Sycamore (Near-Future Dystopia) Read Online Free PDF

discovered and exploited a vulnerability in Sycamore’s transfer protocol?”
    “No,” said Kurt. “The word exploit implies something black-hat, and I wouldn’t call what I found a vulnerability.”
    “So what would you call it? A hole?”
    Kurt shook his head and tried not to smile. “Try canyon.” His audacity silenced Amos and engendered disbelief throughout the audience. “Anyway, let’s just say it wasn’t as difficult as it should have been. Before long I worked it out and managed to send images to my computer instead of the server.”
    Randy’s advice about the present tense came to Kurt’s mind and he put it to immediate use. “So while I’m in my room playing around with everything, the Lenses are recording my field of vision and sending it to the computer. But rather than a single frame I’m capturing 60 of them per second. And rather than analysing the images for linkable content, the computer is storing them. Everything I see is being recorded. I’ve turned the Lenses into the streaming video camera they should have been from the start.”
    A cry of “that’s impossible!” came from one of the contestants who had already pitched. Kurt couldn’t remember what his innovation had been, so it couldn’t have been anything good.
    Amos turned to the complainer sternly in an appeal for silence. “Please.”
    “No,” he said, “I won’t be quiet. How come Mr Wildcard is allowed to make these baseless claims? It’s easy to win people over with fantasy.”
    “How come no one else was interrupted like this?” Kurt asked.
    Amos answered. “No one else was making claims like yours. I hope you can back them up.”
    “I haven’t finished explaining it yet, but if you want a demonstration…?”
    Amos looked along his front row then back to Kurt. “I’m sure I speak for the millions watching around the country when I say that we do, Mr Jacobs.”
    “Then watch this.” Kurt flipped open the laptop on the table beside him. “Bring that camera in closer,” he said. The cameraman obliged. As well as going out live on channel 43, the pictures appeared on the auditorium’s big screen.
    A command line filled the laptop’s display and Kurt typed something too quickly for anyone to read. Seconds later the screen was filled with a never-ending image loop of itself within itself — Kurt’s vision was being transmitted to the computer and replicated in real time. He spun around to the audience and they appeared on the big screen. He welcomed their gasps.
    Next he focused on Amos, who smiled at the sight of himself. He had doubted Kurt but was happy to be proven wrong. Kurt had only one word for him: “See?”
    “Incredible,” said Amos.
    Kurt shook his head with carefully affected nonchalance. “Child’s play.”
    Amos whispered something to the man beside him. Kurt tried not to let it distract him.
    “We can transfer either the raw feed, like this, or the augmented vista. There are a few extra steps for the latter, but…” Kurt typed away on his laptop. “... Here we go.”
    The clock and everything else that Kurt saw through his Lenses was now on the screen. The audience had been amazed by the initial demonstration but this additional step hugely impressed the front row.
    “Okay. The purpose of that demonstration was to show that we can record the totality of our visual experience. Fine. But when we start streaming the images to a portable device, well, that’s when it gets exciting. We need something powerful enough to handle the data but portable enough to always be with us. Think of a DVR. Before DVRs, a TV could only display what the antenna was giving it in the same way that our Lenses can only see through to reality and augment it with whatever the server delivers. But if we had a small processor that was always near the Lenses like the DVR is always near the TV, it could record what we were seeing and relay it at our pleasure. We could literally rewind real life.
    “Today,