Sycamore

by Craig A. Falconer

  Knowing that the professor had been murdered and now defamed by these lies — these lies of the very worst kind — Kurt ripped the Lenses from his eyes. He clawed at them, frantic fingernails drawing blood from his sensitive eyelids. He thought about the mug, warning him that Stacy was in danger. He thought about the professor, murdered and framed without even that much warning.

  Kurt felt paralysing guilt for keeping the warning from Stacy. He felt equally blameworthy for visiting the professor and involving him in the danger, and even worse about what he had said. The last thing Kurt ever told Professor Walker was that he was “a bitter old failure.” Why?

  He sat on the pavement crying and put the Lenses back in his aching eyes to communicate with Amos. He noticed now what was different about the road: RealU had apparently begun allowing consumers to virtually enhance their cars and consumers had apparently jumped at the chance. Kurt noticed this without caring. “Why would you kill him?“ he screamed. “He was nothing to do with anything!”

  “You told him too much,” Amos replied, devoid of emotion. “This one’s on you, too.”

  Kurt stood up and walked down the street. He yelled at passersby that Amos had caused the explosion outside the Sycaplex but no one would listen. He reached a bus stop and the people who weren’t tuned-out in full-immersion asked who he was and how he would know.

  “It's me,” he said “… Kurt Jacobs! I invented the damn Seed!“

  They all laughed. “Listen bro,” said one, a man in a yellow hood. “I know what Kurt Jacobs looks like, and you sure as hell ain't it.”

  “What?”

  “Are you some kind of crazy person?" asked an older woman. "One of those dangerous and deludeds they keep warning us about?”

  “Take out your Lenses and see,” Kurt begged. “It's a lie. Everything is a lie!"

  "Take out our Lenses? He says to take out our Lenses!" Yellow-hood turned back to Kurt. "Man, you’re crazy. I won't see nothing without these things. How am I gonna know if someone texts me?"

  Kurt approached the last group at the bus stop. “Get away from my family,” the man yelled. Kurt kept trying to explain until the man punched him in the face.

  Beaten but not quite defeated, he turned and ran towards Sycamore HQ. A sticky mixture of blood and tears had collected on his cheeks but no more seemed to be coming. The pain of everything was numb. Too much had happened at once. Too much had gone wrong. Too many good people had died.

  The door at HQ was predictably locked so Kurt tried the magic keypad. Where there should have been numbers there was a message reading “ACCESS DENIED.” Perfect. He stepped away from the door as the valet approached and hid behind the tree from which someone had thrown an egg at him a lifetime ago, hoping to sneak in before the door closed like Stacy had taught him.

  The valet noticed. “Closed building, sir. Authorised personnel only.”

  “It’s me, Kurt. You park my Gallardo. Come on, it’s yellow.”

  “It says you’re barred from the premises,” said the valet. “What the hell did you do? Why are there so many red arrows pointing to your head?”

  Kurt realised in that moment that he was marked as wanted in the eyes of Sycamore personnel and law enforcement but disguised as an everyman to the rest of the city. He looked in the building’s glass front and saw his augmented reflection. It wasn’t him. There was no arrow and the face looked nothing like his own.

  Movement on the other side of the glass took Kurt’s attention from the reflection as he saw that Minion and Amos were in the lobby. Minion was pushing fingers into Amos’s chest and remonstrating about something. They were shouting, but the glass was too thick. Kurt remembered Minion’s warning to stay away. He had been trying to help.

  Kurt picked up a rock and threw it through the building’s glass face. Amos turned around. Kurt jumped through the ragged hole and ran towards him. The security guard stepped away from his desk to restrain Kurt.

  “You should have listened, man,” said Minion. He wasn’t gloating.

  Amos looked at Minion. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Nothing,” said Kurt. Minion’s eyes thanked him. “Now tell your goon to let me go. I’m not going to fight you.”

  Amos nodded. The goon released Kurt and returned to his desk.

  Kurt walked to Amos and stopped inches from his face. “You’re an animal,” he whispered.

  “Go away, Kurt. Stay away. If I wanted you dead you wouldn’t be breathing, so trust me when I say that no one will bother you. Just go back to Longhampton right now and stay away. Your Seed will still grant access to your car and house.”

  “I’m not going home. I’m going upstairs. I want to see every vista that saw that car in the last 48 hours and I want it now. I want to see who planted the bomb.”

  “My orders planted the bomb, hotshot, but your actions forced my hand. Your deceit and your lies and your scheming little scheme. What did you think would happen? But if you go home and keep quiet this doesn’t have to go any further. You don’t look like yourself, though, so don’t mention Kurt Jacobs. He’s gone. If this is too difficult, there is another way. An easier way. Check your pockets.”

  Kurt put his hands into both pockets at once and found a small grey pill. He examined it for markings.

  “Cyanide,” said Amos. “No pain.”

  Kurt threw the cyanide pill on the ground and crushed it with his heel. “If I’m going down, you’re coming with me.” Minion, still standing next to Amos, looked in Kurt’s eyes with something resembling respect.

  “Admirable in its own way,” Amos conceded, “but there are more in your house. For when you change your mind.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Amos to Minion. “How stupid is this guy? I’ll tell you one more time, Kurt: Go away. Stay away.”

  “Or what? There’s nothing else you can do to me.”

  Amos looked at his wrist, straining to make out the time on an imaginary watch. “Hmm,” he said. “Sabrina should be waking up right about now.”

  Minion looked at Kurt and then Amos and then the floor. “I’m out,” he said, and he walked away.

  Kurt grabbed Amos by the throat, much tighter than he had a few days earlier. The security goon rushed to grab Kurt then dumped him by the door.

  “You’re going to die slowly,” he shouted to Amos. “And you’ll never know when I’m coming.”

  Amos winked with so much gusto that his whole head moved. “Bye for now, hotshot.”

  Kurt stepped out through the hole he had made in the front of the building. Minion was waiting for him outside. He put a hand on Kurt’s shoulder. Tears filled his eyes. “Kurt… I’m truly sorry.”

  Kurt shook the hand away. “Don’t even,” he said. “Don’t even.”

  ~

  Kurt felt like he should collect some of Stacy’s personal things before Amos had people clear out her house. Still wearing his Lenses, he drove with no care over who knew where he was going. He passed the corner where he used to meet Stacy too quickly to notice that the overflowing dumpster had been airbrushed away, rats and all.

  On arrival at Stacy’s house he realised that he didn’t know what to take. Her notebook was on the table so he picked it up, thinking there would be a lot about Sycamore. He opened it and saw that there was.

  She had filled most of the first half with notes about Sycamore’s actions and Amos’s sleazy links to well-known political figures. Many of the revelations and much of the notebook’s other content was new to Kurt. He was glad he came back for it.

  A quick look through the second half revealed a lot of sketches. There was some pretty messed-up stuff, the worst being a full-page sketch of dead consumers lying on the street, formed into piles and arranged in the shape of a sycamore leaf. She was darker than he had known.

  More happily there were other pictures, too; mainly drawings of dresses. They were all so good — even more vivid than the ads. In another life Stacy
could have been a designer for RealU. A few pages further in she was wearing one of the dresses, a long white one with frills and sequins. The next again page had Kurt on it. He wore a tuxedo and his hair was pushed to the side.

  He kept flicking through. Next came a picture of Kurt and Stacy together, but they weren't smiling. There was a holy man in front of them and he wasn't smiling, either. Kurt turned the page again. They were standing beside a huge cake and the holy man had a knife. There was one page left. On it, Kurt’s left hand rested on the table as the holy man cut it off at the wrist. Everyone was smiling. Stacy had drawn a love heart in the top right corner of that page. There was writing inside the heart, but not their names. It said “FREE AT LAST.”

  More than a little weirded out, Kurt flipped backwards through the notebook and came to a natural opening point a few dozen pages back. The top said “Dear Ernesto,” and the bottom of the page was dated only a week ago. The rest — a message of some twenty lines — had been ripped out roughly.

  Kurt wondered what was going on. Another man? Could he really have been that blind? No one had ever said anything about exclusivity, but surely she wouldn’t? And then a thought comforted him: if there was another man she wouldn’t have been drawing pictures of their imaginary wedding. Whoever Ernesto was, Stacy hadn’t been in love with him.

  So maybe he was another dissident? That made the most sense. Kurt kept Ernesto’s name in his mind, put the notebook under his arm and walked through Stacy’s front door for the last time.

  ~

  Kurt pulled over for his last stop before going home. He looked at Randy’s gate and saw that it been cleaned up by someone in the basement at HQ. Having something new and trivial to be annoyed at was refreshing. He turned off the car’s engine and heard a voice in his ears. Amos.

  “I told you to stay away, Kurt.”

  “I’m going to say goodbye.”

  Kurt heard Amos thinking and could imagine his smug face. “Alright. 5 minutes. But don’t mention what happened.”

  “Undisguise me, then. If it’s the last time my family can see me, I want them to see me.”

  Amos thought again. “Okay, hotshot,” he decided. “But only because I liked you so much.”

  Kurt opened the gate and knocked on the front door. This felt like one of those times he shouldn’t barge in.

  “Hey, bro,” said Randy. “Woah. What happened to your face?”

  Kurt tried to remember. “Someone punched me. So you can see me, right?”

  “What?”

  “Amos disguised me so nobody would believe me when I was trying to explain what he did to Stacy.”

  “Who the hell is Stacy?”

  Kurt began to realise how well he had kept the secret from everyone but Minion and Amos. “Never mind, it’s too late for her but—

  Randy interrupted. “Look, if you’re in trouble then you can’t be here.

  “You don’t understand. It’s about Sabrina. He gave me two warnings yesterday: one about Sabrina and one about Stacy. I went to see Professor Walker and told him about the warnings.”

  Randy lifted his hands impatiently. “So?”

  “Stacy and the professor are dead.”

  “Jesus Christ, Kurt. What have you done?”

  Kurt barged past Randy into the hallway.

  “You can’t be here,” Randy repeated.

  Kurt grabbed him by the collar. “Where is she?”

  Randy pointed upstairs and Kurt ran up to her room. He had felt distant from Sabrina for the last few weeks but was delighted to see that her nose and hair looked natural. She was in full-immersion, though.

  Then he noticed something else: a picture on the wall. It was one of those decorative placements, and they didn’t come cheap. The image was an old one — Sabrina and Kurt last halloween, long before The Seed — so she must have taken an old phone or SD card into a Sycamore branch where they charged to ‘convert’ it into an Icarus-ready file. That would have cost her at least $20 and the permanent virtual frame was easily worth another $80.

  Kurt felt strange. His heart still burned with rage that Sabrina’s childhood and her innocence were being raped by a system he had played no small part in ushering in. She should have been out playing or talking with her friends on the phone... not staring into space, earning money doing surveys and wearing advertising placements.

  But the burning was now joined by a gentler warmth; softer, but somehow much stronger. Warmth from the fact that Sabrina could think of nothing better to spend her money on than a picture of the two of them together. Warmth from the fact that he could look at the picture and see the little girl he remembered. And warmth from the knowledge that, behind the Lenses, she was still there. He didn’t interrupt her.

  Randy was now upstairs, blocking the door to Julian’s bedroom. “You have to go, Kurt.”

  “Once I’ve seen JJ.”

  “Now.”

  Kurt pushed Randy to the floor, either forgetting about his bad leg or forgetting to care. He opened Julian’s door and slammed it behind him. “Yo, Julian,” he called, somehow managing to use the happy tone he always did.

  “Hey, Uncle Kurt.”

  “Hey, kid. How did your sister afford that big picture?”

  “I talked her out of the nose thing.”

  Kurt smiled for the first time all day. “I love you, JJ.”

  Julian studied Kurt. He never said things like that. “What’s wrong?”

  “I have to go away.”

  “Why?”

  “If I told you, you would be in as much trouble as me.”

  “Uncle Kurt… what have you done?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. Whatever they say, nothing. But if people do say I did something, I don’t want you to get yourself into trouble defending me. People will believe whatever Amos wants them to believe, so we’ll just have to wait and see what that is. Just know that I’m innocent of everything.”

  “Except designing The Seed that set all of this in motion, right?”

  Kurt tried to laugh through his sadness and hugged Julian, who was also trying to smile.

  “Just tell me what you did. I won’t say anything.”

  “But you’ll know, kid, and they’ll know that you know. All I can tell you is that the whole world is a lie. Everything. Money, the system, the game. Honestly. You could work all your life and then as soon as you say one thing off-script... boom. Terminated. No money, no job, no future. There’s no getting around it when they run everything. Behind the shiny ads and the endless entertainment it’s all fear and threats and violence. Just be careful… be so damn careful.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home. Well, Longhampton. After that I don’t know, but I can never see any of you again.”

  JJ started to cry and he looked so young that Kurt wondered how he could ever have been angry at him that night before the contest. Why had he ever argued with any of them? Why had he ever not told them how much they meant to him and why had he ever not shown them? Why had he said what he said to the professor? Why had he told the professor that he loved Stacy but never told Stacy that he loved Stacy? Why did it always have to be too late before he realised that one day it would be too late?

  “What will I do when you’re gone?” Julian choked out, extending the circle of unanswerable questions. Kurt shrugged. Tears now fell from his eyes, too, slaloming down an unfamiliar path on stoical terrain and mixing with the dried blood from earlier.

  Julian traced their descent, mesmerised. He was mesmerised by the thickness of the tears; mesmerised by how slowly they moved; mesmerised that they were coming from Uncle Kurt, the bravest man in the world. Uncle Kurt, who had always been young enough to be his friend but old enough to be his hero.

  Kurt pinched the top of his nose with his thumb and index finger to make himself be strong. He searched his mind for advice to leave with Julian. “Look after your little sister,” he eventually said. “She’s just a baby. She thinks she’s so grown up and she want
s to be so big but she’s not. She’s not, okay? Even if you sometimes think she is, she’s not. She’s going to need you more than ever. I know it’s a lot to put on you but I know you can handle it.”

  Julian sniffed sharply and rubbed his eyes to tell the tears that they were no longer welcome. He had less success than Kurt.

  Kurt held out a hand for Julian to shake in acknowledgement of the transfer of responsibilities but Julian threw his arms around Kurt’s chest and held him tight. “Even if you sometimes think I’m grown up,” he sobbed, “I’m not.”

  “You will be,” said Kurt. He walked to Julian’s door and nodded him goodbye. “You will be.”

  Randy was still waiting at the top of the stairs. “You have to go now,” he said. “I can’t have you bringing trouble here.”

  Kurt looked in Randy’s eyes. “Sycamore killed them. An ad popped up in the other driver’s vista, right in front of him. He couldn’t see you. I know for sure.”

  Kurt walked out the front door and through the artificially de-rusted gate without another word. He opened his car and had one leg in when he heard Randy calling.

  “Kurt!”

  He stepped back out. “What?”

  “Thanks.”

  ~

  Kurt drove to Longhampton in a daze. He expected the gate to open as its camera scanned his car. It didn’t.

  The Lamborghini Gallardo crashed into the steel at 48mph and its driver felt nothing but darkness.

  18

  Kurt woke up in his crumpled car oblivious to the five hours that had passed. As soon as he stirred, a horribly familiar voice rang through his in-earphones.

  “I know you don’t want to hear from me, hotshot, but I’ve pulled some strings and created a new account for you. You did well to go home and we’re sorry about the mix-up with the gate. Now we need you to continue disguised. A name will be assigned and you will retain your unlimited credit as a gesture of goodwill. We’ll be monitoring your communications and movements closely. It’s imperative that you don’t talk about Kurt Jacobs or go near his family. His body is going to be found in a river and no one will ask any questions. Understood?”