Sycamore

by Craig A. Falconer

  ~

  Kurt and his fancy fake suit entered the lobby to be greeted by a security guard from the desk. “Mr Amos is in a meeting,” the man said in a noteworthily gruff voice. “He wants you to wait on his floor.”

  “Okay,” said Kurt. He stepped into and quickly out of the elevator and sat on a sofa near the window, in the best light to read while he waited.

  He had forgotten how it felt to have something in his hands while he read. He had forgotten that irreplicable feel of plastic against his fingers, and the way the words faded into each other when he pressed the button to turn the page. There was pleasure in the physical. Feeling. Depth.

  25 pages later Amos emerged from the elevator, announcing his arrival before Kurt saw him. “Why the hell are you reading an actual book?” he asked.

  Kurt looked at Amos then back down to the e-reader. “This isn’t an actual book”.

  “You know what I mean. What are you doing with that old thing when the world has the SycaStore and you have infinite credit?”

  “Some books aren't available through the SycaStore.”

  “So why not just read the ones that are?“ asked Amos, genuinely confused. “There’s everything you could want: detective stories, romance, spy thrillers. And anyway, why the hell are you reading at all? With your infinite credit you could be playing any and every game in the world.”

  Kurt got up from the sofa. “Cut to the chase. Why am I here?”

  “For a heads up; we’re announcing something tonight. If we waited until tomorrow it might take attention away from your award. We’re going to have a little celebration rally tonight, actually, so I’ll take the opportunity to remind everyone to tune in to see you tomorrow. I want you to arrive with Monica — I don’t know why, but the world loves a good romance angle.”

  Kurt was pleased that the name slip seemed to have caused no harm. “What are you celebrating that deserves a rally?” he asked.

  “Well, this is the last announcement I see us having to make. It’s that big.”

  “Compulsory seeding?”

  Amos looked at the ceiling and took a few seconds to choose his words. “Basically,” he said, sitting down and inviting Kurt to follow.

  “I just stood up. And what does basically mean?”

  “It’s digitisation, hotshot. From January 1st a Sycamore balance will be the only legal tender in these United States. We’ve done it: it’s the end of physical money.”

  Quietly smug, Kurt knew that the house of cards would have fallen long before then. His grand reveal would bring forth a full-on rainstorm to send Amos’s crazed ideas back into the recesses of his mind. He said nothing against the move but wondered aloud why it was so far away. “Why wait nearly six months?”

  “Fair warning and all that. But I’m glad you seem accepting of the situation and I’m sure in time you’ll appreciate that fully-digital currency really is better for everyone.”

  Kurt decided he should play angry. “If by everyone you mean you! A 1% charge on every transaction even when people have no choice but to pay with The Seed? It’s the holy grail: an infinite source of profit. And, really, why should anyone care that you can see everything that they’re buying?”

  “I can see that you’re wearing your smart-ass face but your words are true, Kurt. What exactly are people buying that’s so important to keep private? Weapons? Drugs? Pornography? Only people with something to hide have secrets. Like I always say, good things are done in the daylight. This was a natural step for us. The government have wanted to eliminate cash for a long time.”

  “See, that’s what I still don’t get,” said Kurt. “Because in capitalism money is what keeps people down.”

  “You can think that if you want, and I suppose in a way you’re right. But within a monetary system it’s cash that gives people power. We can’t have that.”

  Full control over the nation’s money supply was all that mattered, as Kurt knew today and as Mayer Rothschild had known in 1838, but this was something new — Amos and Sycamore would have full control over every individual’s access to their own money.

  It was beyond frightening but the end was near so Kurt was past caring. Past caring but still curious, he wondered something else; something more basic. “Why is it that you and your type are so driven by money? I mean, why spend your days collecting money when you’re killing everything that used to be good in the world?”

  “Good? What does that even mean? Good is nothing, hotshot. But success… well, success I can count!”

  “You’ve set it up so that we can leech profit from every human need and action, and for what? So we can sit in comfortable chairs looking out at a hollow world? So we can buy fake clothes in the same matrix we’ve trapped everyone else in? None of you people think, you just do whatever brings more profit. Everything is broken but you just keep going. The streets are dirty so you paint over the dirt. Cooperatives and family-run stores are being run out of business so you cover up the storefronts. People in this very city are living in third-world conditions so you airbrush it all away. Your whole world is like RealU writ large — fetishise superficiality and to hell with everything else.”

  Amos shrugged. He didn’t see the problem.

  “But what happens when the roads start cracking and rats come for the waste piling up on the street? Sure, you can cover them up, but that won’t stop the buses from crashing and the rats from biting. Problems need solutions, not diversions.”

  “Now that’s good,” said Amos. “Solutions, not diversions. Clever. You used to say clever things like that all the time.”

  “I used to be angry about things. Now I don’t care. You’re building a system that can’t sustain itself. Sycamore is pregnant with its own demise.”

  “No it’s not. And if it was, why aren’t you trying to save it? You’re a part of this. Your Seed is the biggest part!”

  “You know this isn’t what I wanted. All this power and profit, it’s not for me.”

  “You act like you were trying to do something good, Kurt, but you were always in it for the money and the glory. You didn’t hesitate to take the infinite credit, did you?”

  “I only took your money because I needed it. Real people need money. That’s how the world works, thanks to people like you.”

  “And what about the glory? You could have submitted The Seed anonymously.”

  “It was a contest! I had to pitch it.”

  “Listen, hotshot: Salk gave the polio vaccine away for free, no ego involved. You entered a contest and stormed off the stage when it looked like you wouldn't win. So don’t keep thinking that you’re kidding anyone with this selflessness schtick.”

  Kurt walked over to the window, too angry to think of a reply.

  “I like how that southside wall goes in the late-morning light,” said Amos. “If you stand close and look out dead straight you can see your reflection.”

  Kurt shuffled his feet meekly.

  “See?”

  He nodded.

  “There you are, hotshot.”

  Kurt held his own gaze as he felt an arm around his shoulder.

  “Face to face,” Amos whispered, “with the man who sold the world.”

  16

  Amos’s comment about selling the world really got to Kurt and he felt an immediate need to regain his perspective. Going somewhere high that wasn’t HQ would help him see the bigger picture, he hoped, and the perfect place was only a few minutes away.

  He had felt it all before and said most of it but Kurt’s feelings of disillusionment were stronger now than ever. From the top of the Jobs Monument he zoomed in on the crowds of consumers sauntering along the street below, pointing and gasping at things that weren't there, their open eyes looking at one another without seeing. It was like a herd of wildebeest, mindlessly moving. But what was their watering hole? A Tasmart? A massage chair at home waiting to be fallen into for the evening’s viewing to commence?

  And it couldn't be properly described as a he
rd — each moving independently and oblivious to the others as they were — so what was it? Not a sea of humanity, he thought, for there was beauty in the sea. There was hope and there was zest and there was life in the sea. The people looked like germs to Kurt, like Sycamore had projectile vomited onto the street after consuming one too many consumers. He didn't like himself for the thought.

  He liked himself still less for his part in turning the city’s populace into Sycamore-sucking zombies. Leeches at the company's teat. Lapdogs in their game. It was a virus. He didn't like any of it. The monument was a poor choice.

  “Closing time, kid,” came a voice from the steps.

  “Already?“

  “Yup,” said the male attendant. “Two hours a day. What are you doing up here, anyway?”

  “I wanted to see the view.”

  The attendant looked puzzled. "That so? We don’t get many folks coming up here these days. You do know that you can see this same view from your living room or anyplace else, right?"

  “I know. I invented The Seed.”

  “You’re that Kurt Jacobs?”

  Kurt nodded.

  “Well I never! You must be pretty damn proud of yourself," the man beamed, well-meaning in his simplicity.

  Kurt walked towards the 214 steps and took a final look down at the infected masses. "Something like that," he said.

  “Something like that? You crack me up, kid. All those folks walking through the world with your Seed in their hands... what do you think when you see them?”

  “What do I think when I see them?” Kurt echoed the question. He didn’t have to look down again, but he thought for a few seconds before settling on an answer. “That there’s more to life than being alive.”

  ~

  “How did it go?” Stacy asked before Kurt was fully through the door.

  “He wants you to come tomorrow. He wants us to arrive together — to “play the romance angle” — so he’s laying on the big black car I used to be driven around in. I’ll have to wear my Lenses so I think you should stay at home tonight and meet me at HQ in the morning. Will you be able to get there?”

  Stacy nodded. “But what did he want you in for today, just to tell you that?”

  “No. He wanted to tell me about the big rally tonight.”

  “What’s it for?”

  “Currency digitisation.”

  “Oh god.”

  “Oh god what?” said Kurt. “We’re taking everything out at once, remember? None of this matters. Sycamore will be dead tomorrow so digitisation won’t even happen. Let them have their little party.”

  “I know that in my head,” she said, “it’s just... if this doesn’t work... things are going to be so bad. I thought it would be like boiling a frog, with things getting gradually worse and worse. But it’s only been — what? — three weeks since The Seed launched, and here we are. Currency digitisation is the last thing before The Seed is compulsory! None of this has been gradual. It’s more like Amos put everyone in a microwave with the promise that once inside we’d find heaven through technological convenience. Then beep beep boom. Before we know it everything is blown to pieces.”

  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 rubbe
d 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.”