her in the elevator. She joined them and Amos held down the buttons G and 23 at the same time.
“Where are we going?” asked Kurt.
“Downstairs.”
“There’s a downstairs?”
“Indeed. The Studio is in the basement.” Amos turned to Stacy. “I’m going to show you where Sycamore’s landscapers do their magic.”
The elevator arrived in the basement and Kurt was awestruck by its size — huge didn’t come close. The Studio must have stretched under at least some of the other buildings in the Quartermile, such was its expansive size. Near-blinding white light shone down on the landscapers from high above their heads.
Amos began explaining to Stacy how a BeThere environment
was created and Kurt decided to walk between the rows of focused landscapers. He stopped at one workstation and watched for a few minutes as a fresh-faced young girl put the finishing touches on a dilapidated building she had been tasked with sprucing up. After a while she sensed someone behind her and looked around.
“Oh my god, Mr Jacobs!” Her voice was loud; everyone looked. “I didn’t know you were there. Normally I work harder than this,” she said.
Amos caught wind of the commotion and ordered everyone back to work.
“Relax,” Kurt whispered to the girl. “I was just watching. How old are you?”
“17.”
“And you like doing this?”
“It’s the best job in the world,” she said. “I’m really making a difference.”
Kurt walked back to Stacy and Amos less alive than he had left them. “How many are there?” he asked, pointing to the workers.
Amos shrugged. “I honestly don’t know the exact figure. Two or three thousand.”
It sounded impossible but Kurt turned back and saw that there could well have been 20 rows of 100 workstations. What he really struggled with was the fact that all of these people had been working away under his feet without him having the slightest idea. The logistics of getting them all in and out via the only elevator he could see boggled Kurt’s mind, but their work impressed him even more.
To make everything in the world scaleable and manipulatable was no mean feat and one that he couldn’t begin to get his head around. Lamenting how much better the landscapers’ obvious talents could have been utilised elsewhere, he turned away from the rows of desks that seemed to stretch forever into the distance and shook his head at the wall.
An infinite number of artistic Shakespeares doing the bidding of one megalomaniacal monkey, he thought. How did we get here?
“Seen enough, hotshot?”
Kurt answered by walking into the elevator.
Amos smiled at Stacy. “Forest it is, then.”
~
Sycamore Page 21
