It annoyed Kurt slightly that Lemarchand would even mention this given how much he had done for her career in the last few days, but he wasn’t going to let a comment ruin his mood.
He switched to a UK-based news network to see how they were reporting the incident. Replay footage of the falling debris filled the left side of the screen while a panel of three presenters discussed the ramifications. “This is patently the end for Sycamore,” one said, “but the coming weeks will be an interesting barometer for the future of embedded technology. If the American public demand free de-seeding and a return to the days of cash payments and physical keys, for instance, then we can safely say that subdermal tech is dead. But if the reaction is more nuanced, not “we don’t want it” but merely “we don’t want it like this”, then the situation will be ripe for a new market leader to emerge.”
Kurt turned the video off. He was confident that people would have seen enough of the problems caused by the Seed to know that they couldn’t all be explained away by Amos being a sociopath. They would surely realise that power corrupts, and that the special kind of power that comes with having control over a device under a consumer’s skin inevitably corrupts in a special kind of way.
“Where are we going, anyway?” Kurt asked.
“The mall, silly,” Sabrina said. “Where else would we be going?”
“Harry’s house,” Minter said, trying to put on a child-friendly voice. “We agreed to meet the others at Harry’s house.”
“Does Val know?” Kurt asked.
“Yeah.”
“But how do we know where his house is? We didn’t see the road.”
“By house I meant gas station,” Minter explained.
Kurt didn’t ask any more questions. He felt sure that the others were safe so knew they would find them eventually. The gas station was probably as good a place as any to start looking. Kurt didn’t want to go back to the city until Amos was fully out of the picture, anyway.
It was another long, half-day drive. When Val stopped, Mary and Sabrina went to join her up front now that there was no need to worry about Sycamore spotting them.
In the back, Kurt and Ernesto rewatched the whole takedown from Kurt’s vista, which Minter had been recording. Kurt enjoyed seeing Sycamore’s tower crumble but he hoped that the mob-like scenes didn’t reframe the debate into one about the behaviour of some of the crowd.
Back on the British news sites, reports were coming in that all online Seed functionality had ceased. Millions of people couldn’t unlock their doors or pay for food, the article said. This was always the risk people took when making their entire lives dependent on a fallible external connection, but Kurt felt nothing but sympathy for those who were badly hit by Sycamore’s systems going down. At this stage it wasn’t clear whether Sycamore had pulled the plug or the physical damage to HQ had caused the problems.
Julian perked up a lot during the drive north to Harry’s, hoping that his life was finally about to get back to normal.
The truck pulled up at Harry’s gas station right around midnight, and Harry rushed out from inside to greet it. He opened the back door first. “How did it go?” he asked, evidently still without access to the news.
“We did it,” Kurt said.
“Is he dead?”
Kurt shook his head.
“Arrested?”
Kurt shook his head again.
“So what did you do?”
“Exposed him,” Kurt said. “Showed everyone who he really is. He’ll face charges for the crimes he’s committed and confessed to, don’t worry about that. Where are the others?”
“With Joyce at home.”
“So you let them into your house,” Minter said.
“They ain’t strangers,” Harry replied with a hint of a smile.
Harry asked Val to scoot along so he could drive, and they headed to reunite with the rest of the group.
~
After a low-key toast to mark the end of their fight against Amos, everyone stayed at Harry and Joyce’s for one night. Kurt slept in the truck with Minter, Ty, Lisa and Ernesto. They were also joined by Anthony, who had made up with Kurt and Ernesto following their divisive argument over whether to leave the mall when Val was missing.
Anthony had been proven right in his concerns that La Plethora wasn’t safe, but on watching a replay of the takedown he recognised how much Kurt had put himself on the line and knew that Kurt had never made a decision with anything other than everyone’s best interests at heart.
Morning news reports revealed that Isaiah Amos had been arrested on two charges of conspiracy to commit first degree murder and a string of other less serious charges ranging from blackmail to misappropriation of public funds. This news prompted a more spirited toast than the previous night’s.
The fight against Amos wasn’t just over; the fight had been won.
Shortly after the toast, Michael and Anthony left to return home. Their goodbyes weren’t particularly emotional but they had both played their part. Anthony had been Kurt’s first friend in the mall, and was the only password-holder who let Kurt and some of the others online early in the morning during the first few days.
Michael was a tougher nut to crack, but Kurt had come to realise that his heart was in the right place. Most importantly, Michael had spotted the trio of SkySweeper drones which preceded the strike. Everyone who had been left behind in the mall owed their life to Michael, who still maintained that he neither developed Sycamore’s combat drones nor even knew they existed.
Michael and Anthony took Ernesto and Val with them, too, since they all lived in the same general direction. Kurt and Val had always been business-like rather than warm friends, but Kurt and Ernesto had come together and achieved a goal that neither could have accomplished without the other. They had been brought together by Stacy, and together they had brought to justice the man who killed her. Their time spent working together would never be a happy memory and they would likely never meet again, but Kurt and Ernesto would forever respect each other.
Ernesto promised that Randy would get his half of the crash payout as soon as the bank account problems caused by Randy’s impromptu de-seeding were corrected.
With Amos in custody, Kurt felt safe enough to return to the city. He invited Lisa, Ty and Mary to stay in his Sycamore-funded mansion until things returned to something resembling normal. They all jumped at the chance.
Minter, who lived quite near Kurt, brought them all south in the car he had stolen from the auto shop near Stacy’s and driven until they met Harry. Minter would return the car soon after, with some money in the glove compartment for the owner’s trouble, and he would also leave a few dollars on the shop’s doorstep to pay for the window he damaged.
Randy’s car had been destroyed at La Plethora, but Harry was kind enough to drive him and the kids all the way home. Kurt and Minter had offered, and Harry was just as willing to take the others, but Randy was principled in his insistence that neither Julian nor Sabrina would be travelling in a stolen vehicle.
Kurt and Minter thanked Harry and Joyce for everything before leaving. Harry refused to talk about money, which was a relief to Minter since his promise of “more money than you could ever spend” had been a thoroughly empty one. Minter did, however, hand Harry the Two-Way on his way to the car. “A deal’s a deal,” he said. “One tank of gas for one priceless gadget.” Harry smiled and took the Two-Way as a memento of the strangest two weeks of his life.
“Au revoir,” Joyce said as everyone got into the car. They all laughed and replied in kind.
After a pleasant enough drive south which involved a marathon Four In A Row tournament between Kurt, Mary, Lisa, and Ty, Minter drove through the open gate into Kurt’s upmarket Longhampton street.
Kurt’s front door had been forced open, which saved him the trouble of doing the same. Other than that, though, the police officers and Sycamore agents who had come to collect evidence had left little sign of their presence. The note was
gone, of course, but everything else seemed as it was.
Ty and Lisa ran around the mansion like children in a castle. Mary offered to help Kurt and Minter clean up the mess they had left in their rush to get out of the city, but Kurt encouraged her to join the others or to pick a bedroom and unpack her things. She stayed to help, anyway.
When he next showed his face outside, Kurt was overwhelmed by the welcome he received both in Longhampton and around the city as a whole. Although Sycamore’s collapse was a colossal inconvenience for almost everyone, the vast majority of people Kurt encountered thanked him for revealing the truth.
~
Around the time of the one-year anniversary of the takedown, which had come to be universally known as The SycaFall, Kurt was invited to appear on countless TV shows, both at home and abroad.
By this time, things were largely back to normal. It was a new kind of normal, with many people retaining their Seeds for the myriad of useful offline functions and many more wearing hacked UltraLenses on a permanent basis. Kurt still wore his Lenses for the obvious benefits of zooming and viewing content in full immersion. He was happy using his XK6 instead of a Seed, though, and the reinstatement of the old cellular network meant that he could use it for everything he used to, plus more.
In the immediate aftermath of The SycaFall, the government had stepped in to make good on all existing SycaStore credit. This was funded by a seizure of the company and its executives’ assets; as soon as the full extent of the corruption, illegal surveillance, blackmail and assorted law-breaking that had gone on at Sycamore became clear, no high-ranking executives escaped punishment. Amos was now in prison and would stay there for the rest of his life.
Internet services returned to the old normal as Sycamore-favouring legislation was thrown out as quickly as was politically and legally possible. The president and his party suffered tremendous embarrassment when the depth of his dealings with Amos became public knowledge, but a bipartisan committee was established to deal with the dissolution of Sycamore and everything related to it.
Popular Sycamore services like Star’s Eye View soon reappeared in different guises, and many of the most useful applications designed for the Seed could function without it on a smartphone like the XK6.
Minter and Ty joined Kurt on the TV circuit during the anniversary month. Minter was working in security where he belonged and Ty had begun a promising career as a filmmaker. On the private side, Ty and Lisa were engaged and living in England while Kurt and Minter had gradually become actual friends.
No one else from La Plethora ever appeared in the media. Anthony and Michael quiet understandably washed their hands of the whole thing; Harry and Joyce were private by nature; Mary, though still in regular contact with Kurt, was busy in her dream job of teaching the fourth grade; no one knew anything about Val; and no one had heard from Ernesto since he made good on his promise to give Randy his rightful share of the crash payout.
This was more money than Randy or anyone else would ever need, so he shared some of it with people who had been good to his family and needed a little boost; namely Mary, Harry, and Joyce. He also gave Ty and Lisa something to help them kick-start their new life in England.
Kurt, meanwhile, didn’t need any financial assistance. He was pleasantly surprised to learn that the mansion was legally his own having been purchased outright by Sycamore on the night he asked for it and immediately transferred to him. And if cash flow ever became an issue, Kurt knew he could do as much media work as he wanted.
He was fortunate to be able to turn down the crazy sums he was offered every day to appear in ads for all kinds of products. The only deal he had struck so far was for the movie rights to his life story. He signed the contract on the conditions that Ty would be involved in the production and that his own payment would come in the form of a Prendicco Finale. The studio delivered the car the next day; it was just as shiny and just as yellow as his last.
The questions that Kurt, Ty and Minter received during their TV appearances were usually much the same, apart from one night, when they had been flown to France for a special panel show which also featured Adeline Lemarchand and Rene Cordier.
A young man in the audience, well-spoken and smartly dressed, surprised Kurt with a question-cum-pitch: “What do you think of Fingerchips?”
Kurt had never heard of Fingerchips but quickly learned that they were, as the name suggested, microchips for your fingertips. The fundamental difference from the Seed, their young Belgian creator explained, was that Fingerchips had no internet connection or tracking ability. Each Fingerchip was essentially a sensor, able to detect the tiniest variations in relative movement and pressure.
The man boasted that Fingerchips would enable a near-infinite number of custom shortcuts. Two fingers could come together, he said, or five fingers could spread apart. Fingerchips were the interface of the future.
As the man tried his best to put it in eloquent terms: “It’s like you’re gesturing on a trackpad, or on your hand, but it’s in the air. And you can use both air-based trackpads at once.”
Kurt got an odd sense of reverse déjà vu as the enthusiastic inventor went all out to sell him the idea.
“You could zoom your Lenses by spreading your fingers,” the man said, “no need to touch your other hand or anything as inconvenient as that.”
Kurt smiled. He thought he had reached the limit of progress with a palm-based trackpad, but already people were taking it further. Brain-based implants were surely the final step in this evolution of consumer technology, and Kurt could only hope that he was dead before they became compulsory.
Whatever technology took off next, Kurt wanted stringent legal safeguards that would prevent restrictions on free movement, ensure a broader right to reasonable privacy, and prohibit fully immersive AR in public spaces.
The man insisted that his company was committed to similar safeguards and asked Kurt if he would be interested in joining the project on the ground floor.
“What’s your company called?” Kurt asked.
“I’ll do you one better,” the man said. “Company name and tagline.”
Kurt was all ears.
“Cinnamon: The world at your Fingerchips.”
Kurt shook his head and smiled. “Nah,” he said. “I’m out.”
Author’s Notes
It’s no exaggeration to say that this book wouldn’t have been written if people hadn’t asked for it, so I’d like to thank those people. You know who you are.
This feels like the natural conclusion of Kurt’s story, but that doesn’t mean I won’t write anything else in the Sycamore universe.
Far from it.
The interesting thing about Sycamore’s world of Seeds and UltraLenses is that the products and services would affect so many different people in so many different ways. I don’t foresee a straight sequel in the future, but all sorts of stories could take place during the timeframe in which we’ve been focusing on Kurt. I have ideas for how some of them could interlink in dramatic ways, so it's almost certain that I’ll return. Things like CrimePrev, which didn't really have a place in this sequel, are definitely worth exploring.
Something that I did briefly touch on in this book was the idea of the Funscreen. If you haven’t read my story Funscreen, I think you’ll like it. It’s free on Amazon and at most other places.
My next book is something different, a sci-fi novel called Not Alone. That will be out this year, most likely in early summer.
If you’d like to stay up to date with my latest releases, you can do so at any of the following links:
www.craigafalconer.com
www.twitter.com/craigafalconer
www.facebook.com/craigafalconer
Anyway, thanks for taking a chance on a new author by reading Sycamore and thanks for sticking with me to Sycamore 2. Reviews are really important, so if you liked the books and could spare two minutes to write as much on Amazon, that would be very helpful.
Craig A. Fal
coner,
February 2015
Table of Contents
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Author’s Notes
Sycamore 2 Page 33
