to seven. He clicked into his SycaNews app to watch the hourly bulletin. The lead story surrounded the launch; more specifically, the threat of a protest. Terrance Minion sat in the studio representing Sycamore and the newsreader asked what message he had for the public.
“We can’t live in fear of a hateful minority,” Minion said, “and we won’t. The Fury River Baptists have never done anything of note this far north and they know they aren’t capable. The people of our fine city will run them out of town if they dare show themselves tomorrow. I encourage everyone of sound mind to come on down to Liberty Street at 9am to show solidarity with those patriotic Americans who wish to embrace this new technology and won’t be bullied into staying at home. The Fury River Baptists have a constitutional right to free speech and so do we. Tomorrow, we all have a responsibility to exercise that right on Liberty Street by telling these terrorists loud and clear: not in my town.”
Kurt clicked out of the SycaNews glad that Minion had delivered. He tried Relive but it still wasn’t ready. A new notice filled its holding page — something about Icarus, a service Kurt vaguely remembered Amos mentioning a few times. Icarus was described as “the final destination in supra-cloud storage!” and claimed to be capable of storing lifelong vista recordings for each user, accessible for just $14.99 per month. The server requirements for such an undertaking blew Kurt’s mind and he couldn’t even estimate the set-up costs involved. All he knew was that Amos had listened to his billion-dollar pipeline metaphor and that the trillion-dollar oilfield was primed for exploitation.
He spent the next fifty minutes doing nothing but waiting until suddenly another text arrived from Amos. “Okay, hotshot. It’s up.”
Kurt clicked into the SycaStore and liked what he saw. Like the operating system itself, the SycaStore’s layout was clean and familiar: charts on the right, large tiles of highlighted content to the left, categories along the top. Most pleasing of all was the Balance display in the bottom-right corner. “Kurt Jacobs. Balance: ∞.”
There were five categories: Video, Music, Games, Apps and Subscriptions. Kurt explored the first two very quickly — just long enough to see that they had everything, to buy or rent — then took a longer look in Games. Many of the titles were familiar from his phone and computer, but now they came with the tantalising promise of full-immersion. The featured game was something called Happy Pigs and Kurt downloaded it out of curiosity. The filesize claimed to be 800MB but the game was available to play as soon as Kurt clicked it. He came straight out; there was too much to see to waste time playing games.
Apps was empty, much to Kurt’s annoyance, with a holding page promising quality over quantity and the appearance of life-changing content within a few days. Auctions, Message Boards and something called “Happy Fun Casino Party” would be available for free at launch.
Subscriptions was almost as uneventful. Consumers could access the endless music library for $12.99 per month and receive a selected daily movie for the same price. It seemed expensive but Kurt purchased both for convenience. His balance remained infinite.
He didn’t like the Sycamore Film Club’s first selection so he bought a few nature documentaries from the SycaStore’s impressive Video section and added them to a playlist. The picture quality was incredible and controlling the viewing options via his palm was significantly more intuitive than using a phone. A two-fingered pinch/spread changed the virtual screen’s size and dragging two fingers and a thumb moved it around the room. Kurt locked the screen to the wall facing his bed, as big as it would fit, and fell asleep watching two lions eat an ostrich.
~
Right beside the “JESUS LAUGHS WHEN HOMOS BURN” placard, proudly held by a girl of no more
“We can’t live in fear of a hateful minority,” Minion said, “and we won’t. The Fury River Baptists have never done anything of note this far north and they know they aren’t capable. The people of our fine city will run them out of town if they dare show themselves tomorrow. I encourage everyone of sound mind to come on down to Liberty Street at 9am to show solidarity with those patriotic Americans who wish to embrace this new technology and won’t be bullied into staying at home. The Fury River Baptists have a constitutional right to free speech and so do we. Tomorrow, we all have a responsibility to exercise that right on Liberty Street by telling these terrorists loud and clear: not in my town.”
Kurt clicked out of the SycaNews glad that Minion had delivered. He tried Relive but it still wasn’t ready. A new notice filled its holding page — something about Icarus, a service Kurt vaguely remembered Amos mentioning a few times. Icarus was described as “the final destination in supra-cloud storage!” and claimed to be capable of storing lifelong vista recordings for each user, accessible for just $14.99 per month. The server requirements for such an undertaking blew Kurt’s mind and he couldn’t even estimate the set-up costs involved. All he knew was that Amos had listened to his billion-dollar pipeline metaphor and that the trillion-dollar oilfield was primed for exploitation.
He spent the next fifty minutes doing nothing but waiting until suddenly another text arrived from Amos. “Okay, hotshot. It’s up.”
Kurt clicked into the SycaStore and liked what he saw. Like the operating system itself, the SycaStore’s layout was clean and familiar: charts on the right, large tiles of highlighted content to the left, categories along the top. Most pleasing of all was the Balance display in the bottom-right corner. “Kurt Jacobs. Balance: ∞.”
There were five categories: Video, Music, Games, Apps and Subscriptions. Kurt explored the first two very quickly — just long enough to see that they had everything, to buy or rent — then took a longer look in Games. Many of the titles were familiar from his phone and computer, but now they came with the tantalising promise of full-immersion. The featured game was something called Happy Pigs and Kurt downloaded it out of curiosity. The filesize claimed to be 800MB but the game was available to play as soon as Kurt clicked it. He came straight out; there was too much to see to waste time playing games.
Apps was empty, much to Kurt’s annoyance, with a holding page promising quality over quantity and the appearance of life-changing content within a few days. Auctions, Message Boards and something called “Happy Fun Casino Party” would be available for free at launch.
Subscriptions was almost as uneventful. Consumers could access the endless music library for $12.99 per month and receive a selected daily movie for the same price. It seemed expensive but Kurt purchased both for convenience. His balance remained infinite.
He didn’t like the Sycamore Film Club’s first selection so he bought a few nature documentaries from the SycaStore’s impressive Video section and added them to a playlist. The picture quality was incredible and controlling the viewing options via his palm was significantly more intuitive than using a phone. A two-fingered pinch/spread changed the virtual screen’s size and dragging two fingers and a thumb moved it around the room. Kurt locked the screen to the wall facing his bed, as big as it would fit, and fell asleep watching two lions eat an ostrich.
~
Right beside the “JESUS LAUGHS WHEN HOMOS BURN” placard, proudly held by a girl of no more
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